Brewing Activities May 2016

brewed a saison yesterday. pilsner and wheat malts, plus azacca hops, which i havent tried before. really looking forward to bottling and getting a first taste of the beer. used the french saison yeast from mangrove jacks, which, from what ive heard, is their belgian ale yeast with a new name.

 

Scored a 50 pound CO2 tank and regulator from a co-worker for $50!! Cost $26 to exchange it. Hell of a deal. Added 20 pounds of strawberries to my Belgian and saison with cacao nibs!! Added coffee beans to my imperial breakfast beer too. Can't wait for these bad boys to be ready. I'm having a huge party on the 11th of June so I don't expect these beers to last long at all.

 

Frankenstein Recipe #2. Smoked 2 lbs of grains over Hickory for a couple hours then vacuum sealed them for a couple of weeks. Used 3 different washed Yeasts and added a different one every 2 days. Also my first time kegging so there's more carbonation now then in the mug pic. Didn't think the smoke would work but it has a great after taste.

 

Got my next recipe developed... Just a standard ole' IPA (2-row, white wheat, 10L) with US-05. Columbus, Chinook, Mosaic and Citra. Not doing a hop stand this time, strictly just boil and dry hop, as my past few have been hella hazy and never cleared even after months in the keg with my extensive hop stands... So this time as a test, eliminating the stand and fining with gelatin for the first time.

 

Picked up ingredients for American Pale Ale today. Yeast starter happening tonight so I can brew on Friday.

 

Rebuilding my Kellerwiesse yeast tonight for a rebrew of my Hefe next week. Killed the keg in 2.5 weeks. Wife no happy...

 

Bottled up a Gose, Orange wheat, and a Pale Ale.

Brewed a Honey Blonde last weekend with Wyeast 1318, should be an interesting beer. I'm also going to dry hop it with Comet and Citra because why the hell not?

Bonus shot: this is what 12 hours after pitching the 1318 looks like.

It literally blew off the bung and blow off tube.

 

@Doomsayer52 is that with or without fermcap? What OG and temp?

 

No fermcap.

Pitched at 64 and ambient temps are about ~68.

 

This last weekend marked my return to brewing after 14 months away from the hobby. It felt refreshing and I feel so much better with fresh beer bubbling away in my hall closet. I made a pale ale with Nottingham yeast (first time I've used it) and a rye saison (Wyeast 3711) ... got pretty terrible brewhouse efficiency on both so they are 1.039 and 1.035, respectively (guess they're session beers now!).

I also got around to kegging a couple of sours I brewed back in 2014, including a kriek on 11 lbs of cherries (5 gal batch) and Wyeast Roeselare blend that went into the secondary in January 2014. Turns out 28 months is just about right for the Roeselare ... I've used it before but without nearly that time on it. Results were pretty amazing.

 

5 gal batch of IPA for the pipeline (really using up hops to make room for some Southern Hemi new crop)

 

I have what I'm calling a sour Belgian wheat on the right which has been fermenting for 8 days now. The first two sours I did both turned out tasting great, but had a little bit of something on the nose that I want to try to avoid this time around, so I'm going to dry hop some Citra tomorrow with the hopes of overwhelming the straw/cereal (couldn't quite put my finger on it) smell from last time.

The left is a cyser that I used a bit of Caramel 80L in, which is why it is so dark. I'll put that in a secondary in a month or so with some cinnamon sticks. Hopefully bottle it around October.

 

Just brewed up a tropical DIPA. Was shooting for an OG of around 1.081, but ended up at 1.088 - not bad. 18oz of tropical hops. Should be tasty and finish north of 10%abv.

 

Culturing SN Kellerweis today for next weekend's Hefe.

 

Brewing up 10 gallons of psuedo-turbid mashed lambic wort today. 64% Pilsner, 18% Flaked wheat and 18% wheat. Half will get ECY01 Bugfarm and the other will get ECY34 Dirty Dozen. I've been sitting on those vials for a while and just decided it needed to happen. First time brewing a batch this large, and it was an adventure. Don't quite have the equipment needed to do batches that large, but I made it work. Finally chilling now.

 

Just made a 60 min addition of Challenger to a golden bitter-- 94% Golden Promise, 6% Golden Naked Oats.

 

Racked my American wheat onto 9lbs of peach purée today. Then I bottled the last gallon of my quad that received bourbon and oak cubes. Also tapped the keg of my saison.

 

Just got back from vacation and it's down to ~1.01 and tastes better, I'll do a hydro reading to get the final number after cold crashing. Though now I'm second guessing my decision to cold crash after reading up on introduction of O2 from the suck back, but too late. I'll have to research to see if there are ways of solving that problem with buckets for future batches. Seen a couple solutions for carboys, but not for buckets.

 

Just brewed this Saison (Tank 7 clone-ish) sorta. Pitched WY3711 and I'm about to have to batten down the hatches! She's a monster! Cheers!

 

Trying my very first kettle sour today. Going to pitch a live culture of Lactobacillus probiotic and let it stew for a day or two; as soon as the pH is low enough then I'll do my boil and ferment with Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey, which is one of my faves.