Cinco De Mayo brewing weekend

Today bottling a Sorachi ace/nelson saison with bret C and brewing a 100 % brett C beer tomorrow.

 

Had plans to brew after I put together a temperature controller to turn a chest freezer into a fermentation chamber. It is a dual controller, for heat and cold. After I finished, I realized that I needed to build a collar so I could put a heat source in the chamber. Got all that done and cleaned up and it was 4 pm. Guess I'll brew tomorrow.

 

Heating up my sparge water now for a Belgian Singel with Kumquat.

 

Half way through the boilBCBS what should have been 10 gallons of all graingof saison using locally malted Pils and Rye, to be split between the Wyeast Dupont yeast and White labs American Farmhouse. Last night I smacked the smack pack too hard android blew yeast all over the basement floor (and myself). Still have the White Labs vial and a pack of US-05, so I can still make a comparison I guess.
Hooray for having backup stuff in the fridge/freezer!

 

Brewed an American Wheat today, all sorachi ace hops. Really smooth brew day, hit where I wanted my numbers to be.

 

I did a single mash, 11# Flaked Wheat, 9.6# GW Pale Malt, 151*F for 60 mins, ran off 13.5 gallons at 1.043, split to 2 kettles, 1 got 3/4# Caravienne steeped, and 5oz Amarillo in a 45 minute boil (1.4oz DH) w/ 1.056 for a Gumballhead Clone. The other got Sterling, Coriander, Orange Zest, a special spice, and .8oz of Flaked Oats (added for last 10 mins of boil). Worked out great. Hit my numbers perfect... and then... forgot to dump the 1/2 gallon of StarSan out of my Better Bottle before running the Gumballhead into it... dropped my OG by 5 points. I'm gonna hit it with some sugar after work to drive the OG up a couple points and the FG down a point or two so I still have the intended ABV. Hit my mash with hot water and pulled off another 6 gallons of 1.011 wort that got a handful of grains and 2 days @ 95*F+, will run it off tonight, add 2.5# DME, boil for 15 mins, and hit it with 1oz Challenger and 2oz Cascade just before flameout and let it sit for a few mins before chilling to get about 5 IBUs, floral, grapefruit, spicy aromas, then ferment with WY 3726 Farmhouse and a bug blend for a quick session sour. Bottling all three in 3 weeks.

 

How'd it go?

We did our first decoction yesterday for Dunkleweizen. Good times, with something to actually do rather than just waiting 60 mins.... though the brew day was a bit longer and we had trouble hitting that final sacch rest temp - guess we didn't take enough out.

 

My wife brewed a blone ale of sorts with some orange in ther. I brewed a SMaSH beer on Sunday.

 

That sounds about how our day went. The software lies I guess. We also skipped the mash out decoction as well as experienced a stuck sparge. We had to do a heck of a lot of stirring to while taking first runnings. Wound up mixing in fresh rice hulls for the subsequent wash - it seemed to do the trice. I figured boiling the heck out of the rices hulls might have rendered them useless.

I thought maybe next time we would just add the rice hulls for the last decoction before we return the grain to the mash tun. This way they can be mixed in nice and good (unless it was just a stirring it up again as you did that actually mattered).

 

I ended up brewing an American honey wheat with Wyeast 1010 and some Jolly Pumpkin dregs that I have been feeding for about 6 weeks. Air lock activity started at about 6 hours and has been bubbling away steadily since. I may split the batch for secondary and put half on some fruit.