What's Brewing & Doing - December Edition

What kind of strips are you using? And how do you know they are that accurate? Kai Troester tested ColorpHast strips, which are purportedly the king of pH strips, as part of his paper on mash parameters, and IMO the results were underwhelming...
http://braukaiser.com/documents/Effects_of_mash_parameters_on_attenuation_and_efficiency.pdf

 

Bruton bad ass is moved to Thursday, but wait,,,, Im a playin hooky and yes, its another double batch day so we are making a TH3 dipa. Love brewing to death!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Here are the strips I use... @VikeMan, I haven't tested them against a digital meter, but have tested other brews with known pH and have gotten relatively accurate results...that is by eyeballing it. As long as mine are down in the 3.4 range (between 3.2 and 3.6 colors), I'm happy.

 

Gingerbread Brown Ale, extract

 

Developing three beer recipes tonight to brew the next few weeks to fill my kegs I just bought (no more bottles!). So far I have a cream ale, azacca single hop APA and a porter developed.

 

Make sure you save your bottles, you will probably want some of them in the future.

 

@wspscott

For sure! I plan to save the bombers at least for big stouts or other beers I may want to bottle condition... As well as using them for "growlers" once and a while for same-day consumption.

 

Stopping at the LBHS tonight on the way home from work. No plan for recipes yet.

 

Would love to see a step-by-step of how you set up your smoker.

 

Bottled my Daikon Radish Belgian Saison yesterday.

 

Almost out of IPA so I need to brew again. Will check on my hop supply tonight to make sure I have enough of what I need, then make a starter for next weekend's brewday. Also need to clean a couple kegs.

 

No problem! I've got a master forge smoker. It's pretty much the cheapest of the meat smokers out there: http://www.lowes.com/pd_416522-42600-CBS1301L_0__?productId=4459493

It's been great for smoking meat as well, but when you wanna smoke malt just remove the drip pan and bottom grill tray that are inside it. Keep the top grill on, and just lay a cut piece of aluminum screen material over the top of the grill to place your malt on. I stapled two 4x4 pieces of wood to each side of the screen to keep it settled on the grill.

Get about half a chimney full of hot coals going, and add wood chunks (I used mostly hickory) to the top of the chimney to get them charred and smoldering. Add those wood chunks to the bottom of the smoker and just keep an eye on them to make sure they don't start flaring up. Make sure the temp stays below 100F. Produce a good amount of smoke for around 2 hours, and spray your malt with filtered water every 10 min or so to keep moist.

The malt I smoked smells amazing, but I haven't used it yet on the batch I'm putting together. Probably will into the new year.

 

Awesome and thanks! I will have to try this on my Big Green Egg.

 

Sounds great, Columbus with Galaxy is one of my favorite combos. Trillium Congress Street is a good commercial example.

 

Thanks for the link. Even knowing their limitations I think strips may be good enough for some applications. I wonder about the accuracy of the cheap ph meters too. As you may know from the hydrometer thread I'm hard on my equipment and wish ph meters weren't so easy to break.

 

Usually you can find accuracy specs for even the cheapest ones. +-.1 or even +-.05 are claimed for some of the cheapo units. I can't personally vouch for the accuracy of claims though. And sometimes they seem to confuse accuracy with resolution.

 

I had the exact same thing happen with a Berliner I brewed a few months back. The brux starter I pitched did not ferment any remaining sugars over a duration of 2/3 weeks. Wonder if the low pH has anything to do. Cheers

 

Finally pulled a beer from my all mosaic ipa v5 keg. FG was higher that I wanted, but this beer turned out great. Smells great, starts soft, turns a little sweet and follows with a lingering bitterness that brings you back. I wouldn't hesitate to rebrew it... although I always end up tweaking something on the next batch. I changed too many variables at once between v4 and v5 to know exactly what dialed this bitterness in. #kti

Looking to borrow a beer gun from a friend to fill a few bottles for a competition next week.