What's Brewing? (February Edition)

Brewed a pale ale last weekend with mosaic and azacca at 5 minutes. Malt bill is 50% Vienna 25% MO and 25% 2 Row only because I ran out of buckets last time I ordered grain. Should be tasty though. Dry hopping aggressively 5 gallons gets azacca. The other 5 gets Denali which I’m excited to try.

 

In my 9ish years of home brewing, I'm doing my first ever dump on a batch of beer. Poured out a case of hefeweizen that was brewed back in September '17. I used homegrown hops, and I don't think they had enough alpha acids to contribute any sort of antibacterial properties, and it got pretty nasty in the bottle. For a while, I was trying to just embrace it as a sour/funky beer, but couldn't come to grips with quaffing it down. Not even worth the buzz!

 

Pretty damn good success rate if you ask me. I had a California common I brewed 4 years ago that in hindsight may have been alright if I’d given it time but I dumped it. Now I’ll never know. Besides that I’ve got a lot of bottles from 04-05 in the basement that I should probably dump. Maybe I’ll check em out tonight!

 

Maple sap Union Jack is pretty solid now. As solid as a 3 year old maple sap ipa can be. The beer I brewed with orbit hops a few years ago is still weird. Think I overcarbed and I don’t like the orbit blend. Little vanilla otherwise blah

 

Big bad West Coast DIPA with a ton of Simcoe, Chinook and Columbus, a.k.a Piney the Welder.

 

Brewing up a Scottish ale soon. It will be about 1.055, which puts it in the export/ 80 shilling range. First time using the new monster mill. Also, going to try boiling 1 gallon of 1st runnings down to sludge for the first time.

 

Dry hopped my IPL this morning. Also placed an order for a new SS Brewtech Bucket, Brewmaster edition to replace my plastic buckets... Also some WLP007 brewing next weekend!

 

Brewing up a Citra saison today

 

Souring wort for a Pineapple Blueberry Berliner.

 

Mashing in for the first time in '18 (last brew day was New Year's Eve). Pale ale with flaked rye, hopping inspired by Pliny the Elder clone recipes, but scaled back to be somewhat in balance with session strength. Currently calling it Pliny's Bane, as the philosopher didn't have good things to say about rye.

 

I don't like it, I LOVE it

 

Wee heavy next weekend
60% spelt/40% pils otherwise straightforward hefe
Big Baltic porter at end of month

 

Haven't brewed in about 12mo. but did a simple Brewer's Best malt extract kit Kolsch yesterday. Brew day went really well. So I've got it in a closet that will avg. around 66 degrees (low range of 61 and high end of 70). Will that work out well?

 

Planning on brewing a hoppy kettle sour soon - Berliner grain bill, citra hops added at pale ale strength, WLP648 ferment with apricots added.

 

Brewed a black pepper saison this weekend. Fermenting away nicely.

 

Just transferred English Barleywine onto oak cubes and bourbon. OG 1.121 and current gravity 1.038. Didn't taste sweet at all. As expected needs some aging, taste a little boozy.

 

Brewed up an IPA Saturday. I am hoping it becomes my "house beer" recipe. 71.8% 2-row, 20.5% Flaked Oats, 5.1% Flaked Wheat, 2.6% dextrine mashed at 150-151 with an OG of 1.068. Bittered to 15IBU with columbus in the boil, a 3:2 ratio of Mosaic to Citra in a whirlpool and fermenting with Barbarian at 64 (+/- .9*). Just did the active fermentation dry hop of equal parts citra and mosaic (37h after yeast pitch), I'll then close-transfer it to a keg with cryo mosaic.

75 sulfate, 115 calcium, 149 chloride. pH was a little high at 5.5.

 

Never thought about heating keg. Better thermal conductivity than glass, nice!