What's Brewing - May '17 edition

ESB brewed and kegged. Will be tapped on Friday!

 

Today I will be kegging my new IPA (for tapping this weekend) and making my yeast starter for a new session-pale this weekend to be brewed.

 

Just brewed up a hoppy American wheat, hopped with Amarillo and Wai-ti for a local festival. Currently fermenting happily away, used Imperial Organic Yeast G03 Dieter (Kolsch yeast). Expecting this to be a nice easy drinking but flavorful brew at 4.8 %. Brew on good peeps.

 

Doing some brett harvesting currently.

Building my 'house brett' from different homebrew dregs in a starter flask: various brett brux strains, brett c, a caught wild yeast and lacto plantarum

Also building up dregs from urban artifact's phrenology (brett IPA) to ferment a citra pale ale. I love whatever brett they use in that beer, so glad they finally bottled it so us homebrewers can wrangle it in!

 

Getting my crap together for my annual festbier. It was such a hit last year I need to double production. %75 pils, %24 munich %1 melanoidin. Last year I used bavarian lager, half of this years batch will get the same treatment, the other half will use inland island German monk blend. I may swap the munich with vienna also.

 

A look at the IPA as it went into the keg (my hydrometer sample). Finished at 1.011 (expected 1.010).



In other news, my homemade stir plate died. Decided instead of building another to just buy the malestorm from NB. So hopefully that is worth the money long term!

 

My first ever berliner wiesse (kettle soured) is fermenting. I"m going to add prepackaged tart cherry puree in a few days. Crossing my fingers on this one.

 

Did you make it out of a cigar box/computer fan? I made one that way last winter and have probably used it about 20 times so far... How long did your's last?

 

I used a variable control CPU fan with hard drive magnets and all that, but no cigar box. Same thing though.

Mine lasted over a year. A few krausen overflows took it's toll I could repair I am sure, but I wanted something easier to clean and less hassle when setting up and such. More a convenience than anything, especially when I am always doing step starters and such. Worked great though until just now!

 

A Tripel with Wyeast 3787 and Brett B has been fermenting since I brewed it last Friday. I had a very healthy starter pitch of 3787, and a smaller pitch of Brett B which came from a 1 liter starter I did a few weeks ago. I had a very rigorous fermentation within 12 hours which lasted for a good 36-48 hours. I'm glad I had the foresight to use a blow-off tube.

If I were pitching only 3787 BrewCipher predicted an FG of 1.009. With the Brett, I'm not sure where it'll actually end up. I took a gravity reading last night which was 1.022. I was actually surprised that it was still that high, but there's still fairly steady airlock activity (a bubble every 7 seconds or so), so we'll see where it goes.

 

Saran wrap over the top of the stir plate before putting the flask on it next time. I learned that the hard way Enjoy the new one though – I'll probably do the same if mine ever craps out.

 

Red IIPA boiling...mostly Red X and light Munich...should blend nicely with a 3.3% ABV American Prickly Pear Wheat that just came out of the fermenter a neon red.

 

BYO heady clone recipe starting.... right now

 

Saison in the fermenter, bubbling away. Giving WLP590 French Saison a try. Any ideas for another style I could reuse this yeast for? Dark beer is up next in the rotation, so I was just going to do a dark saison, but I don't have a recipe yet.

 

Can you do 10 gallons? If so, Mad Fermentationist has done a series of funky dark Saisons. You could pick one, do 10 gallons and age 1/2 with the extra bacteria and wild yeast that he does, and drink the other half fresh.

 

Getting ready for tomorrow's brew, a Rye IPA with 5 C's: Chinook, Columbus, Cascade, Centennial and Citra; 13 oz total for a 5 gallon batch. Malt bill: 9.8 lbs Rahr 2 Row, 3 lbs Rye, 0.5 lb Naked Oats, 0.25 lb C 35, and 0.25 lb C 75. Using Wyeast 1332 (NW Ale); boy this yeast really flocculates. Cheers!

 

Today brewing a brown ale then splitting it one gets maple wood, one gets oak, now gets both woods and nibs.

 

Pale ale dry hopping today.

 

I'm doing another double brew day today. Kicking myself for brewing so long and never trying this before until last month. It only adds 30 minutes to brew day. I have an ordinary bitter chilling right now and an oat brown ale on the burner.