Who's brewing this weekend?

Did a fairly simple Vanilla Maple Cider today out of boredom. Will be kegging my Chocolate Pumpkin Porter and maybe my Milk Stout that's been sitting on cinnamon, vanilla, cacao and peppers for a while a bit later today or tomorrow.

 

BooYah! I was brewing this afternoon and loved every minute of it!

I'm brewing some Dead Ringer IPA Extract Kit w/ Specialty Grains from NorthernBrewer.
I brewed a full 5-Gallon batch instead of the 2.5 half-batch (w/2.5 gal cold water) in the directions...
I got out every last drop of the extracts, steeped the Briess Caramel 40 for 25 minutes instead of 20.
Boiled for around 70 minutes instead of the 60 in the directions.
1oz of Centennial on first boil (70 min)
1oz of Centennial at 20 min before finish
2oz of Centennial at <5 min before finish

Ambient Temp Outside today was around 40-45 deg F.
I was able to get the near boiling water down to 65 deg F in less than 30 minutes with a wort chiller and a kiddie pool that I loaded up with water last night to freeze or get really cold. It had a very thin sheet of ice this morning, but melted before boiling... It was awesome because I could pitch my yeast directly afterwards and my specific gravity readings are a little more accurate not having to add additional points for each 10 degrees higher than the 60 degree F baseline provided by the hydrometer.

Instead of getting the predicted 1.064 OG from the instructions... I was able to pump out a flat 1.070. A reading of around 9%. Currently, I have it all in a 6.5 gal primary/bottling bucket for fermentation Man am I stoked for 1-2 weeks from now to rack it into my 6.5 glass carboy for secondary fermentation! (Wish I had a 5 gal glass carboy for times like this)... Will be dry-hopping the secondary with more Centennial. Thinking about adding an additional hop for smell. Perhaps Simcoe or Amarillo, still haven't made up my mind on that yet.

 

Let it go 2 weeks, add your dry hops to the primary, let it sit cool for a week, then bottle. No sense on moving to secondary for this beer. Especially if the fermenter isn't going to minimize oxygen for you.

 

Last batch I mistakingly put 0.5lb of chocolate wheat in my ESB instead of 0.25lb...the results are stellar !

 

But if I were to do that... I wouldn't experience the pure pleasure of cleaning out a glass carboy!

 

There is no such thing as a "Right time of the year" for a beer. Drink what you want... when you want.

I drank an Erdinger Hefeweizen last night, the beer police haven't thrown me in the looney-bin yet!

 

Brewing a 100% brett-trois IPA. Need to use up the rest of my Citra hops. I'll probably blend it with some combination of Amarillo and/or Galaxy.

 

Tried partial mash for the first time in a "Toasted Almond" Nut Brown. It's bubbling away as of this morning.

 

Did a 10 gallon all-grain batch of Paulaner's Hefe-Weizen from the book (Clone Brews). Used two different White Labs Yeasts WLP300 for 5, and WLP380 for 5. Fermenting away at 66 degrees and hoping to combine both the slurry's to do a big Weizenbock in 2 weeks. My friend needed some beer for his family Christmas, hopefully one day he will drink something other than my Hefe. (I have made him around 10 batches since I started in 2007)

 

Brewed up a porter on Friday night. I didn't heat up enough sparge water and was too lazy to heat up more, so I only got about between 5 and 5.5 gallons instead of the normal 6.5, which bumped my O.G. up to 1.064. Smelled great and will pack a whallop.

Also, used dry yeast for the first time since my very first batch since I didn't have time to make a starter. We'll see how it turns out.