Day 15 - October 7

One of the best parts of homebrewing is taking it with on trips. I'll be out of town until Friday and went to fill a growler of the wet hop centenial. I got about 3/4 full and the keg already blew! Good thing i have the stout coming on soon! I guess i have a keg to clean!

Day 14 - October 6

Put away a few more clean bottles. 14 more and I'll have filled the 3 cases i have to put them in. 

Thursday and friday will be interesting. I'll be out of town, so i wonder what I'll do. I guess maybe those will be research days. 

Day 13 - October 5

Oops I forgot to post this after I wrote it.

The results are in, the straight apple cider viniger with less soap is better. Killed more pests.

Day 12 - October 4

The last few days the fruit flys in our house have been really bad! We have tossed every piece of produce in the house, but they are still bad. So, time to wage war on this brewery pest! I set out 3 traps and we will see which catches more by morning. From left to right we have apple cider vinegar with a tiny bit of soap, apple cider vinegar with a bit more soap, and half apple cider vinegar half wet hop centenial ipa with the same amount of soap at the middle. Kill them all! 

I also noticed that with fall cool weather hitting, the heater in one of my fermentation chambers isn't keeping up. The stout is down to about 13.5 degrees Celsius. Im worried the yeast may have dropped out too early! 

I checked the gravity and it is at 1.022. That is a bit high...but it is an oatmeal stout so maybe not too bad. I checked with Keith and he checked the gravity on his batch. He uses a refractometer and his is at 8.5 brix and calculates it out to be about 1.016. I guess we will see if mine continues to drop or not. 

I know its taboo to wash yeast from a dark beer, but it use s-04 so much i think ill wash the yeast from this when I keg it! 

Day 11 - October 3

Today's to do list

1- get newly cleaned bottles into cases
2- get fermenters stored away
3- get clean kegs stored away
4- have a homebrew

Not very exciting today, but it's all stuff that had to be done!

Day 10 - October 2

Its a research day. My next brew is going to be a version of northern brewers smashing pumpkins ale, and convienently someone in my brew club just posted the link below for the quest for the perfect pumpkin beer.

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/how-to-brew-pumpkin-beer/

Day 9 - October 1

I finished cleaning the bottles I started last night. After nearly 24 hours in oxy-clean the lables had all fallen right off. All i had to do was pull the floating labels out, drain thw water and rinse the bottles. I'll let them dry and then add them to my stash.

I also got several kegs that had been cleaned re-assembled and sanitizer into them. I learned through the proceaa that i have 2 brands of kegs. I have corny and firestone and apparently they have different threading on the posts...and i have them all mixed up. Its goi g to take some time to sort everyrhing out and get the right pieces to the right kegs.

I thought I'd share a picture of my new brewing supply box. I picked up a tackle box to organize and store all my parts and pieces in, and i love it. I wish I had done this years ago!