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!

Day 8 - September 30

I don't always save bottles, but when I do I soak them in hot oxy-clean.

With 10 gallons of barlywine in the pipeline I'm going to need a lot of bottles. Since i started kegging i had stopped saving empties, but now I'm back at it. Tonight i have about a dozen bottles soaking in thw utility sink with hot oxy-clean. This will get them nice and clean, and the lables will all fall right off.

Day 7 - September 29

Cleaning again. I'm almost caught up! Got the carboy from the rhubarb wine rinsed snd drying. Stout is still bubbling away

Day 6 - September 28

Some days the bwst thing to do with homebrew is share it. Cantenial wet hop was a hit with company tonight. Oatmeal stout is still fermenting nicely and I'm worn out!

Dave 5 September 27

I didn't get a lot done today, but I did get my rhubarb wine transferred into secondary and checked on the oatmeal stout which is bubbling away nicely.

Day 4 - September 26

BREW DAY! And what a brew day it was!

The started out with a drive to Pine Island to Keith's place where I was greeted by the amazing aroma of pork on the smoker! The pork went through about the same process as our brew day...full of trouble! The fire for the pork has to be re-lit twice!

YUM!

Keith's new-ish brew stand was already set up from a Belgian he brewed the night before, However, we only had about half the RO water we had planned, so we had to cut the RO with city water (trouble number 1) 

We got strike water heated and mashed in to realize that our grain bill was maxing out his mash tun...and way too much for his mash paddle! Not only was the mash tun full tot he rim with a thick mash, but we had to find a copper pipe to stir it because the mash paddle was bending too much! But we got the mash set, all be it a few degrees lower than planned. (trouble 2)

 All the grain had crushed down the braid in the tun so bad that we were running off a trickle of wort...45 minutes late we had only run off about 3 gallons. But it was dark and thick as motor oil, and came in about 1.100 SG on the refractometer!!

Eventually the mash stuck all together and we ended up scooping everythign out a few gallons at a time into a smaller kettle with a paint strainer bag. Essentially doing a pseudo BIAB...trouble number too many by that time. We ended up with about 12 gallons at 1.050 for our pre boil. 

We may have accidentally melted some of the plastic off the handle for his kettle valve...oops

The hour boil was uneventful (Finally!) and we started running through the plate chiller to cool...but it got clogged with hop trub leaving is with just a trickle coming out. The bonus is that with all of the issues, we still hit about 1.060 SG, right where we were aiming! The refractometer said about 1.059, his hydrometer said 1.060 and mine said 1.0635. 

All in all it was a great day even with he troubles! The wort smells amazing. I pitches a pack of S-04 when I got home and it should be bubbling away in the morning!

I also drained out the nasty oxy-clean water fro the barlywine fermenter I left to soak. I re-filled it with hot tap water and more oxy-clean..the cleaning never ends!

Until tomorrow: Cheers! 

Day 3 - September 25

Brew Day tomorrow!

Tomorrow I'll be heading to Keith's place for a 10 gallon collaboration brew. Last time was the wet hop IPA, this time were doing a rye oatmeal stout! I've got my RO water and fermenter with star san in the car ready to go. Now I'm just getting all my grains measured out and crushed. As a bonus, I get to crack into a NEW bag of pale malt. (Rhar Pale Ale malt is my favorite) I love the storage container I go from my friend David years back, fits a 50lb sack perfect and air tight! You can see one of my Fermentation chambers in the back.

 

Here is our recipe for the stout:

15 lb 10oz pale malt
6 1/2 lb Flaked Oats
1 lb Crystal 120
3 lb British Chocolate Malt
3lb Chocolate Rye malt
2 lb Golden naked oats

2oz Centenial at 60 minutes (27 IBU)


Than I'm planning to use S-04 English yeast for mine and ferment about 66F.

Half the Chocolate Rye    

 The Chocolate Rye and Crystal 

 

The specialty Malts

Time for milling! 

I needed to clear some fermentation space, too, so I kegged one batch of the Big Barleywine we did with the brew club a while back. This batch was with S-04 also. O.G. 1.099 FG measured into the keg at 1.026 puts this batch at about 9.5% ABV. Finished a little high, but it tasted yummy! 

                           With brewing comes.....CLEANING.                      

                 My Better bottle that had a bit of a yeast blow out from 

                 the Barleywine will sit in oxy-clean until tomorrow! 

Cheers until tomorrow!

Day 2 - September 24

Lots of little things today. My entries for a competition were delivered to the Northern Brewer in Milwaukee and finalized the grain bill for a collaboration brew with a friend on Saturday.

I am entering 3 beers into a competition at the Delafield Brewhaus called the Schnapp Hans Cup.  I'm entering a bock and dopplebock that I brewed for a RAZE competition that never happened, as well as a fresh hopped IPA with home grown centennial. This will be my first competition with the new 2015 BJCP guidelines, so it will be interesting to get feedback. 

Here is a link to the competition. http://schnapphanscup.com/ 

The Judging is October 10, so I'll have news after that! 

The collaboration brew on Saturday is with my buddy Keith. Were going to brew 10 gallons of Oatmeal Stout and each take 5 home to ferment. This is our second go at a colab brew. The first was the Wet Hop Centennial which turned out great. It should be fun. I'll post the recipe and pictures from the brew day on Saturday. 

Day 1 - Birthday

Day one and I started how all good homebrew adventures should...with a homebrew! A glass of my wet hopped centenial ipa while celebrating with family. As a gift I got a new hydrometer perfect for beer! Its labratory grade and only goes from 1.000 to 1.070, but it is marked every .0005! This nerd likes his data! I'm excited to use it when i test the FG on my barlywine tomorrow!

Brewing 365

Tomorrow is my birthday (28 years old) and im going to begin my brewing 365 challenge. Im going to try to do something homebrew related every day for 1 year! What will tomorrow bring?