Just lit the flame to heat up the strike water. This was an inspired recipe. Had a Ballast Point Grapefruit IPA the other night and my girlfriend and I liked it so much I moved this to the front of the brew line. With summer fast approaching (at least, it is here in SoCal, it’s gonna be in the 90s by next weekend) this will make a great thirst quenching, post yard work, sitting in the sun in my boardshorts and flip flops, beer.
Having a Grapefruit IPA for good luck!
Mashed in!
Brewing in flip flops is my MO. Some call me crazy, and I have busted a toe once, but boot just don’t feel right.
My life is done in flip flops. Only time I wear proper footwear is at work.
Basically the same. I wear hard sole slippers in the winter.
Vorlauf!!!
I just really wanted to say vorlauf.
As a side note, how fast are you guys draining your mash tuns? I always err on the slower side to make sure I don’t get a stuck grain bed, but it seems to take forever.
I start slow for vorlauf and open wide when ready. I batch sparge, so a stuck mash is a minor inconvenience.
Yup, stuck this one trying to go too fast too soon. Oh well, dumped in some more water and mixed it up, good to go.
And boiling.
Chilling out.
Usually takes about 20-25 min to bring it down to 70F-ish. I think I’m gonna get a small recirc pump and use a cooler of ice water. Anyone on here use something like that?
Made a 1.5 liter starter with good old WLP 001 yesterday. Pitched the whole thing today with a good krausen on it. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t just have to rig a blowoff on the fermenter. Fermenteezer set at 61F and that thing is going crazy. If this keeps up I might just have to make a starter more often.
I do that for lagers, and when the tap water is too hot in summer. Use tap water to get down to 100F to save on ice.
I use ice in the winter when I can set a bucket out overnight - to save water overall and avoid icy drive and walks. I am blessed with year round low 50’s well water, so summer chilling is only complicated by the wort sitting at ambient temps above pitching until I can get it into the fermentation chamber for those last few degrees. But I am contemplating using both a whirlpool immersion chiller with a second counter flow chiller using iced water to see if I can get it into the 40’s quickly…
Does anyone else have a problem with peeking into the fermenteezer (or where ever you ferment) about every 30 minutes to an hour for 3-4 days after you brew? I can’t stop! I like geeking out and watching the bubbles and the beer churning away.
I do it in the morning, after work (when I didn’t work from home), and before bed. After a few days I forget about it for a couple of weeks.
I may add a small webcam when I build my brewpi.
I live in So Cal also. In addition to my wort chiller I use a pre-chiller. Williams brewing used to have em, but could only find them on rebel brewer now.
Thanks. I just ordered a little sub-pump and some hose to hook up a recirc system with my immersion chiller. I’m gonna use ground water through it until I fill up an ice chest then hook up the pump hose and run that as a recirculating system. My biggest thing is water conservation. I use the run off on my veggies and citrus trees but anymore than 10-15 gallons and I feel supremely wasteful.
Nice. I do the same with all my run off water. Fill buckets , plastic jugs, whatever I can use. Times are tough in Cali so gotta do our best to help out and not be wasteful.
Absolutely!
My routine for the past three years has been to fill buckets with chilling water. I stop chilling when I run out of buckets. I use the hotter buckets for cleaning and the later buckets for laundry. This only works with top load machines. Someday I will use it to water a garden, but first I need a garden.
I’ve brewed at a buddies house where I dropped my sump pump into his pool. That worked very well and I could let it run for as long as I wanted.
I also use a prechiller during the summer. I add the ice after filling three buckets. I use that bucket as extra thermalmass in my ferm freezer.
The drought is so crazy. I remember when it was dangerous to float the rivers down stream from the dams due to being at capacity.