Brewing our 14th batch today on the back deck. It’s an IPA hopped with Citra, Chinook, Centennial, Columbus, and Mosaic.
Is anyone else brewing today?
Cheers!
Wish i was brewing, Gonna start working on the ferm chamber instead.
I’ve got the 5th iteration of my favorite Gonzo IPA mashing, mixed up the hops in this batch with Centennial, Citra, Simcoe and dry hopped with Amarillo.
almost done brewing up a belgian dubbel.
Yesterday I brewed 10 gallons of German Pilsner, so today I’m smoking 3 racks of baby back ribs, cleaning a couple kegs and racking a couple beers. Maybe making a starter for next weeks proposed beer a rye ale.
Getting a starter of WY2633 going for October’s batch of 'fest.
I think I’m going to make another small starter and throw in a handful of my black currants that are still hanging on the bush to see what I have going for wild yeast on my fruit.
No brewing, it is time it drink the lagers brewed in winter.
German Pils, CAP, and a special lager with American hops (mt. hood, sterling, santium, crystal).
We will also have pretzels, radishes (spiral cut white ones), and obatzda for starters. Later we have an assortment of German wurst and potatoes.
Sounds good, Jeff.
I kegged a lager today that I made on the Solstice. It’s a cross between a German Pils and a Dortmunder.
Sounds like a lovely and delicious Sunday Jeff!
No brewing here either, but I do need to clean some kegs, keg some kolsch and assess the progress of a barley wine.
Beer radi’s Jeff! Love them sliced thin with good lagers!
I’ve never heard of beer radishes until now. Sounds brilliant. I just might have to grow some to have ready for Oktober…
No brewing for me either.
Bottled the Belgian special ale that I had in the fermenter.
Bottled 5 gallons of saison yesterday and brewed 5 gallons of switchback ale today, busy beer weekend
No brewing today. Kegged a hefeweizen to take to a friend’s pool party and also kegged a peach mango wheat for my wife. Hopefully I can find time to brew a Janet’s Brown - type American Brown next weekend.
If I get lucky, I will be kegging a strong saison (1.100 - 1.007) with coconut sugar for some extended ageing. I’ve got a cap a week in the ferm fridge to take a reading on and decide if I want to bump the temp for a d rest. Planning on using a piece of the cake for a fest beer next weekend.
It was a fine afternoon! Mrs R could be talked into some recipe hints. She now has a spirilizer, which is a unitasker, but makes for an authentic Biergarten experience in the USA.
Well, our brew day went OK today, but there are still a couple of things we struggled with.
First, does anyone have suggestions for getting wort pitching temp down faster? We have a wort chiller for our 10-gallon kettle, but it still takes over an hour to get from boiling to below 80 degrees, and I’m getting concerned that we’re risking our luck when it comes to infection.
Secondly, we had a lot of hop additions (including a 2 oz Mosaic addition with 1 minute left in the boil), and we clogged the filter at the bottom of our kettle. The most-frustrating part of that was the fact that we were forced to siphon, and then left a large amount of hops behind in the trub/sludge at the bottom. Does anyone have any best practices here as it relates to adding hops at the end of a boil, or even experience with large hop additions, and keeping them from causing a stuck transfer process?
Cheers!
#1 can be a tricky problem, because if your source water is hot or you dont use a pump you are stuck at the whims of gravity. Having water flow through the chiller faster will help but in the end with a immersion i always just chilled for about 15 minutes(which got my wort to 85-90 F, and then transferred to my bucket and pitched the next day. As long as your sanitation practices are righteous you should have no infection issues with this method.
#2 Hop Spider. You can make one with a PVC collar and a nylon bag, or just buy a SS one. I have http://www.stainlessbrewing.com/Hop-Spider-with-seam-welds_p_158.html this one for my 5G system. Zachs products are awesome. Id buy the biggest one possible. You put the hops int he spider and when the boil is over just pull the entire spider out. No more hops sticking up your valve!
Cheers,
Jeff
A lazier option to the nylon bag hop spider is the bag and a spring clamp on the side of the kettle. Of course the kettle dimensions and level of the liquid might cause this solution to not work.
My brew day was ok. Went with an 80/-. Didn’t reduce my first runnings enough and had about a gallon more boil off in the kettle. Next time I am using a candy thermometer and making sure I get the first runnings to at least 300°.
I think I am going to keep some boiled water to the side for topping up because my evaporation rates have been all over the place with the heat and humidity.
Thanks Jeff and Steve!
Jeff: Next time I make it to Woburn, I’ll pick your brain a little on the hop spider.