What I did for beer today

Bottled my first ever brew, a Brooklyn Brew Shop Everyday IPA 1 gal batch. Tasted it and its kinda meh right now. Not bad, but not as good as I was expecting. I made a couple of mistakes during the process though, so maybe thats whats causing it, or maybe it just needs to condition in the bottles to really bring out all of the flavor.

Or maybe the kit just sucks lol. Either way, I'm still proud. I MADE BEER!

That exact kit was my first beer as well. Tasty stuff!

Welcome aboard!

Planted a different variety of hops, called Horizon, in addition to my Chinook and Centennial. Now, Im just waiting until I get my hands on some Cascade.

Scrubbed my brew pot, and cleaned a keg yesterday, so I can rack my summer blonde into it on Friday. Also ordered some goldings and specialty grains. When I get home, I absolutely have to get some beers in the mail to California, since I got called out of town before I could get it done...

Brewed 5.5 gallons of Da Yooper's House Pale Ale and got to use my brand new refractometer for the first time.

Edit: Also kegged 5 gallons of my own 2 Bad Dogs IPA.

croakerj said:

I take that back, I asked my wife to make sure there was no Brown stuff in my airlock.

Click to expand...

Me too.

She texted me last night and said "you almost got divorced! I heard a boom and thought you beer exploded again".

Turns out the cat knocked something off the counter in the bathroom, and she thought it was my beer. My last two beers blew up pretty bad. She insisted that I use fermcap-s since I'm out of town a lot for work. It didn't explode but she went and put on the blowoff tube just in case.

Ok I doubled up and did a bit more .... I renewed my AHA membership and started a subscription with BYO magazine.

Ordered a Dead Ringer and Witbier kits to get going in the fermenters. The seasons are turning and the race is on to drain my Caribou Slobber keg. Got the Skeeter Pee tapped and carbing. Sampling everyday for quality assurance.

Brewed a batch of Apple Ale for my lovely wife.

Did some gravity/clarity/taste testing on a few of my brews.

16 month old sour saison



1.003

Cream of three crops at 2.5 weeks no finings.



Reading 1.014 at eye level.

Also checked a 3 week old oatmeal milk stout 1.021.

Yay clear beer.

Buying a yeast starter kit, new carboy cap and blow off tube. Also getting a pale ale kit to make a strawberry blond.

Smooshieshawn said:

Bottled my first ever brew, a Brooklyn Brew Shop Everyday IPA 1 gal batch. Tasted it and its kinda meh right now. Not bad, but not as good as I was expecting. I made a couple of mistakes during the process though, so maybe thats whats causing it, or maybe it just needs to condition in the bottles to really bring out all of the flavor.

Or maybe the kit just sucks lol. Either way, I'm still proud. I MADE BEER!

Click to expand...

Brooklyn Brew shop! Man I used to get stuff from there all the time when I lived in Brooklyn (Sheepshead bay). Keep on truckin man, if it ain't right the first time, make it again.

Also Stags head in Mid-town is great beer bar, they have hops growing in their rooftop seating area.:rockin:

Oh right, umm, what I did for beer today.. Organized two "learn to brew" sessions; one at my house (24 gallons planned, 18 attendees) and one at work (10 gallons planned, 10-20 attendees).

spreading the word the only way I know how.

SPR-GRN said:

Oh right, umm, what I did for beer today.. Organized two "learn to brew" sessions; one at my house (24 gallons planned, 18 attendees) and one at work (10 gallons planned, 10-20 attendees).

spreading the word the only way I know how.

Click to expand...

Holy crap, I have taught people in small groups but that's a lot of people at once, twice!

Btw might want to double check that it's okay to do at your work.

Checked the gravity on last week's barleywine while brewing a session IPA. After only 5 days, I was pretty shocked to see that the barleywine had gone from 1.102 to 1.020. Grav sample tasted rich and silky, but not as bitter as I was hoping for.

Bought 50 lbs of 2-row, bunch of specialty grains, hops, yeast to make 10 gal of my pale ale

Helped a coworker with some wine and mead he's making (yes I know not beer)

Got some free supplies and blueberry extract for helping out. Gonna probably do a blueberry hefe at some point now

trying to figure out which way I want to trellis my hops. I wanted to go vertical, but I cant figure how to do it practically in my yard.

Today I took a gravity reading on my Denny's Golden Monkey Homage. OG was 1.086 and FG came in at 1.006. This beer is gonna kick my butt!
Sample tasted a lot more like the real thing sooner than I thought it would.

After taking my reading I put it in my beer fridge to cold crash it in anticipation of kegging it this weekend.

Bottled 2 batches, NB Speckled Heifer and NB American Wheat.

Bottled 5.5 gal of my second batch of the year of Blue Moon clone
the first batch is long gone.

Cheers

Filled my propane tank and bought 20gal of RO water in preparation for the weekend.

Gearing up for brew day next wednesday (it'll be an early morning one).



Brewing a best bitter - with my final mash tun parts on the right. This'll be my first all-grain batch. I've done large PM batches before but I'm still a little nervous - but excited too!

Just need to get the propane tank filled and everything cleaned and scrubbed.

Bought a bunch of pilsner, 6 lbs of various candy sugar. A bunch of various Belgian hops. And a new stir bar. Some Belgian quads and strong blondes in my future.

Picked up a few things for a steal!


8 ball locks
Crankenstein
Therminator
100# 2 row

All for $400

And a free half barrel kegerator that was brand new in box but was hit with a hilo so no idea if it worked.. Well it does; so i scored a $450 kegerator for free!

Cavorted around town to various hardware stores looking for a good price on garden hoses for my new immersion chiller.

Ended up buying a 50' hose on sale, which I'll use for chilling and other purposes. Also a laundry hose for the chiller out, as it can handle heated water.

Also, bought some DME and a smack pack of Wyeast 3711 for next week's brewing.

Assembled and tested my new bottling bucket with 3/4" elbow as dip tube. Perfect! :rockin:

Put away 2 cases of homebrew for aging in the crawlspace under the house. My, the spiders are getting big this season *shiver*.

Threw together a gallon of a simple mead for ferment, why not?

Drank through a sixer of Founders Centennial IPA to sample the qualities of Centennial dry-hop (at 7.2%, I really couldn't care less about the "qualities" but it is mighty tasty - but it makes it really hard to type). :rockin:

It was an excellent day on the brewing front.

Checked on a shipment of hops (EKG) and some grains I ordered. It's gonna be here tomorrow morning. I'm also boxing up a few bottles to send to California tomorrow...

Crushed grains and prepped brew water for a rye PA

I purchased a refractometer, and some wheat yeast.

Returned the corker I bought (wrong one) to the LHBS for store credit. Picked up the necessary ingredients for an American Pilsner as well as a bottle of New Belgium Transatlantic Kriek.

I'd be curious to hear how it turns out. I did a black coffee RyePA a while back - I'm interesting in a RyePA at some point as well.

Gixxer said:

Crushed grains and prepped brew water for a rye PA

Click to expand...

Started designing the logo for my "brewing company" while listening to a couple podcasts at work. Gotta love govt jobs where you're on "hot standby" for 80% of the time you're at work.

I just finished bottling my Gambrinus/Citra SMaSH.

I finished the kegerator: drilled the hole in the top, mounted the dual-tower, and cut out the door panel to make 2 kegs fit. Then hooked up the Perlicks and gas to a kegged stout. Then racked a dunkel-weiss carboy to another keg, and hooked it up too. A good day

Brewed Dogfish Head clone. Kegged Founders Red's RyePA clone. Kegged Yopper's House Ale.

I shared my latest creation with my coworkers... about a hour before quiting time. :rockin: And I also brought my munich helles out of the fridge for a diacetyl rest before lagering.

Shook up my bugs and yeast, and finished a keg so I could have an empty for tomorrow.

*someone's gotta drink it. Figured I'd take one for the team*

Tonight I got my hlt keggle set up ,installed my pumps on my stand , put together misc fittings , packed some equipment up so my friends can brew tomorrow and picked up a random six pack of some good beers for tomorrow. Overall it was a good night for beer

Racked my Big Hoppa IIPA off 9.5 oz of dry hops and into a keg.

Got propane for my next brew, and kegged my Amber Ale