What I did for beer today

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My first inkbird controller died. Cooling doesn’t work, better than the fridge dying tho. Was for the mini fridge I have in the patio. Glad I checked it prior to making another small batch of tea.

So I ordered another one, some pH calibration fluid, pH probe electrolyte storage liquid and..a TDS meter.

And after listening to the bubbles in the garage ferm chamber, I had to take a peek.

IMG_8234.jpeg
 
Raced home from work to get started on the sneaky weeknight brewday. Trying a step mash for the very first time; I've had the ability to do one for quite a while, just haven't been brave enough to try it. And wonderful husband got me the below shirt at Costco; wish we could go!!

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Took a lightning strike wicked close to the house this morning and lost power for a moment which took pretty much everything down. Over the next five minutes or so everything seemed to come back, but when I went to pull a pour from my keezer this afternoon I saw the RaspberryPi that controls the entire cold side of my brewery (3 fridges, a keezer and my tap list) was as down as down gets. SD card had crapped the manger and needed replacement.

Fortunately, I maintain backup cards for all of my (14) RPi systems, and any files that get programmatically updated in place (like my tap list) get backed up to my NAS. So I was able to clone a backup SD card for this system and boot it back to life, then copy back the tap list mysql database and its log files and the other data files that had been updated since the last SD card backup, and everything is back on line.

Clearly, I need to spend an afternoon refreshing my collection of backup cards. Some of the systems have been running without a burp for many years now and the backups are getting stale (2018 last time many were cloned). On the upside, they all share a common base image so it wouldn't be difficult to cobble a card regardless...

life_savers.jpg


(RASPI8 and RASPI10 are deployed at our mountain house doing security camera and environmental monitoring).

Cheers!
 
Sort of doing something for beer. Found a bag of cashmere cones in the fridge not freezer, and a half oz of lemon drop in the freezer so I’m making my first batch of HB hop water. Bitter AF right now but I can always water it down. LOL.
ACB288E2-AD6B-480A-842C-FDCFC0E2D098.jpeg

The smaller pot is the lemon drop “hop dip” More Beer has a video on the process.
 
Finally brewing my chocolate milk stout. Made a bunch of dumb mistakes with water chemistry (I need a better scale). And even though this was a "use up all the leftover grains" recipe, it's probably too heavy on the dark malts even for a stout. But I'm thinking it will still be beer.

Edit - My efficiency must be a lot higher than I thought. SG is 1.120! Target was 1.086. Guess I'll top it off a bit. Took a sip of the hydrometer sample, and it really does taste like hopped chocolate milk.
 
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Prepared my carboys for a soft-crash and programmed their BrewPi controllers for 50°F beer temperatures so I can dry hop them Thursday afternoon.

soft_crash_28jun23.jpg


A few hours later I noticed both fridges had decided to do defrost cycles at pretty much the same time, which is weird given the defrost cycles are kicked off by independent thermo-time switches. But we did have that power outage yesterday which would have reset their timers, and there's a good chance they use a standard timer component even though they're different brands, so I guess it makes sense...

1687977071328.png


Cheers!
 
Went through my dwindling stash of base malts to see if I could make up a leftovers recipe. Came up with what could be described as an Amber Lawnmower beer. 4.4 ABV, 20 IBU, 11 SRM, all numbers right at the minimum of the style guidelines for an American Amber. Then I ordered 80 lbs of base malts from Morebeer. Oh, and poured a beer. :cool:
 
Kegged the NEIPA I did last weekend on Loki, with HBC 586 hops. I did a small batch a while back that was quite tasty, and since I needed something quick on tap decided to do it again, in a 5g batch. Yeast slurry will be used in a competition beer due in a few weeks. Which has me sitting here perusing a calendar, and figuring out how many bottles I will need by the end of July. THREE comps coming up (two state fairs and the Best of the Bay). Last competition depleted my bottle supply to just a few; so thinking of ways to convince the husband that we need to buy some commercial beer (preferably Ninkasi, you just look at the labels funny and they fall right off the bottles). If I send all four beers that I am prepping for the first competition I'll need 36 total. Damn that's a lot of beer. Argument for the defense will include the fact that commercial beer will keep my grubby paws off the competition beers. Argument for the plaintiff will include the words 'expensive', 'lack of space', and 'you drink too much'. Defense might then bring out expert witness 'friend who runs brewpub' that husband tends to listen to more than his wife in brewing matters. Who might just let me borrow one of his canners. Things to think about.
 
seatazzz said:
Kegged the NEIPA I did last weekend on Loki, with HBC 586 hops. I did a small batch a while back that was quite tasty, and since I needed something quick on tap decided to do it again, in a 5g batch. Yeast slurry will be used in a competition beer due in a few weeks. Which has me sitting here perusing a calendar, and figuring out how many bottles I will need by the end of July. THREE comps coming up (two state fairs and the Best of the Bay). Last competition depleted my bottle supply to just a few; so thinking of ways to convince the husband that we need to buy some commercial beer (preferably Ninkasi, you just look at the labels funny and they fall right off the bottles). If I send all four beers that I am prepping for the first competition I'll need 36 total. Damn that's a lot of beer. Argument for the defense will include the fact that commercial beer will keep my grubby paws off the competition beers. Argument for the plaintiff will include the words 'expensive', 'lack of space', and 'you drink too much'. Defense might then bring out expert witness 'friend who runs brewpub' that husband tends to listen to more than his wife in brewing matters. Who might just let me borrow one of his canners. Things to think about.
Click to expand...
Something to ponder… getting a couple cases of new bottles to use for competition. I know, I know not as much fun, however I have had 1st place beer go the BOS and have the second bottle suck. Same beer, packaged the same day (hopefully the same way) so now I use new, and have the reruns for home use and sharing.of course you might do a much better job of cleaning than I do, if so get your bottles full and enjoy!
 
Hoppy2bmerry said:
Something to ponder… getting a couple cases of new bottles to use for competition. I know, I know not as much fun, however I have had 1st place beer go the BOS and have the second bottle suck. Same beer, packaged the same day (hopefully the same way) so now I use new, and have the reruns for home use and sharing.of course you might do a much better job of cleaning than I do, if so get your bottles full and enjoy!
Click to expand...
I do the same thing but it feel strange to say it out loud to people you give beer to.

The amount of work required to get labels off I think the extra price is worth it.
 
ba-brewer said:
The amount of work required to get labels off I think the extra price is worth it.
Click to expand...
I find that most labels just slide right off after an day or two soaking in oxiclean. Some are are a lot more stubborn. Those get soaked longer. A few require additional effort that probably isn't worth the trouble.
 
ba-brewer said:
I do the same thing but it feel strange to say it out loud to people you give beer to.

The amount of work required to get labels off I think the extra price is worth it.
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For the record, when I’ve participated in 12 BOC the last 2 times I purchased new bottles. Partly because i didn’t want to scrub bottles and to save the embarrassment of someone possibly getting a shitty beer in the 3. This way if they think it’s shitty then… wait… ;)
 
Tapped the last cream ale I did on Novalager, in the fermzilla. Think I finally beat the acetaldehyde bogey; this one is slightly sweet, but none of the puckery tang that I've been getting. Needs some conditioning time, but cautiously optimistic that it will be a good one. Good thing too; for the first time in months I only have two on tap, this one and a mediocre NEIPA. Got a Strata Pale fermenting but it won't be ready for at least another week. I see a quick trip to the store in my future for (gasp) beer.
 
JAReeves said:
That ex-port barrel has Merlot. I have two others, a rum barrel with a Hibiscus/Guava Saison and a bourbon barrel I inoculated with Brett that's holding a Barley Wine.
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Impressive. Leaves me thinking, "I am not worthy." I hope they all work out to your expectations. Now I'll have to drink this.
 

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FINALLY brewed my 2023 Lawn Mower Ale, but since it's on the 4th of July, I'll have to come up with a name more suited to the occasion. It's all 2-row with Vicky and a touch of Perle for bitterness and an ounce of Saaz for bouquet and flavor. US-05, do your stuff! Hit 1.050 after the boil, so I'm hoping for about 4.5% ABV (so I don't pass out after cutting the grass!).
 
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Fired up the Mark II to clean a pair of kicked kegs...

ab_04jul2023_1.jpg


...then kegged 10 gallons of my "Ballantine IPA" experiment, and then 10 gallons of my 15th batch of Julius clone...

ab_04jul2023_2.jpg


And now I have four carboys to clean.
I wish the Mark II could do a decent job of them but it can't, so it'll be hand-washing for me...when I get to it later 🙁

Cheers!
 
day_trippr said:
Fired up the Mark II to clean a pair of kicked kegs...

View attachment 824044

...then kegged 10 gallons of my "Ballantine IPA" experiment, and then 10 gallons of my 15th batch of Julius clone...

View attachment 824045

And now I have four carboys to clean.
I wish the Mark II could do a decent job of them but it can't, so it'll be hand-washing for me...when I get to it later 🙁

Cheers!
Click to expand...
That's surprising with the mark II. I've been cleaning my glass carboys with it for years with just a little bit of pbw added. Haven't had to use a carboy brush in a long time. It usually takes about 20 minutes for the mark ii to do it's magic for me.

Edit: Happy 4th!
 
Interesting. I wish I had that kind of success. I brew in 6.5g Italian glass carboys (smooth sides), use 1 oz of PBW in room temp water, and if there's even a hint of a krausen ring it never gets cut. Really all the Mark II does is shoot a singular stream straight up and relies on the "trickle down" of the cleanser to get the job done - which works surprisingly well on my corny kegs but simply doesn't work well on the carboys.

One of these days I'll try adding a small spray ball (has to fit through the carboy neck, so ~29mm max diameter) positioned down low where it can directly attack the krausen ring, and see what that does...

Cheers! (and Happy Fourth to you and 'Murricans everywhere! :mug: )
 
day_trippr said:
Interesting. I wish I had that kind of success. I brew in 6.5g Italian glass carboys (smooth sides), use 1 oz of PBW in room temp water, and if there's even a hint of a krausen ring it never gets cut. Really all the Mark II does is shoot a singular stream straight up and relies on the "trickle down" of the cleanser to get the job done - which works surprisingly well on my corny kegs but simply doesn't work well on the carboys.

One of these days I'll try adding a small spray ball (has to fit through the carboy neck, so ~29mm max diameter) positioned down low where it can directly attack the krausen ring, and see what that does...

Cheers! (and Happy Fourth to you and 'Murricans everywhere! :mug: )
Click to expand...
Yeah the spray balls work really well. I never even used the sprayer that came with it. You can probably find the right size. Pretty cheap on Amazon, I think I paid like $9 and change about 18 months or so ago. The one I bought is full of spray holes so gets all over.
 
Thanks very much for the link. Sadly the 40mm diameter is too large to fit through the neck of my carboys - needs to be <29mm.
I suspect I'll have to drop down to a 3/8" NPT threaded ball to find one small enough to fit.

Thanks anyway, I appreciate it :mug:
 
day_trippr said:
Interesting. I wish I had that kind of success. I brew in 6.5g Italian glass carboys (smooth sides), use 1 oz of PBW in room temp water, and if there's even a hint of a krausen ring it never gets cut. Really all the Mark II does is shoot a singular stream straight up and relies on the "trickle down" of the cleanser to get the job done - which works surprisingly well on my corny kegs but simply doesn't work well on the carboys.

One of these days I'll try adding a small spray ball (has to fit through the carboy neck, so ~29mm max diameter) positioned down low where it can directly attack the krausen ring, and see what that does...

Cheers! (and Happy Fourth to you and 'Murricans everywhere! :mug: )
Click to expand...
I bought a CIP ball from Bezoan for about $20 that fit the neck of my carboys, worked like a charm. The threads even matched the top of the Mark II, so no mods necessary. Double check the neck of your carboys before you order, I think I searched through a couple different ones before I got the one I wanted.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0152FG7UE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 

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