Yeast Wash! Bottled up a simcoe/amarillo pale ale last night and decided to give yeast washing/harvesting a try. All is looking good and hoping to pitch the slurry into a 10 gallon batch of Janets brown later this month. Looking good after one night in the fridge. Now I need to get me a flask and a stir plate to make starters
Here is a time lapse video I made of me bottling a belgian tripel I brewed for my preggo wife. Should be ready to drink when she is, hopefully.
Star Tribune is offering a "STeals" from Midwest Supplies. Buy a $60 gift certificate for $30. http://steals.startribune.com
Got mine! Well the yeast harvesting/washing didn't work out too well the first go. Smelled a bit vinegary so my friend and I decided to pitch new yeast and not risk vinegar beer. Plans are to pick up some canning jars so I know I have a clean container to start with. 10 gallons of Janet's Brown happily fermenting away in my fermentation room with US-05
Yeah I missed my steals... Coffee oatmeal stout is going to town. Full writeup here: http://ryansbeer.blogspot.com/2010/12/sophies-coffee-stout.html My innkeeper is giving a almost metallic aftertaste. Not good. After researching I think it might be from soaking my keg in the sanitizer for too long. I think that's the keg that I started soaking and kind of forgot about for a few days... Woops.
Ryan, do you write the brew it yourself blog? I have the innkeeper sitting in primary from a brew last weeked, hoping I have better results
Oh nevermind dumb question about the blog I see you linked it in your previous post ha. Anyways, I ran across it a few weeks ago and dropped you a comment recently as well. Great write-ups!
Ahh that was you! Cool. I was trying to figure out who it was. My little blog is starting to get a lot more traffic then I thought it would. Thanks for reading!
Well I just got home from vacation, and in front of my apartment door was a large, unexpected box. Turns out my fiance's brother got me a home brewing kit for Christmas, so it looks like I may be paying closer attention to this thread. The kit comes with all the stuff you need to make an IPA, so I will be getting that going tomorrow, then we can see where it goes from there. I am pretty pumped!
I have to spend $60 gift certificate at Midwest Supplies this weekend before it expires - give me some ideas and help me out! I have 4 extract kits to brew from Christmas. So I'm leaning toward equipment. Ideas!?
I just started to do BIAB (brew in a bag). Full grain stuff, should be tasting the first one this weekend. Really didn't cost much but you could by the bag $6.
Doing full boils yet? How bout a 8-10 gallon kettle? Otherwise maybe some extra better bottles/buckets for fermenting those 4 kits you already have? Or stock up on sanitizer, caps, yeast, hops, etc...
Nice, I used my last two in the past few days. What is your current equipment setup? What are you using for boil kettle, how many fermenters do you have/what type? Do you have an immersion chiller? Are you kegging or bottling?
I have a 4 gallon kettle for boiling - inside, on the gas range 15000btu. (garage is detached and uninsulated). I have 2 plastic carboys and 2 glass carboys. I bottle and have plenty of those, but I would like to keg though my mini fridge isn't big enough for a corny. Forced carbonation would be nice though. I also have a yeast starter kit. Maybe I'll go with another carboy and some dme - I'll browse around and find something else I "need" to have.
Well, I bought a carboy, DME, a new capper (my old one sucked), some bottle caps and yeast nutrient. still cost me an extra $25, but it was worth it. I could spend all day in that store.
Refract Used the refractometer for the first time, what a great tool that is. Had me some Arrogant Bastard during the clone brew, props to my friend for making the trip to WI to pick it up. According to the Firkins, Stone should be adding MN to their distribution list in the near future.
+1, I got one used off homebrewtalk a couple months back, and its fantastic for all grain especially. It is pretty interesting to see the gravity at each running during the process. Nice pic too, I was wondering if that worked or not. Here is my buddy reading it:
Just iced my eisbock last night (-10F - good night for it). Left about 1-1.5 gallons of ice/beer slush and siphoned off the rest to a carboy. It was late and I had to work today. I will bottle it tonight. Any chance of it carbonating? I think I will add a little more dry yeast to the priming sugar just in case the yeast cells were lysed during the freezing process.
Just tasted my first All Grain last night. Came out really good, did the BIAB method. Had a couple of buddies give me the "I would buy this" approval.
That sounds awesome! How bout force carbing? That way you can be sure it'll carb and no worries about over carbing and ending up with bottle bombs.
Busy Night Twas a busy night in brewery last night. Bottled 10 gallons of Arrogant F*cker and brewed 10 gallons of One Fish Two Fish. Runnings were coming out very clean and had a delicious looking hot break going. The brew cart will be onto its new owner soon and both the burners are now gone to my friend. Sad day but need to make room for the new brew sculpture coming on Feb 5th! Also have a donated mini fridge that is itching to be turned into a fermentation chamber :biggrin:
Thats a great compliment, good work. Gotta love BIAB, so easy and works so well. But next week you'll be running to the Home Depot to get yourself an orange beverage cooler
I've been pretty quiet on here lately, but here's the project I've been working on: The plan The frame tacked together These are actually going away, I'm having some 8"x7" plates made with plasma cut slots for burner height adjustment. A couple of little chugger pumps and Cam-lock quick dis connects. Here it is as of last night with a light coat of the flat black.
Stand Day 2011 Stand Day was a huge success. Only started myself on fire once and no one lost any fingers.
nice. I have been home brewing for a little over a year now. I love good beer hope to get together for a sample day some time.
Nice work on the stands guys, I have been following that thread on HBT for a while. I am planning my first 10 gallon batch as soon as I get the time, had a baby two weeks ago and its been a bit crazy around here. Currently I only have 1 keggle built, so it should be interesting.... I am planning on heating the water in it for mashing and keeping the wort in a few pails while sparging and then dumping it back into the keggle.
greaser - go for it! You can get started for about $100.00 http://www.midwestsupplies.com/brewing-starter-kit.html Just get a couple cases (3 to be safe) of non-twist off bottles and drink those while your first beer is fermenting - so you have plenty of bottles for your first batch. Let me know if you want a list of "other" stuff to buy that I put together for my cousin who's on his 3rd or 4th batch and loving it. Scotty - Congrats on the new addition! I took about 6 months off when we had our 2nd kid. That's when my pipeline dried up - it sucked! It's just now up and running again and he's 1. Good luck with your 10 gallon batch. What are you using for your MLT?
Thanks! I have the super cheap 48 qt rectangular cooler from menards with a stainless mesh from toilet supply line in the bottom. I feel you on the pipeline, I threw down a couple batches of apfelwein and am waiting on those to finish up. Any advice on my first 10 gallon batch? I guess I better pick up a spare propane tank, it will probably take forever to heat that much water
Right on! From what I've learned you can get a better and more uniform flow from the bottom of the cooler with a copper pipe manifold with slits cut into the bottom of the pipes than you can from the braid. True it's more expensive and more stuff to do, but I thought I'd share. John Palmer has done a fair amount of research on that. I don't have any suggestions for the 10 gallon batch as I've not done one yet. Hit up Paul for that. Yeah, a 2nd tank isn't a bad idea at all!!! Running out mid-session sucks.
For 10 gallons batches i'd first be sure you have room in your mlt for the grain bill plus your water. I've had a few batches that have completely topped up my 52 qt cooler. I usually try to get 1.5qts/lb grain of water in the mash but sometimes i'll get what I can get in there. I've got a chart somewhere that shows what size mlt fits what amount of grain/water, i'll post that up later. Might already be in this thread somewhere. I can get 2 and 1/2 batches out of a 20lb tank. I heat 14 gallons of water in the hlt and usually end up with 11 gallons or less going into the fermenters. I use the bayou BG-14 burner. But as Ted said, having a 2nd tank isn't a bad idea, unfortunately my 2nd tank is always empty. Otherwise brewing 10 vs 5 isn't much harder and you get more beer
Glad to see some other guys are putting together brew stands! I'm in the planning/acquisition phase for a really simple electric HERMS setup. I have a natural gas spike in the garage that I'm going to use for running the boil kettle, don't feel like building an electric brew kettle just yet and getting a bunch of SSR's and PID's.... Just a 1500w heater element controlled directly by a ranco and a single March 809 pump for recirculation through the HLT.
If any of you guys want the steel to build a stand like the ones that we built, just let me know. I can get it all sourced and cut to size - including the burner mount plates. I don't have a cost yet but it should be pretty cheap - well cheaper than you would get if you just called someplace... Just let me know
