The krausen has started to fall, so I removed the blowoff hose and attached an airlock. After primary fermentation is complete, I’ll be cold-conditioning this in the fridge for 3-6 weeks.
May 29, 2006
May 28, 2006
May 28, 2006
The blowoff hose turned out to be absolutely necessary. The krausen took a while to build up, but it did start pushing crud out the hose and into the bucket. So, kudos.
May 27, 2006
May 27, 2006 [BREW DAY!]
Got a fairly early start, around 930 or so. Started heating the strike water, which hit temps in about 20 minutes. Heated to about 180, 2 gallons in 2 pots. Poured that into the new mash tun (Coleman 48qt blue cooler with stainless hose braid…. cheap and dirty!) and waited a few minutes for the temps to settle around 165. Poured in the 11 pounds of grain – 8# Munich and 3# Pilsner – and a tablespoon (about) of Buffer 5.2 and stirred it all up to get rid of any dough balls. Temps settled around 150 pretty quickly, so I closed it up and waited. I checked on it every 15 minutes or so, and temps rose into the high 150s at times, but no biggie. While this was mashing, I heated another 4 gallons to about 180 for the second infusion.
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May 26, 2006
May 26, 2006
In preparation for brewing a German Alt tomorrow, I’ve started a, well, starter. I smacked my smack-pack on Wednesday (WY1007), which didn’t go quite as planned. I couldn’t get the inner pouch to completely rupture, and by Thursday, it had only just begun to swell. I went ahead and brewed up a pint of wort anyhow, cooled it and pitched the yeast into it. When I pulled the inner pouch out, it looks like there are two chambers, and only one had ruptured. I don’t know if the yeast is in the container or in the pouch, but either way I cut that open and poured that also into my starter.
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May 18, 2006
May 18, 2006
I’ve got an idea in my head for a recipe that sounds really tasty to me. Something like a very hoppy brown ale, like I imagine Dogfish’s Indian Brown Ale would taste (before I ever try it). Use some pungent and spicy hops to accompany the full-ish brown ale malt bill. Sounds good to me… Maybe a target of ~1066, down to ~1012 with around 60IBUs? Hrm…
May 16, 2006
May 16, 2006
I had a couple brewskis last night. First up was Rochefort 6, which was good but not great. Next up was my just-bottled, very-young Belgian Golden… I like the sound of that… a young golden Belgian… sounds hot! Still overly sweet and uncarbonated, but with a very nice flavor hidden behind. As of now, I’d say it’s no DT, but give it a couple months and that may change.
On a totally unrelated front, we had to have a circulator for our heating system replaced. So that’s just about $800 out the window. Aye-aye-AYE!
May 13, 2006
May 13, 2006
Spent the morning bottling the “Thar She Blows!” Belgian Golden Strong Ale / Delirium Tremens clone. The final gravity was 1.014. From 1.076, that gives 8.2 ABV, according to Promash. Ended up with 51 12oz bottles, which was more than I was expecting considering there was less than 5 gallons in the carboy. The samples that I took were VERY tasty, so I can’t wait to give this one a try.
Up next is a German Alt, hopefully next weekend.
Took a reading on the Mead, and it’s down to 1.028. Still a ways to go, and it’s still VERY sweet, but also VERY young.
On Tap: “Abbot’s Habit” Belgian Dubbel (1.066), “Skidmarks” American Brown Ale, “Hops Out the Wazoo” American IPA (1.074), “Bull & Bladder Bitter” Ordinary Bitter (1.032), “Thar She Blows” Belgian Golden Strong Ale (1.076) (Bottle Conditioning), and the last 2 BVIPs
In Primary: Sweet Clover Mead (1.114)
In Secondary: nothing
On Deck: Alt Bier, Banana Oat Stout, Belgian Strong Dark Ale
May 12, 2006
May 12, 2006
I’m writing this from “the future,” so you’ll just have to live with the tense changes. So tonight was the first annual Long Island Beer Festival, sponsored by Shoreline Beverages. I really didn’t know what to expect, and didn’t have terribly high expectations. I thought the turnout would be fairly weak, particularly considering the late emails we received saying there were still around 200 tickets available and they would be selling them at the door. Boy, were we mistaken.
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May 9, 2006
May 9, 2006
Northeast region results posted. Nothing passed the first round. DAMMIT!
May 3, 2006
May 3, 2006
So results are filtering in from the NHC2006 competition. I hate their site, cause it doesn’t update properly. I went there earlier and was looking through the results, under the impression that not 1 of my beers had made it past the first round. It wasn’t until hours later that I noticed the results I was looking at were from ‘05. Refreshing the screen brought up the 2006 results thus far, but they haven’t posted or tallied the Northeast region yet, so I’m still waiting. But at least I’m not out of the running just yet. Though I would be able to drink the rest of my BVIPs were that the case…
