The Bar Towel

markaberrant wrote:Did you post that Doppel recipe earlier? It is definitely the Dark Munich, that stuff is like 30L and is only recommended up to 30% usage. 15% crystal malt is a little heavy handed too, then throw in a decoction, and no wonder it won't ferment any further.

Damn, I didn't notice that about the Gambrinus Dark. I've never had a problem using Weyermann's Munich II in high proportions.

The Gambrinus Honey has a little diastatic power, but yeah, that's a lot of 'specialty' malts, and it looks like I created the perfect storm.

Hmm...

Weyermann Munich I = 6L
Weyermann Munich II = 9L

Gambrinus Munich 90 = 10L
Gambrinus Munich 100 = 25 to 30L

Yeah, that was stupid.

That is too bad, but it jumped out at me immediately, as I was just looking at the specs on the Gambrinus dark munich last night while putting together a recipe for 600 liters of Black DIPA. Gonna go with 35 lbs (6.67% of the grist).

Just bottled Chocolate Extra Maple Porter.

First homebrew by myself.

And now the wait...

belgian blonde that i'll marry with brett.
first time hanging with brett

I have 2 to brew in the next few days, weather dependent. A black IIPA and a Citra Pale Ale. Both are going on yeast cakes, which I haven't done before.

KwaiLo wrote:I have 2 to brew in the next few days, weather dependent. A black IIPA and a Citra Pale Ale. Both are going on yeast cakes, which I haven't done before.

Be sure you have blow off tubes!

My Spring Saison that I brewed on Sunday is happily bubbling away.

OG 1.038

7 lbs Pilsner
1lb Munich 10L
.5 lb Flaked Wheat
.5 lb Flaked Rye

Styrian Goldings 1.5oz. 60 min.
Styrian Goldings .5oz. 15 min.
Sorachi Ace .0 oz. 15 min.
Sorachi Ace 1 oz. 0 min.
0.5 oz. Sweet Orange Peel
Wyeast 3711

3 gallons of this will get hit with a leftover pack of Wyeast 3789 I have kicking around.

This weekend, I'm doing 2 beers from one mash.

A Gose, and a Berlinerweisse. Hopefully ready for those hot August nights.

Interesting and fun brewday. Flew by the seat of my pants a bit so we'll see how it turns out.

Used the following:
7 pounds Wheat
7 pounds Pilsner

I mashed at 148 for 60 min. for 10 gallons of wort.
I read somewhere that you should do a decoction for Berliner's so I thought, what the heck. After 60 min. I drew 1/3 of the mash and brought it to a boil for 15 min. Into the decoction, I tossed an ounce of Styrian Goldings for a VERY low IBU contribution. Once it was done I returned it to the main mash, drained it and sparged collecting 10 gallons of wort.

I gave the 10 gallons a good stir, and removed 5 gallons into a carboy. The gravity was 1.040, and this would be my no-boil Berliner wort. I added 1.5 gallons of water as per beersmith to bring it down to 1.030.

The other 5 gallons I brought to a boil and added 1 oz. sea salt, and 1 oz. of coriander and boiled for 15 min. This would be my Gose wort. I drained it into a second carboy.

Now here's the tricky part. The Wyeast lacto culture I had was 6 months old, and it's doing absolutely NOTHING in the apple juice starter I made.. after 48 hours at 80 degrees. My homemade lacto culture of raw grain in starter wort is raging, and is nice and sour. I figured I'd give the wyeast culture overnight to get going, but it's still doing nothing this morning, so in went my homemade lacto starter.. and a handful of raw grain. I'll pitch the kolsch in about 48 hours.

Super excited! Really easy way to get 11.5 gallons of 2 different beers.

It has been so warm here, I decided to open up my brewhouse, hasn't been used since October.

Everything was humming along, brewing a nice basic Zeus pale ale, boil was going, time to clean up my immersion chiller. Notice what appeared to be something stuck to one of the coils, but thought that was odd, as I keep it pretty clean. Took a better look, and the damn thing had ruptured. Crap! Guess there was a little bit of water left in there over the winter. My buddy lives 2 blocks away and has an immersion chiller, but was out of town this weekend.

So I went with the "no chill" Australian-style method on this batch. Filled up a plastic bucket, sealed it and tossed into my fermentation chamber. Also threw in my flameout hops for a nice long steep. Got down to pitching temps in 9 hours. I have no idea if my bucket can handle boiling temps, will see if the final results taste like melted plastic. Already ordered a newer, bigger chiller that will fit in my keggle better.

May end up dumping a batch, but a good lesson learned (always ensure your chiller is drained), and get to give the no chill method a try.

markaberrant wrote:It has been so warm here, I decided to open up my brewhouse, hasn't been used since October.

Everything was humming along, brewing a nice basic Zeus pale ale, boil was going, time to clean up my immersion chiller. Notice what appeared to be something stuck to one of the coils, but thought that was odd, as I keep it pretty clean. Took a better look, and the damn thing had ruptured. Crap! Guess there was a little bit of water left in there over the winter. My buddy lives 2 blocks away and has an immersion chiller, but was out of town this weekend.

So I went with the "no chill" Australian-style method on this batch. Filled up a plastic bucket, sealed it and tossed into my fermentation chamber. Also threw in my flameout hops for a nice long steep. Got down to pitching temps in 9 hours. I have no idea if my bucket can handle boiling temps, will see if the final results taste like melted plastic. Already ordered a newer, bigger chiller that will fit in my keggle better.

May end up dumping a batch, but a good lesson learned (always ensure your chiller is drained), and get to give the no chill method a try.

yikes!

its never fun when unexpected things pop up in your brewday. all i can say is it probably would have been better if you left your wort in the kettle to let it cool a bit before running off into plastic. if you wanted to get the wort out of your kettle you could have run off into something that wasnt plastic (keg maybe?)

either way i hope your beer turns out

matt7215 wrote:it probably would have been better if you left your wort in the kettle to let it cool a bit before running off into plastic. if you wanted to get the wort out of your kettle you could have run off into something that wasnt plastic (keg maybe?)

Yep, I thought about that after I was already running the hot wort into the plastic bucket...

Oh well, it's only 5 gallons, and I've got lots of brewing planned this spring.

markaberrant wrote:May end up dumping a batch, but a good lesson learned (always ensure your chiller is drained), and get to give the no chill method a try.

I have an air compressor in the garage and it is pretty handy for blowing the last of the water out of the chiller. I do this in the warm months to avoid it going wonky inside, and in the cold ones to avoid splits.

i also find that most of it will drain out on its own if you disconnect your hose from the source. you can feel the suction as the water flowing out the long drain hose pulls the last of it out of the chiller.

grub wrote:I have an air compressor in the garage and it is pretty handy for blowing the last of the water out of the chiller. I do this in the warm months to avoid it going wonky inside, and in the cold ones to avoid splits.

i also find that most of it will drain out on its own if you disconnect your hose from the source. you can feel the suction as the water flowing out the long drain hose pulls the last of it out of the chiller.

Yup, I usually just manually blow mine out, but I think I sorta stopped doing this towards the end of last brewing season...