What's Brewing: February '19 edition

So I'm two for two on my goal of brewing one batch each calendar month so far. Knocked out a hoppy pale that is all base malt 60-30-10 Pilsner- Vienna- White wheat. Simcoe and citra at the 5min Mark and pitched a good starter of 1056 harvested from last months batch. Nailed my target OG 1.052! I'm really excited about brewing this year and even more so with the prospect of switching to a base malt with more character from the discussion in random brewing thoughts thread.

 

Fuck it’s February already! I was totally looking for the January thread to post this.

Double brew day here.

Mashed in at 6am on a hoppy pale ale, TF Pearl, just under 20% rye and a touch of crystal 10. Cascade, Cashmere and Azacca. Will ferment w my backyard Yellowjacket culture.

Currently running a Saison into the kettle. Floor malted Pilsner, rye, wheat and spelt from a local maltster. This will get the hoppy iteration of my Allagash Belfius culture.

 

After pulling samples and tinkering with ratios, I took 2 carboys with lower fill levels and blended them last night. One was a turbid mash mixed ferm sour fermented with TYB's sour blend brewed in June and the other was a saison with the DuPont strain & brett c brewed in August. Both beers are pretty young, but I guess I talked myself into blending them out of concern to the fill levels of the carboys and the pellicles they'd grown. The saison has developed a slight barnyard/pineapple funk but is otherwise clean, whereas the mixed ferm sour is already pronounced in tartness but has a Welch's grapejuice/medicinal nose going on. I blended it to be approximately 60/40 saison to mixed ferm sour, hopefully some more time will do them well.

 

Had a saison I was planning to age for a minimum of six months before fruiting this summer. Went to take a sample today and it tastes like some 2015 era sour beer with weird apple funk. Very disappointed, gonna let it ride out for at least another month as the weather is far too terrible here to brew outside yet. Punched down a bunch of blackberries though in another saison and it smells amazing. Win some lose some.

 

Somewhat on a whim I decided to Brew some life this morning. Loosely based on HotD Matt. Two base malts, two crystal, two roasted, two candi sugars, and two smoked malts. Simpsons peated malt has me intrigued guess I need to start drinking some Islay pre-boil is sitting at 23.4p!! Let's see how the rest of the morning goes.

 

rcubed just saw the SBE Email! What timing!!

 

Ended up at 26.8 P!! Biggest beer I've made il on the new system. Hope my yeast pitch was enough...

 

Just bought a second fridge so I don't need to ferment in my kegerator anymore, now I can finally ferment and serve at the same time. I'm breaking it in with a Centennial Blonde this weekend.

 

Off from work today and already almost done with the mash on a batch of Czech pils.

 

Brewday number 2 this weekend, taking my first stab at a dry irish stout.

 

Dry Irish Stout and Pils on tap is a dream combo!

 

Life update checked my force ferment sample and it's down to 6.6P! Double checked with my hydrometer and sure enough 1.026! More excited that both of my measurement tools match up. Probably going to rely solely on my refractometer from here on out. Feel like this is a whole new start for my brewing this year.

 

7.5 gallons

15lbs pils
4lbs wheat
3lbs oats
1.062


Omega Hothead and Tropical IPA (sacc trois) for primary then I’ll add in Bring the Funk blend, Lacto P, and a dry saison strain. I’ll probably add some light dry hopping after that and package.

 

new mixed culture saison getting brewed up today, and super stoked to see the results of this one...

5 gal
rough percentages are 65% Pils, 25% Wheat, 10% Oats
0.5 oz Crystal @90, then 1oz each of Crystal and Grungeist in the whirlpool (targeting ~20 IBUs total)

Mash at 149F in hopes of getting this one a tad more dry

Maniacal Farmhouse Fever will prob get pitched (and held at) around 80F, then maybe ramp up to 85F for a few days to ensure completion

Planning on adding some tilquin/girardin dregs at ~5-7 days into primary, then conditioning for ~10-12 weeks or so prior to bottling, depending on gravity

 

Welp, I just realized (after already having started the mash) that I added ~14.5ml of lactic acid, not ~4.5ml.....

I think I'm gonna go ahead and scrap this one, start fresh in a few days. God damnit lol.

 

Well thats a bummer. And I’m all too familiar with scrapping a brew day after just getting started.

 

Hopefully they did indeed get in more Imperial Rustic yeast at the local shop yesterday so I can brew up my Belgian Pale Ale tomorrow. Been a long time since I've had a Belgian beer on tap so I'm looking forward to it. I've brewed up this recipe a few times and it's pretty dialed in but I decided to try using some of the new Brumalt from Great Western in it: http://www.greatwesternmalting.com/gwm/specialty-malt/brumalt/

 

gonna brew a black saison conditioned on plums and yunnan purple buds loose leaf black tea.

 

Ended up using B53 Precious instead since Rustic has a description of a lot of bubblegum, which I hate in Belgian beers.

 

First time cold crashing. Filled this balloon up with co2 so no oxygen gets into my IPA and I'm looking forward to none of the 8 oz dry hop getting siphoned into the keg.