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Homebrewers - Whats Fermenting?

JRL

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Racked my Skeeter Pee yesterday and added the all the final shit to drop the yeast out. A few more weeks and I will be good to go.
Bought stuff to make a brown ale. Hope to do that tomorrow. The first beer I will be brewing in 6 weeks. I suck.
 

FireDoc83

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The Grazin' Goat just finished. It is a Farmhouse summertime Saison. My wife really likes Spotted Cow Beer (New Glarus Brewery) and Summer Shandy so this was my mad scientist attempt at combining the two. It was an all grain and whole hop leaf recipe.

:scratchhe
 
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I've been on a bottling kick lately. I got my non-sour cherry part of my quad recipe bottled up yesterday. I'll be bottling up some wee heavy with in the week too I think. Then I can brew up a little storm I guess. Then I'll be waiting on the sours and brett aged imperial stout for bottling.
 

twenty5

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Where are we at..

I was finally able to drink my ZD clone this weekend and it was one of the best if not best beers I have brewed, it stands up strong against most commercial beers I have tried and I myself and 4 other tasters preferred it to the real deal. Thanks for the hints on the late extract additions Adam, this has helped my brewing out immensely.
We tried my Chocolate/Vanilla Imperial Stout this weekend too and it is fantastic. A couple more months on this and it will be perfect.
I have a light lager lagering away right, this is my first lager so I am sure it will be screwed up somewhere along the way.
I have a cider beer ready for bottling, maybe I will get this done today or tomorrow.
Sad but good news though. I have ingredients for one more batch of the ZD clone and then my supplies are pretty much exhausted. I am putting an offer on a house today so it looks like I am going to have to hang the kettle up for a while. I will certainly miss brewing but it is a luxury I need to drop for a bit.
 
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All the more reason to brew! I rarely if ever buy beer anymore. The sheer amount of money I save by not paying $40 for a case makes up for the time ingredient costs of homebrewing.

I just got 13lbs of oak smoked wheat malt to make a grodziskie. The recipe is real real simple. Possibly the simplest recipe I've ever brewed.

100% Oak smoked wheat malt
30ish IBUs total of Saaz hops
Rice hulls to aid in lautering
Neutral European/German Ale yeast

Then it is bottle conditioned and carbed to almost 4 volumes.
 
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I'm happy to report that I opened the first bottle of my first attempt at brewing. I got in on the Groupon that was on here way back when, and just got around to brewing my first batch last month. This being my first foray into brewing, I did the simple stock Irish Red Ale recipe from Midwest that came for free with the kit. I cracked the first bottle last week on my birthday, and was quite pleased with the result, although it had been in the bottle only three weeks. After another week, I can honestly say that I ended up with a pretty damn tasty beer that I would happily pay for at a bar. Being the hop lover that I am, the next batch is going to be something extremely hop intense. What I would really like to do would be a Tricerahops clone, but haven't found one. Anybody got a suggestion?
 

JRL

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I am brewing my first beer in 8 weeks. An American Brown Ale. I will be brewing another lighter beer in the next couple of weeks also. Also going to back sweeten the Skeeter Pee today,
The Pilsner/Kolsch was the last beer I made and kegged. It is already gone. Guess it was a fan favorite.
 
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So I bottled up the Grodziskie and my Wee Heavy on Sunday. The Grodziskie finished at 1.005 which comes out to 4.8%abv. The Wee Heavy went down to 1.026 and comes out to about 13%abv. It's sweet, and malty, and rather smooth actually, sort of wine-like.

I just bought two more fermentors for the house. They're Speidel 15gal models. I'm happy to have picked these up as they sell out very very fast when they come in stock.
 
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i have a batch of hefe ready tobottle in 3 days for our lobsta herf, i love a good hefe and pleases the masses too. :)
 
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I just sealed up my lambic today in the 10 gal keg. The head space was rather problematic having 7 gallons in a 10 gal fermentor. The expansion and contraction of the air was screwing with the air lock big time. So I stuck a second gas dip tube into the keg and sealed it up. Now all I have to do is periodically hit the pressure relief to keep it from carbonating in the keg. Last I checked the gravity on the lambic it was a 1.003 so it's not far from being finished fermenting. Just because it's done fermenting though it's not finished maturing which will take another year or two I suspect. I will likely bottle it sometime this fall or early spring that way it can mature the rest of the way in the bottle.

 

mthhurley

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Brewed up a French saison this morning. Looking forward to this one.

Meant to do a double brew with an octoberfest but life interrupted that goal. :)
 

twenty5

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Brewed a Citra IPA and a Stout over the weekend. Hopefully I get some time next weekend to do a Belgian Dubble I have been wanting to do for some time now.
 
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Did a gravity test and a taste of my oud bruin from the middle of November. It started at 1.082 and is sitting at 1.003 currently. So this is a super boozy oud bruin. It's sitting at a cunt hair less than 11% using an alternate equation for ABV since gravity and alcohol production is not a directly linear equation. It doesn't matter at lower gravities but when you start getting up into the 70 points and on it can be fairly significant.
 

twenty5

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Adam, I have a question about the Speidels. A buddy of mine wants to make a Gueze that we could have stored for years. Him and I are thinking: brew 5gal, wait 6mo, brew 5 more gal, wait 6 mo, brew 5 more and add all 3 to a 60L Fermenter then every year after take out 3-5gal and replace with a new batch. Would you trust the Speidel for storage like that? This project could be sitting in there for years. I am worried about O2 transfer.

Maybe there is something better we should be using? The Speidel is attractive due to its size and price.
 
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I don't know the answer to that question for a VERY long term project like that. I think the material they are made out of is very similar to the USA Flex Tanks which have an oxygen permeability similar to a wooden 60gal wine barrel. I plan on brewing a bunch of flemish sour and sticking it in my speidel and possibly another big ole batch of lambic. I just cannot find oxygen permeability claims from the company. Maybe I'll email them this week to see what they say.

His other option would be to check into the smallest flextank size available because they are designed to mimic wine barrels. Plus they can be outfitted with sanitary fittings to make your 6-12 pulls stupid easy.

Today I'm brewing up 16 gallons of saison and I am going to try my best to get a 8 gal batch of dubbel in a fermentor too.
 
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I have another public service announcement for fellow homebrewers. Do not place hops in a shiny stainless steel mixing bowl in direct sunlight on a perfectly clear sunny day. You may find yourself experiencing what would appear to be spontaneous combustion of hop cones. Fear not if you find yourself in such situation, just move the bowl. Ooh and if you have never smelled burning hops before they smell like weed big time.
 

FireDoc83

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I have another public service announcement for fellow homebrewers. Do not place hops in a shiny stainless steel mixing bowl in direct sunlight on a perfectly clear sunny day. You may find yourself experiencing what would appear to be spontaneous combustion of hop cones. Fear not if you find yourself in such situation, just move the bowl. Ooh and if you have never smelled burning hops before they smell like weed big time.
Well I know what I am doing tomorrow
 
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