Redhed on the West Coast or was it Germany ? 5/10/13

Brewed a West Coast Red with load of Amarillo and HBC 342 hops tonight. I fly sparged and used the hop back.
I used 84 g Amarillo and 56g of HBC 342 (Mosiaic).
This beer should be a fruity hoppy beer.

Dooh! The plan was to use WLP022 yeast, but I grabbed the wrong harvested yeast and pitched WLP860. I didn't notice until I went into the garage and smelled Sulfur two days later.
It looks like WLP860 was very happy to ferment and 68 but did stress it out so it threw off sulfur.


At tasting this beer isn't bad at all. The lager yeast fermented fast, cleared fast, and didn't leave off flavors. It if did leave an off flavor it complements the fruityness of these hops.
Nothing left to do but Karrie on...

Stout 4/26/13

Did a Dry stout tonight for June picnic.
No sparge added roasted barley at mash out. I double crushed roasted barley - looks a little on the red side instead of black. Need to add more roast or add earlier in the mash.

APA 4/27/13

Brewed an APA tonight hop bursted with 96g Amarillo and 96g Simcoe.
With the kettle element I had to go back to hop bags for the boil.
Had my first boil over with the new setup. What a mess to clean up.
I'll have to keep the element at 65% when I get to 208.
This should be a blond hop bomb.

Sour beer tasting - 5/6/13m (updated 6/8/13)

I have 6 five gallon batches of sours going - seemed like a good night for a tasting.
Sorry for the not so great tasting notes, I just wanted to capture something.
I like when fruit is added to a sour, it seems to kick them in gear...

Brew - brewdate - style - yeast - notes - fruit
Thing 1 - 2/12 - flanders red - Wyeast Roselare - good - sour cherries
Thing 2 - 2/12 -flanders red - White Labs sour mix - has that "taste" I don't care for - sour cherries
Thing Red - 6/12 - flanders red - ecy flanders - good - sour cherries
Thing Blue - 6/12 - saison - ecy with bret - Ugh nail polish - ?
Consecration  - 12/12 - russian river dregs/roselare - ok -i get alcohol - currants from morebeer
Bug Farm V1 - ecy - really good - currants from farm

All these sours are in 6 gallon better bottles filled to about 5 gallons. It seems the beers that have some kind of pellicle (not the brett saison) can handle the headspace. The Brett saison is like nail polish. I got this in a wine I did a few years ago that had a lot of headspace as well. I'm thinking the pellicle beers (the pellicle protect against oxygen) must be consuming that oxygen in the headspace. This is the first these beers have had the stopper removed, so they shouldn't have oxygen in the headspace. Something happened to the Brett Saison - maybe the airlock got low and let oxygen in.

I'm going to dump the Brett Saison, it's a nail polish bomb. 11 months aged - this brett took over or I got a dry airlock. It's a split ferment with thing red and fermented side by side. The ecy flanders is nice and the ecy saison with brett is bad. I'll should have tasted the ecy saison. I think I'll have to go back to kegging my bret beers and topping them with C02.

I'm going to pitch the fruit listed above in a week or two on everything but the brett saison.
We'll see them in 6 months... I'll serve one Christmas Eve...

Update 6/8/13
Brett Saison dumped...

I pitched 2# of sour cherries on thing1, thing2, thing red.

I pitched 2# of black currants on Bug FARM V1.

I 

Next brew - Bo Pils

Lets see if I can taste any of flavors with the electric element in the kettle.
I brewed a single infusion Bo pils with Weyermann Pils and lots of saaz.
Something delicate to check eveyrthing out.
I worked out the process issues from the first brew.
Brewday was smooth and I did my normal cleaning procedures.
Next morning found a problem, a little rust on the element.
New process - no overnight soaking with PBW in the brew kettle.
Got all the rust off the element base and we'll keep an eye on the element for the next brew.

First brew on the new system

My chocolate lab Guinness is getting up in age. My mojo that hangs on every brew system I've built is a small a keg of Guinness. So guess what I'm brewing first... Irish Dry stout.

First brew was really nice. I  over shot my mash temps with the new system, but that's a process change. I found a problem with the HLT controller. I did a no sparge since that's what I like to do on low gravity brews.

First brew in the garage - I need a longer hose and a shut off valve. I was a little nervous dropping a whirlpool chiller in an electric boil kettle, but it was fine.

Overall I like the new system, I'll have to work out the kinks.

Cheers Guinness...

New brewery - I'm back in production.

Construction is complete.