Just an update on some of my brewing from over the past few weekends.
- Brewed the Two Hearted Clone last Saturday.
- OG finished a little lower than I would have liked, but nothing terrible at 1.062 (was shooting for 1.065)
- Lag time of about 8 hours. Also added 8 drops of FermCap to keep down on the krausen.
- Dry hopped with 2oz of Centennial hops this weekend and moved into the closest for one week on the hops.
- Moved the Pliny the Elder (Imperial IPA) clone from a carboy into a bright keg.
- Unfortunately the pelletized hops clogged up my ball lock, so I had to just open the keg and rack it in.
- Finished out at 1.014 from an OG of 1.088. I tasted it and was quite impressed. I had the girlfriend taste it and she said even at this point, it’s better than Hopslam.
- Noticed a bit of fusel alcohol aroma as it warmed. Hopefully some of this will age off a bit.
- Brought the Mango Blonde down to 37° last weekend.
- Transfered to bright keg this weekend and added 6lbs of mango. Looking back at it though, should not have moved this into the bright tank. I think I’ll just swap dip tubes.
- Also, fitting 6lbs of mango into the keg lost me about a gallon of beer. Not a big deal.
- Chilled and carbonated the La Fin Du Monde clone.
- Bottled 20 bottles of my Oatmeal Stout and 14 Bottles of the Southern English Brown. Dumped the rest of the Oatmeal Stout.
- Had a lot of foaming with the Oatmeal Stout, I think it was due to the keg being warm.
This weekend I tackled a Raspberry Wheat beer. 47.9% Pils, 47.9% White Wheat and 4.3% Crystal 15. One additional of Willamette at 60 minutes to bring it to 18 IBUs. I’ll add 3lbs of raspberry puree after primary fermentation has ceased.
I also did overnight mash for this beer. I’m trying to avoid brewing on Sundays and thanks to the awesome Repeal of Prohibition festival I was busy Saturday afternoon. So I began my mash right before heading for dinner on Friday night, came home and brought the temperature up to 174 with my heatstick and left it overnight. I woke up early on Saturday morning and began heating my sparge water. The temp on the mash dropped to 153 overnight, so I used the heatstick to bring it back up to 170. Did my sparge and then boiled. I was hoping this would make a 6 hour brew day only 3-4 hour day, but thanks to a 90 minute boil it was closer to 4.5-5 hours. Still made for an interesting experiment.
Oh, this was also my 6th batch in 6 weeks. Whew. Talking a Belgian Wit this weekend and then taking off a few weeks from brewing. I’m sure it’ll make Irene happy.
