beer =[ GM's 1st 16x Batches, and/or 10 mo. Brewing ]=

[grantmichaels]

OK ... well ... good times ...

Went after a big boy today ...

10 lbs Maris Otter ...

Borrowed that from the tandem brew that Bumper and I haven't coordinated yet ...

Some Crystal 15L ...

And a tiny bit of Pale Chocolate Malt ...

Grist porn ...

But we're going big ...

Had to left some for coffee, so ...

=)

Oh Yeah!

That's what I'm talkin' about ...


Bump, por favor!

 

[D3monic]

ooo looks interesting

 

[grantmichaels]

thx for the bump, man ...

mashed in ... twenty min pH check ...

had to add 1 quart ...

what, what ...

At 60 min, of 90 ...

Setup for O2 up high tonight, to keep wort from diffusing through the stone into the line ...

Last couple of mins pf boil ...

BOOM!

Time to chill ...

Not bad ... I chilled for like five mins, tap-water only, no ice ...

Applied a minute's worth of 1L/sec O2 at 90F, and then sprayed wort into sanitized corny ...

Nice foamy head probably a good sign of being hella aerated ...

Which was what Wheebz told me I'd need, because ...

Final OG ...

1.0965

Pretty rockin' ...

Cleaned up by running hot water back through plate-chiller and through pump and into kettle ...

Charliewine.

CHEERS!

BTW, love this thing ...

Next time I'll try the IOStar for Wheebz ...

 

[grantmichaels]

I think I can go to bed after an hour of TV, now, as this puppy's 2x burp/min at only 3 hours post pitch ...

I expect it'll be cruisin' along nicely by the time I wake up in like 8 hrs or so ...
 
Everything went pretty well on this batch, I think ...
 
It wasn't really too much of a hassle sans ice-water bullshit, and using the keg-washer to sanitize while I ran the boil ...
 
Much happpier w/ brewing since dropping the glass carboys, the 2nd chiller, and the 2nd pump ...
 
Just forgot to pre-chill the keg, or I'd have probably nailed my desired pitching temp.
 
Good shit.
 
I'm full now, though =) ... both freezers have 3x kegs in them.

 

[grantmichaels]

Freezers are both now full of kegs, so ...
 
I can brew a saison this week, and ferm in the room - but that's it.
 
Actually, that's not true.
 
I can brew a lager using the WLP940 and use a Spunding valve.
 
I think that might just work nicely for my remaining ingredients, too:
 
pellet hops:

columbus 1 oz
us fuggle 1 oz (x2)
czech saaz 1 oz
equinox 1 oz
falconer's flight 7 c's 1 oz
citra 1 oz
australian galaxy 1 oz
uk challenger 1 oz (x2)
us golding 1 oz (x2)
hallertau 1 oz
hallertau mittelfruh 1 oz
ger magnum 1 oz (x2)
willamette 2 oz
 
yeast vials/smack-packs/packets:

ecy-11 belgian white
bootleg biology arlingtonesis
white labs wlp940 mexican lager
wyeast 1099 whitbread ale (pitched into Charliewine)
wyeast 3711 french saison
wyeast 3724 belgian saison (x2)
safale us-05

grains:

10 lb pilsner malt as "simple saison"
5 lb 2-row pale
1 lb weyermann acidulated malt
1 lb briess carapils (x2)
2 lb flaked oats (maillard malts)
1 lb flaked oats love2brew
1 lb briess black
~11/16 lb pale chocolate
~.5 lb black roasted barley
~.5 lb carapils
~.5 lb crystal 15
~.625 lb black patent

extracts:

briess golden light dme
briess pilsen light dme
briess cbw golden light lme
 
We'll see ...
 
My schedule looks like it might just afford me the opportunity to brew again in a few days ...
 
I might have to rock out another batch this week - we'll see.
 
Maybe something w/ some Citra hops =)

 

[grantmichaels]

Rocked keg and raised ferm chamber temp to 67F ... sluggish to nonexistent ferm. ...

 

[tctenten]

Nice to see that it all worked as you planned it.

 

[grantmichaels]

Nice to see that it all worked as you planned it.

Nothing is that easy, I'm afraid ...

Looks like these yeast either didn't enjoy being pitched into the starter without a couple of hours to warm-up, or they didn't like the (less than or equal to) 90F wort they got pitched into, and then going to the 65F ferm chamber, or ? ...

Ferm was dead pan this AM ...

I sanitized the wand ...

Figuring the O2 might have escaped solution due to 90F ...

After 20-30s of 1L/min O2, the pressure expelled the wand into the keg ... yay, not ...

Can't open the lid, because it's just long enough to block the rocking movement the lid needs to come out ... lol.

So, I've had a smack-pack of Wyeast 1109 readying for 3 hrs, and I'm about to pour it through a funnel through the airlock hole ...

Never a dull moment.

Back-up's FTW.

We'll just keep working on it ...

Ok, so ...

Good luck little yeasties ... get to work.

 

[Bumper]

Late to the bump.  If that was your 13.9% abv, any yeast is going to freak if you didn't do a big healthy take over the world big ass starter… 

 

[grantmichaels]

It was fine all along, I just learned =/ ...

The innards piece of the airlock must be from a different lot or store, and it doesn't burp just right w/ the level havings changed from evap of vodka, I guess ... I was just in there and took the lid off the airlock, and watched it burp correctly. So, armed w/ knowledge that it's been fermenting for like 16-18 hrs and now has a second load of yeast (meant for 5gal, lol), I opened up the keg lid and fished out the O2 wand, and closed it back up and put the airlock back on ...

After an hour or so, I'll check when things settle down, and possibly just put a standard lid on it and throw a spunding valve on the gas post ... the beer is way the fuck down there, so I'm not imagining krausen is coming up and into the valve assembly for a 2-2.5 gal batch in a 5g corny ...

Anyways, always a little something to rock my boat a little, but this one should be ok, I think ...

It brewed nicely.

Just needed to have had the focus on starter night, that I had for brewing ... and didn't.

CHEERS!

 

[grantmichaels]

ok, so, i rebuilt Spunding #1 with teflon gas tape earlier ...

this is the simplest version, and doesn't even have a pressure dial - so therefor it requires an external pressure level device to tune it's spring ...

it's weak sauce compared to spunding #3 ...

separately, a quick disconnect for small diameter tubing, like for modularizing the CO2 tank and distributor block ...

the handy push-button allows one-handed operation.

good stuff ...

getting really close.

 

[grantmichaels]

The third and last batch before I EOL this thread will be Wheebz sekret stout.

I've got the details in hand, to place an order tomorrow ...

After this one, I'll be taking a break from big beers, to work on room-temp lagering under pressure ... gotta get to that WLP940!

 

[grantmichaels]

ok, so ...
 
here's the airlock activity (1 min, as I've said prior, for future counting for burp/min if I so desire to track) at 12 hr post pitching the smack-pack of Wyeast 1099 Whitebread Ale around 2-2:15 yesterday ...

and here's the same, at 20 hrs post Wyeast 1099 (and consequently ~36 hrs post original pitching of the WLP007 starter) ...

i believe this batch was saved by the 2nd pitch, because as you can see, the airlock is working just fine ...
 
i don't believe the airlock was a problem, i think the starter of WLP007 hit that work, got jerked around a bit in terms of temp, chewed up those easy sugars from the sucrose, and then dropped the f**k out of that wort, down at 65F, without working on the starches from the grains ...
 
also, as that was my first smack pack ... wow, stinky ... the yeast from the smack pack really stinks a bit, lol ...
 
i'll be happy to see this one bubble for as long as possible, frankly ...
 
CHEERS!

 

[grantmichaels]

at the 48 hr point ...

probably nobody cares, but i can't help myself but document it ...

 

[Ozzy2001]

Good to see that one active. Lots of sugars to get munched on.

 

[grantmichaels]

Good to see that one active. Lots of sugars to get munched on.

 
Oh Yeah!
 
That one's a biggun' ...

 

[grantmichaels]

spunding #0

coupled with the nuts that appear below ...

you can experiment w/ naturally carbonating in two-liter bottles, things like kombucha and soda etc ... my reason for checking them out, is because i'm considering doing some yeast/hops experiments in extract-based wort in them.

the rest of the parts in the picture are for spunding #4 ...

along with this dial ...

and this relief valve ... the HBT version, if you will ...

assembly required, lol ...

but the little hex nut screw thing doesn't fit either part, so they're shipping a replacement in the morning ... and this one's on hold until it arrives.

spunding #2 is from morebeer, it's like #1, but with a dial gauge - and came taped.

I also added singles of female NPT quick-disconnects ...

which I'm pretty sure will end up allowing me to reduce a little bit of complexity ...

and a "break" for the O2 connection ...

and a liquid post-to-post jumper connection ...

there's only a few pieces of the puzzle left ...

a secondary regulator, a steel hop basket w/ 300 micron openings to keep my pump and plate chiller free of debris, and one last three gal keg.

 

[grantmichaels]

As it turns out - I wanted to try BBS's recent offering, when I saw it ...

It's not next, but ... eventually!

 

[grantmichaels]

The Summer Wheat w/ Apricot batch was brewed on 7/12, it had over three weeks in primary, and has been cold crashing at 32-35F for weeks since ...
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Tonight I figured out what's boggled me about keg and beverage tubing and connections. It's the variability between 1/4" and 5/16" connections for liquid and gas connections, compounded by the 1/4" flare versus barb connections, and the icing on the cake, the oetiker clamps requiring a crimp tool I didn't have ...

By the time tonight was over, and after ordering some miscellaneous crap to build out the connection tubing between the gas distributor and the other crap, I realized that I could throw the 2nd tank in the keezer w/ the flare connect gas posts connected to each of the flare hook-up's to the dual regulator that's ultimately there for the BeerGun ...

So now, I can polish off that chocolate maple porter - which is sadly quite light now at it's serving pressure, while force carbing up the Wheebz saison and the Summer Wheat w/ Apricot BBS brew from above ...

That lets me begin to rotate pours, so I don't hammer one - like I did the porter - for lack of options.

It buys me a little time so that I can do a nice job - installing the quick disconnects and distributor block - for the single-regulator keg, to free that second dual-regulator tank back outside the keezer, for bottle filling via the Beer Gun, and to provide pressure for closed-system keg-to-keg transfers and pressurized fermentations.

I also figured out the additional tubing and connectors to transfer contaminant-free from the plate-chiller through a 150-micron 304 filter in a #10 housing directly into both posts of a corny keg using the keg washer ditty from morebeer below.

I believe I'll be able to pre-sanitize and close w/ a lid and pre-chill kegs the day before now, and then pump the chilled wort into the keg at the end of the brew session without so much as ever opening the lid on the kettle by pulling the pin on the corny lid while filling.

It's elegantly simple - chilled, filtered, oxygenated wort that never sees the outside air after flame out.

Cleared the final hurdle.

The only things I'd like to eventually add are a bigger (15 gal Bayou Classic 1060) kettle w/ element (that I'd use on the stove for the boil + electric element w/ pid controller), a secondary regulator so I can have different pressures for each keg in the keezer, and some dry hopping/hopback gear IF I turn out to like the Citra, Galaxy, Amarillo type hop flavors, for split batches.

Basically, though, it's all good, already!

CHEERS!

 

[grantmichaels]

1) Charliewine still fermenting away ...
2) Time to start thinking about this weekend's beer brewing pre-routine ...
3) Lost a tank of CO2 to the keezer gods overnight, probably for omitting gaskets on the 1/4" flare connections between the dual-reg and gas post connections =/ ...