Sunday, December 26, 2010

Happy Holidays

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy holidays. I will be brewing/racking/bottling next weekend on Saturday with a few friends, so if you're in the area stop by with some brew and enjoy one amongst fellow beer lovers. I'm not sure if it will turn into a mass-tasting but I can hope and dream, lol.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Bottle king?

I ended up making pasta and bottling my blonde ale on Wednesday night with a little help from my main squeeze Suz. She did the washing and I did the setup and most of the actual racking to the bottles. We used an assortment of 12oz. and 22oz. bottles to get her done. I dunno but it seemed to be a little on the light side beer-wise. I thought 5 gallons would need a few more myself. We have bottle number one in the fridge and number two got gifted to our favorite craft beer bar in the H-town. If we get to stay home as planned on Christmas day we might do a little racking or bottling depending on our mood.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Bottling time

I decided to hold off and bottle my blonde this Wednesday so Suz can partake in the proceedings. I think I will also move the IPA into the blonde's carboy to secondary for a while. Evidently I can still dry hop in-carboy with no issues so here's crossing my fingers to that one. Looks like a ready date of Christmas day or so.... might be a merry one after all

Monday, December 6, 2010

It's a little chilly

I moved my IPA up to the second floor in the condo since it gets pretty frigid down there at times. I think it will be a much better fermentation environment up there. It had me worried a bit, but it showed signs of life today when I got home from job #1.

I'm thinking last weeks project, the blonde ale, will spend this week in the carboy and get racked over to bottles quickly.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Brewing 'til three

I was up late last night brewing my next project: The Decimation IPA. Lots of hops and then more hops on top of that. Finished the cleanup around 3:30 AM. I messed up the hops schedule so I will have to play with it a bit and coax something out of it.

I also managed to rack my blonde ale and Raisinette into secondary carboys. The Raisinette was a rushed effort, I should have practiced some patience. The blonde went much smoother and with much less trub transfer.

I also made a terrible mistake in that I mixed and matched two different sanitizing agents. Note to self NEVER REPEAT!!!!! The results could have been disasterous.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Rack 'em again

So I checked on my blonde and raisinette trappist today and I think both are ready to rack over to secondarys. The blonde ale finished it's fermentation time very quickly which is one of the reasons for me choosing it. All of the other brews I have made are gonna take awhile before they are drinkable. I have to talk to the guys at the LBS again to make sure but I beleive the Cherry-Poppin sits until January and the trappist is roughly the same. I talked to the guy who created the Decimator, my next IPA project, and he says two to three months in secondary and tertiary carboys......YIKES!!