Saturday, October 15, 2005
Glug glug glug...
...goes the airlock on my latest Pumpkin beer. It was a hellish brew day, but as of 4pm when I pitched my mystery Brewferm yeast, it is over. I doubled the pumpkin as I previously mentioned I would, which made for a very concrete-like mash. It stuck. HARD. And when it did, all kinds of bad stuff started happening, like grain debris pulling thru the false bottom and into the kettle, etc... And in the process of getting it unstuck my mash temp dropped from 166 down to around 149.... which again made for even more problems. So, to make a long story short... I managed to get the damn thing sparged with marginal efficiency (like ~70%). My OG was a tad lower than I wanted, but I won't whine too much.
Tomorrow I hope to get my Wit transferred to secondaries and get my current brews counter-pressure bottled so I can take some Oak-Aged Vanilla Porter and Native Rage with me to Friday's meeting ** cough cough** competition ** cough cough **. Actually, I don't expect to walk out of that with anything more than I went in, and will probably drop a half case of beer in the process... but hey... Fun, right? I'm the new kid on the block in our homebrew club, and there are lots of more experienced, seasoned homebrewers that are going to most likely wax the floor with my brews...
Next weekend is most likely my 10 gallons of Peated scottish. Hope I added enough peat - I will be disappointed if you can't tell in the final product. After that I've got like 3 different ones I could do (5 gallons)... Another round of the oak-aged vanilla, a "homegrown" pale using my homegrown Nugget and Cascade hops, or an abbey-style dubbel - not sure what I'm in the mood for just yet, but I'm thinking the belgian or the oak-aged would probably be best - get ready for winter and all that stuff.
I have a ridiculous number of brew books in our next amazon order - 5 of the classic beer style books (Bock, Octoberfest, Brown Ale, Wheat, and Belgian) as well as "Brew Like A Monk". I am strongly considering starting to brew cold-fermented beers this winter, namely a Maibock and a Winterfest - I've been doing the Ale thing for a year and a half now, and I really want to start challenging myself again - And lagering will definitely do that.
Man, I'm thirsty - time to go drink some of the Pumpkin Ale I've got on tap...
Tomorrow I hope to get my Wit transferred to secondaries and get my current brews counter-pressure bottled so I can take some Oak-Aged Vanilla Porter and Native Rage with me to Friday's meeting ** cough cough** competition ** cough cough **. Actually, I don't expect to walk out of that with anything more than I went in, and will probably drop a half case of beer in the process... but hey... Fun, right? I'm the new kid on the block in our homebrew club, and there are lots of more experienced, seasoned homebrewers that are going to most likely wax the floor with my brews...
Next weekend is most likely my 10 gallons of Peated scottish. Hope I added enough peat - I will be disappointed if you can't tell in the final product. After that I've got like 3 different ones I could do (5 gallons)... Another round of the oak-aged vanilla, a "homegrown" pale using my homegrown Nugget and Cascade hops, or an abbey-style dubbel - not sure what I'm in the mood for just yet, but I'm thinking the belgian or the oak-aged would probably be best - get ready for winter and all that stuff.
I have a ridiculous number of brew books in our next amazon order - 5 of the classic beer style books (Bock, Octoberfest, Brown Ale, Wheat, and Belgian) as well as "Brew Like A Monk". I am strongly considering starting to brew cold-fermented beers this winter, namely a Maibock and a Winterfest - I've been doing the Ale thing for a year and a half now, and I really want to start challenging myself again - And lagering will definitely do that.
Man, I'm thirsty - time to go drink some of the Pumpkin Ale I've got on tap...
