Are you just using a clean ale yeast for the oktoberfest?

OktoberFAST is a Biermuncher recipe:  http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=39021

Thanks.  That looks great.  I found a Sam Adams fall sampler a week ago, so my fall beer addiction is coming on.



The next brew I do will be a vienna lager, so that should keep me satiated.  



 

Yes, and it is delicious.  I use S-05, not S-04 in mine, and it's wonderful.

I just bottled 5ish gallons of Plum wine tonight. It's kind of tangy. I don't really care for it. I'll let it sit for a few months and start opening bottles once a month and see how it tastes then.

Tangy as in sour?

Not like vinegar if that's what you mean. It's got a tartness I hope mellows out.

I just racked the rye pale ale.  The dry hopping came through well and the aroma is great.  I think once it carbs up, it's going to be tasty.  

I'm probably going to do a cherry stout on Sunday.  THe grains were crushed a few months ago and have been waiting to be brewed.

Finished at 1.024, so around 17.3% abv

Try using kolsch yeast for a psuedo-lager and ferment high 50s. You can even lager for  month to really clean it up.

 
Whoa...not a bad attenuation at all.  How's the taste?

Like a quad with a vodka depth charge! It's actually really good, but you can instantly tell it
s super strong. Some age will make this one great!

ETA: in bottles at a re-calculated 18.1% abv.

This morning I'm brewing a pale with 3522 and will be letting this one ferment as hot as it wants to go in a 73F room.  Will secondary with some orange peel for a sort of mimosa beer. I plan on brewing a BSD to pour on the yeast cake when this is done.

Oh man. That sounds awesome, do want.

I started a yeast starter (on a new stir plate what what?) yesterday and just cleaned all of my brew gear.

On Saturday, I'll be brewing a Cherry Stout that came to me through the Adventures in Homebrewing Mug Club (bimonthly beer kit club):  http://www.homebrewing.org/Adventures-All-Grain-Mug-Club_p_5439.html


I received 3 recipes when I signed up for the club on father's day...this is the last one that I need to brew, and it's been crushed this whole time.


Here is the general recipe:  



It's more of a cherry concentrate (and past its best by date).


I'm trying for a fuller body so I'll mash at 156 instead of my regular 152.


The WLP002 I'm using has a pretty low attenuation, so I think it'll turn out pretty sweet and nicely balanced with 7%ish alcohol.


I'll let you know how it goes.

So, I overestimated my grain water absorbtion and ended up with over 6 gallons of wort.  I only have 6.5 gallon buckets, so pouring everything in there would be a recipe for a blow over.  Instead of tossing the excess, I threw about a gallon into a carboy with a small portion of the yeast to ferment out.  I'll only add the cherry concentrate to the 5 gallon batch, so the remainder will be a "regular" stout.





ETA:  After 24 hours the airlock is filling with beer.  Oh Joy.

 

It's healthy

 
Haha, very.


I opened it at 46 hours and added the juice concentrate.  The Krausen had already fallen, but fermentation was still pretty active.  Wlp002 is proving to be very fast.


Gravity went from 1.065 to 1.032 in less then 2 days.  The concentrate bumped it up to 1.042.  I expect it to finish out at 1.020ish at 7.5% abv.

^^^ Nice!!!

Busy day for me today, I'm kegging a pale that had orange zest added, and brewing an Xmas beer to pour on top of the 3522 yeast cake. It has cutie peels, ginger, cinnamon, and will have brown sugar added after high krausen.  Tonight I'll be brewing a quad with WLP545 to see what the yeast is like.


ETA: All done. The keg is chilling while getting 10psi and smelled amazing, the Xmas beer(OG 1.08 before adding 2lbs of brown sugar) was rocking blowing bubbles in the blowoff bottle, and the quad is in the fermentor(OG also 1.08 before adding 3lbs of candi syrup). Now I can start planning my next few beers

 
Well, I just racked to secondary at 1.030...If it stays there, it'll be at 6% abv.  It really wasn't that sweet...more sour because of the cherry concentrate, although there is a nice roasted chocolate balance.  I hope that mellows out with age.  




So, I think that the take away of wanting a beer to finish in the low twentys is a hot mash (156) or a low attenuating yeast, not necessarily both.


 

Oh, and I ended up with 6 22oz bottles of "normal" stout from my extra gallon of wort.

I kegged the cherry stout then went on a week of leave.  When I came back, it was nicely carbonated.  There isn't a ton of cherry aroma...more coffee or maybe dark chocolate.  The carbonation has helped to cut a lot of the sour taste...now it is more of a tart stout with a nice finish.



On the one hand, it isn't what I expected.  On the other hand, it's a sour beer without the added pain of bugs.

Just about to start chilling a dunkleweiss, then I'll brew a big Belgian amber with harvested WLP 545.

I have 5 gallons of a dryish (hopefully) mead going on. My very first time making anything. It's in a secondary and seems to be happy.

Since that was fun and easy I grabbed a 1 gallon kit to do with my dad of Imperial Stout. It went really well for about 12 hours and then it blew shit into the airlock. I quickly set up a blow out setup as recommended by the instructions and I've apparently lost some beer in the process. I also stuck the 1 gallon glass jar into my 6.5 gal brewing bucket in case it explodes.

Of course, I've got almost no idea what I'm doing, so it might be fine. Evidently, from google research, small batches can be more annoying than larger batches. So maybe next time I'll do a 5 gallon run of beer. Which means I'd need another 5 gallon carboy.

October Skie

American Brown Ale (10 C)

Type: Extract
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.52 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
End of Boil Vol: 5.98 gal
Final Bottling Vol: 4.60 gal
Fermentation: My Aging Profile

Date: 01 Sep 2015
Brewer: Bryan Swanson
Asst Brewer:
Equipment: Pot and Cooler ( 5 Gal/19 L) - All Grain

Prepare for Brewing
? Create a yeast starter with 1.00 l of wort
? Clean and Prepare Brewing Equipment
? Total Water Needed: 6.95 gal


Mash or Steep Grains

Grains to Steep

1 lbs 8.0 oz Chocolate (Briess) (350.0 SRM) Grain 1 15.0 %
1 lbs Caramel Malt - 60L (Briess) (60.0 SRM) Grain 2 10.0 %
? If steeping, remove grains, and prepare to boil wort

? Add water to achieve boil volume of 6.52 gal
? Estimated pre-boil gravity is 1.060 SG

Boil Ingredients

7 lbs 8.0 oz Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 3 75.0 %
1.25 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 20.7 IBUs
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 5 -
1.00 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 6 6.0 IBUs
1.25 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 1.0 min Hop 7 1.9 IBUs
? Estimated Post Boil Vol: 5.98 gal and Est Post Boil Gravity: 1.059 SG

Cool and Transfer Wort
? Cool wort to fermentation temperature
? Transfer wort to fermenter
? Add water if needed to achieve final volume of 5.00 gal

Pitch Yeast and Measure Gravity and Volume

Fermentation Ingredients

1.0 pkg SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) [23.66 ml] Yeast 8 -
? Measure Actual Original Gravity _______     (Target: 1.059 SG)
? Measure Actual Batch Volume _______     (Target: 5.00 gal)
? Add water if needed to achieve final volume of 5.00 gal

Fermentation
? 01 Sep 2015 - Primary Fermentation (10.00 days at 65.0 F ending at 65.0 F)
? 11 Sep 2015 - Secondary Fermentation (10.00 days at 65.0 F ending at 65.0 F)


Dry Hop and Bottle/Keg
? Measure Final Gravity: _________  (Estimate: 1.016 SG)
? Date Bottled/Kegged: 21 Sep 2015 - Carbonation: Bottle with 3.61 oz Corn Sugar
? Age beer for 7.00 days at 65.0 F
? 28 Sep 2015 - Drink and enjoy!

Got some fresh local wet hops the next weekend and couldn't resist creating a recipe and going for it...



BJ'S Fresh Hop IPA

American IPA (14 B)

Type: Extract
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.52 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
End of Boil Vol: 5.98 gal
Final Bottling Vol: 4.60 gal
Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage

Date: 12 Sep 2015
Brewer: Bryan Swanson
Asst Brewer:
Equipment: Pot and Cooler ( 5 Gal/19 L) - All Grain

Prepare for Brewing

? Clean and Prepare Brewing Equipment
? Total Water Needed: 7.04 gal


Mash or Steep Grains

Grains to Steep

1 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 8.5 %
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L (30.0 SRM) Grain 2 4.3 %
8.0 oz Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 3 4.3 %
4.0 oz Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM) Grain 4 2.1 %
? If steeping, remove grains, and prepare to boil wort

? Add water to achieve boil volume of 6.52 gal
? Estimated pre-boil gravity is 1.064 SG

Boil Ingredients

1 lbs 8.0 oz Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 5 12.8 %
1 lbs Amber Malt (22.0 SRM) Dry Extract 6 8.5 %
7 lbs Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract 7 59.6 %
3.00 oz Cascade [6.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 59.2 IBUs
3.50 oz Cascade (Fresh Wet hops x 5) [5.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 9 30.8 IBUs
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 10 -
3.50 oz Cascade (Fresh Wet hops x 5) [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 11 0.0 IBUs
? Estimated Post Boil Vol: 5.98 gal and Est Post Boil Gravity: 1.063 SG

Cool and Transfer Wort
? Cool wort to fermentation temperature
? Transfer wort to fermenter
? Add water if needed to achieve final volume of 5.00 gal

Pitch Yeast and Measure Gravity and Volume

Fermentation Ingredients

1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) [50.28 ml] Yeast 12 -
? Measure Actual Original Gravity _______     (Target: 1.063 SG)
? Measure Actual Batch Volume _______     (Target: 5.00 gal)
? Add water if needed to achieve final volume of 5.00 gal

Fermentation
? 12 Sep 2015 - Primary Fermentation (4.00 days at 67.0 F ending at 67.0 F)
? 16 Sep 2015 - Secondary Fermentation (10.00 days at 67.0 F ending at 67.0 F)


Dry Hop and Bottle/Keg
? Measure Final Gravity: _________  (Estimate: 1.015 SG)
? Date Bottled/Kegged: 26 Sep 2015 - Carbonation: Bottle with 3.61 oz Corn Sugar
? Age beer for 30.00 days at 65.0 F
? 26 Oct 2015 - Drink and enjoy!

A day ago I kegged a dunkleweiss for my homebrew club Octoberfest party. It's a bit of a Weihenstephan clone. I moved a Belgian amber into the cold crash fridge and ordered supplies for an Orval clone. And planning a big juicy fruity IPA for a work party.

A further modification of a friends stout recipe.  Hopefully will be less malty this time and a slightly lower finishing gravity (better completion).

 
Do you mind posting the recipe?  I just bought a dunkelweiss kit on sale that I'll hopefully brew over the 4 day.  It's hard to beat $21 to my door, including a vial of wlp300.



 


Here's mine:  






 

It's easy:

5lbs Pilsner
5lbs white wheat, I used red wheat
1lb honey malt
.5lb special B

mash at 152 for 1 hour

1oz Hallertau @60

Wyeast 3068

fermented @ 70F

It's got the maltyness, and the banana & clove in equal amounts, I just had a sip

The stout looked lonely in there all by itself...had some empty growlers laying around...so, decided to try my hand a mead.





I have 0.5 gallons of mead in the freezer as well. Hopefully it doesn't suck. Guess I'll know in 6 months.

A nut brown that will become a pumkin, OG 1.09

Welp, with the 4-day weekend coming up I'll be brewing the dunkelweizen on Monday.  This will be my first try at decanting the starter (I've always poured in the 2+ quarts...which apparently is bad).  

Northern Brewer chocolate milk stout.

Bottled my Xmas beer, and have everything ready to go for tomorrow when I'll be brewing an Orval clone. The best part will be drinking 4 Orval bottles to harvest the dregs that will be added at secondary

Welp, the brew went well for the Dunkelweiss.  Mash was right where I wanted it at 152.

I nailed the 90 minute boil and ended up with 5 gallons of wort.  I chilled the fermenting bucket in a 20 gallon plastic tote of ice water that took me down to 78 (it stalled there) before pitching.  I pitched and threw it in my fermentation fridge set at 68 and now the probe taped to the side of the bucket is measuring 60.  I guess my normal brewing thermometer isn't reliable below 80.  I'm pretty sure the fridge probe is accurate...it's a Johnson that I've used well.




One potential difference is that i insulated and taped the probe to my bucket...until now I've simply left it dangling in the fridge measuring ambient temperature.


I'm hoping the heat of fermentation kicks in and warms it up to 66 or so.  If not, I may throw in a small heater until it gets into the mid-60s.

Using my calibrated scientific thermometer, I found that my controller was reading about 0.8 degrees too warm.



My controller is exactly the same as yours.



 

 
Thanks.  I trust it more than my 18" $15 dial thermometer that I "calibrated" at boiling.


I'm an engineer by education, so knowing how imprecise my setup is kills me.

Why not calibrate your dial thermometer at freezing?
Go out and buy a gallon of distilled water, make you some distilled ice cubes, then make yourself a distilled ice water bath.
Should be closer to your fermentation temp than boiling.





ETA::Oh, and I'm also an engineer... and I'm so obsessed with the precision and accuracy of my fermentation chamber, that right now, as we speak, I shit you not, I have a data acquisition system connected to my computer that records the temperate.



Here is an old pic of some data when I first bought it:




 

I haven't brewed anything all summer long so I had some catching up to do.  My 4 taps haven been empty for a few weeks so I brewed 4 batches over last weekend.  I brewed an Amarillo IPA (6 oz + 1 oz for dry hopping), a Rye Pale Ale and a Scottish Ale.  I also brewed an Imperial Milk Stout that I'm going to flavor with chocolate and peanut butter for my stout tap although that won't be ready until around Christmas.

Rocking a Pumpkin Lager, a ton of Irish Stout, and an experimental Sack Mead.  Gonna be a good winter!

I've got 5 gal of caribou slobber in the secondary and 5 gal of dead ringer IPA in the primary that I just boiled up last night. Come Christmas, I'll have a nice little stash going. This is only my 4th and 5th batch so far, really enjoying the home brew hobby! With upgrades to equipment and finishing our basement next year to include a spot for kegs, I'll be dropping some money to increase production! Now what to do with all the beer...

6 gallons of Dos Equis Amber clone in the keg with pressure on for the ladies and an IPA in the other keg for the men.  Next up is a Stone IPA clone.

Christmas ale bubbling away.

What is it spiced with?

An Orval clone. Thursday I'll be making a 1 pint starter with some dregs of a few fresh Orvals. I'll add the starter to the keg and put it away for a few months to funk up.

While that was mashing I transferred to a keg my nut brown ale with pumpkin spice added, fantastic

I just kegged the DunkelWeiss.  I fermented it pretty cool for WLP 300 (68 instead of 72ish) to lower the banana and bring out cloves.  I ended up with a pretty nice balance between the two.

I can't wait for it to carb up.

Just stepped up a starter of Chimay. It will be used in a collaboration beer that I'm pretty excited about: a Belgian quad that will have a bottle of Malbec added to it at bottling. A co-worker made the wine, he's really good at it too. We'll be bottling a 6 pack of just quad, then adding the wine. Halfway through the bottling of the wine portion we'll innoculate the rest with Wyeast Brett Lambicus. The cherry and funk should add some interesting edge to this

Quad recipe:
Est OG 1.1
Est FG 1.012-ish

15lbs Pilsner
1lb chocolate

Chimay yeast, 2.5L

1oz Hallertaur @60
1oz Saaz @10

2.5lbs D-180 candi syrup

Single infusion mash @146F for 90

Start ferment @ 66F. Move to 70F room when krausen falls and add the candi syrup and insulate and let it rise as hot as it wants to get. Once FG has been reached slowly cold crash and bottle to 2.5 vols with D-180.

ETA: Brewed a modified version of this for Nation Lear to Homebrew Day. My club put on a brewing demo outside a popular brewery here and I was stuck with showing how to do an extract  I used 9lbs of Pils DME and the OG is 1.090. Fermenting at 67F right now.

Tonight is a leftovers saison. A can of Quaker oats steeped, Some pils DME, and some random low AA hops with Belle Saison yeast. I'm going to add some white wine and Sofie dergs(Brett C) to it at bottling.

Brewed 10 gal. of light lager this weekend.  In 2 weeks, I'll dump another batch over the yeast cake.  That should last me for a couple of months.