What are you doing with homebrew today?

[Herm brews]

I have grains mashing for PNW IPA, hitting my target temp of 152F. As is the nature of my process, the temp drops with time. Given the relatively low pre boil gravities I’ve been getting lately, I decided to open the kettle to stir and check temp at 30 minutes, also collecting a refractometer sample. The mash was at 150F and 11.0* Brix/1.045 which seems OK to me. Hoping the final 30 minutes and the stir get me to my 1.052 pre boil target.

 

[Josh Hughes]

Monitoring. My wort got down to 47F overnight. If temp doesn’t raise and more yeast action occur I’ll have to bring it inside to warm up a bit.

It continues to do its magic. Got it back to 52f

 

[Herm brews]

Preliminary measurements continue my missing pre boil gravity on the low side, at least according to my refractometer. The hydrometer sample is still cooling, so we’ll see where that lands. As of right now, I got more wort than expected, at SG of 1.049. I will extend my boil to 75 minutes, keeping the original hops schedule.

 

[Herm brews]

Boiling now, with vent hood fan running full blast and it’s noisy in this kitchen! The vent works well, especially with the grease screen removed. I just need to keep the condensation wiped from the underside of the hood.

 

[Josh Hughes]

Boiling now, with vent hood fan running full blast and it’s noisy in this kitchen! The vent works well, especially with the grease screen removed. I just need to keep the condensation wiped from the underside of the hood.

I used a piece of foil on mine each brew day. I wrap it on so I don’t get anything dripping that wasn’t clean

 

[Donoroto]

Boiling now, with vent hood fan running full blast and it’s noisy in this kitchen! The vent works well, especially with the grease screen removed. I just need to keep the condensation wiped from the underside of the hood.

Yeah, that is a definite downside.

 

[WesBrew]

porter seemed a little on the light side. I couldn't leave it alone. Whipped up .5g of .12something to add to it. Hit 26.5 on the refractometer, boiled ten more minutes then chilled, couldn't get a reading at all at that point.
It was the color and consistency of used motor oil, LOL and was Delish! . Needed more chocolate and a little sweetness in the porter.
12/21-Its really good. at .020, working on .018.

 

[Herm brews]

Yeah, that is a definite downside.

At least it cleared out the steam, and I didn’t fog up the rest of the house. It helped too that I cracked open the kitchen window to let in some 50F ish air. Fan is off now, and I’m enjoying music

 

[Herm brews]

Spent beer grains from today’s batch, still need a little longer to dry in the oven. True to my crazy nature, in the middle of my brew day, I put together a dough of sourdough to bake tomorrow. That dough used up the last of my supply of dried sbg, thus I am in need. Saved some wet to try with oatmeal, as suggested by @Josh Hughes

 

[RoadRoach]

I finished the new temp controller for the ferm chamber. Two Inkbird ITC-1000s. The first unit will monitor and control one fermenter. The second Inkbird will be passive only--just to monitor the temps in the second fermenter when I have two batches fermenting simultaneously. I have always wondered what's happening in fermenter 2, temp-wise. Now I can monitor.

I did a bench test, works ok. One thing I noticed is that the compressor delay function in the Inkbirds is a little flaky. Sometimes the delay works, sometimes it doesn't and the cooling cycle just kicks in right away. When the delay does run, the timing isn't always quite right. To test, I set the delay for one minute. Sometimes the chill cycle starts in about 30 seconds. Other times it switches on in 1 minute.

Kind of a moot point for me as I usually don't use the delay anyway, as I set +/- 1F for hysteresis and the freezer doesn't cycle that much anyway. But it was interesting to run the Inkbird through its paces. I'll calibrate the probes in some ice water before I put it to use.

After I'm done with the batch that's fermenting now and bottle, I'll swap out the old controller for the new one.

View attachment 23510

View attachment 23511

I'm going to build a box nearly identical, but with a different control concept. I want to limit the chamber temperature with a wider deadband to override the batch temperature. I want to see if I can reduce the overshoot just a bit. Switching over to Celsius scale helped some already because the increments for temperature setpoint as well as the hysteresis is .1 C. 1 F is the minimum increment when they're set for Fahrenheit, which is about 1.8 C. Another thing I'm going to do is wire it so that my fan runs whether I'm heating or cooling to better homogenize the air temperature in the chamber. I've got the second controller, so all I need to do now is build the new box.

I think I'm going to order another along with a hotplate so I can better control my mashing temperatures. All in the name of the 'science' of brewing.

 

[Sunfire96]

The golden ale will be ready to cold crash tomorrow, so I need to kick a keg today to make room in the fridge the hardships of homebrewing

 

[Megary]

The golden ale will be ready to cold crash tomorrow, so I need to kick a keg today to make room in the fridge the hardships of homebrewing

Saddle up, get it done!

 

[Josh Hughes]

Moving the fermenter inside from the garage later today. Attenuation will be over 60% by then.

 

[MaxStout]

I used a piece of foil on mine each brew day. I wrap it on so I don’t get anything dripping that wasn’t clean

I need to do that with my hood (which doesn't vent outside). I get condensation dripping from it during the boil. Anything that drips in will be sanitized, but I still don't like seeing it drip, drip, drip into the kettle.

 

[GFHomebrew]

Took gravity on Aldi Cider

@Josh Hughes this wasn't the game plan man! 1.000 or even a tad under on the dirty Hydrometer.

When Matilda saw this she said Daddy drinking orange juice .

Well it tastes clean and dry maybe a touch tart but nothing offensive.
I'll crash her down

 

[Zambi]

We just have to find a way to get some foam on cider.
At least then Mathilda won't be so surprised

 

[Sunfire96]

Just realized that instead of worrying about fridge space to cold crash this beer, I could've stuck it outside! High of 38F today

 

[Zambi]

I'm wondering about fridge space as well and don't have the luxury of keeping my beer at the required temperature, except inside the fridge.
Next brew I want to re-pitch on trub of current one.
So I bottle & leave slurry in fermenter and place back in fermentation fridge.
New brew gets made and wort cooled down as much as possible. But it needs to cool down further, but no space to put the whole pot in the fridge, 'cause the fermenter with slurry lives there.
I can do an overnight outside chill in the hope the temp goes down to 20-22 oC (68-72 F) and transfer wort to fermenter.

Or maybe (I haven't done this before) I can try get the slurry somehow out of the fermenter into a sanitised bottle and it can go in the fridge together with the cooling down pot? Or in the 4 oC (40 F) fridge for a little while?

 

[Steve Ruch]

Using it in a batch of brownies.

 

[MaxStout]

Took gravity on Aldi Cider View attachment 23544
@Josh Hughes this wasn't the game plan man! 1.000 or even a tad under on the dirty Hydrometer.
View attachment 23545
When Matilda saw this she said Daddy drinking orange juice .

Well it tastes clean and dry maybe a touch tart but nothing offensive.
I'll crash her down

I'm about due to make another batch of Aldi cider. I noticed that they have their nice Montmorency cherry juice in stock again. I did one of those last year, about 75/25 apple/cherry.