Author: stoutmaker

What is this!

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With the Titletown Open about a month away, its time to start deciding what beers and what categories.

Seems like it should be easy to do. If I brewed a Pale ale, put it in pale ale. Well of course it dont work like that. One of the most important decisions in a homebrew contest is to get the right category and sub category. And even that has little tricks, or nuances. You need to play to the judges. You need to see a judging first hand to get the full meaning of that.

My Betazoid stout for example. I brewed this to be a dry stout. And I think it would fit perfectly here, except its 7.5%. Thats extremely high for a dry. So this might fall into the Foreign extra slot. The only reason I am considering Foreign is because of the alc. I'm gonna need some feed back on this one for sure before I decide.
 
My strong ale is another. I originally brewed as a barley wine, and I think it still could pass as that, but its nearly two years old now, and is really making a case for old ale. I only have 4 bottles left of this and its been 8 months or so since I had one. Even then the Hops were starting to drop out and the beers was really hitting its stride. I really do hope this one scores well. I like this beer alot. Dont wanna see those last 4 go.
 
And the I have some tougher ones to place. The porter, is it really a porter? The Valhelsing, American brown, amber? Are these ESBs really ESBs?
 
Plus I gotta decide which of the 20p beers I wanna use. Our special category this year for the 20th anniversary. My have a starting OG of 20p or more. I made a brown last April just for this and it is fantastic, but I got that Double Alt that sure wants to be in it if it can clean it self up a little in a month. 
 
This year I dont feel I have any clear winners. Sad to say,, but thats the way it is. I do have some good solid beers going in, just nothing that stand out so to say.
 

Mini

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Almost ready to give the Mini batch system the go. Have one more round if tests to go now that I have both heatsticks ready and our kettle insulated

Initial tests were,, ok I guess. We could if forced into it, brew with the one stick. But two aught to be crazy! 
We added a couple if mini kegs to the Mini system as well. I can’t wait to start using these guys. In fact to night the German Double Alt goes in. 
Not sure what I want to be my first mini electric batch, but am currently am massing quite a sleu of recipes. 
Here I thought I was on the cutting edge of scaling back, but everywhere I look it’s mini batches now. It’s the in thing. 

One of those days

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I got my procedure down pat for the most part. I usually know whats going to happen before it happens. But then there are days when I start messing with things that aught not to be messed with, and just random things that happen to try and screw everything up.

Last nights brew was supposed to be a quick knock out of an ESB. Standard stuff. Mash, boil, done. Lets recap the night..

I start by feeding Beersmith all the pertinent data needed to calc my strike and sparge waters. In the midst of that, in the back of my head I remember the other day another brewer telling me that his “cooler weight” setting was off,, and for what ever reason I thought to my self it would be a good idea to change mine as well. I move it up because it felt heavy. Mind you it been on the same setting from the get go and has worked perfectly since. I get my measurements and start up.

In the last week I have been making use of heatsticks, so I chucked one in the kettle to speed up the process. Holy crap does it ever. Like 7 minutes to get strike up to temp. I was shocked really. Wasn’t really ready for it.

Hustle everything into position and get to mashing. What the hell? Stir, stir, stir.. what the hell!? I’m like 6-7 degrees low. 145 is a bit low. But I figured that I have corn in this batch, so I’ll let it mash there for 30 then step it up to the 152. I took a guess at how much boiling water was needed. and actually hit it just right. But as I’m stirring, I see my campden is still sitting on the counter. That 7 minute strike heat up was so quick, forgot to add it. I threw it in, but don’t know if it works after conversion starts.

So with all of that taken care of everything is going as planned. I hit my preboil right on, I found that just one heatstick can keep at least a simmer in my un-insulated keggle. things are lookin good. Coming up to the end of the boil I start to get my late hops and yeast ready.

Yeast. Hmm, where the hell is my yeast? I GOT NO YEAST! The chiller is in the pot already, its almost 9pmand I have no yeast.

Luckily, I have been on a brewing streak. I have 2 batches in the primary. A pale and a stout, both at the two week mark.

Prepare for emergency kegging! It wasn’t no big deal really. I had cleaned sanitized kegs ready any way. As I’m chilling one, I’m kegging the other. Give the yeast cake a swirl or two, and pour some into the ESBand we saved the universe again.

The ESB now has 05 yeast instead of anything British, but we have a heavily churning happy beer. It was just one of those days. Better not be any more like this.