Picked up a few of those silicon fermentation lids. Gonna get a test run in before stuff starts growing around here. (Though with 4 feet of snow yet, it may be a while yet)
A pound of beans fits a quart jar just about perfectly.
Used a 3.5% brine here, and added 1 TBS dill seed and 1/2 tsp each mustard seed and black pepper.
Have my ferment box set to 70F. Will keep tabs on this through the comments for the next week or two.
This past year was a bit slower in the brewing dept than normal. A quite a bit slower. From the notes it looks like I only brewed 15 times this year.
-4 ambers
-5 porter/stouts
-2 blondes
-1 IPA
-1 International Lager
-barleywine
-Scottish 60 spiced
Quite a bit less than my usual quota. But managed to grab a few awards this year. Which was surprising as almost everything that I brewed was experimental somehow.
The Mash and boil was the big focus this year. Sure it works just fine right out of the box. But I didn’t quite trust it early in the year. But after figuring some of the numbers and times, I began to trust it more, and have since mostly put the rest of my brew equipment away in favor of the all in one unit.
The brewery seen it share of other ferments this year. Wine, cider and a mead all seen some action this year. I had quite a bit of fun and good results with them, so I already have plans to work on a few more ciders in the near future.
And probably one of my favorite things in the brewery this year was the pickling and fermenting of the Farmers Market buys. Had several Krauts and pickles bubbling away down here all year!
In fact, everything went over so well with the food canning and fermenting, that I am pretty sure a spin off Blogsite of some kind will be needed.
So what is in store for 2019? I think I feel myself switching gears a bit. As mentioned up further, I had quite a lot of fun with the Ciders and wines, and would like to maybe look more into them. Still brew of course, but I think I need to get back to brewing for me and my styles, rather than mostly club needs.
And as alluded to, I think there will be some new content showing up. Both here, and hopefully a new site that would combine the brewing, bbq, and canning into one place.
Happy new Year
Time for another kraut post.
9stripe Brewing 