The object of this beer is three fold. First. Get beer in the fridge for the yard working. Second. Get the kinks worked out of the Mash and Boil. Third. Try these Motueka hops.

A simple Blonde ale aught to cover all three.

• Work Beer 3 gallon 5%

• 5 lbs 2 row
• .5 lbs flaked oats
• .5 lbs 10L crystal
• .33 oz Montueka @ 60
• .66 Montueka @15
• American Ale yeast
• mashed 156

(Quick rant. First time using this brand of hops. Can’t believe how much leaves and sticks were in here. I won these,, but not sure I would purchase them after today.)

This is only the third batch on this system and its sorta been throwing me off a little. The temp swings on it are pretty severe. The heat wont kick on until it get -6 from target, and then it always over shoots by about +6. Thats, well, no good.

A couple of solutions that might help tighten it up.

First, but sadly not possible, is to adjust the endpoints on the controller. But its not adjustable. Well not yet anyway. You know someone is fed up with it and will figure a way to flash it or replace it.

Next, and probably the best bet,, just insulate the mutha so the temp dont drop in the first place. I already did a double wrap of reflectix and it certainly did help. But I think it also needs the old BiaB Blanket as well. (Yep, I know thats one sweet lookin blanket!)

Also, lets use this system like the BiaB that it really is. Full (or close to full) volumes. The more water in there, the less its likely to drop in temp. May take a hit in efficiency, but prolly not much.

The condensed tale of this brew day was quite different than the first three times on the M&B. More water and more insulation meant only a 2 degree drop in 30 min. A quick stir with the heat on, and shutting down manually when we got back to temp for another 30 minutes of mashing and I was quite happy with it.

(Any of you who also have this system and find that your mashbasket seals completely shut with grain and doesnt let the wort drip out when pulled up,, put a mash bag INSIDE the basket like you would a BiaB kettle. Works 1000x better)

Once I lifted the basket and got it into drain position, I cranked up the elements to head to boil and recirculated by hand pouring it back over the grains and mash bag until we hit 170. The wort was cloudy, but no grains or husks.

From there on out everything was groovin. I was within .002 points of all my numbers and hit all volumes dead nuts on.

For those keeping score,, this thing boils off .6 gallons an hour, and leaves .5 gallons behind under the valve.

I was indeed happy with this brew. Still need to work on routine and pretty up the wraps and such,, but I think I will be able to make this thing work the way I want. So.. tomorrow I think I will do a full sized Red IPA

Kinda fell out the mood dealing with some of the locals, and havent had the urge to brew in a while. Been dabbling here or there, cleaning up loose ends. So I need to do a quick catch up, then we will be back at it
Since I got the Mash and Boil system back December I think I have only brewed three times. Some kinks in that system,, but I think I have most of them worked out.
So I’m ready to start working on consistently with it and firm up a couple of recipes I’ve been tinkering with. Especially the 3 gallon sides of things.
Plus I gots ingredients coming out of my ears. Made a killing at a couple of homebrew contests the last couple weeks. Both in prizes and in raffles. Scales, controllers, grains, and hops! But as you will see shortly, I will be starting to make use of all that stuff. (I hope you like reading about Cascade hop recipes.)
I did get out a few weeks ago and brewed up a 10 gallon batch of an English BarleyWine with a buddy on his big ass system. We split it up, and currently am deciding if I should keg or bottle it.

Not sure I wanna tie up a keg for a year or so, and I more than enough bombers. Plus I wanna get some numbers and pics and just general data on the bottling process again, so more than likely will be capping soon.

Got the red currant wine all corked and put away. I really was surprised at how good it turned out. Needs some time on it to meld a little, but even in this short of a time its tasty. I’m sure a tasting review will be incoming as we closer to release date!
I don’t see me brewing or anything club related in the near future, so everything coming up will be for my own use, and things I can write up for this sad blog. I have a ton of bombers to fill and space to put them so should be a string of 3 gallon batches
First thing coming up this weekend will be a simple mini blonde ale to get back in the swing, and see if i can get both my spreadsheet and Beersmith dialed in for it.

If everything is kosher, the will start finalizing a Red IPA featuring… Cascades! I have a few directions to go with it, but should decide which way to head by Sunday.

Sometime within the past year or two, my household decided they like wine. Lots of wine. And so, my hand has been forced to get a batch going.

I did start in on this hobby making wines, but that was so long ago that I would not call myself a wine maker

Being a brewer mostly, I have nearly all of the equipment that I need to, except for the standard wine potions, but picked those up for under 10 bucks. And after perusing several wine sites, not much, if anything had really changed since my last venture.

Had planned on doing a kit, but I had a pile of red currants I was gonna make a blonde beer with. Might as well use them up.

Just over 3 lbs..or enough for a gallon. But I am shooting for 3 gallons so gonna add these to a white concentrate. Yep. The old Welches white.

I of course screwed up my volumes, but I did have enough concentrate to recover.

(Shot of the solids dropping out while the enzyme and campden are doing thier stuff)

Ended up with 4 gallons of 1.095.

Took a look this morning and the yeasties are firing on all cylinders. So I’ll report back on the first racking