11-26-11 (having issues with pics. will edit in later)
Black feather stout

– 1 can extract light
– 5 lbs pale malt
– 3 lbs Munich
– 1 lb black patent
– .75 60L
– .25 roasted barley
1 oz magnum hops 60 min
1 oz cascade hops 15 min
1 oz Willamette hops 5 min
US05 yeast

Using original recipe with a few changes
1-added 1/4 lbs torrified wheat for (yea you know)
2-added 1/4 lbs chocolate malt just because it was on top of the torrified wheat.
3-gonna add 1 more oz of cascade at flame out or maybe split it at flame out and 15 min

4-Also added an ounce or more of Mt.hood from backyard at 15

Got my thermometer adjusted. as we are gonna mash pretty high. I want that nice thick body.

Scottish 60
first time brewing with Beersmith as a guide. we will see.
first time doing 10 gallons.
I used to make this recipe when I was just starting out. It was all extract. I never really knew what Scottish 60 was supposed to taste like. But after having one at the Rails and Ales it tasted just like my old one.

Scottish 60 (need a name for this) 10 gallons
12 lbs Maris otter
.6 lbs roasted barley
1.5 oz east Kent Goldings
and for the yeast, gonna do one with Windsor and one with coopers ale

beersmith calls for about 4 gallons at 162 to get 154. this seems a bit low temp. I’ll use 168 water

Ok thats about as much as i can mash.

Starting to rain hard now. good thing we in the garage.
got 152 at my temp. gonna leave it.

I couldnt get the lid on tight and lost about 5 degrees. Dont think I’m gonna mess with it.
looks like we are going to get about 2.5 from first running.
about 2.5 from second. Gonna do three, but no more.

So I got 3 sparges of all 2.5 and the I added 4.5 gallons of top up water. why 4.5? because I am going to take 2 gallons of the wert and boil the hell out of it and reduce it to 1 gallon.

Trying to get that carmaly flavor. (or the burnt extract, ha! lol)

Real tough getting this to boil today. everything seems slower today.
Am getting ready to transfer to carboys and we are hitting the six hour mark. long day.

OG is 1.042 looks pretty good. Lot of trub.
(final note: I split this into 5 gallon primaries. 1 used Windsor and the other I used Coopers ale yeast, because that is what I used when it was extract.)

Finally got around to getting the rhubarb wine going. Didnt really keep great notes on this, but here is what I do have.

I thawed a couple of packs. About 8 lbs worth. Dumped 4 lbs of sugar all over it and let it sit and ooze for 2 days.

Boiled about 2.5 gallons of water and dumped it in there to get all the sugar into solution and then poured everything thru my strainer into the ferment bucket.

threw in a small box of raisins, a couple spoons of nutrient and energizer. I had a bottle of Welches Grape juice, so I threw that in too. A 75 cent packet of Red Star Premire Cuvee and we slammed the lid down.

I’ll check on that next month.

Yesterday I decided to brew. Kind of spur of the moment, so we did something easy and one I’ve made a few times before. A nice Bitter. Put out the word, and we got RSVPs back from Tim and Max

Tim from Tim’s Closet Brewery wanted to give his new piece of EQ a try so I didn’t grind my grains at the store.

After a few adjustments we got one hell of a crush. (note to self: start keeping rice hulls on hand again).

Brewed some beer. Drank some beer. Onion wine. Meads. pretty much anything that wasnt nailed down. The Bitter came out good (so far) so it was another good day.

Oh yea, for those keeping track:

DrWhovian Bitter (variant)

6 lbs maris otter

3/4 lbs crystal 40

1/4 lbs choc malt

1/4 oz first Gold hops FWH

1/2 oz first gold hops 60

1/4 oz first gold 15 (First Gold hops are 8%)

1/2 oz EKG 15

1/2 oz ekg 1 min

*variant- normally would have just used 1 oz of EKG 60 instead of the Gold and no FWH*

Mashed at 151

Windsor yeast of course