re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

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When I built my mash tun, we had Mett, OBJ and Jarvis Landry playing football at LSU. I haven't cleaned it other than spraying it out with the hose since then. As long as no grain is stuck under the false bottom, I assume I'm good.

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same here. I do go ahead and remove the false bottom to make it a little easier to clean, though I might stop doing that since last time I brewed I poured the strike water into the mash tun and turned around and saw the false bottom sitting on my tailgate.

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My new one has the valves that you can disassemble so it's on my list of things to do to take them apart and clean them out. They're probably gross on the inside.

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Well, my valve smelled awful on the inside. Probably because i didn't do anything but hose out the mash tun since the last time it was used, so i made sure to clean it good this go round. I'll probably end up adding a bead of silicone to keep it water tight.

Last night I went to a class hosted by Jeff Mello at Bootleg Biology. It was at a nature center where we went over the basics of capturing wild yeast and also sampling beers with different wild yeasts and bacteria. Pretty fun, and Jeff was a super awesome guy willing to share everything he knew. He said he was a regular ol' homebrewer with no formal education in microbiology. He just liked capturing yeast and making beer, so he decided to make a career out of it.

I might have picked enough for one batch. We'll see what the final weight comes in at once they're dried. They're northern brewer and all of them came from one bine. Next season I plan on splitting it up growing more.

And yes, I stuck my face in it.

Brewed a brut IPA Friday. Checked the gravity last night. OG was 1.052. Added the dry hop charge of Nelson Sauvin and Mandarina Bavaria (3oz each) last night as well.

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Checked the gravity last night.

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I'm jealous. Apparently I've forgotten how to ferment stuff. The saison I mentioned earlier (like 2 months ago), is still taking its own sweet time. The Brett I added has taken it down to 1.020 but it's going slowly. Next year I'm brewing my summer saison in March.

I just picked up about 9 lbs of muscadines to add to my blended sour. I’ll crush up the grapes and add them directly to the fermenter. Got about 5 lbs of red and 4 lbs of bronze (green) muscadines.

So this brut IPA thing. I've heard of it. Don't think I've ever tried one. It's just a super dry IPA? More east coast or west coast? Any good examples?

Basically what I’m doing is I brew about 6 gallons of a style. Typically saison grain bill but sometimes just a golden ale. I then either copitch the sach, Brett, and bugs, or ill primary with sach and let finish before pitching the Brett and bugs just to get a low FG. Or copitch Brett and sach, and pitch the bugs after a couple weeks. Then I’ll just let it do it’s thing for about a year, towards the end I add a French oak spiral for a few weeks then I’ll either fruit or bottle. I typically let sit on fruit for a month or 2. I also prefer bottling with Brett as opposed to a wine yeast. I find the ever evolvong flavors from Brett at bottling to be pretty fun.

Oh, also, i typically do split batches, so I’ll brew 6, primary with a clean strain, ferment out then split into 2, 3 gallon fermenters. Then I’ll follow some of the above steps.

Then, at the end of all this, and prior to fruiting, I do my final measurements and taste. If the beer is too sour or not a low enough FG, I’ll brew up a clean saison, add some sach then blend. Ratios vary depending on what I want out of the beer.

What's the ibus on Brut ipas?