On Saturday I brewed a 10.5 gal batch of a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone. I decided to brew this because I had all the ingredients on hand. This was my first batch using my new plate chiller. Overall I am pleased with the performance of the plate chiller. I was able pump 10.5 gallons near boiling into 2 - 6 gallon Better Bottles at 75 degrees in about 10 minutes. I have the option to use a submersible pump in ice water which would have lowered the temp considerably but I would gone through a lot of ice and water. For my next brewday I will likely have a prechiller upstream of the plate chiller.
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Plate chillers are awesome! After I first used one I decided I had to have one from there on out. Takes so much time off the end of the brewday.

So, have we always been posting in a thread with fermenter spelled incorrectly? I hadn't noticed until today. Shows up as fermeter on my screen.
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fixed!
funny i usually notice typos right away. that one was subtle for whatever reason. mst b lk th thng whr ycn rd wtht vwls.
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For some reason my brewhouse efficiency was down for this batch. I usually get around 75% with the default crush on my crankandstein mill. I actually tightened up the gap to hopefully hit 80%. I batch sparge with 2 equal sparges. Maybe I just didn't let the batch sparges rest long enough to dissolve all the sugars. Or maybe I drained off too fast with my pump.
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Brewed up 10 gallons of an imperial black IPA last night. Already bubbling away this morning.

For the third batch of beer in a row I forgot to add corn sugar to the boil. In the last two it wasn't a big deal but it would have wrecked this batch. I made a small boil on the stovetop and added it to the beer after a 10 minute boil. We'll see how it comes out...
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What's happening fellow brewers? Got brew day planned for Sun...time to celebrate my favorite beer season, Oktoberfest!

Got my label done up already! Looking forward to brewing again.
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hmmm. I was talking with my brewing partner about what to brew next. Oktoberfest could be it. Killer label :-)
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Spent last night bottling up my Falconers Flight IPA, and my split-batch English ESB. I think that makes my homebrew volume just about 50 gallons for 2012. :-)

For the first time in more than a year, I have empty fermenters in my house. Considering that I have something like 11 fermenters of different sizes, that's a lot of emptiness.
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:-)
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I started a sour mash last night for what will be a semi-funky Saison. I have a session IPA (missed my OG by a lot and ended up with a low abv, high ibu beer) that I really need to get into bottles and a standard bitter that should have another week or so in the fermenter. Planning on brewing the Saison either tomorrow or Saturday, depending on how long it takes to get a nice sour profile.
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How'd you do the sour mash? I did one for a Berliner weisse by just tossing some raw pilsner malt into a brew in a bag half batch not long ago. Came out fantastic.
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Excellent brew day yesterday....had three participants brewing. Oktoberfest, Blonde Ale and one I can't recall at this point. Bunch of friends came over as well....so it was a regular party. Several cigars smoked, a ton of beer drank. All in all....great day. My oktoberfest hit right on target for OG.
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Oh yeah, and I think I got enough positive feedback to put one of my beers, maybe two, into the Dominion Cup. Gotta bottle them up and send them off. First time I'll send anything to a competition. Hopefully I don't get smacked down.
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I'm just getting into this, we've got a Dunkelweizen in primary right now, should be ready to bottle in a week. This is only my second batch, I'm doing partial but really want to switch to all grain... expensive though.
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All grain is expensive up front but even those costs can be kept down if you can DIY some of your equipment. If you have a supplier that will discount bulk grain purchases you should wind up with less cost in the long run. That is if you can keep yourself from constantly updating your equipment and buying bulk hops you don't need etc.
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Entered a couple brews in the Delaware State Fair "Battle of the Brews" competition, and my maibock took second in the European Lager category! :-)

http://firststatebrewers.com/wp-cont...-the-Brews.pdf
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Way to go Gerard! Congrats man!
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Nice work Gerard!
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Congrats Gerard :-). Thinking of starting a Pumkin Porter for the fall. Got to get my supplies ready for that.
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just brewed a DBL IPA yesterday. first brew in almost a year. My OG was off by 20 points. Don't know why i didn't just add some LME to the boil too boost it up.
Live and learn.
It started bubbling two hours after pitching. which made me feel better:-)
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