I've got 25 gallons of Berliner Weiss going now (going with various fruit treatments, 5 gal each). Bottled my Blueberry Sour Saison last night, along with my "Mango Mimosa" (mango Saison brewed with Hill Farmstead Mimosa yeast/dreggs). If got a Chocolate Porter going as well (cocoa nibs and lactose), and of course my barrel aging plambics. I think that's it.
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I was finally able to gather all my home brewing equipment together, clean it, fix it, and get the ingredients for my favorite beer.

5 gallons of Altbier about ready to be brewed, primary mash underway now.
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7 days of fermenting, 3 days of raising temp, shock it and 20-30 days of lagering to produce the elixir of the gods. I think the Germans made this so complicated just because they were bored.

Sadly neither of my propane burners were working, so I have to use the stove.
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I put in a Sweet Stout (Northern Brewer kit) today, an IPA (Thirsty Pig IPA- Beersmith recipe) yesterday, and a Bitter (modified Papazian recipe) in on Friday. Finally caught up with my consumption and social obligation deficit.
I really should get another couple big buckets or carboys so I can get more than 3 in primary at a time.
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Brewed an IPA Friday night with summit and cascade. Plan to dry hop with more cascade and maybe some simcoe in a couple weeks before kegging.
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Another Brewherf yesterday with Ferg & Matt, although I couldn’t officially brew since all my fermenters are currently tied up.

However, we made Attempt #2 at an unconventional second runnings mix-mash: after sparging & draining the grain bed, we let the mashtun sit while we continue our brewday. After a few hours, the coolers will have collected up usually another gallon or so of wort (not technically second runnings, I guess, because this is after the sparge.) We collect up all the runnings in a brewpot, and then fire up a small batch of this small beer, toss in some hops, then ferment with whatever yeast we might have handy.

MixMash #1 in March was about a gallon of Kolsch-Smoked Oktoberfest mixture (OG 1.039), that we hopped with Centennial and Saaz, fermented with Bell’s yeast. Ended up with about 3.9% ABV, 25 IBUs, bottle carb’d, and sampled it yesterday--I have to say, it was pretty damn good! Definitely a session beer that retained some characteristics of its two parents.

MixMash #2 yesterday was from Ferg’s Saison + Matt’s Oktoberfest. I took home about 2 gallons last night, boiled, hopped with Centennial, Hallertauer & Saaz to 35 IBUs, pitched a starter of some yeast that I harvested out of a Blue Mountain Brewery Imperial Stout, and it’s bubbling away this morning. :-)

No idea what we’re making, or how much fermentable sugars we’re able to extract from just the sparge, but it’s been a fun experiment!
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Pretty exciting day! Tapped my first keg of home brew! Tapped it a little young, but it's still damn tasty!

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Dude....we gotta get you in on our Brew Days. We tend to do them between Chester and Midlothian.
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Coffee Stout in the secondary is mixing well, looking at adding a clearifying agent to the secondary for the next 7-10 days it has left in the secondary.

The Weisse is still fermenting with 10-15 sec bubbles on its 5th day of fermenting, OG 1.064, still going strong in the primary.
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Brewed my 1st Saison yesterday
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I've got ingredients for an AG coffee stout and an extract Wit on the way. Should be here next week. Might do a big brew day next weekend depending on what I've got going on.
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Celebrated National Homebrew Day/Big Brew yesterday by brewing up an American Imperial Stout small batch. Pitched it on top of some yeast I harvested out of Blue Mountain Brewery's Dark Hollow, flavor profile makes me think it's some kind of Belgian strain although I'm not sure. It's bubbling away this morning, and will eventually age on top of some bourbon soaked oak chips.

Also, racked MixMash #2 (Saison + Oktoberfest) to secondary yesterday, and it tastes great! The Blue Mountain yeast dropped the gravity from 1.038 to 1.011, so I guess there were still fermentables in that "second runnings."
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I helped out with our clubs competition all day yesterday. I helped out judges that did amber lagers (Viennas and Marzens) and Belgian dark strongs (Blonde, Dubbel, Triple, Dark Strong). It was interesting to hear the comments from the judges on the various beers while tasting them. Some were great, and there were some absolute stinkers that I give the judges credit for working through to make comments on.

I had five beers in, two won ribbons. I entered my citra/galaxy pale as an IPA because it was on the edge of IPA and pale ale hoppiness. It won the IPA category which was one of the biggest of the show. My German Pils scored a 37 but took second place in the pilsner category. I also learned that my keg to bottle process needs fixing, all the beers I entered from my kegs had hints of infections that killed their scores. This tells me I'm not cleaning the bottles well enough before bottling those because the beer in the keg has no sign of an infection.

I'd definitely suggest joining a competition if you haven't, and to try to volunteer at the competition. I learned a ton yesterday, and got to drink beer from 9am to 6pm for free!
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I intend to enter a competition at some point. I need to refine my processes a bit still though.
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work party tonight. brought various different homebrews. someone else brought a growler of harpoon leviathan imperial ipa. as he said at the end of the night "pretty impressive that yours are almost gone and no one drank the leviathan".
it was a nice chance to try my various beers all at once. i'm digging the cda/black ipa.

brendan, i'm such a noob i have no clue if it's a good method, but i bake my bottles... to me it just sounded much more likely to end up at a satisfactory result than trying to wash them....
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That's an awesome idea that I had never thought of. I've never had an issue when bottling just using starsan. There is something about going from the keg to a bottle. I think I just didn't let the starsan coat the bottles for enough time, and I didn't take time to sanitize the faucet so I could have introduced something there as well.

Usually I drink bottles I fill from the keg on the day I fill them. It was 3 weeks from fill to competition so whatever it was had time to grow.
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I need a like button for your consumption record, my friend.
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for anyone who wants to bake bottles, here's what i do:
- rinse with water right after pouring beer
- keep in this "clean but not sanitized" state until i have enough collected up to bake
- take a square of aluminum foil and press it over the top of each bottle
- put bottles in cold oven
- set to 350, bake for 90 minutes after it reach temp
- leave in oven for slow cool down over night

then when i bottle all i have to do is remove foil. Also nice that it means sanitation can be done on a different day than bottling.
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Awesome showing in your competition, congrats on the IPA and 37 is a great score for the pils!

Can't help you on sourcing the infection, as I'm still stuck in the bottling dark ages. :-)
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Thanks! I definitely liked both of those beers, IPA more so than Pils, so it's good to know I don't have a complete gutter palate :-)
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yeah, awesome about the contest - so when are we trading?
:-)
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