whats brewing

wife and doughter are going to beach on sunday so you know what i'm doing.brewing a rye wheat ale and my first lager.both recipes are from brewing classic styles. got the starters going now the lager starter is 2.5L on the stir plate and the rye wheat is 1L on the walk by and shake method.whats brewing for you guys this weekend.HB.

Tomorrow I'm doing the single bock, then I got two open 3gal carboys, not really sure what I'm gonna fill em with. Probably gonna do a sour of some sort with wine soaked oak, then maybe a session beer of sorts

Just got that triple IPA in a keg, came out at 13%! It's good, but boozy

Took the kids on a hike up crotched mountain today so I could collect some staghorn sumac from a stand up there. I'm thinking I will brew sumac pale ale tommorow. Never tried it before so I'm not too sure what to expect.

Brew day went well started at 6:30 am. finish at 1:30 pm. the rye wheat was first did a protein rest at 122 then up to 152 for sac.rest.drain to kettle.clean mash tun then mash in the lager.water for lager was allready at temps before I cleaned the tun.chilled the rye wheat while lager boiled for 90 min. chilled lager to 58 deg. put fermenter and starter in frig. till temp.was 48 deg. then pitched yeast.that was the easy part now I need to ferment lager till ferm. slows and do a d-rest.my O.G. is 1.046 so I'm thinking 1.037 for d-rest for two days then bottle and lager in the bottles at 36 deg.first time with lager beers so advice is wecome please.HB.

sounds like a busy day HB! I would go much further along in ferm before looking to do a d-rest. I typically go 7-10 days then let it rise for a d-rest. As long as you pitch cold and keep temps down, diacetyl isn't usually much of an issue but I feel better doing one anyway. Remember, the lagers are going to work much slower the ale yeast. Don't panic when you don't see airlock going for two days....Which yeast are you using?

thanks nailer I am nervous this being my first time at lagers.There's more that can go wrong.I used wyeast 2308 with 2.5L.starter.I'll follow your advice and wait 7-10 days before D-rest.HB.

yeah thats the yeast I use for my helles's, it throws a metic shit ton of sulphur during ferment, but cleans it up nice if you give it time....I shake the carboy every couple days to make sure there aren't any lazy folks in there....

It's been 48 hours and no airlock activity.Not that i'm panicing or anything.HB.

Same thing is happening with my bock. Starting real slow, but I'm sitting way colder at 44. No need to panic, and be patient! I let my American lager go for close to a month before kegging and lagering. I cold conditioned for 3-4 weeks, and it was worth the wait

seeing some activity today.can't wait to get home from work.

yep i's fermenting now.the temp was at 41 deg. thats the cold end. I've seen 51 deg.for the high end.I don't want to be any higher than that in temp. Is 41 deg.to low? HB.

that may be pushing it, when i use 2308 it doesn't seem to like being below 44. I usually pitch at 40 and then let it rise up to 48, its probably still working at 41 but just sloooooooooowwwww..

thanks for the advice.I've been checking the temps.more closely tonight and looks like i'm getting 46 at the high end now.so I think I'll up the temp. a little.just don't want to go over 50 deg.HB>

My lager is like 12 hours behind yours hb, checked it this morning and its starting to blow off finally. Gonna tap my keg of IIIPA, cant wait to see what type of monster i created there

hey funkmaster hows that lager doing.mine is going well,it seems slow but i'm used to ales that ferment like crazy.i'm bottling the rye wheat on sunday.whats everybody else doing brew wise this weekend.HB

I was listen to a podcast from Jamil where he talks about no batch sparging and it got me wondering. Have any of you done this? I would like to try it at least once with some type of session beer. Maybe just a pale ale or something like that. always fun to try different technique. thanks guys, happy brewing. hope your lagers come out ok boys!

I guess I could say yes to that in two different ways....One way is brew in a bag which is no sparge and the second would be when I did a barleywine I just used the first batch high gravity to make the beer.....NoT sure if those fit though because I am not 100% sure of no sparge meaning......


I grabbed some Goldings at the shop earlier and hopefully will make an english IPA this weekend....

Sense the pats aren't on until tonight I'm gonna attempt a no sparge - 2-row / amarillo SMASH half batch today. We'll see how much time I save on brew day.
How did the IPA go Nailer?

Not a banner day for sure. Everything was going perfect until I pulled the bag when mashing out and noticed a hole in it! I had probably 2 quarts of husks in the kettle, I removed what I could and the just boiled anyway. I'm expecting a ton of tanins but i'm sort of hoping all the hops will mask it. Time will tell. On the positive side though I did get some good extraction, shooting for 1061 and got 1070....
I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on your brew day when done...



ps I should add though that I hade a basil/garlic gnocchi with shrimp for dinner that was so good it pretty much made the day a success

oh man, good luck with it nailer! keep us updated with how it goes. at least you had a good meal!!
brew day went well. the "no sparge" technique took off about a half hour so that was nice! however when i use my normal batch sparge technique i get an eff. of 70% most times, this time i hit 63% eff. so that sort of stinks!
i used 5 lbs.+/- two-row malt and mashed it with 4.5 gallons of water. mashed for an hour at 150 and drained to boil kettle. pre-boil volume was 4 gallons. Boiled it for an hour and brought it down to 3 gallons. transferred 2.5 gallons to the carboy and called it a day! my OG was 1.045, i was looking to get 1.053. not bad i guess.
go Pats!!

hey ellis I think I read you up the grain bill a bit to compensate for not sparging.It didn't say how much ,so I guess it's trial and error on your rig.Nice go at it though.thank you, when someone trys something new we all learn from it.let us know how the next no sparge comes out.HB.

I,m going to do a biab fri. I hope.I have two questions 1:Do you still need rice hulls if your doing a wheat beer?I figure it can,t hurt and I have some so why not.2:I have a 5 g.paint strainer and a 7.5 g pot if I wanted to do a 5 g. batch can I use the proper amount of grain and anough water to fill pot do my mash then remove grain bag add water as needed for a 5 g. batch? ps.I,m only doing a 3 g. batch on fri just wanted to know if 5 g. is posible.HB.

hy howie, you do NOT need rice hulls,since there is no sparge there is no neeed for them. They are simply going to take up space. You may be close to being able to do a full batch of a lower OG beer. Remember to squeeze the bag when done mashing, get all that good stuff out. I would be interesting to see but I'm thinking if you did a 1045 beer and squeezed the bag when done you would only need about a gallong to top up....just a guess, as I have never tried it......I'd love to know how it works out though...


If it helps in the figuring, when I do a 1050 or so beer I usually add 7.25 gals of water then add my bag of grains. Also, go ahaed and double crush your grain to get a couple more points....

thats the problem my pot is 7.5 g.so 7,25 g.of water would over flow when I add the grain.You got a good idea with crushing the grain finer, that will give me extra points so if I use say 6 g.add 1 g. after I pull the grain out it might not be perfect but could work.thanks HB.

HB. You need a keggle sir! Or two!