What's in your fermenter??

Chris Norrick · Post by **Chris Norrick** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 5:08 pm

I hope everyone took advantage of the warm weather today and brewed! I was in a t-shirt for a couple of hours. Got a 10 gallon of the Robust Porter done.

I guess I'm a little rusty. I ran out of propane about 20 minutes into the boil. Put the backup tank on and nothing came out. I ran down to ACE and filled up. Strange thing is it did have about a pound of propane in it. Turns out that damn OPD valve got me. If I have the needle valve on when you turn the valve tank on it won't let any gas out. You have to make sure the needle valve is off before turning on the tank valve.

I also had TWO boil overs. One was very minor the other was after the whilrflock addition 15 mins to go. It was so bad it clogged up my burner and I had to shut down early as all I was getting were yellow sooty flames. This is the roughest brew day I've had in awhile. But, I hit all the numbers!

john mills · Post by **john mills** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 9:29 pm

Running out of propane sure blows. How many batches are you able to get from the small 20 lb tank? I thought I used up a whole tank during my 2nd batch last week, but it was my cruddy burner. I took it all apart and scraped all the gunk, and rust out. It helped out a great deal.
I'm looking to switch to natural gas. I saw a reference somewhere on the net about a system a guy built using furnace parts, but that got me thinking.... how about the burner from the hot water heater (I know....why heat water, but thats what I call the damn thing). I hate to run out of anything, and Vectren is making sure my natural gas is in good supply. I guess electric could work too, but the combining of liquids and high voltage is best left to somebody else. Low pressure fuel makes me feel safer.

Anybody got an old natural gas water heater lying around?

JohnD · Post by **JohnD** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 6:51 am

Chris, if you put a nylon paint strainer(alias: hop bag)over the kettle during the boil, there will be NO BOILOVER!!! I use one every time now , 5 gallon size. Hops go in the bag too.

Chris Norrick · Post by **Chris Norrick** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 9:21 am

The leaf hops I've been getting clog up my pump so I picked up a couple of these awhile ago. I need to sew a pocket along the top edge so I can put a circular piece of wire in there to support it. It won't stretch over a keg boiler, so I'm getting creative!

JohnD · Post by **JohnD** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 8:26 am

Made an Irish Red Ale yesterday afternoon. Snow on the ground-good day to brew!

9# Maris Otter
1# Crystal 60L
.50# Melanoidin Malt
.25# Carapils
1.5 oz Kent Golding 60 min
.5 oz Northern Brewer 10 min
2 tsp gypsum
Irish moss
Used magic powder(5.2) in mash
Irish ale yeast

Boil volume was 6.5 gal, OG ended up at 1.058
Saturday AM bubbling nicely

sirgiovanni · Post by **sirgiovanni** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 8:57 am

First 10 Gallon for the Conical

18 lbs Maris Otter
1.5 lb Simpson's Dark Crystal
1.7 oz Breis Chocolate Malt
2.5 oz English Kent Golding - Boil
1.5 oz English Kent - Finish
Wyeast London III

OG-1.056

sirgiovanni · Post by **sirgiovanni** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:24 pm

1 Gallon Blueberry Vanilla Mead

5 lbs of clover honey
5.5 lbs of blueberries
1 oz vanilla extract
London III Wyeast

Dwayne_Delaney · Post by **Dwayne_Delaney** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 4:00 pm

My first attempt at a Chocolate Porter. It looked and smelled just like Hershey's syrup going into the fermenter. I'm not sure how the yeasties will react to this slurry. Going into the fermenter it was very bitter due to all of the chocolate, but I'm sure a lot of the chocolate will settle out in the fermenter.

Chris Alvey · Post by **Chris Alvey** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:01 pm

Honey Blonde (10gal) 1.050 21 IBU

14# Pale Malt (American)
1# Honey Malt
1# Wheat Malt
1/2# 10 L Crystal
3# Honey at Flameout

2oz Willamette 60
1oz Willamette 10

Mash 150 or so (we were low so mashed at about 149 for 90 min.)
Wyeast 1010 (because it was available... intended to use American Ale)

For those who brew 10 gallons... how do you boil all that without a boilover? I have a converted keg (15.5g) and when we filled it up it was only a few inches from the top. I was scared of a nasty boilover so ended up boiling in 2 containers.

Chris Norrick · Post by **Chris Norrick** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:24 pm

Gotta have faith..a...faith...a...faith...baby!

What can I say, they kept playing that song for some tv show after LOST.

I throw in a couple of hop pellets pre-boil. Then really keep an eye on the flame as it comes up to boil. It settles down a few minutes into the boil. Of course, if you see a couple of posts above, I had a killer one after a Irish moss addition, but that is rare.

I've also been using a lot less flame lately. My boiloff numbers were really high and I think I was just boiling too vigorously. With 10 gallons it takes awhile to bring it up to boil so to keep the flame low I kick on the burner at low flame during the sparge, when there is a few inches in the kettle. Once the sparge is just about done, the batch is near, if not at, boiling, with little flame. Seems to help when you have 14 gallons in a 15.5 gallon pot.

Saves a lot of time too. Probably one advantage to fly sparging.

sirgiovanni · Post by **sirgiovanni** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 3:23 pm

I'm boiling in a 15 gallon pot now.

Dwayne_Delaney · Post by **Dwayne_Delaney** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 4:56 pm

Classic American Pilsner

Ingredients
11.00 lb Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM)
2.00 lb Corn, Flaked (1.3 SRM)
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
1.00 oz Cluster [7.90 %] (60 min)
1.00 oz Liberty [4.30 %] (20 min)
1.00 oz Liberty [4.30 %] (5 min)
1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min)
1 Pkgs Lager (Brewferm #Lager) [Starter 1000 ml]

Only my second lager, wish me luck.

john mills · Post by **john mills** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 3:08 pm

I made another batch of my American Wheat that I made on 1/20/08 since my wife liked it, and it is almost gone. I used the same grain bill, but changed the hops a bit.
5lbs Marris
5lbs Wheat
1/2 lb Carapils
1/2 lb Crystal 60
1 1/2 oz CZ Premiant boil
1/2 oz Amarillo 5 min
Once I finished the protein rest, and added the rest of the infusion water to get my 154 degree mash. I just closed the lid on the cooler and wrapped it with a couple of blankets and ran some errands around town for what I thought would be no longer than a couple of hours. I was gone longer than anticipated (came back 7hrs later). The temp in the cooler dropped to 137 degrees.
I fly sparged as normal, but didn't collect as much runoff as usual (I usually stop when runnings drop below 1.010). Runoff was at 1.004 (my new chineese refractometer I won on ebay finally came in the mail**Wow what a pain in the a$$ it is to use a hydrometer compared to this**).
Post boil I had about 6 gallons where I had 6 1/2 for the original. My OG on the original recipe came in at 1.044. Now the 2nd attempt came in at 1.060!
Is there that much of an increase in gravity from removing 1/2 gal of water? or could it be the extended mashing increasing efficiency?

Davin · Post by **Davin** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 2:06 pm

Great day to be outdoors, man i'm glad I got the new equipment done so I could enjoy this day the way the beer gods envisioned.

Here is the big over-the-top amber I made today:

10 lbs. American 2-Row
2 lbs. White Wheat malt (had planned to use all two row, but I ran out)
1 lbs. Crystal 40L
1 lbs. Munich Malt
.5 lbs. Carmel 120L
.5 lbs. Victory Malt
3 oz Pale Chocolate (200L)

1 oz Summit (60M)
1 oz Amarillo (10M)
1 oz Cascade (10M)
1 oz Amarillo (At Flame out)
1 oz Cascade (At Flame out)

This was my first use of whole hops, I noticed a lot of what I can only guess is hop particals going into the fermenter. Is that normal? It was not whole hops or anything, and they were very small particals, just not used to it.

Chris Norrick · Post by **Chris Norrick** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 8:22 pm

Got a 10 gallon batch of Gumballhead Clone done before lunch! Of course, I started about 6:30 a.m.

57% White Wheat
36% Maris Otter
6% Cara 20 (supposed to be Cara 45 but I didn't have any)
Mash at 152 F

1.5oz of 9.4% Amarillo @ 60
1.5oz of 9.4% Amarillo @ 30
1.5oz of 9.4% Amarillo @ 15 (I reduced this to 1oz and 1oz of Sorachi Ace because I had it)
1.5oz of 9.4% Amarillo @ 5
2oz of 9.4% Amarillo @ dry-hop

WLP001-Cal Ale

I tried out my new whole hop sack on this batch. It's one of those 5 gallon sized paint strainers that I sewed (yes, real men own a sewing machine) a pocket around the top and inserted some copper wire to support it on my sanke kettle. It worked ok I guess, the mesh is too tight. It doesn't seem to let much liquid through once it clogs up with proteins (especially wheat). I'm going to look for some courser mesh and some nylon strapping this week. I'm going to make some of those BrewHaulers for my carboys out of the strapping.

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OVHA Chat

What's in your fermenter??

Ahh what a day...

Gumballhead Clone