Ruby Clone

This one is for Steph

Ingredients:

Grain-

11 lbs 2 Row Pale Malt

Hops-

1 oz Mt Hood @ 30
1 oz Mt Hood @ 10

Yeast-

Safale American 05

Raspberry-

Will make a raspberry puree and it into secondary

O.G. 1.041

I'm not hitting my gravities and am not sure why. I'm thinking my handheld thermometer might be off so I will try that. Or possibly I'm disturbing my grain bed too much and I'll try the pie plate technique.

24SEP2011: I forgot to update when I transferred to secondary and tertiary. I added two pints of raspberries into secondary and cold crashed in tertiary. Today I kegged it so it should be ready in a couple of days. Gravity hit 1.004 making it 4.8% ABV which is about right for this beer.

The Harvest

So its time to harvest our hops from our mystery plant that was here when we bought the house. We don't do anything to it, we don't water it, train it, put twine up or anything else. It just goes crazy and it's an absolute monster. I can't get to all the hops cause the vines extend twenty feet into three different neighbors yard but we still got a lot of them.



The picture is what we pulled off the vine today but if you can see that mound of vines on the ground there are still a lot more to be picked off and dried. We'll start vacuum sealing them tomorrow. I'm excited to see how much we get.

Jockey Box

So we are going camping this weekend, and Randy and I had brewed 50 gallons of beer over the 4th of July weekend for the camping trip. He has a small jockey box with one tap on it. We need more than that for camping so I decided to go ahead and make something so we can have more taps rolling cold. Here it is-









First inventoried supplies. The cooler, 50 feet of 1/4 copper tube, silicone caulking, taps, something to wrap the copper around (in this case a small propane tank) and of course Beer.



















Wrapped the copper tightly around the tank.





































Copper all wound up.











































Checked to see see if I would be able to fit 2 or 3 coils. In this case only 2 will fit.



























Counted the coils and divided in half. Used this number to mark the center point and cut the copper. Here it is cut.

































The two coils inside the cooler.

































Drilled 1/4 inch holes and brought 1 inch of each coil through the holes and sealed them on both sides with caulking.

























Installed the 2 taps, and hooked up beer lines from the copper to the taps.



Now just need to add beer, ice, some camping and some friends.

Raspberry Mead

Ingredients:



Fermentables-

3 lbs local-raw-organic, raspberry Honey

5 oz Fresh Raspberries



Yeast-

Red Star Pasteur Champagne



OG- 1.120



16JUL2011- After weighing out the raspberries I put them into a pot, added water and started boiling. I used a spoon and mashed the raspberries into the water as they boiled. After that mixed in the raspberry puree with the honey and added enough water to make a gallon. Beautiful purple color.



11AUG2011- Looks like pink lemonade now. Down to 1.002 for a whopping 15.5% ABV

Broken Mower Pilsner

Ingredients-

Grain:

20 lbs- Pils
3 lbs- Carafoam

Hops:

2 oz- Perle @ 60
1 oz- Perle @ 40
1 oz- Perle @ 30
1 oz- Saaz @ 15
1 oz- Saaz @ 5

Water:

Mash-
7.25 Gallons @ 162 for 60 Minutes
Sparge-
2 Gallons @ 169
2 Gallons @ 169
5.5 Gallons @ 169

Yeast:

Wyeast 2001, Urquell Lager (starter made day prior with 1 lb DME)

OG:

1.048

22JUN2011- Another batch brewed with Jon. Its really nice to have the extra help around for the brew. Plus its fun to relax with a friend. Everything went really well. No stuck mash, no hiccups really anywhere in the process. Gravity was a little lower than target even though our the mash temp was right on. I'll have to think it over and see where something needs to be adjusted.

29JUN2011- Down to 1.008, I thought this yeast was supposed to take a long time but apparently it went really quick. Might cold crash on friday.

Brawley's Meadicine

Ingredients:

4 lbs- Local Organic Raw Honey

1 Gallon- Water

1 Packet- Red Star Pasteur champagne Yeast

O.G. 1.159

22JUN2011- Man this is gonna be crazy

Simple Mead

Ingredients:

Honey- ~3.5 lbs

Water- <1 Gallon

Yeast- Red Star Pasteur Champagne

O.G. 1.120

15JUN2011- My last mead went over so well I had to make another. I just get bummed about how long it takes to ferment. I'll check it in a couple of months and see what the gravity is down to.

21JUN2011- I had checked it earlier this week and again this morning. Fermentation has stopped at 1.032 for a final ABV of 11.6% Its pretty good, you can really feel that alcohol burn but the left over sugars really balance it out.