Batch Moving Day + Ginger Ale

Today was batch transfer day.  We had 10 gallons of Pale Ale and 5 gallons of IPA that finished in the primary.  One Pale Ale went directly in the keg with a sock of Ahtanum hops and the other went into a secondary fermenter.  The IPA with an original gravity of 1.064 went into the secondary fermenter at a gravity of 1.011, which equates to about 7% ABV with 70 IBU.  In addition to the three transfers, we made a 5 gallon batch of ginger ale with fresh ginger, lemons, sugar and water.  Here are a few shots of the action.

Dry hop Ahtanum:

Pale Ale transfer:

Washing bottles with recycled cleaning water:

Racking Pearl Malt IPA:

Ginger Ale:

Cheers!

Fawcett Pearl IPA Brew Day

Today we brewed the base malt challenge IPA for my homebrew club with 95% Thomas Fawcett Pearl malt and 5% Carafoam.  Hops are Columbus, Simcoe, and Amarillo.  The target ABV is 7% with 70 IBU.

Weighing the malt:

Heating strike water for mash:

Milling the malted barley:

Grains into mash tun:

Water into mash tun:

Vorlauft:

Lauter:

Measure hops:

Draining with first wort hops:

Boiling strong:

5 minutes remaining:

Racked into carboy and pitched yeast:

The original gravity was 1.064 and the yeast is Wyeast American Ale 1056.  Hopefully we can get it down to around 1.010.

O Rye Ale Bottling Day

Today is the bottling and kegging day for our Rye Pale Ale.  Check out our snazzy new labels.

We have 10 gallons of this Rye Ale with half on Safale US-05 American Ale yeast and half on Safale S-04 English Ale yeast.  Somewhat surprisingly, both finished with the same Final Gravity of 1.014.  The Original Gravity was 1.058, which puts this at 5.8% ABV.  The grist was Pale US 2-Row, Munich, Vienna, Rye, Biscuit, and Honey Malt and the hops were Columbus, Fuggles, East Kent Goldings, Cascade, and Amarillo, which should play well with the malts.  This will be a great beer for tailgating at the Braves home opener on April 10!

Racking to keg below:

Bottling via bucket:

Sanitized bottles:

Hop shrapnel:

Crowned and cased:

49 longnecks and 2 bombers:

Packed for competition:

Cheers!

Fat Ninja Ale Big Brew Day

Saturday was 65 degrees, perfect for a Pale Ale 10g batch. We used up the Maris Otter and used Pale US Malt, Munich, Biscuit, and Wheat malts. It came out at 1.052.

Experimental hop schedule with Simcoe, Centennial, Amarillo, & Palisade in the boil at 7,6,5,4,3,2,1...

Grains pre-mill:

Draining mash to kettle:

Boil in progress, lots of green hops:

Racking to two carboy fermentors;

Pitched yeast and set blowoffs:

One is California Ale yeast and one is English Ale yeast, both from White Labs.