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.

Three Pale Ales

These are all the beers left in the pipeline. One gets bottled and two get dry hop/secondaried this weekend.

This is my new favorite video.

https://vimeo.com/86180108?from=facebook

Amber Ale bottled

47 bottles of Hopswell Amber Ale with 3.4oz sugar.

Brewed the Hard Way IPA kegged

Bottled 8, then kegged about 4 gallons. 4 carb drops per bottle.

We have our Ginger Ale, Oatmeal Stout, & this double dry hop west coast IPA brewed for people who like to drink beer. At 12 psi, the IPA should be ready in 5-7 days I surmise.

Peach State permit printed & ready, #thisbudsforyou

Portable CO2 Keg Dispensor

We had a trial run with the new keg portable draft dispensing system. It looks like 1 or 2 co2 cartridges will dispense 5 gallons. The beer should be good and carbonated in the fridge first on the big tank as this is for serving only.

Safety Disclaimer: Do not attach charger to post unless it is already attached to the keg. Do not squeeze trigger unless picnic tap is pressed open.

You attach the empty gas post first, which depressurizes the keg, then screw on the loaded charger, then open the picnic tap and pull charger trigger to re-pressurize. If it runs out, simply unscrew the cartridge holder, replace the co2 cartridge, screw it back on and tap/charge again.

This will surely beat hauling the co2 tank, regulator, distributor, and the tubing. We will probably set the keg in a 5 gallon bucket with ice.  Get ready Peach State Brew Off!

Oatmeal Stout Bottling Day

The Oatmeal Stout came out to 55 bottles worth. Bottling stouts is remarkably easier than dry-hopped IPAs due to the sludge called trub.

First, we racked sanitizer to the bottling bucket:

Then racked the sanitizer back into carboy:

Now the beer was transferred from the carboy to the bucket with some Dixie Crystal simple syrup. The Hydrometer reading was 1.018 from 1.058.

Add the bottling wand and fill some bottles:

Crown and crimp:

This will be a good batch. It smelled and tasted Choco- roasty. Cheers!