Two brews in three days.  This is the recap of the sweet stout brewing day.

The weather wasn’t the best this morning.  The cold rain turned over to big snowflakes and then back to rain.  This brew dude plowed through with a rigorous boil and a winter coat with a hood.

The dark grains mashed well with the Maris Otter malt.

The black gold poured down from the mash tun.  The 60 minute boil met with some snow and rain during the hour but I covered it up while it cooled.

After it was chilled, the spigot of the kettle was opened and it poured through the funnel and into the fermentor.  I aerated and pitched my WLP002 starter.  I decanted some of the liquid off of the top of the yeast cake and swirled around the rest.  This strain is chunky!    It’s fermenting right next to the harvest ale and I’ll post more when we get to the conditioning phase.

The first of two winter vacation brews is complete.  The harvest ale, which used homegrown hops, is currently fermenting away in the basement.

I made two 2 liter starters for the WLP002 and WLP008 vials.

I labeled the 002 so I would remember the difference.  The 008 was used in the harvest ale.

My mash temp stayed pretty steady at about 154°F for the full hour.  I had some boiling water ready to add to it at the 30 minute mark, but I didn’t need it.

The boil went fine – seeing all the hop cones swimming around was great.  They do soak up some wort though.  Starting with a 6.5 gallon pre-boil volume worked.   I was able to get 5 gallons into the fermentor.

Knowing that the spigot on my kettle gets clogged pretty quickly with whole hops, I had my autosiphon cleaned, sanitized, and ready to go.

With the siphoning  out of the kettle, a long aeration session with the aquarium pump seemed necessary.  I let it aerate for a full hour before I pitch the yeast.

My final gravity was 1.055 which is where I wanted it to be.  The fermentation began quickly – in about 6 hours after pitching.

I read a bunch of negative comments about this yeast strain on boards.  It apparently can impart some tartness – If my hop choices work out – earthy, spicy rather than citrusy – then the tartness shouldn’t be a distraction.

Although I have been brewing since 2005, there are many things that I just haven’t done yet within the hobby.  Next week, I plan to accomplish these new-to-me things:

• Brew with Pale Chocolate malt
• Brew with Lactose
• Divide the sweet stout into 4 different secondary “tanks” for different flavor additives
• Use the WLP008 yeast strain

I guess that’s why brewing is so interesting as a hobby.  It seems like there so much to it and it’s hard to get bored.  I wonder if people who have been brewing for over 30 years feel like there is still more to learn.

Learn and do.

Learn and do.

Next week, I will have some photos/recaps of the two brew sessions.  Hmmm, I should start making my yeast starters this weekend.

Ok – enough making cider and mead. It’s time to get brewing beer again. Yay.

I am taking some time off of work in 2 weeks so I will hopefully have time to brew up a couple of beers before the end of the year.

First up is the Harvest Ale. I have all these homegrown hops in my freezer that are begging to be boiled in a kettle. Hops – they want what they want. The Harvest ale will be pretty straightforward and should be ready in January.

The second brew will be a sweet stout. With this one, I plan to have separate secondaries for different flavor combinations – chocolate, vanilla, cherry.

The plan is to ferment the full brew all at once and then rack it to separate secondary vessels and add particular flavorful ingredients to them like, uh, cacao nibs, vanilla beans, and cherry puree.

I gotta start ordering stuff this week so I have it in time for my staycation or brewcation. I gotta remember to buy a new autosiphon because I broke mine a few brews ago and more PBW.

Ok – end of ramble. Brew on.

After a week in the bottle, the cider was carbonated enough to pass as sparkling.

My handy dandy carbonation alert system worked like a charm. It regained its original shape:

If you want to see what it look like before it carbonated, take a look at the cider bottling post.

After a few hours in the fridge, it was ready for Thanksgiving dinner. My target audience thought it was much, much better than my first attempt at making cider two years ago.

It was a bit cloudy in the glass but the bottles that didn’t make it out of the fridge have started to clear up. I’ll post a photo of a glass later.

There isn’t much left. I did put some in 12 ounce bottles for competitions so I will need to pasteurize them at some point. The rest will be gone soon.

With one month down in the secondary and at least one month to go, I added 2 ounces of oak chips to my raspberry mead last week.

I read in the Compleat Meadmaker that mead and oak work well together. I think my raspberry mead is going to benefit from some oaky/vanilla flavors.

I soaked the chips in water for 12 hours and steamed them for 10 minutes. I sanitized my big funnel and poured them right into the glass carboy.

So, the new plan is to let the mead and the oak play together for a while. I will be sneaking tastes every week to see how things are progressing. I am looking for balance so I will rack the mead off the oak when I think it’s oak-y enough.

This morning, I bottled the 2011 edition of hard cider.  Let me get you up to speed on what has been happening since the last update.

I tried to get the cider to clear a little faster.  I put the carboy in the fridge to chill it down and maybe get the proteins and yeast to settle out quicker.  It got less hazy but it wasn’t clear after a week.

Then I got the bright idea to add some flavorless gelatin to the cider to kick the clearing into high gear.  It got less hazy but it wasn’t clear with a week to go ’til Thanksgiving.

So I said to myself, “Brew On.”, which in this case is synonymous for “Screw it.” and bottled up the cider.

I tasted it the night before and it was dry and tart.  It was ok to me, but my target audience won’t like it so I back-sweetened it.  Yeah, I know.  I didn’t want to do that but it seemed to be the only way to get the flavor I wanted.

So I added a can of condensed apple juice and added it to the bottling bucket.  Then I had 2 cups of table sugar that was boiled in 2 cups of water (cooled) and added that mixture until the sweetness was where I thought it should be.

I took a hydrometer reading and it read 1.010.

Now it’s carbonation time.  I know I have the possibility of bottle bombs on my hands but I have a fail safe device.

That, my dear readers, is hard cider in a plastic water bottle.  It might look like a urine sample, but let me assure you…that is hard cider in a water bottle.

When that water bottle swells up, I know it will be time to pasteurize my bottle so they don’t blow up.

Hopefully someone will drink this stuff next week.  I hate rushing things.