Batch 305, Berry cider

 I made a cider along with making batch 304, and as usual, forgot to write anything down about it. This is the usual recipe:

11 cans frozen apple juice

1 gallon wort from batch 304

water to make 4 gallons

To get the 1 gallon of wort, after draining the mash tun into the boil kettle, I scoop out the grain into a double bucket, the inner bucket has holes drilled into the bottom so the wet grain drains into the outer bucket. This almost always gives me right at a gallon of wort that would otherwise be tossed into the trash. 

Update 15 June 2025, blended 3 lbs of frozen mixed berries with a gallon of water and added to the fermenter. Checking my notes, sometimes it's a 3 lb bag, sometimes 4 lbs, I don't think it really matters too much.

Update 18 June 2025, cold crash to35F.

Batch 304, a pale ale

 I'm back in the real world, for now. I sure do like my brew set up here, things are in the right place, the water is good, equipment is great, so it was a pretty nice brew day. My only concern is the yeast, I didn't make the hour long trip to the "local" homebrew store to by new, so I made a starter from yeast from last fall. I built it up over 3 days and I tasted it before I pitched it, no off flavors that I could tell.

10 gallon batch

This is made out of what I had on hand, which was a lot of base malt and not so much specialty, like I'm completely out of crystal of any shade. Again, I didn't want to make that long drive to the homebrew store.

5 lb, 5 oz 2-row, all that I had

1 lb white wheat

14 lb, 12 oz pilsner, I have lots of this

7 oz biscuit, all that I had, and why not?

2 oz chocolate malt, all that I had, and a little color is good

Mashed at some temperature around 150 - 155F, I forgot to check when I mashed in, but I did see it was about 152F when I started recirculation. pH adjusted to 5.38.

Hops are all Cascade for this recipe because I have a lot on hand, like 2 pounds from last years crop. 90 minute boil.

1 oz FWH

3 oz 60 minutes

1 oz 20 minutes

2 tsp Irish moss 15 minutes

2 oz at flameout

I was cleaning things since I hadn't been in the beer shed in months, and thought I had some time, but I still got a boil-over. Crap. A little messy, but whatever. The rest of the boil went well. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but I started chilling then we had guests arrive in the middle. After about an hour of visiting, I excused myself and the wort was right at pitching temperature. I'm wondering how hoppy this will be since the hops had been in for almost 3 hours.

Another thing to mention, for my future reference (Hi Dale!), is that the chest freezer that I use to fermenting has died, so I needed to clean out my fridge in the beer shed. I use that for conditioning, mostly, it holds 6 kegs and I do have 2 taps on it. It's the only other cooling device that I have that I can ferment in. So that was part of the "cleaning things" that I mentioned, there were several kegs in there from last year that were of questionable flavor -- the basil IPA was still good, although the hops had dropped off considerably, the Panama Red was totally sour, the Leeser had a surprisingly good green apple flavor, the Red Seal was toast, the Dunkel was good, but gone in 2 days.

Details from Brewtarget, which has been almost useless with the last update. Really dumb things, like there is a choice on where to add the hops, you can add them to the mash, the boil, the fermenter, or the package. Default should be to the boil, but no, it's to the mash. Weird, mash hops are almost never heard of now.

OG: 1.050 (didn't do an actual, there were those guests that I metioned)

FG: 1.013

ABV: 4.8

IBU: 44.3

SRM: 6.2 (probably would be out of spec if I hadn't added the chocolate)

Batch 303, a crap beer

 It was supposed to be a Panama Red. I thought I had my process down, finally, but fucked up on dumping this batch on top of the yeast cake from the last batch, which was also crap. It turns out the yeast had gone bad, so I had 2 bad batches in a row. I'm not even going to list the whole story, as it just sucked. That, and I ran out of CO2, and the only place I know here in Baja to get it doesn't handle my little 5 lb tank, just the 20 pounders.

Batch 302, Brown Ale

I've decided what I don't care for about the beers I've been making recently are the hops. I don't think I'm getting good flavors out of the pellets. I'm using pellets since they keep well and I don't have the cold storage space for leaf pellets. I'm also a little concerned about hauling leaf hops across the border, but my neighbor says they do it regularly, so I'll give that a try next year.

Here's a 5 gallon batch of brown ale, copied from BrewTarget:

Brown Ale - American Brown Ale (10C)

Date 3/2/25

Batch Size 5.750 gal 

Boil Size 6.500 gal

Boil Time 60.000 min Efficiency 70

OG 1.050 sg 

FG 1.013 sg

ABV 5.0% 

IBU 21.9 (Tinseth)

Color 16.2 srm (Morey)

Fermentables

Pale Malt (2 Row) US Grain 9.000 lb

Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L Grain 12.000 oz

Biscuit Malt Grain 8.000 oz

Chocolate Malt (US) Grain 4.000 oz

Hops

Mount Hood 5.5% 0.700 oz Boil 60.000 min Pellet 14.6

Mount Hood 5.5% 0.700 oz Boil 15.000 min Pellet 7.2

Yeast

1272 - American Ale II

25 Mar 2025: fuck. It turns out the yeast had gone bad and I didn't notice, this beer just sucked. Even worse, I kegged this while brewing the next batch and dumped the new beer (Panama Red) on top of the yeast cake. Two bad batches in a row. Fuck.

Batch 301, same as last time

Same as last time, just working on process.

5 gallon batch

11 lb. 2-row

8 oz Biscuit

Mashed at 156F for 60 minutes, started recirc at 45. Did math to decide how much for the second sparge, apparently I can still do math. I did nothing about the pH.

1 oz Mosaic, FWH

1 tsp Irish Moss, 15 min

1 oz Cascade, 5 min

1 oz Mt Hood, 5 min

60 minute boil, collected 5.5 gallons in the fermenter, yay!

Wyeast 1272 from last batch.