Hey did i tell y'all im making some alcohol?

[wacky1980]

that's a nice pick-up! i've eyeballed that catalyst fermenter for small batch stuff at home. add a sampling port and temp control, and you've got yourself an awesome little piece of kit. my only concern was introducing atmosphere into the fermenter when you slap on a fresh mason jar and open the valve. it should be super-easy to clean and maintain. just make sure you don't scratch that acrylic on the inside during cleaning, or you'll have a hard time keeping the scratch from housing bacteria. 

[SwimModSponges]

Temperature control isn't something I'm hugely worried about because my basement maintains pretty standard.

That's a good point about the mason jar though... wonder if a fellow  couldn't fill the jar before slapping it on, reduce the air that would get in.

Sampling port too, that's another thing I gotta figure out.

Also I'm getting a bunch of honey from the folks so I've been kicking around the idea of using a jar to freeze distill. 

I mean it's federally illegal, but if I just make less than a gallon and hide it in the liquor cabinet it should be fine right?

Just don't  tell the BATF.

[wacky1980]

2 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

Temperature control isn't something I'm hugely worried about because my basement maintains pretty standard.

That's a good point about the mason jar though... wonder if a fellow  couldn't fill the jar before slapping it on, reduce the air that would get in.

Sampling port too, that's another thing I gotta figure out.

Also I'm getting a bunch of honey from the folks so I've been kicking around the idea of using a jar to freeze distill. 

I mean it's federally illegal, but if I just make less than a gallon and hide it in the liquor cabinet it should be fine right?

Just don't  tell the BATF.

i don't think distillation is illegal if you're only doing it for your own personal use. but i'm not familiar with freeze distillation so i'm gonna stop right there.

[SwimModSponges]

Everything I'm seeing says it's illegal to distill alcohol in any form.

Though I did see a guy post something along the lines of

Quote

So hypothetically speaking, say I go to chill some mead, but I leave  it in there too long and part of it gets frozen. Then when I try to pour it, the ice stays and only the liquid pours out. It'd be a shame to waste that liquid, right?

 

[wacky1980]

i stand corrected. it's illegal in the same way that homebrewing beer/mead was illegal before 1979. not sure how strictly it's regulated though.

you can legally buy distilling equipment and ingredients all over the internet and in local homebrew shops. i'd wager if you had a home still in your basement for personal use and the feds found out, they'd likely look the other way.

[SwimModSponges]

If Johnny law comes into my basement a still is going to be the least of my problems. 

Not really of course. 

[SwimModSponges]

Aight, got my summer recipe started.

Peach, honeydew, and ginger.

Starting gravity of 1.084, so that should be about perfect. 

Now i just gotta wait for the bubbles to start. 

So exciting. 

[wacky1980]

my black ipa finally smoothed out. only now, it's closer on the style chart to a dry-hopped stout. once you convince your brain to not expect the ipa flavor profile, it's actually quite good. with as thick and heavy as it ended up, it would have made a good candidate for whiskey barrel aging. maybe next fall...

gonna try it again next week, and actually try to nail down the black ipa style this time. cut the dark grains by 2/3rds to reduce the tannins and roasted malt character...not sure how i calculated the grain bill so poorly last time. also gonna avoid hopping it so heavily on the cold side this time around. start low and build in later, seems like a better approach.

still looking for a proper enclosure for my control panel, and then that build can begin. i *think* i have just about everything else i need at this point, except for a couple receptacles for the heating elements and some wire and ferrules. all quick grabs at the local hardware store, and i'm not in a hurry to get them until i figure out exactly what i'll need in that regard. wife is losing her patience with the growing pile of parts on the landing, and i can't blame her. it's a big pile.

[SwimModSponges]

So, the first thing I do after starting a brew is panic because I just know I fucked something up and ruined it.

So this time, i figure i'm best off blending all of my fruit before I mix it in- so it'll take up less space and can get more distributed in the must.

So i had about a gallon of fruit puree to four honey mixture (i'm leaving a good amount of head space because i've seen a lot of these bubble over) and i get em all mixed together in my fermenter, open up the window (i've got it in the case for blocking light) and see what looks like a 2 inch thick fruitcap there to smother my fermentation.

Thankfully this is not the case, went down an hour later to find bubbles floating right up through the mush.

Going pretty crazy right now- like yeast fireworks. 

 

[SwimModSponges]

Also it smells like mangoes. 

[wacky1980]

we were gonna brew that black ipa again tomorrow night at the brother-in-law's. but now that the rest of my house is in quarantine, i probably shouldn't be going and doing. maybe i can convince the wife to brew a small batch at home instead. i have some dry extract and a pile of special dark grains. maybe we can brew up a stout, and then give it the barrel-aging treatment in my new 3-gal fast-fermenter...

[SwimModSponges]

Officially 2 weeks old and i can smell the alcohol through the airlock.

Woot.

[wacky1980]

started working on the brewhouse build last night. i was hoping to get all the temp probes built by the end of tonight, but they're tedious af. it took me an hour to get one of them halfway done yesterday, and i need to build three of these damn things. oof.

i did get in the last big component today though...the control panel housing. it's a monstrosity of a thing, and it's gonna be beautiful once i get it hacked up and painted, and get all the components installed. it's nice to be excited about something again.

[SwimModSponges]

Wife's friend was over just now, convinced me to pop open the fermenter and have a quick taste.

So its still only 3 weeks old. Its like an orange juice with extra pulp right now.

Ginger is strong. Tannins are right where they need to be, peach flavor comes through, and the honeydew actually gives it a very floral taste.

Tried sips of my fall batch now that they've aged.

Dried out quite a bit over time.

[wacky1980]

Slapped together those temp probes this afternoon. I couldn't find my solder gun so I had to borrow one from a friend, and it was a blunt stick of hot shit. I almost melted the first connector trying to get the solder to take. Anyways, they're done now. 

Also got started on the heating elements, but I forgot to bring home some wire terminals so I can't finish those right now. They're much more impressive-looking than some simple temp probes. Maybe tomorrow I'll get those done and can post a pic then. 

The project is underway...

[NaBarney]

I had some homemade eggnog today

It was alright. 

[wacky1980]

6 hours ago, NaBarney said:

I had some homemade eggnog today

It was alright.

Look at you! Out there living the dream.

Apparently you're not without internet either. Lucky dog.

[SwimModSponges]

Dad made some homemade eggnog the other day. 

Supposed to be delicious but eggs destroy my innards.

[SwimModSponges]

All right, officially at the 1 month mark, time to take a reading.

Its still super cloudy because I blended it and filled it with pectin, but I'm planning on these guys being 6-month batches so I've got a long way for it to clear up.

[SwimModSponges]

Clarity is definitely a 0%. Flavor comes across very sour, very alcohol. You can taste the peach, you can taste the ginger, theres that hint of honeydew. 

The wife's playing fallout so i can't get to my mead journal at the moment to figure out my ABV, but i'll get it in a bit here.

I'm thinking about adding another 3 lbs of honey, also more fruit once i take put the lees jar.

[SwimModSponges]

~9.8% ABV, btw.

[wacky1980]

On 1/4/2021 at 12:39 PM, SwimModSponges said:

~9.8% ABV, btw.

that's a big mead. nice work.

we're brewing my black ipa, v2.0 tonight. yay! i tweaked the recipe after the first attempt, so maybe now it will line up a little better with the intended style. also, i just found out our brewing space will eventually be relocated from the basement into a new outbuilding with a commercial kitchen. might happen as early as this summer/fall, which is right about the same time i expect we'll have our new electric brewery tweaked up and running at full cap. i love it when a plan comes together. with a little bit of luck, we'll be turning out consistent barrels of good beer by the end of the year, and maybe even working on our commercial brewing space if the right property opens up.

[SwimModSponges]

Mr. Bubble 

 

[wacky1980]

mine did not enter the mr bubble phase as intended. really, the whole brew session was a shitshow. someone just needs to recognize that i'm in fucking charge of the show, and we can avoid problems in the future.

1) i said don't use a mesh bag in the mash, but conceded when faced with fervent opposition. the mesh bag collapsed into the kettle, causing a mess that could have been easily avoided, and losing 20% of the batch to waste.
2) i said we need to get a water quality test done because something is fucking with our mash efficiency. i was told it's not necessary. our efficiency should have been around 80%. it was only 55%.
3) i said we needed to vent our brewing area better since we're still using propane (for now), but conceded because "it would get too cold in the basement." so instead, the CO detectors went off all night throughout the house.
4) i said we shouldn't use the old yeast because it was expired, and i brought three new packs along to use instead. well, the old pack got pitched anyways and it was dead. hopefully a new pack being pitched on top corrects that before it gets infected.

ugh. life would be so much easier if people would just recognize my superior knowledge and skill. 

[SwimModSponges]

Oh man thats nasty.

I know beer has a much higher risk of infection than mead, but i'd think yoy could just pitch some more and use the dead stuff as nutrient- thats pretty much what yeast hulls are anyway.

[wacky1980]

51 minutes ago, SwimModSponges said:

Oh man thats nasty.

I know beer has a much higher risk of infection than mead, but i'd think yoy could just pitch some more and use the dead stuff as nutrient- thats pretty much what yeast hulls are anyway.

we'll find out. i've had stalled batches before where we re-pitched and things fired back off. but this isn't in my basement anymore, and i have no control or monitoring capability when i'm not physically there. if it's not done properly, opening the fermenter to re-pitch on a still bucket of wort is risky. at this point, i'm willing to sacrifice the entire batch rather than fight it for 3 gallons of what will surely miss the quality mark anyways. 

[SwimModSponges]

Just did another reading- still actively fermenting and up to ~11.03%.

[SwimModSponges]

All right so when i said "actively fermenting" i prolly should have said "offgassing." Bigass bubbles up in there yet though...

Just took a hydrometer reading and its still the same.

Now what i think happened is the yeast just ate about all the available sugars. 

So i'm thinking about adding another six pounds of honey interspersed in a half-gallon of peach tea.

That feels like a good idea.

[wacky1980]

not related to making booze, but very much related to drinking it-

i'm heading up to toppling goliath this weekend for a beer release event and possibly some vip stuff, depending on what the brewery rep has set us up with. i'm sure being from where you are, that you've heard of TG and probably even had some of their beers. this is one of my top 3 wishlisted brewery visits (treehouse and dogfish also in there). the beer being released is called double barrel assassin and it sounds fucking wild.

anyways, this seems like it could be a good day/weekend trip, and one i'll be making repeatedly if all goes well. i will report back with an update on whether it's worth the trip (for me it's like 6 hours but for you it's probably closer to 3). just fyi, in case you ever do things like this.

[SwimModSponges]

That's more something the brother in law does, but sounds very cool.

Also i decided i'm definitely adding vanilla in secondary. 

[SwimModSponges]

Ok, so it was at 1.000 but with the tea and extra honey I'm up at 1.030 and a full 6.5 gallons (maybe a little more, there was some... overflow).

I  can't imagine there will be any more fermentation out of there  at ~11%, but I'll go ahead and let it sit for another week or two before I take another reading.

Definitely gonna have to rack through some cheesecloth though- goddamn there be some sediments up innit.

[SwimModSponges]

Well she's bubblin' on up again.

How about that.

[wacky1980]

So this was fun.

The big ones in the back? Those are 400 barrel (15,000 gallon) fermenters. My fermenters at home are 1/6 barrel size. Only 2400x difference...

Wife next to the empty Pseudo Sue cans. There were 2 more stacks this size of Pseudo cans, plus all the other flavors. 

Barrel room. Drool.

Edited January 19, 2021 by wacky1980

[SwimModSponges]

Last night i dreamed that i was trying to rack, but the fermenter was filled with oatmeal. 

So that wasn't cool.

[SwimModSponges]

So mom stopped by this morning and I gave her a sample. 

She said it was "incredibly good".

She keeps asking "why aren't you bottling this right now?" 

Well its my summer recipe.

It's gotta age.

[SwimModSponges]

Tested again today- still  fermenting I think, but pretty slowly.

Went from a 1.030 on the 17th to a 1.024 on the 27th, to 1.020 today, so that puts me at about ~12.36% ABV.

I was hoping to be able to rack into secondary on the 2nd, get my next batch started soon.

Get on a rotation of a new brew started every 2 months instead of every three months and I'll be able to age longer each  batch before I bottle for the season.

[SwimModSponges]

Holding solid at 1.020.

Time to rigity-rack it on up into secondary, throw some more  fruit in there to mull, and add the vanilla.

It's gonna be mighty good.

Next batch is my 2nd attempt at Honeysapple, gonna be better this time for sure, with the experience I've gained so far.

After that comes my winter and spring brews.

Aiming for a coffee/orange type thing for the winter, we'll see how that shakes out.

Spring? Thinking lemon, dandelion, and chai.

[SwimModSponges]

Well, never going to blend again, that's for sure.

Very messy procedure, so goddamn much sediment at the bottom.

Ended up I had to rack manually because the bottom thing kept clogging.

Talk about a cloudy beverage too.

Tastes good though, and there's a long way until summer.

Hopefully they clear up a bit.

Managed to get a whole 5 gallons out of there though, so that's more than I figured.

[SwimModSponges]

Mom stopped by to drop off some honey and maple syrup for my fall batch, gave her a sample.

It's actually clearing up really well, I'm very surprised. 

I was a little bit worried I added too much vanilla but it's not too overpowering.

You can definitely taste the honeydew now.

Also last time I sampled there was  a definite fusel-y flavor, thankfully that seems to have dissipated already.

The ginger really died down though, so that's a bit of a shame.

Still tastes great I'd say.

[JehutyNinja]

I don't drink anymore, really, but I do love blueberries

[wacky1980]

i finally got in what i believe was the last couple pieces of hardware to build my control panel. depending on how ambitious i get this evening, i might try drilling a few holes in the panel to see how much trouble it will be to do all of it myself. if it goes well enough, i could maybe get it drilled out and ready to prime/paint over the weekend. i do have a dead truck that needs attention this weekend though, so that might take priority. it's always somethin'. 

[SwimModSponges]

Took another sample today after some more aging. Its still fairly cloudy but honestly way clearer than i thought itd get.

Still actively off gassing.

Honeydew flavor is really coming through now.

 

[wacky1980]

a friend discovered some old brewing ingredients in the back of their closet from like 15 years ago. so we did what any pile of dumb folks would do: we concocted a recipe based on the ingredients he discovered, and we brewed a beer with them last night. i'm concerned it might kill us if we try to drink it, but we'll worry about that later if it actually ferments out. the plan is to have an amber/red ale crammed full of noble hops, clocking in at around 5%. now we wait...

[SwimModSponges]

Sister's family stopped in yesterday to drop off their dog because they're going to Florida over the weekend.

Gave the brother in law a sample, he said it was "really good" and "smooth."

So yeah, I was talking to my boss today about how I need to get some snooty winos to be my friends, because I'm watching all these mead tasting videos on youtube and I want people to critique its mouth feel and bouquet and shit.

Y'all know how obsessive I can get over requests for feedback.

She actually said her husband reviews beer and uses descriptive vocabulary like "oaky" to describe things.

Man I hope shit's back to normal by June so I can have a release party.

[SwimModSponges]

Gave a sample glass to my neighbor (the one who isn't a neonazi) to try, he asked if there was pear in there.

Told him it was peach, honeydew, ginger, and vanilla, he said never in a million years would he have thought to comine those flavors. Said it was really good. 

Wife's friends are coming over this weekend while im at work and they wanted a little sample bottle to split so i set them up with one.

But thats it, they don't get more in june when its done.

Anyway here's a picture with the neighbors house in the background. 

 

[SwimModSponges]

Also mom stopped by to drop off more honey to get the fall batch started, gave her a sample glass, she said it was incredibly good.

I says "thats because it aged. Remember earlier when you asked why i didn't just start drinking it now?"

Still not done yet though.

June.

[SwimModSponges]

Alcohol taste test was successful- it continues to get great reviews.

[SwimModSponges]

Think i'mma bottle today, get my fall batch started.

Tell you what though they still seem to be pumping out the gasses, only had a couple airlocks on hand so i've got one capped and i've just been loosening it every couple days to let the air out, still sounds like i'm cracking open a soda every time.

I'll go ahead and take a measurement make sure they're actually done (i mean there's no way they're not, by this point), then ofgass the hell out of em.

[wacky1980]

we bottled 10 gallons last night: 5 gallons of chocolate milk stout (turned out excellent), and 5 gallons of the "stale ale" from the old ingredients discovery. the stale ale turned out a lot darker than we anticipated, and it tasted like dried fruit, molasses, and tin can...so the jury's still out.

[wacky1980]

i got most of the control panel assembled over the last couple days, but still have to install the controllers and then wire it all up. once it's all done, i'll post up a pic. in the meantime, i'm studying up on HERMS plumbing right now. this diagram is shit, but it kinda captures the basic concept: water in, heat in, grain in; circulate, boil, chill; and out to the fermenter.