Rumor has it that one of the two makers of 6.5 gallon glass carboys has switched its production to Corona bottles. The two producers, one from Italy and one from Mexico apparently provide the lions share of carboys to the world.
Of course there is more to the glassware than just home brewers, but if Corona is going to pay better than the production of 6.5 gallon carboys, why not switch? If I had a crystal ball to look into, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the price of all carboys going up in response to this. If you have a LHBS that still sells the 6.5 around $20-25, grab one now.
I do have a 6.5, and it is very handy for big beer primaries that I want to leave for more than a week or so, it also works well for 6 gallon wine secondaries. I have left wine in there for a month or so before racking over to a 5 gallon and filling it to the top. What happens with the rest? Well, its already fairly clear by then, you see, and we couldn’t have it go to waste, now could we?
I’ll try and do some substantive research on this and get back with citable info.
I decided today would be a good day to rack the Kolsch I brewed last weekend. Eight days didn’t seem too far out of the realm of “standard brewing procedure” so I took a gravity. 1.018 or so, not bad for primary, certainly not bad to put over to secondary.
After sanitizing my Autosiphon and my carboy I being the rack. Spit sputter glurg comes from the racking tube and the siphon is broken! What the heck? There are also yeast colonies floating on the surface of the beer and the tube was very cloudy. The cloudiness I expected but not the yeast on the top nor the ineffective siphon.
I lifted the autosiphon off the bottom of the carboy and was able to transfer three gallons or so that way, but as the top and bottom became closer it stopped again.
Now, rather than sit and force it through by pumping the autosiphon over and over I just pulled out, airlocked both carboys covered them up and walked away. So clearly it wasn’t ready for racking!
So THATS what is meant by “top cropping, low flocculation”!
Learn something new every day.
Any guesses how long I should leave it alone? I’ll wait until Friday and try again, but I’m concerned about leaving it too long!
When I get kits from the brew store and I won’t be able to brew them right away I like to separate out the ingredients. My hope is to prolong the freshness as best I can. Obviously if my kit came with liquid yeast that goes in the refrigerator. I also like to put my hops in the fridge.
Since I don’t have a grain mill quite yet, I usually like to get my grains crushed at the store. I’m told that keeping them in a dry cool place will help keep them fresh. So the remainder of the box ends up in the entryway closet, eagerly awaiting brew day.
Nothing too fancy, but I like to hope that will keep the ingredients as fresh as I can.
Fermentation Friday is tomorrow and the topic this month is:
“What is the craziest concoction you ever came up with, on the fly or prepped, to brew with”
My absolute craziest beer brewed was my root beer float stout. The idea behind it was to make a milk stout with tones of root beer in it, sarsaparilla, licorice root, a little bit of winter green leaves and some lactose.
So, that was the craziest beer I brewed, and it sticks out in my mind so incredibly well because it was a complete disaster. The root beer tones I was trying for ended up having tones of nastiness only enhanced by the vomitous contributions of the lactose.
This was the only beer that I dumped almost all of it. Yes, I had to give it a few tries, but after a first sip my wife wouldn’t touch it. That was such a bummer beer, and I had it on the stout faucet too. Come to think of it, besides my Tony Tripel, that was the last beer I free brewed with out a recipe or kit.
Time to break out of the rut again and shoot for something more. Since I’ve committed myself to going all grain after the last three kits are brewed I should also start coming up with new recipes too. Well, I should let my wife know that I want to go all grain as well. Heh.
As I’ve indicated for the past year I am building up the nerve to go all grain with my brewing. In my searches this afternoon I found a video on batch sparging by Don Osborn. He presents the topic very straight forward without bogging me down with a ton of details. Give it a view!
Thats it, once three more extract kits are brewed up I’ll make the jump. That should put me into August. That ought to be plenty of time to get my MLT rigged up and ready to go. I’ve read posts by Don over at Northern Brewer but haven’t been active there in a couple of years.
Since I’ve always been told “a picture is worth a thousand words”
I put the kids down for their nap yesterday afternoon and gathered up the goods. It was a beautiful afternoon and I spent it in my garage steeping stirring drinking and sadly, tidying up a little. This time around I remembered the whirlfloc at the 15 minute mark.
The kit was Midwest’s Kolsch with the Activator smack pack.
I cannot believe that I have been blogging for a year now. What is more, I cannot believe that in all my searches of news and other sources for beer I haven’t come across the Beer Examiner. It appears the Charlie Papazian updates this almost every day.
When I started brewing seven years ago Mr. Papazian’s book was the second homebrewing book in my collection, and the first I bought. Korzonas’ book was the first and given to me with my kit from my wife.
Why the amazement and attention from me? I can safely say there isn’t one homebrewer who hasn’t heard of Mr. Papazian, unless that person bought the gear from a rummage sale and learned it through trial and error instead of reading. This fellow is a legend for homebrewers, and his book is a must read. Even if you have three or four other books about homebrewing you have to read this one just to know what the heck other homebrewers are talking about! In those pages we are introduced to the credo of online chatting about homebrewing. RDWHAHB
Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Homebrew!
I feel woefully abashed that I haven’t found this before. Never fear though, I have subscribed to it.
Along the lines of old memories surfacing, there are two guys that I very much looked up to when I first starting brewing. These guys were very patient with me and answered all my questions. There was a few months when every time I saw one or the other of them all I would talk about was beer and brewing.
Jay worked at the same place as I and we ran into each other often. I would chat him up about this beer or that, my plans for what to brew next, how to do one thing or another. He copied a couple articles about fruit beer for me that culminated in my Cranberry Wheat. One of my best beers, I think. Well, that and my Ring of Fire Wheat.
Frank works as an assistant brewer, and years ago he was my Laboratory Instructor for Animal Diversity in college. I’d run into him both at his place of work as well as get togethers of that circle of friends. I started feeling really bad for Frank because honestly, every time I saw him I would talk about beer right after the “Hi”. I can’t imagine how annoying that could be! He never seemed to mind though.
The next pint of IPA is raised to you guys, if or when I see you again I’ll buy you both a beer.
Any one else remember influential people when you started brewing?
The homebrew blogging day got the juices flowing I suppose. I’m not sure why this popped into my head while I was folding laundry this morning.
A few months after I had done my very first batch, I was at a party (yeah, that was before kids.) and there was another gentleman there that also brewed.
“Cool,” I thought “someone else to talk about brewing with.”
Nope. This guy was as snooty as they come. When I told him I brewed too, he proceeded to inform me that when HE started he was going to do it all and right, so he went straight to all grain. After extolling the virtues of all grain brewing for five or ten minutes and soaking in the glory from the other party goers about his fabulous beer I finally convinced him to let me try a taste.
This so called Scotish 80 that everyone was raving about had about as much body and color as an “Amber Bock” from Mich. Seriously, for a home brewing all grainer who wanted to do it right he sure missed on that one.
Why so much vitreole from me? Well, come on, someone who is interested in a hobby and just began with it meets someone who supposedly was more exerienced you would hope that the more exerienced person would offer advice and talk with the new one, right?!?
Bah I say. I recall writing about this guy before, part of the inspiration for “The Show” brewer.
I know, I know its not beer, but cut me some slack. Vint Dad just doesn’t roll of the tongue as well.
A year and a half ago, perhaps longer, I started a batch of dry mead. It sat in primary for a couple months and then in secondary for over a year. In fact, last night was the first time I touched in since that second racking. I ended up putting it in a keg for ease of transport.
Overall the flavor was still a bit harsh and nearly unpalatable. I’m hoping leaving it in the keg for another six months or so will help it age a bit more. I was less than careful leaving the lees, so I’m also hopeful that the keg will help reduce that as well. If it doesn’t turn out I have a bottle of raspberry extract that I can add to see if that helps. Or to cover up the off flavors. I’ll not go that route for another year though.
Perhaps a filter might be in the works. Let my wines and mead tertiary in a keg before filtering? Something to think about anyway.
On a sudsy note, it has been months since I offered for a local brew day, I think that is going to have to happen next month. By then hopefully I’ll have a kegerator up and running!
