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[headdunce]

I just transferred the beer I started last week to the secondary fermentation carboy. Another week in there, then it's to bottles, and another couple weeks of rest before drinking!



More pictures here...
www.flickr.com/photos/head_dunce/sets/72157633172675650/show/

[skyluvr]

To cool

I love craft beer ;D

I have several friends......well 2....who are into home brew.

I have tried some of their home brew and its really good!

Enjoy!!

Nice garage by the way ;D

[headdunce]

Ha, that's the office - not the garage - but it's for www.carguygarage.com so...

Anyway, I've made 2 more batches this week too. So now I'm up to 15 gallons of beer, three different flavors. I have enough fermenters to start one more 5 gallon batch, a Liberty Cream Ale I already bought the ingredients for, but I just need to find enough time to pull out the jet burner and go at it. I'm hoping to actually drink these beers on Memorial Day weekend.



I can see collecting enough bottles is going to be a problem soon (save your empty beer bottles, only the pop-top not the twist offs - I can refill them for you!)

I just got my hands on a new freezer that I'm going to convert into a keezer. My plan is to build this -



The whole thing has been interesting to watch and do so far. Yeast is an amazing thing!

[erikruud]

I have a few friends who are into home brew. I haven't seen that any of them have made something quite as ambitious as that keezer.

Two of those friends brought an excellent home brew root beer to one of the star parties in Saint Charles last summer.

[Paulie pchris00]

CA Jeremy also home brews. I'm not much of a beer drinker, but he was kind enough to give me a few samples, which were greatly enjoyed.

relativitybrewery.blogspot.com/

[headdunce]

Apr 25, 2013 18:09:25 GMT -6 Paulie pchris00 said:

CA Jeremy also home brews. I'm not much of a beer drinker, but he was kind enough to give me a few samples, which were greatly enjoyed.

relativitybrewery.blogspot.com/

That's over the level I'm at now
The stuff I'm currently doing is more like Jiffy muffin mix ;D

Where I'm at now, I've got 15 gallons in fermenters. I'll brew another 5 gallons soon (Monday?) so I'll have 20 gallons fermenting. I just measured the specific gravity of the first batch this afternoon, the Irish Stout, and it was at 1.014 - from the recipe www.midwestsupplies.com/media/downloads/55/Irish%20Stout%20Instructions.pdf in the upper right, the FG (Final Gravity) should be at 1.012 or lower so I'm very close. I'll measure again on Monday.

Anyway, 5 gallons is about 48 bottles. So I'll need about 200 bottles to make all this beer happen. Where I'm at now in the brew process, it doesn't have much booze and no bubbles sitting in fermentors growing yeast. I'm waiting for the yeast to eat all the sugar (from the barley malt and honey boiled into the "wort" which is like tea, once you add yeast you call wort beer.)

Once I can get specific gravity readings that are the same three days in a row, the yeast is done eating. Then I mix in a bunch of sugar, and put into bottles I cap. Then the yeast goes on an eating frenzy again, pissin booze and fartin CO2. The CO2 has no where to go because it's capped into a bottle. It can either blow the cap off, blow the glass bottle up (which happens) or carbonate the water which is of course the goal.

To do this, you need 12 oz bottles that are not the screw off type. It's funny, for $7 more, I can get 24 bottles from Costo with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in them than it costs for empty bottles. I'd had the idea to save the time and trouble, bottle in 1/2 gallon growlers, but the glass isn't thick enough on a growler to contain that type of pressure so you'll eventually end up with a busted growler and a 1/2 gallon of beer in your carpet. The best you can do to carbonate the beer is 22 oz bottles.

Or the other option is to carbonate in a keg. Then (and I don't know all this yet, just starting to read about it) instead of using the yeast eating sugar you've added to carbonate the beer, you can use pressurized CO2 tanks which also save you time.

So I'm hoping to have a bunch (10 would be awesome, like the pic shows) different beers on tap. Then everyone can get a 1/2 gallon growler, or a few, and just fill their growlers from the keezer. Growlers work well, as long as you're not trying to carbonate the beer in them. Fill em from the tap, cap them, and you've got about 5.5 beers in one jug.

Ha, anyway... I like beer ;D

[headdunce]

Bottled my first batch yesterday, about 45 bottles of Irish Stout. Should be ready to drink in about 2 weeks (started it April 23)

[headdunce]

Ha, quite a few batches in now. And I got that keezer done, added racing stripes on Friday, and then 15 gallons of beer in 3 different 5 gallon batches on Monday ;D It only holds 20 gallons, oh well, I got the freezer for free and it's basically new so I'll take it

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

This is really cool Jim.

This would be great in the garage!

[headdunce]

Hummm... new project in the Joe garage? Let me know if you need help!