ovrclokd and I bottled the chai-spiced stout last night. I knew the batch was a bit a short of the full 5-gallon target volume due to loss during blow-off, but it wasn't until I transferred it into the bottling bucket that I found that it was only 4 gallons. I used the priming calculator at TastyBrew.com to calculate how much corn sugar to add to the ( Read more... )

I transferred the Ommmegang Abbey style ale and hard cider to secondary last night. They've been fermenting for 10 and 16 days, respectively, and the activity in the airlocks is roughly the same. Overall, it seems like cider takes a little longer to ferment than beer ( Read more... )

I got together last weekend (Sunday, 2/12) with a group of homebrewers at The Cookery in Durham to brew a batch of beer for BrewDurham that's coming up at the end of March. One of the members of TRUB, my local homebrew club, is organizing the BrewDurham event and put together this BrewDay ( Read more... )

Transferred my chai-spiced oatmeal stout to secondary today. I estimate that I lost about a quarter gallon to blow-off, and the layer of trub in the bottom of the primary fermenter was very thick -- spices, yeast, some hop debris -- so I lost a little more there ( Read more... )

I've been wanting to brew a chai stout for a while now, ever since I heard someone mention one on a podcast back in the fall. I finally got around to doing it this morning (Sunday, 1/22). I had searched online and found a post with a recipe, but it only has the recipe for the stout and not for the chai spices. I went ahead and got the ingredients ( Read more... )

To celebrate Repeal Day yesterday, I finally bottled the small batch of cider that has been sitting in a gallon jug on the counter for the past month and the 5 gallon batch of barleywine that has been in secondary for almost 2 months. Big thanks to ovrclokd for helping with the capping!

Cider priming and bottlingAccording to bottle priming calculator at ( Read more... )

I finally had a chance to move my Old Speckled Hen clone into a keg today.  This is good news (to me, at least!) since the keg previously had my Belgian Wit, and I just recently kicked that.  I'm happy that I'll have beer on tap again Real Soon Now.

I cleaned and sanitized the keg, and used the CO2 to push some sanitizer through the beer serving ( Read more... )

Transferred my maybe-a-barleywine-but-lower-gravity-than-I-had-planned[1] batch from primary to secondary today. It's been in primary for just over 2 weeks. With the extra volume, it just barely fit into a 5 gallon carboy. As the beer finished transferring, there was foam from the Star San (no rinse sanitizer) being pushed out the top. Measured ( Read more... )

I brewed the Old Speckled Hen clone two weeks ago tomorrow. I've been meaning to transfer it to secondary pretty much each day for the past week, but I've been lazy. Then I got an e-mail from one of my Trailheads friends saying that he was hosting a brew day this weekend. I decided that it was time to brew up another batch of barleywine. It ( Read more... )

I'm getting low on beer at home and have been thinking about brewing another batch for a while now, but things (mostly travel) have been getting in the way. After getting back from Burning Man last week, I swung by the local homebrew shop and picked up what I needed to make an Old Speckled Hen clone. I've made this a couple times before with me_not_you and I ( Read more... )