So far we have brewed a dunkelweizen, light scottish ale, and an irish red which all turned out great. We bottled Vlad the ImpALEr last night (American Strong Ale), and our Riwaka Wheat will be done conditioning on Sunday. We are planning on bottling Eric's Imperial IPA tonight and we also need to transfer our strong scotch ale to secondary. Provided our ingredients we ordered from northern brewer arrive on time, we should be brewing either my German Assassin (Schwarzbier) recipe or Eric's Peach Wheat IPA tomorrow night. If we do the schwarzbier it will be our first partial mash brew. All of our brews so far have been extract recipes, with some special grains steeped in.

We will be using the 'counter-top partial mashing' method outlined here http://www.byo.com/component/resource/article/511-countertop-partial-mashing for the schwarzbier.

hope it works out

So today I took 2 huge steps forward in my brewing career. I did my first partial mash, and I did it from a recipe I designed myself... I thought I had been nervous about the past few batches I brewed, but man, today's brew has got me on high alert like never before. lol. I'm really hoping it turns out well, a whole lotta love went into that fermenter.

On another note, I built myself a lauter tun today in anticipation of doing an all grain batch in the coming months. I had the extra cooler just sitting out in the garage taking up space and since I finished my brew earlier than anticipated, I decided to go ahead and convert it. You can see pics in my profile.

Cheers!

So, I got the hubbers a brewers best kit for his bday, one with a bucket fermenter and a better bottle carboy. Decided to get our hands wet yesterday at 3 pm. went ok, but I really wish my hubby would have done some more research before we started, I tend to get frustrated with him easily especially when we are doing something new, in which I have done research and he has not. We thought a rough estimate on time would be a total of 3 hours, well, 4 and 1/2 hours after we started we were finally done cleaning all of our equipment, so, I think our biggest time consumer was waiting for the boils. I think we may need a diff. pot, the one we got has a slightly raised bottom with 2 inches of outer rim actually touching down. Should have known. From what I read I kinda felt like we needed to keep a close eye on the process, so the hubby went in the office for a majority of the time, wile I babysat the wort. Got a little pissy about that too. oh well. I should have known that it would end up that way, me being a perfectionist. I'm not 100% sure we had the boil high enough, the instructions said a low rolling boil, we got the temp up to about 215, but we just had a heck of a time getting there so our patience was getting thin, we were too excited to do everything. But, overall, I think we did ok. The fermentation seems to be getting started, at least just from looking at the airlock and having some bubbling. We sanitized everything fairly well, I had to rush to get a strainer out of the clean dishwasher while I was racking from the pot to the primary fermenter, my auto siphon was getting clogged with hops! no good. hubby had gone to get pizza at that moment so I was in a bit of a panic, trying to maneuver the auto siphon and get the strainer, pot out of the sink, pour into strainer... blah. This better turn out, or I think it may dampen my interest slightly.

Just wanted to post pic's of my Herms system. It's been evolving for about a year now. Some temp control automation is next. It sure is a joy to brew on.
The Jamil style whirlpool chiller realy does and awesome job. It's been nice to do step changes in temperature and having the option to do it direct flame or through the HERMS. I welcome comments and questions.

Yippee it's done! Now I have to work on mankave!

Brewed a NB Dry Irish Stout extract with grains kit today, seemed to go well, 1.052@70F SG (I added a scoop of sugar to boost the SG a tad from the expected 1.042ish).

Also bottled my first all grain, an Imperialish Stout (I had bad efficiency and my SG was only around 1.075 so while it's stronger than a stout it's a pretty wimpy imperial).

Here's a picture:

Primary=
Winter Brew - Coffee Stout - Stouts are great beers to have around all the time, but especially during the winter months. This beer starts out with a nice roasty Stout base, not too malty and not to bitter. Then, Ozark Mountain Coffee Co. provides us with fresh roasted Colombian Supremo coffee to compliment the character of the stout. This beer has a strong coffee character that will come into balance about a month after bottling. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Double Chocolate Stout - A Sinful Double Chocolate Stout. A dark and delicious stout loaded with chocolate malt and real cocoa for a rich and smooth beer.

My first label for my fictitious brewing company, TWO IF BY SEA Brewing Company.

Brewed a Black IPA from NB extract with specialty grains last sunday, just took a test sample and man this is hoppy, pretty good though, current reading is 1.030 so should ferment down some more, I am a doofus and didn't write down the SG it was in the 1.075 range as per the kit's data at NB.

Fixing to bottle the AG Imperial Stout I brewed on 02/01 and tonight or tomorrow I will brew the Extract w/grains Dry Irish Stout from NB, I still have that AG Doppelbock waiting but I want my brewkettle to be all electric first I had a serious time boiling that crap last time on my stove.