miia monthly

After months and months of sitting in the secondary fermentor, I finally transferred the red rye ale to a keg for consumption. This beer was ready to go at least two months ago. And with a FG of 1.020, the extra months in the second really did nothing to drop the FG into the target [...]

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It only took me a little over 4 1/2 months, but the never ending 1/2 barrel keg of Bud Light is finally cashed. Since this BL keg was taking up valuable kegerator space in the basement, that I could have been using for my kegs of Christmas beer and Red Rye. I decided to take [...]

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After 7 days in the primary fermentor. Last weekend on Sunday afternoon, I racked off the Irish ale to a secondary fermentor.
The final gravity after 7 days was 1.024, when the target gravity was suppose to be ~1.014. But after racking the beer to the secondary, enough yeast was kicked up to get the fermentation [...]

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Note: Keep in mind that this article was supposed to be posted in November 2009, I guess better late then never. For a current update on the ciders status, see this posting.
So get a load of this. It’s been about a month since I started fermenting this year’s batch of hard cider. And about two [...]

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Since I ended up getting Monday off for MLK, I thought that is is high time that I brew up a batch of beer, since I’m running low of both BL and homebrew. Sure I still have the keg of Christmas beer that hasn’t been tapped (even though all the bottles were drank in early [...]

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Well its been a couple of months since the last gravity check on the hard cider, and surprisingly we are doing pretty good on the final gravity.
Here is the breakdown of the three different batches:

Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast – 0.996
Red Star Premier Cuvee yeast – 1.004
Red Star Cote des Blancs – 1.000

Out of the three batches, [...]

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Boy did I leave this beer in the secondary a long time, just shy of a month. But this time around I’m doing something a little different, in that I’m priming the entire 5 gallon batch of homebrew before bottling & kegging. I’ve had this discussion with JRR offline, but the gist of the conversation [...]

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Last week I ended up racking the Pumpkin beer to a glass secondary, and I took a quick FG reading and it was at 1.014. Which isn’t too shabby. At first I thought about saving the yeast from this batch, but as I kept racking the yeast between jugs. I just couldn’t remove all the [...]

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There is no point in rehashing the post from 10 days ago about the Pumpkin Ale. So then lets dive in head first into the nitty gritty from this brew session.
Last Saturday morning I headed out to the farmer’s market to pick up a butternut squash, after a quick walk around to gauge what was [...]

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Since I really don’t have anything lined up this weekend, other then swapping the battery in my truck. Why not brew up another batch of beer, since I’m starting to run low on the dry stout and IPA down in the kegerator. This time I thought that I would brew up something totally different, but [...]

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