First wine bottled and Swheat Summer Kegged!

Sunday I bottled my first attempt at wine, a Green Apple Reisling kit. Tastes good. Yesterday I kegged my Swheat Summer, I honey wheat ale. Should be carbonated in a week or less. Still waiting to bottle my Ovila Quad clone, still get a bubble every few minutes so I wait.....

3 Fermenters At Once!

AT the moment I have a Belgian Quad (Ovila Quad Clone) in secondry fermentation. Green Apple Reisling (First Wine Kit attempt) in primary and a Honey Wheat (Swheat Summer) in primary. At the moment I have nothing home brewed to drink! Bought some Becks Black last week, not bad..... Sampled the Barrel we have been aging Russian Impierial Stout in for about a year. Sample was good. The plan is to take 5 gallons out for kegging and replace with 5 gallons to keep topped off.

Imperial Toasted Blonde

Made an Imperial Toasted Blonde, (really a IIPA) for a grad party in Mountain WI. Pulled a second runnings off the mash and made a light beer for the BMC drinkers, came out way too light so I added 3 pounds of honey to the secondary. Both beers were a hit! There were a couple of "eeww's" but they were strictly bud light drinkers.

Anyone read this ever????

Not sure if I should keep this going, I have not brewed in a while but I don't think anyone reads this even when I do update........

Russian Imperial Stout

Brewed this BIG beer as part of a group barrel project.  3 of us are brewing 60 gallons of this stout to be aged in a used whiskey barrel for at least 1 year!  Good thing it won't be kept at my house or most of it would "evaporate" before the year is up! :-)

Took two mash tuns to make this!  Needed 15.6 gallons of 175 degree water to mash all the grain for this batch and my tun is only a 15 gallon pot.  Got my old tun (igloo cooler) out of retirement and put 10 lbs of grain in it and just short of 40 lbs in the other.

After fly sparging 13 gallons into the kettle the runnings still looked quite thick so I refilled the mash tuns with hot water and let sit while bringing the big pot to a boil, then just drained the tuns to a 7 gallon kettle and still got a 1.04 OG wort from it!

Anyway, the big pot yeilded 1.12 OG and is fermenting away.

CHEERS!

MGD Lemonade

This is just too funny.  At least I know what NOT to try...  Here is a short quote from Joe Sixpacks blog,

"...You might say MGD Lemonade 64 is nothing more than an alcohol delivery device, but it doesn't do even that very well.
A 150-pound woman could commence drinking one bottle of MGD 64 Lemonade every 15 minutes, and after an hour and a half (a full sixpack!) she still couldn't get herself pulled over for DUI. She would, however, have consumed 384 calories - about the same as a McDonald's Sausage McMuffin...."



Read the whole thing for the rest of the story here.  www.joesixpack.net/columnArchives/2011/062411.htm

Born on the 4th of July!

Brewed a kit for the second time in my brewing life.  Boundary Waters American Wheat from Midwest.  I modified it a little, some on purpose, some by accident.  It is currently bubbling away in the basement awaiting the day it can be drunk in honor of the 4th!

As a was explaining the brewing process to a friend who happened by, the boil started unexpectedly and in my rush to get the first hops in I grabbed the wrong bag and dumped them in.....  soooo......  it will be an all new beer!   Put Palisade in for the bittering hops and Sterling for the flavor/aroma hops instead of the other way around.  Meant to look up the hops and see what they are but have yet to get around to that.  My guess is I will drink it when it's done.

On another note. 
The Amber Ale I brewed a few weeks ago finished its primary fermentation and I decided to try something.  I had planned on kegging half and bottling half, 10 gallon batch, and have heard allot on the uselessness of secondary.  Now I have always made very clear beers and think it's due to the secondary fermentation.  But I put half right in the keg and the other half in a carboy to bottle in a couple more weeks.  The kegged half I started drinking last week, it did not clear out very well, so I dubbed it Merriman Mud Ale.  It tastes great and has had good reviews from samplers who happen by, and has cleared a little but not much.  The big test will be a side by side comparison after the bottles are ready.

Cheers!