Plans...
One thing that I really liked on one of the pages that I saw, was sort of a step-by-step break down of how his brew day went (critical temps, what went where, etc). I think I'll try to add a Brew Proceedure page that just sort of shows how/what I do. May save me answering a lot of questions all the time in the emails I get.

Oh, and I'm almost out of Black Butte Porter. Seems like it has the PERFECT OG to make it be my next 20 gallon brew from a single mash session!

Jason also picked up 10 pin-lock Coke style corny kegs for $10 each last Friday, so I'm taking 2 of them and getting some quick flare pin-lock taps for them to potentially put in my fridge if I need to. That way Jason and I can swap kegs once in a while if we need to.
- posted by Jeff @ 7:41 AM

 
Smells like baking bread
It really adds up when 20 gallons of brew is bubbling away making alcohol. I love the smell of brewers yeast working away on that sweet nectar! I put in two blow off tubes on the most aggressively filled carboys. Looks like the worry over only pitching two 125mL XL Slap packs in 20 gallons is over. Things sure do take off well when you pitch in a well aerated wort. I've noticed my krausens go up significantly and my lag times drop a LOT ever since moving over to using pure O2 to aerate my wort inline on my CFC.




- posted by Jeff @ 7:56 PM

 
WOOT!!! 87% on 20 gallon mash of Moosedrool!
I just got done with my 20 gallon brew of Moose Drool and I got a whooping 87% efficiency out of my mash. I did 43 lbs of grain in a single mash at about 1.0 qts/lb on my mash, and I was figuring on only about 70% efficiencies. This is the first brew with the new Grain Mill and I was worried that with that much grain, I was going to have low efficiencies and, worse, possibly a stuck mash. I ground the grains all last night, and the crush was a LOT more than I'm use to (even after backing off the crush a lot and gapping the space more than stock). Well, I was worried about all that fine crush, but it turned out SPLENDID. As it was, we had to use 5 carboys to get all 21.5 gallons in. I did all 43 lbs at once in the mash, and then drained the 4.5 gallons of initial runnings (hit 1.113 SG on that) into one of the boil kettles, and then batch sparged about 13 more gallons (in 4.5 gallon increments), then fly sparged the last 6 gallons to hit my 25 gallons preboil volumes. Pumped the wort for a long time between the two boil kettles to equalize the gravities, and hit 1.053 (was shooting for 1.044). Well, boiled for 80 minutes, and ended up with about 21.5 gallons in the kettles at 1.061, for a grand total of 87% efficiency. I didn't stir the mash once after the initial dough in.

Thanks for all the help, Rob! We played cribbage, drank beer, and ate some brauts and chorizos cooked in chocolate oatmeal stout in a crockpot. It was a great time.




- posted by Jeff @ 5:59 PM