Had to do a little Brew work today.

Needed to keg the summer ale.  Managed to get about 8 gallons out of the fermenter.  I had some issues with it as the dry hops I put in kept plugging the outlet tube.  Ended up using a standard siphon to get the beer out of the fermenter.  The kegs are in the keezer and quietly carbonating away.

Also Racked off the Mango and the Spine Bender Ale today.  The mango was just a huge blast of hops and citrus and sweetness.  Can taste the alcohol, but not in a boozey way.

The Spine bender was mild, and the non traditional hop choices added an interesting flavor profile.

Put them both in the outside fermentation chamber so I can get the temperature down low and help them to clear up a bit before bottling.

I will bottle condition both of these.  Bombers for the Spine Bender, 12 ouncers for the Triple Mango IPA.

Tonight was time to rack the mango beer from the primary fermenter to secondary.  I figured well, Lets go ahead and rack it on to the mangoes, and use the tertiary fermenter to do a final dry hop and let the beer clear a bit.

So I stuffed the mangoes into the carboy, dumped in the first round of dry hops and siphoned the beer on top.

The beer had fermented down to 1.018, so it’s working, but not completely finished.

And WOW What aroma and flavor it has already.  Very juicy.  Lots of citrus and grapefruit notes.

You can see that the yeast started working on the mangos pretty quickly, Fermenting their sugars and filling them with c02, floating them up to the surface.

The green on top are the hops and should settle out prior to the next racking.

So, After making the Double mango IPA today, I drained what was left in the mash tun and got about 2 gallons of 1030 wort.  So I said to myself, “Self, It would be stupid to waste this wort”.

So I boiled it up with a little hallertauer hops, and mad a couple of very small batches of fruit beer.  I boiled it down to about 6 quarts of volume, including the hops.

1 Batch got some Black berries, 1 Batch got some peaches.

I heated up the fruit in the microwave to both unthaw it, and hopefully pasteurize it a bit.

I then racked the wort on top of the fruit in a couple of 1 gallon jugs.

That’s it.  Just doing it for a fun experiment.  We’ll see how they turn out!

Fortunately, I had a little extra fresh yeast that arrived this week.

I’ve never made such a small amount of beer before, so it should be an interesting experiment.

So, the original idea was to make a clone of the Troegs Triple Mango IPA based on Brian Moyers recipe http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/triple-mango-ipa-help-308604/#post3838778.  I’ve made a few little changes here and there based on the feedback I’ve seen on the internet so we’ll see how things turn out.

Well, I started it up today. I processed some mangoes earlier in the week, and today put together the beer.

Was shooting for an OG of around 1090, but only got 1080, So, I’m going to have to call this a double Mango IPA, but hey, That’s not all bad.  I’ve got to work on some of my volume calculations.  The main reason it dropped was I had to add some water to make up for boiling losses.

It was a fun day of brewing, and I’m sure this will turn out to be a good beer.  Here are a few pics from todays session.

After this, I’ll mainly be working on racking to seconday, tertiary, and bottling, with some dry hopping action in between.

Well, The best laid plans and all that. Thought I would brew up nice little summer Blonde ale. Used Beersmith 2 to put together the recipe and it was all coming out right.

Was going to use some hallertauer hops and a little rice to lighten up the beer to make something that would be nice and refreshing after a day patrolling the border of the compound.

Unfortunately, I used Munich Malt instead of Pale Malt. The only real issue is that Munich malt doesn’t have quite as much diastatic power as pale malt, and it has a little more ‘color’ than pale malt.

True to form, I forgot to pay homage to the beer gods and missed the target temp (low) by 10 degrees. Hooking up my HERMS (Heat Exchanger Recirculating Mash System) to bring the temp up, I immediately encountered a stuck mash. I blame the rice for both undershooting the temp as well as the mash being stuck. Well, Instead of getting all upset about it, I grabbed a pint glass and filled it from the tap with some English Bitter. Sure thing, 2 minutes later the mash was unstuck and flowing smoothly (albeit slowly) through the system and I was able to raise the temp up without a problem.

No worries, It converted the rice right on target and all is right with the world.

I went ahead and did a mash at 148.5 degrees in order to make a more fermentable, aka, drier beer.

Experimented with doing mainly late hop additions. Could not really taste much in the way of hops in the final sample, so I’m thinking I’ll dry hop it with some more hallertauer prior to kegging.

Going to have to work on my volumes. Started with 13 gallons in the brew kettle and ended up with only 9 in the fermenter. I am not willing to add water to top off, so will just live with it. Next time I’ll collect another gallon or two in the kettle before I start the boil.

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