Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?

[Salvelinus]

Bottled a Sierra Nevada Pale clone 9 days ago. This morning I was walking up the stairs past the rubbermaid tote I keep my filled bottles in and all of the sudden I want a beer. Open the top and there is a shattered growler. I've bottled my last two batches with unrefined raw sugar to get a little molasses flavor. First batch was undercarbonated so I added a 1/4 cup more. Guess that was too much. I cracked all the growlers to let some pressure out. Hopefully that saves the rest of the beer.

[cricky101]

Bottled a Surly Furious clone yesterday morning. It smelled really good. It looked a little cloudy racking into the bottling bucket, but hopefully it tastes as good as it smells.

I think the next brew will be a hefeweizen. I really like Paulaner hefe, so may need to shoot for something similar.

[kaisersozei]

Got the Hopslam clone in the fermenter yesterday around 6, and pitched the yeast starter. Already had airlock activity this morning, and it smelled pretty good Here's what I'm going with:

6# LME
3# 2-row pale malt, U.S.
1# 40L crystal
8oz Cara-Pils
4oz Aromatic
4oz Honey malt
8oz malto-dextrine
24oz clover honey

Did a multirest mash on the grains (110/30min-140/20min-158/40min), and hit a gravity of 1.036, a bit higher than expected. I'll add the clover honey either to the primary after 3 days, or in the secondary.

Hop schedule:

Centennial 1/2 oz at 55min & 20min
Citra 1/2 oz at 45min & 10min
Simcoe 1/2 oz at 30min & 15min
Amarillo 1/2 oz at 5min

Will dry hop with 1/2oz Amarillo + 1.5oz Simcoe. IBUs = 72, which is in the ballpark for what Bell's reports is in Hopslam. They say that they use high-alpha US strains, and I figured they used a burst technique so hopefully I got it close. Except for the Amarillo, all the hops are 11-13% AA. It smelled and tasted great out of the kettle, so I think I'll be happy even if it's not a match!

OG = 1.076 without the honey, which is on target exactly for 1.087.

Fingers crossed that it goes well. I thought about splitting the batch and pitching half with WLP1 California ale, but I didn't. No guts no glory.

[rack04]

My next project is building a cooler mash tun and hopefully upgrading to a 10 gallon brew kettle. If/when I get a new brew kettle I will probably install a weldless bulkhead with valve to drain the wort.