Today was a great day. Not only because it was brew day, but because I had made up my mind before I started that I would blog about it. I have not done so in quite a while, and I miss it. So, when I got home from the brew shop, I made sure the camera had plenty of fresh batteries and took a picture of my next beer-to-be!

Its basically going to be a dark, strongish winter ale. The last time I brewed this it turned out fantastic... big body, malty without being too syrupy, with a nice mild but definitely present hop profile that was just great. Loved it. So today I wanted to brew a 3 gallon batch. I went to the brew shop, and to my dismay they were fresh out of Vienna malt, which just so happens to be the BASE OF THE RECIPE. Bah. Anyway, my eyes wandered over to the Munich, and I thought to myself, "self, you always wanted to try a Munich base. Maybe the beer gods are telling you something." So, long story even longer, I went with the Munich!

I drove home, pet the Buster, and fired up the strike water.


When it got to my target 170, I dumped it into my mash tun and... OOO SHIIIIIIITTTTT! It was leaking like crazy out of the valve. Took me a while to install some new washers, and not 20 minutes into my brew I already had quite the mess on my hands.
So much for a totally flawless brew, but after mashing in I poured a fresh honey wheat and relaxed for an hour.

The good news is that I hit my 156 mash temp purrrrrrrfectly, and had an amazing smooth sparge. This is most likely thanks to the new false bottom I fandagled and stainless steel mesh manifold I got from Home Depot. No pictures of that unfortunately... Ill stick em up later.

Also, Ive been using this stuff called 5 squared. I was having some efficiency issues lately, and a dude at the brew shop pointed me towards it.

Anyways, after the sparge, I drained my mash tun to go throw the spent grains out, and realized I had about 1.2 gallons of wort still left. Then I remembered all those forgotten hops sitting in the back of my freezer, and the half used pack of S-05 in the fridge... and I decided to make another brew!
Just a one gallon batch, with Brewers Gold for bittering and I finished it with a little Nugget. We'll see how it turns out!

Today was also pretty momentous in that I used whole hops for the first time.
Im hooked, it was sooooo much easier to keep em out of the fermenter. Plus they look awesome, and I don't know if my brain is playing tricks on me, but I think they smelled better too.

So ya, all in all today was a great day. Super smooth brew, which I attribute mainly to the fact that I had planned to blog about it. All of my brews lately have been disasters, but almost every time I blog about my brews, they go with no hitches. I might just start doing this every brew day.

I ended up with 3 gallons of winter ale (1.067) and 1 gallon of... the same pretty much but much smaller (1.04) and less hoppy.
 They look delicious! Can't wait to keg em and let y'all know how they taste.

PEACE