Last weekend I brewed for the second straight weekend, with the help of a hockey buddy who wants to get into homebrewing, Josh. We did a Magic Hat #9 clone from Austin Homebrew Supply. To make room in my primary fermenter, I racked the Imperial IPA over to a secondary. It was at about 1.032, so it still has some work to do, so I made sure to take some of the yeast cake with it. Probably not the best idea in the world, but it took all of a few hours to be back at it with a nice thick krausen, so all is good. We ended up not getting nearly as much boil off as I expected, so almost 6 gallons of Magic Hat went into the fermenter. I still hit my OG, though, so it should be fine, just more of it! We'll see after it's bottled and conditioned when we do a blind, side-by-side taste test! I have them both fermenting happily away upstairs in the guest bathroom in swamp coolers. With the cooler weather the last few days, I haven't even needed to add frozen water bottles to keep them both around 64-66 degrees!
The next day I was musing about moving on to all grain using the Brew in a Bag method, but knowing I probably need a bigger kettle than my current 8 gallon one. My totally awesome wife started browsing through stock pots on Amazon and gave me a few ideas. I eventually settled on a 16 gallon Bayou Classic stainless steel kettle with ball valve spigot, and she ordered it! This is going to be awesome! I have a couple of 5 gallon paint strainer bags from Lowe's that I was going to use as brew bags, but now I'm afraid they might not be big enough for the 16 gallon monster that's supposed to arrive on our doorstep today. I'm going to Homebrew HQ after work today to get a new hydrometer (the old one got accidentally dropped, and they're extremely fragile) and a few other things, so I might see what they have there. There's also a guy who makes custom BIAB bags and charges pretty reasonable amounts. We'll see on that.
Another thing I want to get into is making yeast starters. It seems easy enough, and I won't have to buy two vials of yeast for the high gravity beers like I did with the Smoked Porter and Imperial IPA. I've been working on some all grain recipes recently. I've got ideas for an ESB, a Kolsch, and a Belgian Trippel. I'll probably start with the Kolsch, since it will be the simplest and cheapest.
Speaking of beers, I've been trying to come up with catchy names for all my beers. Originally, I was thinking of using artillery terms and slang for all the beers I make, since I'm an FA officer in the Guard. That led to Charge 8 Imperial IPA and Willy Pete American Wheat. Lately, though, I was thinking maybe I should stick to the theme of the brewery name, and go with Texas-based names. I had the idea of using figures from the Texas Revolution and have beers like Jim Bowie Blonde and Juan Seguin Stout. I expanded to Texan military heroes from all eras and wars, to be able to do something like a Chris Kyle Kolsch or an Audie Murphy IPA. If anyone actually reads this blog, I'd love some input! Naming beers is half the fun of brewing them (the other half being the drinking part, of course....ok, maybe its more 20/80 naming/drinking, but you get the point!)
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