Final Update For 2015

Brew-wise its been a whirl-wind fall of collecting and cleaning long lost gear, configuring the home microbiology lab and generally re-learning what had in the past almost been muscle memory, but the first batch is safely in the bottle and conditioning. This is always a relief even if I did manage to waste nearly a gallon (about 10 bottles) by not giving a siphon hose the attention it deserved; gravity, damn gravity! So far no signs of contamination.

Fortunately, all of the old gear was still functional although I did miss my kegging system at several points along the way (being able to gas purge carboys and do pressure transfers, doing secondaries and dry hopping in stainless, etc.). The only new gear of any significance was a couple of PETE carboys to try out and help free-up the glass for a future mead run.

Brewery status as of today:

1) Boar Snout Amber Ale (my everyday house ale): in the bottle and due for a first taste on January 16, 2016.

2) Son of Weihenstephan Dunkelweizen (my seasonal dark weissbier clone): is in the secondary fermenter and smelling spectacular. We shall see.

3) Culture and freeze-down of Wyest Labs #1007 and #3068: German Ale #1007 is my go to house ale strain for many different beer styles. It is of low flocculation but high attenuation making for vigorous quick-start pitches and clean after-taste. Alcohol tolerance is up to 11%. Weihenstephan #3068 is rumored to have originated from the Weihenstephan brewery (circa 1040) although after all of that time I doubt it could be of the exact same genetic background. It has a similar profile to #1007 but in the presence of wheat malt and with proper pitch rate and fermentation temperature will produce the classic ester flavor profile (particularly the clove-like taste) that weissbiers are known for. As with all Wyest products both strains were clean and I now have several vials in the chest freezer to get me through 2016. I will be missing access to an ultralow freezer for long-term archiving.

Skol!

Yeast Culturing

Basic yeast culture for homebrewing is a bit more complicated these days as I'm no longer a bench scientist working in the lab. Gone are the days of autoclaving media at work and being able to archive strains in the ultra-low freezer for years on end. I've had to make do at home with surplus glassware I've collected over the years and my backpacking stove doubling as a Bunsen burner. For now I'll be keeping my two main brewing strains on agar tube slants in the frig for short term use and backup vials in the chest freezer for long term storage.

First Brew In Nearly Ten Years!!

(Full Mash Amber Ale; Sam Adams Boston Ale Clone). I took a rare picture-perfect Sunday to finally get my brewing legs back under me and do a batch of my house amber after nearly ten years of inactivity. I should have been out on the trail or on my bike but all of the ingredients were in store and the yeast pitch was at full kraeusen so it absolutely had to be done.

Things came back to me fairly quickly although it was a bit different working with 6-row malt in comparison to all my past experience with 2-row (the initial dough-in was a bit scary as all of my volumes were way off).

It was nice to have the scent of hops and malt in the air as the weather was perfect in temperature with no wind. As I now brew exclusively in my garage I need to keep wind in mind as it is a potential contamination source.

And as of this morning the primary is showing good yeast activity so we'll be keeping fingers crossed for the rest of the week. Once this is in the bottle I'll be posting a complete analysis/run-down.