winter project...

Dan Noren

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falcon heights, minnesota
now that the weather and temps have turned foul for woodworking, and being sans shop (dats widdou shop larry), i've had to turn to indoor projects to appease my curse of creativity. yes folks, it's honey porter time! i'm using the same recipie as last year's batch, the only difference being that i'm using some of the best, can't see the sun through it buckwheat honey instead of clover honey. i started this batch about 8:30 last night after dropping the wife off at work (some times life works out that way :rofl:), and finished up pitching the yeast around 2 this morning. i woke up this morning to the genteel sounds of my wife offering to dump water on me if i don't get up:eek:, and the sound of the airlock pleasantly bubbling away, proving that fermentation is occurring. now it's just a matter of patiently waiting for the fermentation to finish, waiting for it to clarify, and then waiting for it to carbonate naturally after bottling.
 

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i bought it at the fair. part of the agriculture-horticulture building is a bee & honey section, where they display all the entries in the competitions. they range all the way from almost colorless to the almost black buckwheat honey. i picked up 3 lbs this year. this honey porter is so dark, that i can have a light on one side of the 5 gallon carboy, and not see it on the other side.
 
Dan,
your current batch reminds me of a trip to the "Chapter House" microbrewery in Ithaca NY alooong time ago. They would make three batches at a time, never quite the same recipe, but always a white, an amber and a dark. The last time I was there, they had a belgian white, a typical nice amber and their coup de gras was Double Fudge Mocha Stout. I had more than I should have, good thing my friend was driving that night. A Pint was about... $3 back then, and that was when typical mass market brews were $1 a bottle.

And literally you could not see through the Stout, it was Delicious too!
 
i try to ease back some on the hops, to keep the bitterness in check. i would rather have people who try it end up with a smile rather than a grimmace. (no, not the purple mcdonald's guy larry). :D:thumb::rolleyes:
 
Blub blub, blub, blubblubblub...

Love that sound! If I didn't have soo many projects running at the same time right now, it'd be an awesome time to get some beer's a brewin...
 
tis a fun sound to hear, especially when falling asleep. :thumb: one time i had 3 batches going at once, it was like being camped along side a babbling brook... :D on the other hand, my wife thinks the whole process is disgusting :rolleyes::rofl::rofl: (i told her what the yeast does after it eats the sugars :eek::rofl::rofl:)
 
There was one weekend a few years ago I did two 10 gallon full grain batches back to back on a saturday. Made for a very long day, but I then had 4 5 gallon carboys all bubbling at once. Ahh, those were the days....

I used to use the old 5 gallon pop canister kegs and would take homebrew to parties at work. I made a little rolling 'kegarator' that would hold 2 kegs and a tank of C02. Basically a wood box on wheels fiberglassed on the inside to make it water proof. Usually pretty generally well received.

I really need to get that going again sometimes. I even grew some pumpkins this year I was thinking of doing a pumpkin ale with..

If you can't tell, I'm JEALOUS!
 
brent, i carbonate the old fashioned way, in the bottle. come bottling time, add an amount of corn sugar, then bottle and let nature take it's course. i usually keep the bottles in a large steel stock pot, covered, in case any decide to become bottle bombs. keeps the mess and shrapnel down.
 
Oh yeah, Done my share of bottling as well...

At one point, I was brewing pretty often, once a month or so, and bottling was just taking too much time. But I'm thinking about doing a smallish stove batch here pretty soon, just to get back into it. I've still got all the equipment, I just need to make a stand of some sort in order to be able to use it... Hmmm, Pumpkin ale... I might just have to see if theres a brewing supply store in town this weekend....
 
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