Monday, April 20, 2015

The "Almost" Daily Beer and Bike Log April 20 2015 A Lesson Learned

In an interesting weekend I tried a couple of new beers, set myself up for 1 gallon batches of beer straight from my kitchen, not only so if these first solo batches suck but once I get going to experiment with some recipes. 

No Riding and I am getting anxious on that front.
 Anyway I also was able to move my very first All Grain batch from Primary to secondary fermentation. This my friends was an adventure. I want to preface this by saying I should have pulled the head out of my ass and bought an Auto Siphon (which will be purchased this week) so I went to YouTube and found a video on Racking your beer with a racking cane. Simple right? Looked simple enough. 
(now there were not a lot of pictures during this craziness actually this was the first and the last as I tried to save the beer)
So I got some sterilized water submerged the correct end of the tubing. After a bunch of water on the floor and my hands soaked I got the siphon going then in a panic (as I did not have a clamp but had my finger over the tube) I had my daughter get the fermenter up high so I could get it going but realized as I stuck my hand in the beer (side not if this beer comes out great I am sticking my hand in more often, side not 2 my hand and arm were sanitized so relax)  after switching that up and getting the beer going to get the water out I placed the tubing into the Carboy and it was underway, But oh my troubles were not over. At a certain point my tube got an air bubble and I could not get the rest into the carboy the plus is we had about 5 and a half gallons anyway so I had plenty in the carboy. Now as I went to put the bung in the hole (giggle,  Bung hole) it was slick due to all the San Star both on the Bung and in the carboy every time I would put that and the airlock in it would pop out, just like it was taunting me. I had to completely dry both and keep pressing it in until it stayed. Finally with water, beer and paper towels all over the place I could clean up.  I placed a shirt over the Glass carboy put a thermometer on it and left it…Next week (with an auto siphon) we will take 5 separate gallon jugs and further ferment with some different things in each (Oak Chips, dark chocolate, etc…) Lesson learned but wish it was a lesson learned on a cheap Grain Bill not a Big Imperial beer. Either way I am drinking it… 

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