Thursday, January 17, 2008

Yeast Redux, Brew Day update

So the yeast starter post yielded quite a range of comments. From "gee, I should probably use them" to "I've been brewing for an age and never had a problem" to an anti The Big Lebowski diatribe from my younger brother (I only beat him several times, and not very badly. What can I say. He's a sad strange little man).

Whatever your feelings about yeast starters, this is my point: use 'em if you want to. Don't if you don't. I've used them in each of my brews thus far, and been very happy with the results. That said, I will be trying some new yeast methods in the future. My next batch will utilize a starter, but the one after that I'll be pitching to the cake from the first batch. And then I'll attempt to harvest the yeast of that batch (there is a great picture tutorial of that on the Homebrewtalk forums). We'll see how that all works. I may have to keep a Saflager in stock to bail me out if those go sideways.

In sadder news, I will not be brewing this weekend. I am an outdoor brewer, and the weather is supposed to be even colder than it is generally this time of year in Atlanta. Something like 4 degrees on Saturday, and 8 on Sunday. Not that that would be a problem for me personally. But I was planning on fly sparging with my bottling bucket as my HLT, and keeping water in a plastic bucket at a constant temperature in 5 degrees was more than I think should be attempted on the first all grain batch. The highly anticipated Blue Blood Lager will have to wait another week. Which is a bummer. I was actually looking to see how fast I could chill 5 gallons that way.

In the end, that is okay. It will give me more time to finish constructing the most ghetto looking immersion chiller ever built. Seriously. It looks like it was "coiled" by a drunken Polack. Which, basically, it was. I'll share some pictures because I'm cool like that, and basically have no shame.

Confidential to "Freak:" No teabagging, sorry to disappoint. It would have been weird since there was a dog there. Also, she's a real lesbian, and I'm not a woman. Also, this is my beer blog. My bachelor adventures are all posted here.

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