Sunday Fun-Day!

It was my birthday on Friday and I worked like an animal Friday and Saturday.  It's part of the "deal" with catering.  The sporadic nature of catering is also what allows me flexible time to brew a LOT, which I really do appreciate.

Sunday was brew day, I re-brewed the Sorachi Ace Belgian Blonde.  NOW- since I only bottled it on Wednesday, and haven't tasted the final product, WHY would I brew it again right away?  Well, for one thing it tasted DELICIOUS at bottling time, and 2- I wanted to re-use the yeast cake.  I kept it in the fermentation cooler at 65 degrees for those 3 days, and racked my batch Sunday, right into the same carboy.  This is not the "recommended" method.  The "right" way to do it, is to siphon the yeast out, clean it by letting it settle and striate, and taking only the living best cells.  However I have re-pitched in the past and it works just fine.  It will have dead cells and trub from the prior brew which could (and most likely does, in some fashion) affect the new batch.  It is also impossible, using my method, to exactly replicate the beer.  In 3 days though, and using the same recipe, the affect will be minimal.

I also brewed the Cake and A Card again, albeit card-free.  People keep beating me up, wanting to taste it, so - I did it again.

The homebrew club asked if I could brew a "calibration beer".  This is a beer where everyone at the meeting tastes it, and determines the style that the beer is, and compares it to the BJCP guidelines for that style.  I am going to supply 8, 1-liter bottles of the Belgian Blonde.  It should be fairly easy to determine the style, and the "flaw" would be the Sorachi Ace hops.

One of the BEST things about brewing yesterday was that my Dad came over for 4 or 5 hours, Bret and Kim and their sons dropped by for a couple of hours, and Bryan and Krista stopped by for 3 or 4 hours. We all drank homebrew and some delicious commercial beers, and bingo!  Magic Sunday Fun-Day.

Pop gave me a new immersion chiller which is critical.  It took 90 minutes to bring my beers down to 68 degrees and that SUCKS for brew-day.  Instead of being done by 9:30, it was 10:30.  Too late.

So be it.. The check on the babies this morning showed a nice start to fermentation, and they look good to go!