cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/954190

As the title says, I brewed a Brown Wheat Ale with Applewood-Smoked Leaf Hops. This was my first time using smoked hops and I'm happy with the result. They imparted more of a subtle smoke flavor than smoked malt. Recipe is available here if anyone is interested.

Sorry for the wall of text!

TL:DR great brew day ruined by AC shutting off overnight and fermentation temperature skyrocketing. Fixed by brewing the same beer again and choosing a different yeast.

So I had posted a few days ago about weird and wacky ideas for making an Oat-centric beer for a homebrew event in October. I came up with this recipe for my take at an Oat-wine and started making a yeast starter on Monday for a brewday the following day (which was yesterday).

I had been worried that using a high proportion of oats (33.3%) as I was might lead to a stuck sparge so I am happy to report that my combination of a 15 minute beta-glucanase rest at 110°F (43°C) and a hefty 1lb (~450g) of rice hulls was fantastic in preventing this. It was at this point that I encountered my first obstacle.

I had calculated that I would need 2 gallons (~7.6L) of boiling water to bring my mash up to Saccharification temperature but this ended up being not nearly enough. I was aiming for 152°F (67°C) but after adding all the boiling water the mash had stabilized at around 142°F (61°C) so I hastily boiled another half gallon in a tea kettle and added it to the mash which managed to bring the temperature closer to where I wanted it (148°F (64°C)) but at this point the mash was already extremely thin and I didn't want to just keep adding more water so I decided to just roll with it and accept I would have a slightly more fermentable wort and therefore a drier final beer.

After this the brewday was fairly routine. I had planned on an extended boil to bring my final volume down to 2.5 Gallons (~9.5L). I accidentally overdid the boil a little and after cooling down to as low as my ground water could go (71°F (~22°C)) I ended up with only 2.2 gallons (8.3L) in the fermenter. As luck would have it, my yeast starter was almost perfectly the correct volume to bring the wort to the full 2.5 gallons so after oxygenating the wort I pitched the entirety of the nice active starter into the fermenter along with a Tilt hydrometer and closed everything up. My original gravity was 1.087 for an overall brewhouse efficiency of 68% (on the lower side for me but it was a big beer so I had expected this and was pleased with how everything had gone) At this point I cleaned everything up and went home for the night (I brew at work instead of in my apartment).

When I came in to work this morning it was clear the AC had turned off overnight and I could see the airlock on the fermenter going absolutely crazy. I opened up the Tilt app on my phone to check on the stats of the beer. It had only been around 16 hours but the gravity was down to 1.037 and the temperature was at 89°F (~32°C) which was far hotter than the top end of the range of the yeast I was using (Scottish Ale: Optimal range 63–75° F (17–24° C)).

I was able to wrestle down the fermenter temperature by covering it in wet paper towels and blasting the AC and a fan at it but I'm still pretty sure the beer will be an undrinkable fusel alcohol mess that not even an extended amount of cold conditioning time will fix.

Thinking through my options I decided the best course of action would just be to re-brew the batch and go for a different yeast that was more sensible in these temperatures. I had considered using a clean-tasting Kveik strain such as Omega HotHead or Lutra Kveik but I ultimately decided against this because I am of the opinion that even with adequate nutrients and oxygen, the Kveik strains tend to impart an off flavor that I don't like in the final beer. I therefore decided to go in the complete opposite direction and choose a lager yeast which I would ferment around 50°F (10°C) in the keezer we use for serving beer.

At least I could learn from mistakes of yesterday's brew and so today I brewed the exact same beer again and even slightly improved my efficiency! (Original gravity up to 1.089 from 1.087 at the same volume). I was still only able to cool the wort down to around 71°F (~22°C) with an immersion chiller and so the batch is cooling overnight the rest of the way and I'll pitch the yeast tomorrow when I come into work.

I haven't dumped the original batch that fermented too hot so now I guess I'll be able to do a side by side test when both are finished and I'll have another update for you all!

Here is the recipe I'm going with. I'm planning on doing a long (~120 minute) boil to get some caramelization of the wort for color and depth of flavor and also because I think having a fairly thin mash will help avoid a stuck sparge.

Original post:

My homebrew club has an annual fundraiser every year where all the brewers have to adhere to a theme that changes every time. This year's theme is adjuncts and I've been assigned Oats as an adjunct. Now I have brewed several Oatmeal stouts in my time and I want to go for something more interesting and out of the ordinary. I was thinking of Brewing a Barley wine with a hefty portion of the grain bill switched out for oats to make an Oat-wine if you will.

I was just wondering if anyone had any other wacky suggestions? I have access to pretty much all the ingredients available (I actually manage a Homebrew store) and several months before the event itself which is in mid October. As an aside, if anyone is going to be in NYC in mid October and wants to go to a fantastic event where you can try approximately 30 different beers made by some excellent home brewers have I got the event for you!

What character were you playing as and what combination of cards/relics made it so satisfying?

For me, I just had a (unfortunately unsuccessful) run as the silent which consistently generated 7 or 8 energy per turn because of [Hovering Kite] and [Tools of the Trade] as well as 2 copies of [Tactician] and [Acrobatics]. All this energy I was pouring into [Poisoned Stab] and [Bouncing Flask] and just generally having a very good time poisoning the hell out of everyone and trying to generate enough defence with an [After Image] to turtle my way to victory in every fight. My deck unfortunately struggled with AoE and eventually I fell to the Scourge of all singular-target-focused decks, Reptomancer.

It isn't possible to overstate the impact this story has had on all kinds of media (books, films, video games, music etc) since it was first published in 1955. The world Tolkien writes about feels alive and full of history (in part because he spent years creating a complete overarching mythos and history of this world and the people in it (of which the Lord of the Rings is but a small part).

I'm running the latest beta (1.0.82) so firstly I like to say thank you for updating the community listing in the side panel! It now is correctly showing all the communities I'm subscribed to.

My feature request I would like to see in the app (and someone please point me to it if it already exists) is a post Score threshold filter. What I mean by this is, I like to browse posts by new so that I see more rapid change/turnover in my feed. Sometimes posts appear that have an extremely negative post Score (most recent example I have seen was at -41). If I were browsing by hot, or top or any of the other sorting algorithms, these posts would be weighted so low that they wouldn't appear. Is there a way to set a score threshold (say something like -5 (or even better make it user settable)) so that any posts with a score below that threshold get filtered out of all feeds?