This was good.

Brewed an Octoberfest Ale over the weekend.  I wanted to ferment this a little cooler so I put a wet towel over the bucket.  Turns out I didn't need to do this as it is unseasonably cool here and my basement was already at the right temperature.  I hooked up a space heater to warm things up a bit and that seemed to work.  Now with no space heater it is fermenting in the low-mid 60's.  It's not that vigorous but it is cooler in the basement than it has been for other batches, plus I am using European Ale yeast which I heard likes to take its own sweet time.  I'm in no hurry as I am looking to drink this around Thanksgiving.

Hurry up.  I'd want my milk stout to age for 4+ months

A heady brew tastes better when well aged.

I had a group brew last weekend where we brewed some beer. heh

The base malt. 2 bags of Pilsner, 1 Vienna and 1 wheat.

Needs more Wiener!

Milling the grain. One of the guys bought a HUGE stainless steel cooler off craigslist for $50 that we turned into a mash tun.

Breaking in the new mash tun. I think the initial mash in was 26 gal and the sparges were 19 gal each.

The first batch we brewed that day went into a conical fermenter the club acquired from Warbird brewing that closed last year. Rather than carry the kettles down to the basement we decided to just rack through the window.

Going through the window worked great. It's amazing how fast you can transfer 10 gal with gravity on your side.

The first batch is going to be a Flanders Red. Once the primary fermentation is done we'll transfer it to the Woodford Reserve bourbon barrel we got for the Indiana state fair brewers cup. The down side is that this will take a minimum of a year for the beer to age in the barrel.

The second batch brewed was a lambic. We split this batch up in two mash tuns since the grain didn't all fit in the large cooler. We used the turbid mash method which involves removing some of the wort, heating it to near boiling and adding it back to the mash. It was a bit more challenging and we had some issues getting all the water heated up in a timely manner.

There is a bunch of wheat in the lambic mash so it was creamy once drained.

The lambic wort went straight in to a used St. Julian wine barrel we bought off craigslist. That's right we're passing gas through our bunghole!

So the net result of a 14 hour brew day is a conical with a Flanders red and a barrel of lambic. Now we cross our fingers and hope they both turn out a year from now. Each batch will be split up among the guys participating which should account for 5 gal each.

Sanitizing the barrels is a relative term. Mostly you try to kill off as much of the stuff growing in them before adding the beer. When we first used the bourbon barrel it came straight from the distillery so we didn't have to clean it other than a quick rinse. I used a product called barolkleen on the wine barrel since it had a bunch of gunk left over from the wine in it. I rinsed it several times and added some potassium metabisulphite to kill off any remaining bugs. Both these barrel will be dedicated to sour beers after this. Once the Brettanomyces and other bugs get in the wood we can re-use them without having to pitch more cultures. It seemed kind of odd to clean the barrels first but we wanted to choose what bugs were living in these barrels.

The Flanders batch was pitched with 6-7 packs of US-05 dry yeast first. When we rack into the barrel we'll add the Roeselare blend from Wyeast. The idea is that the ale yeast will ferment most of the sugars leaving a small amount for the souring bacteria to consume. The Lambic batch received a vial of White Labs Belgian sour mix and 5 gals of previously brewed lambic.

One guy that gave us some advice was the Mad Fermentationist. His blog is pretty good.

Sounds interesting  ... I hope that your beers turn out well.