Lawrence Brewers Guild

First my thermometer broke, then my White Labs WL001 yeast was apparently dead, now there's a moth in my brew.



Fuck you, mother nature.

Did you boil the moth? If so, just added protein. Watch out for the fruit flies since they are sneaky.

You yeast looks like it is doing fine. If you need more yeast, let me know.

Don't dump the beer and let it complete.

In all likelihood, I did boil the moth, but I can't say for sure, because in the fermenter is the first time I saw it. The lid was off during the entire boil outside. As soon as I brought it inside I put the lid on, and the only time it was off inside was when I was stirring the wort to help cool it down.

It was a Hop Head Double IPA kit from Midwest Supplies that I ordered the White Labs upgrade for. I forgot to order an ice pak, and since this was only my 2nd time brewing, and first time with liquid yeast, I clearly didn't know what active yeast should've looked like in the vial. I thought it was good, and pitched it anyways, but 36 hours later, nothing had happened. So I pitched the Munton's dry yeast they included in the kit by default, that's what's going to town now.

I was trying to decide whether to fish the moth out or not and delayed my decision until this afternoon. Unfortunately when I did decide to fish it out, I couldn't find it, doh!

It'll probably be the best beer I ever brew, and I won't be able to replicate it...

A vial of WL or Wyeast would have had a hard time starting in your double IPA. The lag time for you to see action would have been extreme. You made the best choice by pitching the dry yeast pack.

The vial of yeast should have been pitched into a 1.040 SG solution of wort and allowed to grow up to pitching strength.

A nice pitching rate calculator is here http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html . If you go to the top of the window and select Ale, type in your expected starting gravity and your gallons of wort, you will see on the liquid tab how much yeast is required for your wort. Set the date for today.

Starter solutions are easy to do but need to be planned in advance of your brew day so that the yeast has a chance of growing up in colony strength.

I would think that your moth was collected outside and got trapped in the steam vapor. The hot wort and the travel inside would have taken care of moth.

You did a fine job of working through the issues of your first brew and now you have beer. Enjoy!

+1 it will still be very good. Special name?

Something to do with the Mothman Prophecies?

At least you didn't have this;

I brewed outdoors this past January and got a freakin' bee in my beer. In January! The beer turned out well, according to style. Not a fan of the style though.

Last fall I got two Asian beetles in a different beer as well. I named that one Beetle Juice. I thought it would be ruined because Asian beetles smell so nasty. Amazingly it was drinkable as well, although I wasn't too hot on that style either. I've been trying styles that I normally don't for learning purposes. Any faults in either beer had more to do with other procedural issues.

What I've learned is...keep a tight lid when you use an immersion wort chiller.

My moth brew still smells sweet, still bubbling. Friday or Saturday it should be ready for secondary, I'll taste it then.

Id get drink furious on your Mothball Brew

I haven't had a run in with bugs but with my second batch ever I was brewing outside and a bird flew over and took a crap on my recipe.
I was making an imperial stout and where it craped was on the part that told me how much oak chips to put in the fermenter. All I could make out was the number two. I had bought a two lb bag of chips. I dumped the whole thing in. The recipe,I found out later, called for two hand fulls. UNDRINKABLE!

So, how did the extra protein work out in your brew?

Did Mothman Ale make the cut?

Turned out ok! Sorry for my lack of updates, two weeks ago, I spent the whole week at the Apple developer conference in San Fran, and last week was just extremely busy with work.

Before I left for the Apple conference, I hooked up my Ranco temp controller to my new (to me) kegerator and set it at 68 F, transferred the Moth Head Double IPA to secondary 5 gal carboy, and let it sit there for a week while I was away.

Once I got back, I was planning on kegging it Sunday, but after sanitizing the hell out of my kegerator/gas/keg/misc equipment, I hooked up my system and checked for leaks and one of the poppet valves was leaking on my keg, grrrrr!

Tuesday afternoon I ran to Ale-n-Vino in Topeka and got a new poppet valve and kegged it Tuesday night - tasted good then, although not carbonated yet.

Set the CO2 at 23 PSI or so and shook it a few times Tuesday night and let it sit all day Wednesday. Wed. night it was good, but not fully carbonated, and a bit bitter for my tastes. I don't think anything went wrong with it, a friend who brews this recipe often says his tastes the same, but for my personal taste I'd like it to be a bit sweeter (maybe more crystal hops?).

I had a bachelor party to go to this past weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks, so I took the keg & CO2. It wasn't as much of a hit as I thought it would be, but I think that's mostly because the guys wanted to drink Miller Lite & not be so drunk off of my stuff. That said, my keg was quite a bit lighter when I brought it home on Sunday, and I'm enjoying what remains.

Planning my next brew now - trying to decide which summer brew to make!