Brewing, Bottling and Transferring Over the Weekend

Over this past weekend I had to transfer the Kick Ass Sassafras into the secondary, bottle the Smoked Gobbling Porter and use up some older grains in the extract based Touch of Everything.  The Touch of Everything was a way of using up some extracts I purchased a while back, some older grains and the last of the hops in the freezer.  This batch will also be my first attempt at kegging beer with forced carbonation vs bottle conditioning.

Barely Can Walk Through

I am running out of room quickly in the breakfast nook but Sharon says I can't have anymore of the house.  I may have to create storage out in the garage just so I can move around more easily than now.  Sadly, it is so much easier to have everything in one place ... oh well.

New Equipment

This week was one of purchases:  I bought a refrigerator for the kegging of the beer and a 10 gallon mash tun and spraging cooler to better extract the grains during mashing.  I tried the mash tun just the other day on the new batch of Kick Ass Sassafras but thanks to a smaller false bottom and my vigorous stirring in the grains, the bottom slightly lifted thus allowing grain under it.  This led to a sprage lock and I had to hand dip the wort.  Lesson learned.

New Fridge and Mashing Equipment

Got the results back from the contest ... the porter fared excellent but needs to be smokier, the Smoking Wheat had a slight metallic taste ... unsure the cause but will find out, and need to be even more smokier, and lastly the Sweet Sharon still isn't fairing very well in the contest, but everyone that tries loves it.  I will change the base recipe the next time. 

Slowly Taking Over the Kitchen -- It's Mine, All Mine

All of the judge's notes have been taken into consideration and adjustments have been made to the recipes to improve their flavors.