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Hey y'all from Texas!

Helmo Alkou

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Just bought BS2 and loaded some recipes in it.  Looks easy enough to get around in.  I'm only on my fourth batch of beer after graduating from the Mr. Beer kit and I love it! 

I've read, "take notes, take notes, take notes" in just about every book/instructions I've read.  Do y'all add the details of your brew into the "Notes" section of the recipe or just keep a separate journal?  Currently I'm using a spiral notebook while brewing then type it into a spreadsheet where I kept the recipe.

My list so far:
1- Irish Red Ale, Brewer's Best kit (excellent beer)
2- Imperial Ale, just had the first one last night.  Good stuff!
3- Hefenweizer, in secondary
4- Strong/Bitter English Ale, "Jack the Ripper" in primary
5- Black Cherry Wheat, waiting patiently for "Jack" to get out of the primary!
 
I keep written notes on brew day then add them to the notes section.  here is an example of my notes.  Sometimes I wonder about myself.

Grain

Milled grain using barley crusher.  No problems. Well, my wrist was a little sore.

Grain temp 65ish

Mash

12:50 Mash in at 149F ish 3.5g ish hot clear dihydrogen monoxide. Pre-treated with K2O5S2

Sparge

Yes, thanks for asking.  Added more dihydrogen monoxide until I stopped adding it

Boil

2:50 all in kettle, 7G ish

10 Brix runnings 1.039 or so

3:00 Crap out of propane.  Missus to the rescue. Nice cape.

3:20 Boil started, OK, restarted.  Propane is magic.

1.056 pre boil gravity.  hydrometer and cold pot from teh freezer.  Err. saucepan I mean.

3:25 2oz willamette.  1.5 years old in mah freezer. 2009 harvest.

4:10 .5 oz willamette. Same as above.  no cheese.

4:10 whirlflock. ½ tablet like the good book says.

4:25 .75 cascades.  recent crop year.

Chill

74f - lowest hose would go. Damn you ground water temp.
Xfer to Fermenter

90 seconds Nitroarial Spirit

5:00 74f in fridge

5:40 67f in fridge. 7f in 40 minutes = let cool 1 pint drinking time

Pitched OLD (from May 18) saved yeast. May+June+July = 17 years old I think. Maybe one viable cell left.

Fermentation Notes

36 hours very little krausen and CO2 activity.  Maybe no viable cells.

Captured about 4oz high krausen wort from blond and pitched right on the brown.  Blonde on brunette action baby!

48 hours decent krausen

72 hours normal ferment

7/10 frequent activity.  Beer at 65f, raised controller to 67

7/12 Raised controller to 70F.  OK blonde/brunette offspring, clean up the crap you parents left behind.

Notes
I made wort, yeast made beer.  We are a good team.
 
I like the way you think Jomebrew. 

Ahem...Anyway, I do not tend to record my notes back to BS2.  I print my rather long and involved (7 pages) brewsheet, which has various tables and blanks for recording all the parameters and calculations that I made on brewday and throughout the fermentation / aging process.  Once the beer is tapped, I fill in the last few tasting notes and then it goes into a 3-ring binder categorized by BJCP style.  At the front of each section I have the 2008 BJCP style guide for that section.  I keep an index in the front of all the brews in chronological order, with a reference to which section it has bene filed under.  My current 3" binder is getting full.  Its about time to start another one. 

I follow this approach because:

1.  I hate transcribing, and BS2 isn't friendly enough to use DURING the brew process (see item #3 below).
2.  BS2 notes section is too limiting for much of the data that I record.
3.  The layout of the "actual" parameters is a pain to deal with (spread throughout the recipe design pages). 
 
Nice notes, Jomebrew!  Both ways sound good.  I do like the brewsheet idea just to give a direction/check list during the process.  Thanks guys!
 
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