Jensen Haus Home Brewing

After 3 years of giving my wife crap about the Kingswood Rummage sales, I pilfered a few sales this year for some Home Brew gear and came out like a thief. Picked up a perfect sized fridge for kegging and promptly turned it in to a keggerator. I bought a Fridge Conversion Kit from Midwest and a two keg kit with a 2 valve regulator and CO2 tank. I should hopefully get some pics up on Flickr soon. At another sale, I picked up a 7.5 gallon turkey fryer pot and propane burner for $40. Its so nice to be able to boil an entire 5 gallons. Its a pain to try and cool the wort down this way though. Think I might have to invest in a wort chiller. This poses a slight issue come winter time as my outdoor water faucet is off limits that time year and I have a weird sink faucet and can’t use the sink adapters.

I know most of you who home brew have some sort method to label your bottles. I’ve been using plan old masking tap and a sharpie to mark whats in each bottle. I didn’t like the “prohibition” feel that this method gave but I wasn’t exactly thrilled about printing out labels and then soaking them off once the beer had been enjoyed. I decided that a good compromise would be a permanent generic “Jensen Haus” label and the masking tape labels to note what and from when was in the bottles. I found these labels online and they are billed as “permanent”, dishwasher safe and laser printable. I order up a package and found that they print very well in the laser printer and that they are incredibly sticky and that the laser printing does not rub off. Even with a wet finger. I applied these labels to a case of 1L swing-top brown bottles last night. I ran them through the dishwasher this afternoon so I could bottle my batch of Oatmeal Stout and they survived the dishwasher excellently. In fact, during the stout bottling, I overfilled a couple of bottles and the spilled stout wiped right off the labels. So after a successful trial run, I then applied these labels to all my bottles. (they don’t work on the Growlers.) I took some pics and you can check them out on Flickr. (they should be the in “beer/brewing” photostream in the upper right.)

The Oatmeal Stout not only smelled fantastic, it tasted fantastic as well. Can’t see through it and it has a nice roastedness to it as a good hearty stout should. I hope I can hold out two weeks for this batch to carbonate.

After much contemplation about a desire to brew more than once batch at once, I stared longingly at my Bottling Bucket and cursed it for being a Bottling Bucket, not a Primary Fermenter. It then occured to me that the only thing keeping my Primary from becoming a Bottling Bucket (and vice versa) was an extra lid, airlock and spigot. But, could I use a bucket with a spigot in it as a Primary? After some research it seemed that I was not alone. I quick ordered up a lid, spigot and airlock and pulled out the cordless drill and the 1in boring bit. Now I have two bottling buckets that can be used as Primaries. Its actually highly useful. If I rack the beer from the spigot , it leaves the trub on the bottom of the bucket as the spigot is mounted about an inch from the bottom. Now that I had two primary fermenters, I, of course, needed another secondary fermenter. I picked up a 6.5 and a 5 gallon carboy for $40 from a former homebrewer here in town. He threw in 48 cap bottles for free so it was a pretty good deal. Now I have a dearth of brew equipment.