new brew cart means more brewing!

A lot of brewing has been happening at Two Jacks. We currently have Stop That Train (California Common) dry hopping along with Proprietor's Porter which is slowly being imparted with the delicious tastes of bourbon, oak, and coffee. Judge Hopner IPA was brewed this holiday weekend along with Pippy Hopstocking, which is the first of our beers to use our new Sanke keg fermenting system (more on this in a future post). Next weekend, we plan on tapping the Steam Beer and Porter along with brewing Alice UP!

The new brewing cart works amazing and definitely makes brew day so much easier.  As with anything new, there  is tweaking that needs to happen during the first brew and a lot of creative thinking to connect the proper hoses and fittings. Unfortunately, one of our stout taps has decided it loves Stretchy Pants so much that it needed to continuously pour beer and never stop. A new stout tap should be arriving tomorrow and hopefully, with the help of Google, we will fix the broken stout tap and use it as a backup. Our Mega Pot with compression fittings was irritating us during brewing due to leaking. We had fittings welded in permanently and we like the pot much better. However, if you decide to brew, I'd recommend the Brew Built pots...we like them much better and have been very happy with them thus far. Today, we decided to go back to using our plate chiller rather than the immersion chiller to speed up the cooling rate of the wort. We also used our Sanke fermenter for the first time along with the Cool Zone cooling jacket system to regulate the temperature during the fermentation. So far, we like the results of the Cool Zone; we'll see how we like the setup after we have had to add in ice for a few weeks to cool things.

Up next equipment:  we are planning on cutting a hole in the top of one of our Sanke kegs to fit a 6 inch ferrule and see if the expanded opening helps us with cleaning and sanitation.
Up next beers: Hoppenheimer DIPA, Mouth Mittens (a new recipe we created for an Imperial Red Ale), and the one we are most excited to Brew....Tijuana Facelift Mexican Lager.