Salty Daddy Brewing

I had a great start brewing at the start of 2016! One of my beer year resolutions was to start taking mash pH readings.

Cheap pH strips will do the work if you’re good with colors (somewhat subjective)

To recap, I started out the year with a band by starting brewing on New Year’s day – a dunkelweizen bock. Then the following week a 100% wheat no boil berliner weisse soured with L. Plantarum and kefir grains. The following week I brewed an ESB. The fourth weekend I brewed a sweet stout. Finally finishing the month of January with a gose turned American Wheat (taste like American Wheat at the end because I didn’t sour/salt enough). That’s 5 beers in January.

In February, I didn’t go too crazy, I brewed another no boil berliner weisse, ginger beer, and a split batch saison/pilsner. My very first pilsner fermented brulosophy way. No secondary, no problem! It’s crystal clear too!

Crystal clear pilsner dry hopped with hersbrucker

I was already approaching my 5% discount mark at Brewstock!

March/April was when I started my Jazz Fest brewing marathon. Legit back to back 10 gal batches of beer. Starting out with a saison, then an american wheat beer the next day. The following week I did a sour saison, split batch with 5 gal dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin, and the other 5 gal soaking french oak chips (soaked in rum for a day)/lime peel/mint, inspired by Michael Soo’s mojito berliner weisse. Before I knew it, it was April, time for the last lap of brewing marathon, I brewed a split batch, one pitched with WB06 that will be JefeVincent, and the other pitched with US05, which will turn into another wheat beer! I love brewing wheat beer for nice spring weather. Finally last week, after kegging the sour saison, I did a no boil wort consist of 2 row and wheat malt to rack onto the yeast cake of the sour saison. That sucker took off within 2 hours!

American wheat beer, heavenly citrus. 

 

 

By this point, I was already a 5% club member at Brewstock. It’s not even May yet.

Salty Daddy will be open for pre/post party. We are only planning on going one day each weekend, so we’ll be around most of the time. Come taste some homebrew, my friends!

The beer line up, with a non beer but boozy liquid on the fifth tap

Happy festing!

Since the last update, we have brewed about 18 more batches of beer. We have participated in NOLA On Tap, serving our saison (no we did not serve the sal(i)vation saison) and hefeweizen. The hefeweizen name was one of my all time favorite named JefeVincent. As the weather got cooler, we started brewing porter/stout. We even experimented with a sour porter, adding cherry to it.

Brewing oatmeal stout while enjoying Extra Sleigh Bells ESB

Bottled the sour cherry porter batch for a dear friend who helped build the bar

Also, Salty Daddy has a new bar! We hosted friends on Thanksgiving to taste the homebrew before heading to the track to bet on horses.

2015 has been a great year for improving Salty Daddy’s homebrew. I can’t believe we brewed more than 20 batches this year! (Brewstock 10% club, you bet!) I also went from 0 kegerator to 3 kegerators and a fridge! 0 kegs to 4x corneys, and a few “unknown” sankey kegs. The 100 quart crawfish pot is performing like a champ, doing crawfish/crab boils on the side.

2015 brew: (definitely a year of saison and will continue to be so since we have 6 months of summer!)

• 6 saison batches
• 3 Hefeweizen (JefeVincent)
• 3 stout
• 2 sour saison
• 2 sour porter (1 with added cherry, bottle conditioned)
• 2 ESB
• 1 chili porter
• 1 pale ale
• 1 blonde

We are definitely looking forward to another year of fun homebrewing! Bring on 2016 and happy new BEER!

This is by far the most expensive piece of brewing equipment that Salty Daddy Brewing has acquired so far. It’s well worth it. Our methodology of one brewing vessel system is now complete with this pump. It allows us to whirlpool while chilling, by recirculating hot wort through the plate chiller and back to the kettle. The end result was phenomenal. The tap water temperature was close to 85 deg, and we were able to chill the boiling wort down to 120 deg within 5 minutes. We stopped at 120 because we were doing kettle sour with lacto from a yogurt culture. (It soured within 12 hours!)

Now we just need to build a proper frame to hold everything together.

Last Sunday, during one of the hottest NOLA summer day (felt like 110 deg), we brewed a 10 gal batch for NOLA on tap. BIAB style, 21# grain bill, OG 1.053, ~25 IBU, EKG and Styrian hops, Belle Saison yeast.

It was tough cooling the wort down. I think I might had some HSA, but if consumed before October, it shouldn’t go stale right?! The wort might have extra amylase conversion too during cooling due to a drooling incident. Let’s hope the mighty yeast takes over before the drool does.

Overall, it’s a great brew day with lots of homebrew saison drinking and hanging out.