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DrBouvenstein posted:drat it! Northern Brewery sent me a thermometer in my kit instead of a hydrometer! I was going to brew tomorrow, now I have to decide to wait until they can send me the hydrometer, or saw "gently caress it" and go to the local brew store and buy one... Go to the LHBS and buy two. You'll be glad you did when you shatter one on the kitchen floor along with your dreams.
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Feb 11, 2012 16:29
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DrBouvenstein posted:drat it! Northern Brewery sent me a thermometer in my kit instead of a hydrometer! I was going to brew tomorrow, now I have to decide to wait until they can send me the hydrometer, or saw "gently caress it" and go to the local brew store and buy one... Assuming you're doing an extract brew, you don't really need a hydrometer right now - you'll be getting pretty much the same OG no matter what you do. Call up Northern Brewer, get them to send you what you paid for, and hopefully by the time fermentation's done and you actually need a reading it'll have gotten to you.
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Feb 11, 2012 16:29
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Has anybody brewed any batches of mead? I was looking into it yesterday and it seemed incredibly easy.
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Feb 11, 2012 17:03
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I have been thinking about starting to homebrew for a long time and finally took the plunge this week. I ordered a kit and several recipes from Craft a Brew in SA Mart. Got everything in the mail yesterday and hope to brew my first batch on Sunday! Can't wait to get started 
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Feb 11, 2012 17:13
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space pope posted:I have been thinking about starting to homebrew for a long time and finally took the plunge this week. I ordered a kit and several recipes from Craft a Brew in SA Mart. Got everything in the mail yesterday and hope to brew my first batch on Sunday! Can't wait to get started Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
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Feb 11, 2012 17:44
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Corbet posted:Has anybody brewed any batches of mead? I was looking into it yesterday and it seemed incredibly easy. I have been looking at doing a small batch or two as well. All these glass wine jugs are going to be helpful because drat you gotta let it sit for awhile.
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Feb 11, 2012 17:46
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Corbet posted:Has anybody brewed any batches of mead? I was looking into it yesterday and it seemed incredibly easy. The traditional mead recipe (honey, water, yeast) is so simple that it must be hard to do badly; conversely, there's so little to it that getting the best honey (or blend of honeys) and supporting them with the right yeast must be as much art as anything. I think much the same can be said about cider - it's dead easy to put juice and yeast into a fermenter, but a really world-class cider demands very careful and skilled selection and blending of apples. Also, the traditional recipe takes a while to reach its peak - I think a lot of meadmakers wait a year or more before they call their product done. This is somewhat faster with yeast nutrients, but mead still has a very long aging curve. So I would say, yes, very easy, except for the hard parts. space pope posted:took the plunge Very cool, and welcome to the mania and the thread. If anything comes up, we'll do our best to assist.
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Feb 11, 2012 17:52
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Toebone posted:Assuming you're doing an extract brew, you don't really need a hydrometer right now - you'll be getting pretty much the same OG no matter what you do. Call up Northern Brewer, get them to send you what you paid for, and hopefully by the time fermentation's done and you actually need a reading it'll have gotten to you. I was doing an extract IPA kit yesterday and forgot to even do the OG (again!) until like 5 minutes after pitching the yeast starter, so I just stuck the thief down the side so I wouldn't pick up a bunch of yeast. The expected OG was like 1.064 and the result I got was 1.064 - seems to me like there's not a *ton* of variables involved when the fermentable sugars are just pre-made extract and it's a pre-formulated kit. I was wondering, however, if there's something preventing you from just sticking the sanitized hydrometer right in the bucket if you're using a bucket rather than a carboy. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Feb 11, 2012 |
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Feb 11, 2012 18:43
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Angry Grimace posted:I was wondering, however, if there's something preventing you from just sticking the sanitized hydrometer right in the bucket if you're using a bucket rather than a carboy. Once the ferment starts, anyway, there's a boatload of foam and crap that would make reading the hydrometer difficult at best. Even before that, though, there's the issue of parallax - the hydrometer is best read with the meniscus at eye level, and you just can't do that in a bucket; you have to look down across the rim of the bucket to the hydrometer. This introduces error (probably a small one though) in the reading.
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Feb 11, 2012 18:51
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You can do mead fast, there's a commercial meadery that had us do a batch of mead at Terrapin and it was 3 weeks from start to finish. Of course they kegged it so that cut out any bottle conditioning time, and they crash cooled and filtered it which cut out any clearing time you'd have.
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Feb 11, 2012 20:18
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my LHBS just put together a wheat beer kit. some sort of wheat LME with hershbrucker and tettnang hops. looking forward to seeing how it turns out..
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Feb 11, 2012 20:57
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You can get a pretty good mead in a month or two if you pitch a lot of healthy yeast and use yeast nutrient. Most of the reason people have to age their meads so long is because unhappy yeast make a lot of off-flavors that need to be aged to get rid of.
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Feb 11, 2012 20:59
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Angry Grimace posted:I was wondering, however, if there's something preventing you from just sticking the sanitized hydrometer right in the bucket if you're using a bucket rather than a carboy. This is what I do. gently caress wasting beer in a thief.
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Feb 11, 2012 21:04
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Speaking of mead, has anyone tried any of the recipes over on home brew talk (or any other recipes)? I'm trying to get better at planning ahead, I'm thinking if I got 2 different 1 gallon batches going now, I should have nicely aged mead by xmas. I was thinking of maybe these two, but haven't done enough reading yet: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/vanilla-mead-31698/ http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/malkores-not-so-ancient-orange-mead-50201/
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Feb 11, 2012 21:15
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I also accidentally poured the stir bar in the bucket. Not that there's anything I can do about it now, but I assume it won't really do anything.
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Feb 11, 2012 21:31
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I'm trying to build myself a stir plate with some parts I have laying around. I'm pretty retarded with electronics though, so it's not working right. I can get the fan spinning fine, with the speed controlled by the potentiometer, but my switch is getting super hot pretty quickly, and the light in the switch seems to also be controlled by the pot (turns dim/off when I ramp down the fan speed). What am I doing wrong?
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Feb 11, 2012 21:35
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JohnnySmitch posted:I'm trying to build myself a stir plate with some parts I have laying around. I'm pretty retarded with electronics though, so it's not working right. I can get the fan spinning fine, with the speed controlled by the potentiometer, but my switch is getting super hot pretty quickly, and the light in the switch seems to also be controlled by the pot (turns dim/off when I ramp down the fan speed). What am I doing wrong?
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Feb 11, 2012 23:04
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Corbet posted:Has anybody brewed any batches of mead? I was looking into it yesterday and it seemed incredibly easy. There used to be a huge mead thread but I think it went to the archives by now. I have a few batches of mead (technically melomels and cysers) done and aging now. I need to do another batch or two but I've been a little uninspired for recipes lately. The Compleat Meadmaker is the mead equivalent of the Papazian book or Palmer's How to Brew. If you already have some brewing experience then MoreBeer's mead-making manual is pretty good: http://morewinemaking.com/public/pdf/wmead.pdf
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Feb 12, 2012 01:01
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So the last batch I brewed boiled off more liquid than I expected, and I ended up about 3/4 gallon short and with a higher gravity than I intended. I'm bottling it tomorrow, and it somehow just occurred to me that I can just add water. Any reason not to add in the missing 3/4 gallon with the priming sugar tomorrow to get a few more beers out of this batch at the right strength?
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Feb 12, 2012 09:10
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And I have officially started my first solo batch of beer! Water is heating up...will be a while before it boils...glass carboy is soaking with PBW, will pour that out soon and put in some Star-San...speaking of, I am using my bucket fermenter as a sanitation bucket, so it has five gallons of Star-San mix in it...I assume I can just dump that into the carboy to sanitize it? I mean...it's not going to "lose" it's sanitizing properties from the few things that are in there, right (funnel, spoon to stir, thermometer, rubber stopper, airlock, knife to cut the yeast packet, and said yeast packet.) And I can now easily see why a wort chiller is a great investment...just a couple bags of ice ran me almost $10...so a $60 wort chiller will pay for itself in 6-7 brews.
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Feb 12, 2012 18:32
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Dilute Star San can last a couple of months if stored properly. Just test the pH before using it later on
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Feb 12, 2012 18:41
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The awesome thing about star-san is that as long as it remains under a pH of 3 it can be used and reused for sanitizing things over and over. I have a 5 gallon bucket of it that I break out on brew days to give things a soak, or when I need to clean and sanitize a keg, there is enough to dump in there and shake around to get every surface. Also, protip that everyone here likes to suggest: a spray bottle of starsan is immeasurably useful on a brew day.
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Feb 12, 2012 18:45
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Oh, awesome...so I'll pour it from the carboy back into the bucket, put the lid on, and then I can keep it in there for a couple weeks until I rack into the secondary? Cool beans. And I should be able to easily get pH test strips from work...hooray for working in hospitals and labs!
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Feb 12, 2012 19:10
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So yesterday I drove down to Cooperstown to visit Brewery Ommegang. It was really cool to visit a brewery now that I know at least something about making beer. The only other brewery I've been to since starting homebrewing is the place called Chatham Brewery which basically operates out of a garage. (Pretty neat article that really captures the spirit of visting Chatham Brewery: http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2011/02/25/chatham-brewing-back-alley-operation-big-time-tast) Anyway, back to Ommegang. I think it's pretty mind blowing when you consider the size of the place and then think about how much beer they distribute. It really just seems too small to make that much beer! It was awesome to have the opportunity to chat with some of the staff, and they have awesome Belgian frittes. Unfortunately, all the Aphrodite is gone so I really am going to have to try cloning it. Hopefully it will be ready to drink before Ommegang makes more of it.
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Feb 12, 2012 19:38
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Just finished brewing my first batch of beer - a smooth brown ale from Craft a Brew. The whole house stinks and I set off the fire alarm three times! I should have a tasting in about a month.
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Feb 13, 2012 04:33
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internet celebrity posted:You can get a pretty good mead in a month or two if you pitch a lot of healthy yeast and use yeast nutrient. Most of the reason people have to age their meads so long is because unhappy yeast make a lot of off-flavors that need to be aged to get rid of. I thought it just HAD to age otherwise it would taste weird? I mean if I can just feed a big yeast culture honeywater and nutrients and then kill it off later and not get off flavours I'm down to give summer mead a shot.
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Feb 13, 2012 04:46
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Zakath posted:Disconnect ground from the pot. Thanks - that fixed it! Now I just need to monkey around with the magnet positions to get it to not kick the stir bar, and maybe add a resistor to get the fan speed down more.
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Feb 13, 2012 06:21
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JohnnySmitch posted:Thanks - that fixed it! Now I just need to monkey around with the magnet positions to get it to not kick the stir bar, and maybe add a resistor to get the fan speed down more. I know this may seem obvious to some, but make sure to start the fan/bar together don't try to place the flask with stir bar on while the magnet is spinning. Jacobey000 fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Feb 13, 2012 |
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Feb 13, 2012 15:20
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Three infusions, two decoctions - the Hefe is brewed! Despite all the extra time and effort I actually enjoyed this mashing process, even if I did get a little stressed out a couple times. We overshot the beta-glucan rest and undershot the first sacc rest. Despite this we got 84% efficiency and the sparge was easier than any single-infusion sparge we've ever done despite the grist being 50% wheat and not using rice hulls. We liked this so much that we're considering doing protein rests + single decoction brews for more than just german styles. Now I just can't wait to try this beer when it's finished - the unfermented wort tasted heavenly, with lots of subtle malty/grainy flavors that are definitely not typically present.
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Feb 13, 2012 17:21
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Do any of you guys use a banjo burner with keggles? Specifically the KAB4 or 6? I worry about the stability of the arms on top with 10g of beer and a rounded bottom.
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Feb 13, 2012 19:18
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Checked on the carboy this morning before I left for work, and there was some foaming on the top and a few bubbles in the airlock! :wop: I'm worried, though, because my roommate and I keep our apartment kind of on the cool side...just under 70 when we're there, but we turn off the heat from roughly 10 PM until ~5 PM the next day (weekdays, it stays on all day on weekends.) The temp can be anywhere from mid fifties to mid sixties when we get home and turn it on...I assume the biggest effect this will have is that I might have to let me beer ferment another few days or a week, since the yeast will be a little slow?
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Feb 13, 2012 20:19
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LeeMajors posted:Do any of you guys use a banjo burner with keggles? Specifically the KAB4 or 6? I worry about the stability of the arms on top with 10g of beer and a rounded bottom. I have a KAB4, and while I don't have a keggle specifically, I have had 15 gallons of water heating up on it before. Never saw any flexing or stability issues.
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Feb 13, 2012 20:19
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LeeMajors posted:Do any of you guys use a banjo burner with keggles? Specifically the KAB4 or 6? I worry about the stability of the arms on top with 10g of beer and a rounded bottom. I use a KAB4 with a converted Sanke keg. The only difference in the 4 and the 6 is the 6 has a heavy duty stand built for larger pots. I think their literature says ~30G. The KAB4 is just fine for converted kegs. I'm not sure what you fear about stability. The skirt of the sanke keg fits on the arms of the burner, not the convex bottom inside the skirt. With it's low profile and four contact points it's pretty hard to get more stable than a sanke sitting on a KAB4.
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Feb 13, 2012 20:26
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Just bought the KAB6 and it arrived Saturday. I placed it on the most level part of my patio, and then put a level on the bars that hold the pot/keggle/whatever. While it wasn't 100% level, it was pretty drat close, and there wasn't any rocking when the 10-gallon pot was full and on the bars. I've never played with high-throughput burners before...cranking it up to full heat on both the LPT and opening the air regulator on the burner all the way was RAD. Fucker hums, cannot wait for my first batch's ingredients to arrive on Thursday, with Saturday being my first large pot brew day. Starting with extract + specialty grains, but I'm already eyeing ingredients and equipment for AG - I was mentally okay with sticking with extract/specialty but when someone explained it like baking, where you can buy Betty Crocker's cake mix vs making a family recipe from scratch, I said a quiet 'gently caress!' to myself because I know this is going to lead to a sure-fire trip down the rabbit hole of time/money/equipment. Side question, when doing extract + specialty brewing, there's still a benefit to making a yeast starter, correct? I know some steps in the AG process don't translate over to extract brewing but I think this is one that is beneficial in all cases, yes? To that point, I don't have a stir plate; doing a 2-pint wort slurry and shaking the poo poo out of it for a few minutes will get me going on the right track in lieu of owning a stir plate, correct?
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Feb 13, 2012 20:36
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drewhead posted:I use a KAB4 with a converted Sanke keg. The only difference in the 4 and the 6 is the 6 has a heavy duty stand built for larger pots. I think their literature says ~30G. The KAB4 is just fine for converted kegs. I'm not sure what you fear about stability. The skirt of the sanke keg fits on the arms of the burner, not the convex bottom inside the skirt. With it's low profile and four contact points it's pretty hard to get more stable than a sanke sitting on a KAB4. EXCELLENT. This is what I was hoping for. I thought it might've been the convex bottom that made contact with the stand. Good deal.
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Feb 13, 2012 20:45
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Using one of those portable burner things, how quick would you expect to go through one regular sized propane tank?
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Feb 13, 2012 20:52
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LeeMajors posted:EXCELLENT. This is what I was hoping for. I thought it might've been the convex bottom that made contact with the stand. Good deal. Yep, one has to be precise to make sure you position it right as centered there is only about an inch of extra, but it fits right on perfectly. Sirotan posted:Using one of those portable burner things, how quick would you expect to go through one regular sized propane tank? All my regulators have valves on them so it depends on how high one turns them up. And how high one turns one up depends on depends on lots of different factors. Personally I have multiple burners going on brewday from multiple tanks, but I wanna say back when I was on a single burner (not the KAB4) I could do 3 10G batches on a full 20# tank? with some leftover to start the 4th.
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Feb 13, 2012 21:00
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wattershed posted:Just bought the KAB6 and it arrived Saturday. I placed it on the most level part of my patio, and then put a level on the bars that hold the pot/keggle/whatever. While it wasn't 100% level, it was pretty drat close, and there wasn't any rocking when the 10-gallon pot was full and on the bars.
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Feb 13, 2012 21:01
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DrBouvenstein posted:I'm worried, though, because my roommate and I keep our apartment kind of on the cool side...just under 70 when we're there, but we turn off the heat from roughly 10 PM until ~5 PM the next day (weekdays, it stays on all day on weekends.) I think you'll be fine- I don't know what yeast strain you're using, but I've taken a handful of ale strains all the way down to 52, and they've been alright, if not somewhat slow to start. I actually think that lower temperatures are the way to go with some yeast strains, such as Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale, which cleans up really nicely in the upper 50s.
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Feb 13, 2012 21:16
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jwh posted:I think you'll be fine- I don't know what yeast strain you're using, but I've taken a handful of ale strains all the way down to 52, and they've been alright, if not somewhat slow to start. They have those belts that wrap around carboys and such...do those even work? In my mind there's no way something like that could work.
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Feb 13, 2012 21:48
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