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crazyfish posted:On the rare occasions when I brew extract beers, I *only* use dried extract (and get my extra colour/flavour from steeping grains). It stays fresher far longer than LME and it is much easier to weigh out for partial additions (like when making yeast starters and the like). It's too bad that so many kits come with liquid. The weighing is the reason I ever tried DME, I was making a very small batch. Which I just remember has been sitting in a gallon fermenter in my fridge for about 2 months. Chances that it's probably pooched?
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Aug 12, 2013 18:00
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Dead Inside Darwin posted:So hold on, I use LME as most of the fermentables right now. I want to just steep the grains for the 60 minutes, then do the hops for however many minutes, and THEN add the LME before putting it in the fermenter? Take all this with a grain of salt, but typically in home brewing with ALL GRAIN you have a very specific benefit to bringing things to a boil, getting the hot break, and having things boil away. In extracts, the creation of the extract from grain did this for you, so boiling the extract for 60 min is pretty much unneeded and its detrimental at worst. I have only done dark porters, so i dont notice a dark color of 'burned' lme in my brews.. but i have read a few pages on the subject. You will need SOME extract in there for alpha/beta hop conversion for the 60 min, but the large majority of your extract 'should' be added at the very end of you boil. If you have hop additions that only need a 30-10 min addition, then you only need to boil for that long. its pretty contrary to every instruction that i read anywhere, but i justify that as being the 'easy instructions'. I have yet to try any of this for myself though. And I'm not that experienced in the chemistry involved, so i could be talking out my rear end.
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Aug 12, 2013 18:02
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Roundboy posted:also you may be thinking of the latest reading i was doing regarding extract brewing and boil times.
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Aug 12, 2013 18:06
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Roundboy posted:its pretty contrary to every instruction that i read anywhere, but i justify that as being the 'easy instructions'. I have yet to try any of this for myself though. And I'm not that experienced in the chemistry involved, so i could be talking out my rear end. Most homebrew instructions are also really old and awful and still rooted in how people did things in 1980. Just think how often someone comes in here and posts "hey i just got a kit. the instructions say to chill the wort down to 90 degrees, sprinkle some (lovely, dead) yeast on the top, ferment for 2 days, transfer to secondary and bottle after a week. sound good?". Most shops just aren't up on good, modern practices for some reason 
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Aug 12, 2013 18:09
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Roundboy posted:Take all this with a grain of salt, but typically in home brewing with ALL GRAIN you have a very specific benefit to bringing things to a boil, getting the hot break, and having things boil away. Thanks, I'm going to give this a try next beer I make since it most likely will be something a bit lighter.
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Aug 12, 2013 18:09
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Syrinxx posted:This also has the added benefit of fixing bad hop utilization due to high gravity during partial boils. I usually just add an amount of extract equal to the amount I'm partial boiling (i.e. half of the malt for a 2.5 gal boil) to keep utilization on track. Yep, Im still trying to get a handle on all the chemistry involved. Its hard to track down *exactly* what is going on when you talk about temps and time and the differences in those values. Docjowles posted:Most homebrew instructions are also really old and awful and still rooted in how people did things in 1980. Just think how often someone comes in here and posts "hey i just got a kit. the instructions say to chill the wort down to 90 degrees, sprinkle some (lovely, dead) yeast on the top, ferment for 2 days, transfer to secondary and bottle after a week. sound good?". Most shops just aren't up on good, modern practices for some reason I agree, and i havent even been doing it for long. For my first brew ever, my LHBS old guy was like 'bah just add this instead' and i was trying to stick to a plan.
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Aug 12, 2013 18:43
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Has anyone here made northern brewers Caribou Slobber? I was planing on making it but substituting with some fresh Willamette hops from the garden.
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Aug 12, 2013 20:38
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So... filtering. I want to start doing it but as with many things homebrewing the amount of information out there is just overwhelming. It seems that the one thing everyone worries about is oxidation. A number of people say that if using a double-pad filter loaded with 5-micron pads, you have to have it assembled underwater in a sanitizing solution and flushed with a small amount of either distilled water or sacrificial beer and using low CO2 pressure to move the beer into a keg which also had been filed with CO2 first. Then I think about what my father does with his wine... clean filter of obvious gunk, push wine through using a sealed vessel provided with pressure from a hand pump. He switched to using CO2 to pressurize not because of any issues with oxidation but instead because his arms were getting tired from the hand pump. Is this a case of beer homebrewers just completely over-doing/thinking it because that's just what we do? I don't see anything wrong with the first procedure I wrote above but it would be nice to know that if I accidently let a small bubble into the hose that everything isn't going to go to poo poo after force carbing.
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Aug 12, 2013 20:50
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Shifty Pony posted:So... filtering. Get a water filter for your hose or faucet. make beer. use a stainless steel scrub in front of your outlet pipe to catch the obvious big chunks. Use hop pellets in bags, and anything else you dont want floating around. then just have it drop out as you rack to a secondary. Also try some irish moss in the boil.
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Aug 12, 2013 21:00
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Shifty Pony posted:So... filtering. Do you make things that really need that much filtering though? How well is cold crashing + irish moss + gelatin working for you (or not working)?
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Aug 12, 2013 21:02
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djwetmouse posted:Has anyone here made northern brewers Caribou Slobber? I was planing on making it but substituting with some fresh Willamette hops from the garden. I have and it's pretty great. The Danstar yeast used in that kit commonly quits at around 1.20 or so for whatever reason so if you don't want your beer to be on the sweet side use the liquid yeast option or some other yeast.
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Aug 12, 2013 21:13
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Does anyone have first-hand experience making a beer with wet hops? I have a lb of Simcoe wet hops headed my way and want to use all of them in one batch of beer. I'm thinking something like an imperial amber or maybe just SMaSH with a more malt-forward grain like Vienna.
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Aug 12, 2013 21:37
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I have done a couple of wet hop beers. Honestly I'm not a fan, they tended to be intensely vegetal if you add them too early. If you use them as a late addition (flavor/aroma stage) it can turns out nice but using them as a bittering addition didn't go well for me at all. I stuck mostly with cascade although I did manage to pick up some fresh amarillo which I prefer over cascade.
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Aug 12, 2013 23:52
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Dead Inside Darwin posted:Do you make things that really need that much filtering though? How well is cold crashing + irish moss + gelatin working for you (or not working)? My favorite beer style by far is kolsch and no matter what I do I can't get WYeast 2565 to drop bright. I also would like to have an alternative to using gelatin or Super-Klear as I have a number of friends who are vegan so if that stuff touches the beer they can't have any.
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Aug 13, 2013 00:14
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Shifty Pony posted:My favorite beer style by far is kolsch and no matter what I do I can't get WYeast 2565 to drop bright. I also would like to have an alternative to using gelatin or Super-Klear as I have a number of friends who are vegan so if that stuff touches the beer they can't have any. Kolsch is famous for not dropping bright. Your options are 1) lagering, 2) fining, 3) filtering. Lagering works quite well and indeed, a lot of people suggest Kolsch should be lagered anyways. But its going to take 4 weeks of cold storage. Fining is an option and there are certianly vegan options, like using Polyclar or Biofine Clear. Technically, you are supposed to filter out Polyclar, but I don't know if you could just rack off of it. Filtering is just filtering, it will be clear in hours rather than days.
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Aug 13, 2013 00:20
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Shifty Pony posted:My favorite beer style by far is kolsch and no matter what I do I can't get WYeast 2565 to drop bright. I also would like to have an alternative to using gelatin or Super-Klear as I have a number of friends who are vegan so if that stuff touches the beer they can't have any. I think Biofine Clear is vegan-friendly, but I'm also unsure of its effectiveness. edit: As mentioned, you may also have to treat it like a lager. Kolsch yeast is notorious for its low floc rate.
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Aug 13, 2013 00:33
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I started my End-of-Summer-Celebration batch yesterday. 5 gallons of a summer wheat hefeweizen and 5 gallons of a dark pumpkin ale. I do partial mash brews because I don't have the equipment for all-grain yet, but they've been turning out fine none-the-less. The summer wheat: 1 lb Honey Malt (steeped for 30 min) 3 lb Wheat DME 3.3 lb Bavarian Wheat LME 1 oz German Hersbrucker (60 min) 1 tsp Coriander (15 min) WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale Yeast OG 1.042 (was a little disappointed by this, but ah well) Pumpkin Ale: 3 lb Carapils (steeped for 30 min) 5 lb Breiss Traditional Dark DME 1 lb Mutton's Amber DME 2 oz Hallertau (1 oz @ 60/1 oz @ 15 min) 0.5 tsp Cinnamon 0.5 tsp Nutmeg 0.5 cup Brown Sugar 30 oz canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix, but real pumpkin) WLP005 British Ale Yeast OG 1.054 
MisterFusion fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Aug 13, 2013 |
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Aug 13, 2013 01:33
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I'm wondering out loud here if there's any correlation between underpitching and needing a blowoff tube. Since I started recyling my cakes as my primary source of yeast I haven't had any problems (except I'm probably overpitching a bit, whatever though), but over the weekend we brewed a 10gallon batch and (definitely) underpitched with some 05, and that poo poo is spraying everywhere. Could just be a coincidence.
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Aug 13, 2013 02:39
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Shifty Pony posted:My favorite beer style by far is kolsch and no matter what I do I can't get WYeast 2565 to drop bright. I also would like to have an alternative to using gelatin or Super-Klear as I have a number of friends who are vegan so if that stuff touches the beer they can't have any. I brew a lot of Kolsch as well, and haven't found better way than whirfloc, fermenting in the upper 50's and racking to a secondary, and leaving that in the upper 50's for 3+ weeks. 2565 is my favorite Kolsch yeast, but it's pretty difficult to totally clear up. I was going to try gelatin in the next batch and see how that works in addition to this.
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Aug 13, 2013 03:14
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MisterFusion posted:
are you cooking it in the oven at all first or using it raw?  TRIP REPORTI bottled my cider tonight, and 1 gal batches are just SO much trouble :/ 2 gal cherry cider : still very dry, lacking a note of apple or cherry. the puree did nothing but add color. This one will need some back sweeteining with apple juice hopped cherry : WOW, the hops really made a difference here, no apple notes, but its drat tasty. debating on how to get some appletaste back in there, maybe a backsweeten but VERY slight cider: i added a cup of brown sugar to the gallon. and wow, it left a hint of sweetness in there. I enjoy this one as well. hopped cider: same as the cherry, still dry, but pretty tasty. Cant wait till this is all carbonated. I left a lot of cider behind.. i cant recover about a beers worth from the container, in a 5 gal batch that is nothing, but in 1 gal, its a big deal. I need to reserve these for really special taste experiments because its a bitch to bottle from them. I used about 1.5 tbsp of priming sugar in each batch, which should give it barleywine level of CO2
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Aug 13, 2013 03:32
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I recently made a batch of Craft-A-Brew's Honey Ale and everything was going fine, until suddenly the beer in the carboy became cloudy again two days ago. It has been in the carboy for 3.5 weeks now, and has been "clear" for the last week and a half. Could a temperature change have caused the sudden cloudiness? There has been a heat spike here,and it has been harder to keep my house cool. I suppose I'll just wait it out and bottle it once it clears again. Could popping it in the fridge help settle it?
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Aug 13, 2013 08:58
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Weird. I pitched more cider onto a yeast cake from a just bottled cider and put it in the fridge at lowish 60s. Didn't really keep tabs on it but pulled it after 5-6 days because I had to get a keg cold for a party. Now it is like 5 days after that and it appears to be fermenting...for the first time. Of course Nottingham is probably making all sorts of bad flavors at room temp. Oh wells.
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Aug 13, 2013 17:33
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Discomancer posted:I brew a lot of Kolsch as well, and haven't found better way than whirfloc, fermenting in the upper 50's and racking to a secondary, and leaving that in the upper 50's for 3+ weeks. 2565 is my favorite Kolsch yeast, but it's pretty difficult to totally clear up. I was going to try gelatin in the next batch and see how that works in addition to this. Yeah, it really is one of the worst case scenario beers for wanting clarity. It is too drat tasty though to stop brewing and stunning to look at when bright.
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Aug 13, 2013 18:19
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Just made an AMAZING cider. I've tried all sorts of methods, but this has the best results with the quickest turnaround. In a carboy, combine: 5 Gallons store bought apple juice (I used Great Value from Walmart) 1 quart of very very very dark brewed black tea 1/4 cup lime juice 1 packet Red Star Cote des Blancs yeast 2 tsp yeast nutrient the TINIEST bit of olive oil you can add (I dipped the tip of a toothpick in the oil and dropped it in the carboy) I let this sit and ferment for ~2 months (basically once it is clarified fully then it is ready to transfer), then I stabilized with campden and potassium sorbate. I added this to a keg which I refrigerated at 32* F for three days (my fridge has no room for a carboy, so I essentially was cold-crashing in the keg), then transferred that to a carboy for ~2 more weeks of conditioning. Finally, I added 5 containers of frozen concentrated apple juice to sweeten, kegged it, force carbonated it, and it was ready to drink! It is absolutely perfect: not overly sweet, good apple flavor, and very pleasant tannin and mild sourness. I really recommend anyone with a keg setup try this at least once, I know you won't regret it (plus it is very easy and cheap, ~$25 for everything, all it takes is time).
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Aug 13, 2013 19:34
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I'm going to be bottling a Sam Adams Boston Ale clone this weekend, using the East Coast Ale yeast strain. I'd like to reuse the cake immediately (my first time doing so). What styles would be good to pitch onto an East Coast Ale cake? I assume stouts, porters, and other particularly "ale-y" styles, but anything else? We've been making a lot of Pale Ales, and we were already planning a Russian Imperial Stout for the week after. Should we just save the cake for a week for that? And if we did so, would it be okay to just refrigerate it for that week, then pitch without making a starter?
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Aug 13, 2013 20:07
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 My latest beer, an amber ale brewed with 5 varities of hops all added late boil. This has a complex malt base with an excellent hop aroma that provides a nice touch to the maltineess. The recipe is available here. I highly recommend this if you want a crowd pleaser that will be a nice upgrade from the likes of Fat Tire. My plan the next time I brew this is to dry hop this with chinook and nugget and add pine needles to the boil. I also need to remember to add Irish moss to help with clarity. Midorka fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Aug 13, 2013 |
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Aug 13, 2013 20:44
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RagingBoner posted:1 quart of very very very dark brewed black tea That's pretty interesting. I wonder if I've been underestimating the importance of tannin and acid additions. If you think it's good with walmart juice then I bet it would be incredible with some real fresh pressed stuff.
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Aug 13, 2013 22:28
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Dispite two different yeasts,and the addition of honey,I havent tasted the difference in store juice vs cider. But I'll try one gallon test batches in the future to really get it down
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Aug 14, 2013 00:52
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Midorka posted:My plan the next time I brew this is to dry hop this with chinook and nugget and add pine needles to the boil. I also need to remember to add Irish moss to help with clarity. That's so weird, my coworker just asked me yesterday if I ever brewed with pine needles and I was like "wtf I've never heard of that but I guarantee someone has done it." Now I'm seeing it here like clockwork.
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Aug 14, 2013 02:43
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As someone who knows precisely dick about all-grain brewing, what advantages does the process have over partial-mash, apart from more control over the ingredients?Midorka posted:My plan the next time I brew this is to dry hop this with chinook and nugget and add pine needles to the boil. I also need to remember to add Irish moss to help with clarity. I assume pine needles would give the beer a pine taste, right? Because if so, I think I just found a new additive for my holiday season homebrew. Also, that beer looks amazing.
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Aug 14, 2013 03:15
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NEED TOILET PAPER posted:As someone who knows precisely dick about all-grain brewing, what advantages does the process have over partial-mash, apart from more control over the ingredients? Honestly, these days, not too much. I can think of a few specific techniques you just can't perfectly clone without all-grain, but they're spergy and some brewers question whether they're even worth the effort (to open another can of worms). Decoction mashing comes to mind. Or brewing with 100% undermodified heirloom German malts or some poo poo that requires a fussy multi-rest mash. In the past, extract--much like yeast--was god awful and simply going all-grain would make your beer dramatically better because your ingredients hadn't sat in a hot warehouse for 5 years. Nowadays you can buy super fresh extract from reputable manufacturers, and there's a wider variety than ever. You can get drat near any base malt you want as an extract, from pilsner through Munich. You still don't have complete control over what went into the extract and how it was mashed but with a little trial and error you can control for that. Brewing all-grain is also pretty fun, which counts for something. Brew-in-a-bag is another great technique that's a happy medium of the control of all-grain with the minimal gear investment of partial-mash. I don't do it but others in the thread do to great success.
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Aug 14, 2013 04:20
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What Doc said, but also it's literally half as expensive as extract once your equipment costs have paid for themselves - which they will quickly if you brew a lot.
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Aug 14, 2013 04:28
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Cpt.Wacky posted:That's pretty interesting. I wonder if I've been underestimating the importance of tannin and acid additions. If you think it's good with walmart juice then I bet it would be incredible with some real fresh pressed stuff. I don't say this lightly: I don't know how it could be any better. It's already better than any commercial cider I've ever bought, and I've tried EVERYTHING. Woodchuck, Hornsby's, Angry Orchard, Ace, Fox Barrel, Red's, all sorts of dry English imports... The only thing that is even close is J.K.'s Scrumpy and J.K.'s Solstice, and those tend to be WAY too sweet for me (but it varies from bottle to bottle, since it's unfiltered and organic). And to be more specific about my tannin addition, I used a family sized Lipton tea bag (these may be hard to find outside of the south, where there aren't entire grocery aisles only selling tea) and boiled it in 1.25 quarts of water for about 5-10 minutes. Edit: On the all-grain talk, it is also the only way to do decoction mashing, which is a more advanced brewing technique that gives different malt characteristics to your beers. RagingBoner fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 04:38
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fullroundaction posted:equipment costs have paid for themselves  Though to be fair you may actually accomplish this since you have a bunch of roommates and appear to brew like 5 times a week.RagingBoner posted:Edit: On the all-grain talk, it is also the only way to do decoction mashing, which is a more advanced brewing technique that gives different malt characteristics to your beers. Hey I mentioned that  not actually mad
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Aug 14, 2013 04:54
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Docjowles posted:Brewing all-grain is also pretty fun, which counts for something. Brew-in-a-bag is another great technique that's a happy medium of the control of all-grain with the minimal gear investment of partial-mash. I don't do it but others in the thread do to great success. I was just about to ask if there was a method like BIAB, glad you beat me to the punch  I think I'm going to take that up if it's a valid substitute for all-grain brewing, since generally the malt extracts are the single most expensive (and sort of replaceable) items on my homebrew shopping list. Hopefully my muslin bag can take the strain, and if not I'm pretty sure I could just do it slow and steady and just scoop the grains out of the bag after boiling with a sanitized spoon until there's few enough grains that I feel safe enough lifting the bag out of the pot.
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Aug 14, 2013 05:24
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fullroundaction posted:What Doc said, but also it's literally half as expensive as extract once your equipment costs have paid for themselves - which they will quickly if you brew a lot. Even extract brewing doesn't really cost a whole lot, even if you brew every couple of weeks or once a month. Really, even if you brewed every single day, it's still cheaper than buying beer.
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Aug 14, 2013 05:45
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NEED TOILET PAPER posted:I was just about to ask if there was a method like BIAB, glad you beat me to the punch I BIAB. For a while I used an $8 sheer white curtain and did a 24.25lb (and that's dry) grain bill in 9.8 gallons of water. In a 10 gallon pot. While I don't recommend that necessarily, I recommend it less so for the complete lack of headspace in the pot than I do for the grain bill. The sheet was fine, in fact. I've moved onto a professionally stitched bag with handles (as in I paid someone to make one for my pot size because working a sewing machine is sorcery to me). I use a ladder above the pot with a ratcheting s-hook suspended from the top of it and pull the bag out by the handles. Completely eliminates the physical aspect of it not to mention raising 35+ lbs of 150° grains being a dicey proposition to begin with. I bring this up every so often in this thread and I don't want to stuff it up beyond this unless anyone's got specific questions, but for NEED TOILET PAPER or anyone who's curious about my process and equipment, feel free to PM me.
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Aug 14, 2013 05:46
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RagingBoner posted:I don't say this lightly: I don't know how it could be any better. It's already better than any commercial cider I've ever bought, and I've tried EVERYTHING. Woodchuck, Hornsby's, Angry Orchard, Ace, Fox Barrel, Red's, all sorts of dry English imports... The only thing that is even close is J.K.'s Scrumpy and J.K.'s Solstice, and those tend to be WAY too sweet for me (but it varies from bottle to bottle, since it's unfiltered and organic). Have you tried anything from Crispin? My buddy swears by it. How much do you think the yeast selection mattered to your result? What temperature did you ferment at? NEED TOILET PAPER posted:I was just about to ask if there was a method like BIAB, glad you beat me to the punch MoreBeer makes a cheap bag suitable for BIAB. You can also spend more and get a sturdier bag custom-made for BIAB. wattershed posted:I've moved onto a professionally stitched bag with handles (as in I paid someone to make one for my pot size because working a sewing machine is sorcery to me). I use a ladder above the pot with a ratcheting s-hook suspended from the top of it and pull the bag out by the handles. Completely eliminates the physical aspect of it not to mention raising 35+ lbs of 150° grains being a dicey proposition to begin with. I've been following the thread for a while and don't recall seeing this ladder trick. Please continue stuffing up the thread with these ideas. A picture would be swell too.
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Aug 14, 2013 05:56
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I've moved on to AG BIAB, and will soon be moving on to making a proper mash tun when I can be bothered. Apart from the cost and the fun of more things to fiddle with, the best part for me was not having to deal with DME which just loves to go puff up in clouds and go EVERYWHERE, making a god awful mess that unless you immediately find and clean lest it go sticky and gross. It's definitely worth a try, given bags are usually cheap and pretty tough and pay for themselves pretty quickly if you already have a reasonably sized pot. The only awkward thing about it is trying to sparge (usually by pouring water over the hanging bag or dunk sparging into another pot), which really isn't necessarily worth the effort, and your volume requirements.
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Aug 14, 2013 07:06
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Have you tried anything from Crispin? My buddy swears by it. How much do you think the yeast selection mattered to your result? What temperature did you ferment at? I have tried Crispin, and it's quality stuff, but it's bit dry for me, and it's like $14 for a 22oz bottle. The yeast matters a lot, I find Cote des Blancs has a sweeter, more flavor-preserving finish than champagne yeast (which is just a nuclear option to create the driest poo poo possible) or other wine yeast varieties that I've tried. I fermented at room temperature, around 76*F.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:02
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