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Brewing a Maibock this weekend. 6 gallons 65-70% Efficiency 13 lbs Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian Pilsner 4 lbs Weyermann Dark Munich 4 oz Acid Malt 2 oz 4.1% Saphir hops (60 minutes) 1 oz 4.1% Saphir hops (10 minutes) 3 pkgs Fermantis Saflager 34/70 Ferment at 48F Does anyone think I need to add some hops at KO or will that make the beer too hoppy for the style?
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Apr 27, 2017 17:22
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LaserWash posted:Water Chemistry Nerds: Followup on this: If you're taking Bru'n Water's calculations for CaCl2 at face value and not baking that salt ahead of time you're actually undershooting your target on that particular salt for the same reason it was getting sticky. Two options that can help with this baking the salt at like 350 F for an hour before weighing it out  or keeping the CaCl2 in solution, using specific gravity to figure out the actual concentration. Another option that is more of an approximation is to assume that the salt is somewhere between a mono and dihydrate for the most part.
kirtar fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Apr 27, 2017 |
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Apr 27, 2017 17:26
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Power_of_the_glory posted:Brewing a Maibock this weekend. Having just visited Germany, I'd say no. Early hops only. Out of curiosity, what's that amount of acid malt for?
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Apr 27, 2017 22:48
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Kaiho posted:Having just visited Germany, I'd say no. Early hops only. Out of curiosity, what's that amount of acid malt for? 4 oz usually gets me in the pH range when using mostly pale malts with my RO water.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:55
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Gotcha, didn't think that you'd have full RO water. 
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Apr 28, 2017 09:53
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Cracked a bottle of the weissbier that I bottled last week to check on it. Turned out better than I was expecting given that I undershot the gravity by a bit (OG was ~1.040), and like an idiot I forgot I was only planning to use 0.5 oz of hops and dumped the whole 1 oz package in. 3 Gallon BIAB 3 lb PIlsner malt 3 lb American White Wheat 0.5/1 oz Halltertau Mittelfrueh (intended 0.5, added 1) FWH for 60. In retrospect given the use of pilsner malt, might have been better to boil for 90 to reduce DMS. 1 package Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen kirtar fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 23:45
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Just call it a Session American Weissbier. Okay, I'll leave now.
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Apr 29, 2017 01:41
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LaserWash posted:Just call it a Session American Weissbier. That'll be in the 2020 BJCP guidelines.
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Apr 29, 2017 01:49
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Alarbus posted:That'll be in the 2020 BJCP guidelines. No kidding, been studying for the tasting exam that is being held this weekend. The number of styles that have appeared from the 2008 guidelines are so stupid. Can't we all admit that when you gently caress up gravity it's not a session IPA, when you make it hazy it's not a hazy IPA, and when you gently caress up the color it isn't a "insert color gently caress up here" IPA. Granted the first two aren't "styles"..... yet.... (Written as I sip my Black IPA/Cascadian dark ale watching baseball this evening) edit: RIP, it was the last pour from the keg. LaserWash fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Apr 29, 2017 |
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Apr 29, 2017 01:58
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LaserWash posted:No kidding, been studying for the tasting exam that is being held this weekend. The number of styles that have appeared from the 2008 guidelines are so stupid. Can't we all admit that when you gently caress up gravity it's not a session IPA, when you make it hazy it's not a hazy IPA, and when you gently caress up the color it isn't a "insert color gently caress up here" IPA. Granted the first two aren't "styles"..... yet.... RIP. I guess on the bright side I will be able to work through this ~3.9% ABV weissbier pretty quickly.
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Apr 29, 2017 04:08
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LaserWash posted:No kidding, been studying for the tasting exam that is being held this weekend. The number of styles that have appeared from the 2008 guidelines are so stupid. Can't we all admit that when you gently caress up gravity it's not a session IPA, when you make it hazy it's not a hazy IPA, and when you gently caress up the color it isn't a "insert color gently caress up here" IPA. Granted the first two aren't "styles"..... yet.... Mostly, I just really don't envy the judges that have to slog through 10,000 "NEIPA"s that are just lovely, cloudy, oxidized, yeast slurry IPAs these days. Call me west coast-fashioned, but I feel like the success rate of people that claim that style is crazy low.
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Apr 29, 2017 06:39
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Glottis posted:Mostly, I just really don't envy the judges that have to slog through 10,000 "NEIPA"s that are just lovely, cloudy, oxidized, yeast slurry IPAs these days. Call me west coast-fashioned, but I feel like the success rate of people that claim that style is crazy low. In fairness they probably do it every time a trend pops up. Ten thousand each lovely boring double IPAs, imperial whatevers, sours, NEIPAs, etc.
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Apr 29, 2017 13:58
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the yeti posted:In fairness they probably do it every time a trend pops up. Ten thousand each lovely boring double IPAs, imperial whatevers, sours, NEIPAs, etc. That is part of what makes it actually a trend. At some point, we'll end up with a piney, hazy, wheat fueled, belgian yeasted, wild microbial beer craze and then the world will implode and we can all go back to just drinking beer. That said, I found a nice and ripe 4.5 lb Papaya at the grocery that will be making its way partially into about a gallon of the Gose that I need to bottle. Cutting and freezing today, then I'll puree it tomorrow and add a gallon of the gose on top with some pectic enzyme. Then I'll bottle what remains of about seven gallons tomorrow. I really need to brew something. The Czech Pilsner I did a while back turned out pretty nice, and if I keep drinking more than I brew I won't have any beer left. London Porter is on deck for whichever day looks like it won't be 20mph+ winds this week. I need to just do two this week so I don't run out again in a month. The never ending struggle to have enough beer.
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Apr 29, 2017 17:29
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If you're judging, just brew and enter beers in the categories you don't want to judge. Our former club president complains about judging Belgian string and IPA every time. Because he doesn't drink those, he doesn't brew those, and thus he'll never judge German alt or English bitter.
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Apr 29, 2017 17:47
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So I'm planning on making some mead. Will probably do 2 1-gallon batches, one with 3lbs of average golden honey, and one something like 1lb pale honey, 1lb amber, 1lb buckwheat. I've brewed a lot of all grain batches, maybe 60+ at this point, so I'm fairly experienced when it comes to methodology and sanitation, and have lots of equipment. I've done a bunch of reading but just want to check in with goons, any tips or things that are easy to overlook when doing mead for the first time? This is the summer of new sugars for me, I've never done anything other than beer, but I'm planning on doing mead, grape wine and maybe cider/apple wine too! Very excited.
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Apr 30, 2017 07:20
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:So I'm planning on making some mead. Will probably do 2 1-gallon batches, one with 3lbs of average golden honey, and one something like 1lb pale honey, 1lb amber, 1lb buckwheat. I've brewed a lot of all grain batches, maybe 60+ at this point, so I'm fairly experienced when it comes to methodology and sanitation, and have lots of equipment. I've done a bunch of reading but just want to check in with goons, any tips or things that are easy to overlook when doing mead for the first time? Yeast nutrient. Yeast nutrient and healthy yeast, and loads of it. Honey is a bastard to ferment in any quantity in my experience, though champagne yeast will chomp through it. Don't use champagne yeast though - it dries it out too much IMO. edit: So I brewed for the first time with a new setup yesterday, and for the first time in something like 18 months. All went well, and I hit my OG (1.058) just fine but ended up with 14 liters instead of the expected 20. I guess it's time to confess that I didn't actually measure my sparge water (fly sparge) and my new brew pot doesn't have volume markings so I had to eyeball the volume for the boil. I'm just confused how I ended up bang on the gravity I wanted, but with so much less volume. Kaiho fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 08:53
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:So I'm planning on making some mead. Will probably do 2 1-gallon batches, one with 3lbs of average golden honey, and one something like 1lb pale honey, 1lb amber, 1lb buckwheat. I've brewed a lot of all grain batches, maybe 60+ at this point, so I'm fairly experienced when it comes to methodology and sanitation, and have lots of equipment. I've done a bunch of reading but just want to check in with goons, any tips or things that are easy to overlook when doing mead for the first time? I am also going to be brewing mead for the first time soon; I am using the Joe's Ancient Orange recipe that calls for bread yeast. I was just at a farmer's market this morning and the good local stuff surprisingly isn't much more expensive than the bulk redgum stuff I found in the restaurant supply section of my local Asian grocery, so I may try that sooner rather than later. If you're looking for another low cost/hassle type of fermentation to check out, try rice wine. Basically you steam some rice, grind up some yeast/mould balls you can buy at your local Asian grocery (or failing that, online), sprinkle the powder over the rice, then cover and let it sit for 3-4 weeks. Seems to be generally pretty forgiving of iffy sanitisation/temp control. I'm a few days into my first batch, disappointingly no liquid in the bottom yet, but from skimming a few hundred pages of the homebrewtalk thread, that's not unusual.
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Apr 30, 2017 12:26
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:So I'm planning on making some mead. Will probably do 2 1-gallon batches, one with 3lbs of average golden honey, and one something like 1lb pale honey, 1lb amber, 1lb buckwheat. I've brewed a lot of all grain batches, maybe 60+ at this point, so I'm fairly experienced when it comes to methodology and sanitation, and have lots of equipment. I've done a bunch of reading but just want to check in with goons, any tips or things that are easy to overlook when doing mead for the first time? All these other things tend to be so very much easier than AG beer, so you're in for a treat. As Kaiho said, yeast nutrient, but don't forget the oxygen. Make sure to get plenty in at the start, as the long cycle needed to ferment that honey will require it. Have an extra gallon container for transferring, as you won't want it to sit on those lees for the longer secondary. I wouldn't bother with bread yeast (even though that popular Joe's recipe will tell you to do it). We have a plethora of options, and almost all of them will give you better results than using bread yeast. I used D47 in the one I have clearing (I think it was d47), and I'm expecting it to be on the dry side, but not bone dry. I used a uninteresting wildflower honey. If I were to do another batch, I'd get some interesting honey, and use a more interesting yeast. If you want to take a run at the Apple wine that a few goons in the thread have now taken a run at, it's called Liquid Gold and it turned out pretty great: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3437782&userid=62024&perpage=40&pagenumber=9#post451995555
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Apr 30, 2017 16:45
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I ended up with a bit extra wort from a hefeweizen I just brewed, so I've got it fermenting in a growler. Any ideas on something to add as a little side batch? It's 50/50 pilsner/wheat malt, about 13 IBUs of some German hop, and WLP300
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Apr 30, 2017 19:58
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Toebone posted:I ended up with a bit extra wort from a hefeweizen I just brewed, so I've got it fermenting in a growler. Any ideas on something to add as a little side batch? It's 50/50 pilsner/wheat malt, about 13 IBUs of some German hop, and WLP300 Honey, fruits, apple juice, grapefruit juice. I was toying with the idea of how to make a 50/50 ish grapefruit soda/malt beverage. I actually plan on doing a fairly strong pale, dosing it with potassium metabisulfite to kill the yeast, then blending with a grapefruit soda in a keg. Premade radlers for summertime sound really nice.
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Apr 30, 2017 20:31
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I learned the hard way not to rush a fermentation. I submitted a DIPA to a local competition and the judges unanimously told me it tasted like buttery rear end. I didn't think it was thaaat bad, but my sinuses have been full of gunk for the last month. Things I think I can do to avoid diacetyl in the future: 1) Get a real oxygenation setup 2) better fermentation temp control - I've been using a tub of water and evaporative cooling but it's time for a dedicated fermentation fridge 3) patience They also told me the hops were stale. Could that have been exacerbated by the diacetly or anything I did? I bought them in December and they had been in the freezer the whole time.
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May 1, 2017 04:39
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User Error posted:I learned the hard way not to rush a fermentation. I submitted a DIPA to a local competition and the judges unanimously told me it tasted like buttery rear end. I didn't think it was thaaat bad, but my sinuses have been full of gunk for the last month. Oxygenation isn't all that important on the homebrew scale. There has been a lot of experimentation on it lately and good aeration is just about as effective. That being said, I still do it on higher gravity batches, but I already own an oxygenation setup and oxygen is cheap. With higher gravity beers, you definitely want to focus on a healthy yeast pitch as well. What yeast did you use and did you make a starter? Temp control is one of the best upgrades you can make. If you have the room for a setup, it's a solid investment and not even that expensive. My used chest freezer and the controller I built cost me a total of about $100. As for the hops being stale, were your hops vacuum sealed or just measured out in a ziploc? If it was the latter, that could be your problem. Ziplocs are not a great long term storage method. All of my hops in my freezer are vacuum sealed.
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May 1, 2017 16:48
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Moved my honey malt dry hopped to the keg this weekend. I'm going to let it sit and lager/clarify for a few weeks before trying it out. The funktown Amber I made is ready to pull from. Going to recharge my CO2 during lunch and clean all the lines tonight and hook it up to charge and hopefully be tasting this weekend. I have no idea how its going to turn out. Next up in the queue is a pale farmhouse again. I plan on pulling some sour beer from my barrel to blend with it and then refill the barrel with the rest. My 5 gallons barrel of cider has the thickest pellicle I have ever seen on it. In 2 weeks it hits the year mark. Going to strain and bottling as a still cider. It has some beautiful wine notes to it so far. Nice and sour and a little funky. Lots of Apple of course and really dry. I'm going to blend some tannins back into it for body and hope it comes out well.
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May 1, 2017 19:13
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Just a thought. When kegs/fittings aren't leaking, CO2 in my keezer lasts a long loving time.
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May 2, 2017 01:20
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robotsinmyhead posted:Just a thought. When kegs/fittings aren't leaking, CO2 in my keezer lasts a long loving time. Seriously. Really going through all my gas lines and such saved me so much time, money, and frustration. I wasted money upgrading to a 10 pound bottle when 1/10th the amount of money in o-rings and keg lube would have worked fine.
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May 2, 2017 01:29
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Oh this is as good a time as any to post some fun stuff about AHA stuff. Recently, a friend and guy in my homebrew club put in a spiced mead, and another friend put in beers for competition. One was a Spiced Mead (entered as a Semi-dry Mead (24B)) and the other was a Milk Stout (16A) The mead, I think, was either a typical Fall Spice Mead, or a Christmas Spice thing - it had a lot of nutmeg in it. It was fantastic and ended up with a 41. Judges notes ended up being things like "Superb" and "Don't change a thing", but it didn't go through because more typical, basic 24B examples passed it and there isn't a category for Spiced Meads. Similarly, the Milk Stout was dogged by classification. I brewed a mirrored 5gal batch with a friend and despite being what I think was technically the best beer I've ever made, it kinda floundered. I'm lacking some details here, but it MAY have been entered as a wood-aged beer (33A), with the simple descriptor as "Whiskey Barrel-Aged Milk Stout" which scored like a 37 due to "mild whiskey flavors". The beer was aged in a whiskey barrel (3rd cycle) and has a really smooth, mild barrel quality to it rather than the typical HOT 1st run barrel beer quality. edit: my category numbers are off because I don't have the sheets with me. robotsinmyhead fucked around with this message at 11:11 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 02:34
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robotsinmyhead posted:Oh this is as good a time as any to post some fun stuff about AHA stuff. Was that competition using the 2008 guidelines/categorization? kirtar fucked around with this message at 04:00 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 03:34
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kirtar posted:Was that competition using the 2008 guidelines/categorization? No, I just don't have the notes on-hand.
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May 2, 2017 11:08
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Thanks for the tips on yeast and nutrient re: meads. One thing I'm still unsure of is how to control/predict fermentation? I'm also now thinking I want to do a cyser and cider, and want to be able to know the abv I'm targeting in advance and whether it will turn out dry or sweet. Is it just a case of assuming all the sugar will be eaten (like FG is always 1.000?) and backsweetening if it's too dry, or what?
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May 2, 2017 14:17
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Read up on the yeast variety you'll be using. The WYeast mead ones have ranges they post.
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May 2, 2017 14:19
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robotsinmyhead posted:No, I just don't have the notes on-hand. Assuming they were using 2015 then, it probably should have been entered as specialty wood-aged beer (33B) if it was available, since wood-aged beer (33A) does specify that it is for aging that does not impart flavor from previous use.
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May 2, 2017 17:48
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 Unless you score a 49 or 50, any legitimate judge on a BJCP competition score sheet should give you SOME kind of advice at the bottom of the page. The advice I read from doing my studies for the BJCP tasting exam is that you should give at least one piece of advice for every category you fall off from perfect. (ie. Outstanding->Excellent->Very Good->Good->Fair->Problematic).
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May 2, 2017 18:16
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Despite my loving up regarding Style Guidelines, the point was that getting your beer in the right category is often just as important as the beer itself. There will be beers that are on the fence and they will not fare well, all else being equal. Since these entries weren't specifically my fuckup, I get to  and move on.
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May 2, 2017 18:27
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See, I get to and say, screw style guidelines as fact. The word itself suggests that it's a guide, not a requirement. All the love the BJCP gets is wasted once you have to actually try to categorize an otherwise good beer into categories that are either a) too broad or b) not anywhere near what the actual beer is. If they were to focus on the qualities of the beer instead of getting hung up on category, it would be a much more useful process. You'd still have 40 NEIPAs entered, but instead of worrying about category, you could just taste it and rate it based on the description of the beer when it's submitted. For example, a NEIPA would be a hazy, juicy, citrus IPA that could easily sit alongside a NW IPA with a description of clear, piney, heavily hopped, IPA. They could still use most of the rating sheet as it is today, and we wouldn't have people complaining about how to categorize things that don't have categories. Get rid of the one line at the bottom about Stylistic Accuracy and it could be useful. You could just take the beers as they are instead of trying to sort IPA into seven different categories. Granted, you'd have to retrain everyone to stop giving a poo poo about perfect style (there is no platonic ideal here to achieve, just fantastic beer), and just go with the broad style and score based on the beers that have the best qualities within that broad category.
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May 2, 2017 18:48
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As with any form of competition, a good amount of it is playing the game. Did some brewing with whole hops yesterday. What a pain in the rear end. Pellets may sludge up but in all other respects their way more practical imo. Edit: Jhet posted:See, I get to That works for styles with huge variety and rapid mutability, like IPA, but doesn't work as well for other styles of beer like Kolsch, which is an imitative style with fairly stringent requirements. Also regarding NEIPA, the current style guidelines were written just before they got super popular, and unfortunately that means there isn't a great place for them to go. I think the introduction to the guidelines addresses that issue pretty well, but reading and understanding that versus actually practicing it at the judging table are two different things. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a substantial revision of the 2015 guidelines in a couple of years, much like how the old ones were the "2008 revision of the 2004 guidelines". epic bird guy fucked around with this message at 19:01 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 18:51
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SCA Enthusiast posted:As with any form of competition, a good amount of it is playing the game. My friend and I have been growing hops for a few years and not ever really using them. I have like 2lbs of whole-cone Cascade in my freezer from 2016 harvest and every time I think I wanna use them, I remember the mess. Then I remembered that since I BIAB, I can experiment with First Wort Hopping and just throw the cones right into the bag. Win-win-win!
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May 2, 2017 19:14
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robotsinmyhead posted:My friend and I have been growing hops for a few years and not ever really using them. I have like 2lbs of whole-cone Cascade in my freezer from 2016 harvest and every time I think I wanna use them, I remember the mess. Then I remembered that since I BIAB, I can experiment with First Wort Hopping and just throw the cones right into the bag. Win-win-win! I have a second mash screen that I put in my boil kettle. It catches the whole hops and helps filter out the cold break as well. Pellets just leave me with sludge. I suppose I could whirlpool it and use a trub catcher, but I'll just keep buying whole hops instead. Anyone who doesn't want their whole leaf hops can send them to me. I'd even pay for the shipping cost (don't tell my wife). RE BJCP NEIPA was just the example. What do you do with a Belgian IPA? Or just look at the mess that wild microbes cause with categories. My point was not that its banal to brew beer in a certain way, but that categorizing it for the sake of judging such a specific thing is annoying. What happens if I want to age my Kolsch in a Hungarian oak barrel that was used to make apple schnapps and I decide I want to use it when it's nearly neutral. It's no longer technically a Kolsch, but yet it is and it adds a great fruit character to the subtle malt, but then I lost some of the hops, so I also use a small dry hop to gently bring back some of the aroma. The use of wood makes it a 33a, but really it's better suited to 5b. Or wait, there's some other alcohol flavor, so it should be 33b, but it'll never compare well to bourbon barrel stouts. It could be the best Kolsch ever, but it would never win awards because it's being shoe horned into a specific style that's been broken down to even more specificity or somehow less. As a homebrewer especially, there are so many techniques and interesting ways to play around with beer. So many of which would never fit a style, because styles aren't really there to be played with, they're there functioning as that ideal form of the beer instead. I'm not advocating for the removal of style descriptions, but rather an approach that allows for moving forward, not looking backward. The next craze won't fit into whichever next set of guidelines either, because the crazes become that way because someone was playing with their food again and came up with something cool that tastes great. One of the base problems with the way I'm thinking is that people love quantifying these things. So putting numbers to beer (or wine or whiskey or etc) won't be ending, but maybe it could be more inviting instead of headache causing to the people trying new things instead of just staying where it's already been done (there is merit here too, but not merit that needs to be quantified). /rant. I need to brew something.
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May 2, 2017 19:56
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How bad is it if a fermenter gets to temps in the mid 80s during the last part of fermentation? It's a saison with wyeast3711 and it sat at around 74 for four weeks but sunday morning my AC broke and temps inside got kinda warm. I haven't checked inside to see what's happened but figured I'd ask around. I hear the guys at St. Somewhere do open air fermentation in ambient FL temps so i figured two days of warm temperatures won't spoil the beer, but I'm a worrywort and don't want to waste a batch. But if I gotta dump it, no big deal because I still have hops and wood for dry hopping. Also when dry hopping, what do you guys use to weigh down the hop bags? I'm thinking of just finding solid glass marbles and boiling them.
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May 2, 2017 20:18
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Spanish Manlove posted:when dry hopping, what do you guys use to weigh down the hop bags? I'm thinking of just finding solid glass marbles and boiling them. Spare stainless steel parts from my bucket o'plumbing bits. Nipples, barbs, elbows, and so on. Boil or just torch them to sanitize.
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May 2, 2017 20:50
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A glass marble could explode during or after boiling so probably don't use that. If you star san-ed it it would probably be fine.
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May 2, 2017 21:01
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