|
Just bottled up the Florida orange blossom honey mead. Crystal clear, very, very deep orange when it's in the carboy, but lighter in the glass. EC-1118 again, 18.9% ABV, I'm getting lucky with this content. Not even remotely hot tasting, but I'm used to, erm, testing it every few weeks or so. Trying it out on virgin mead people tomorrow, that'll let me know if it's gotta bottle age. Just in time, I'm moving on Monday. Good fortune, there's a local beekeeper who sells honey at a roadside stand where I'm moving, looking forward to having a real job that affords me the chance to run more than one batch at a time and compare. [edit] 
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2018 04:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 19:44 |
|
|
We buy ultra high purity water at work in 2.5 L amber glass bottles. Most of the empty ones get binned so I held onto a few to bring home to do some small batches of mead or whatever in. As I'm walking home today, carrying two of these bottles, I pass this old bloke who's throwing out a bunch of 5 L glass carboys! Used to make fruit wine but now his wife's making him throw them out.   Gonna make some bin wine
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2018 18:50
|
|
|
Rozzbot posted:We buy ultra high purity water at work in 2.5 L amber glass bottles. Most of the empty ones get binned so I held onto a few to bring home to do some small batches of mead or whatever in. Bummer for him, score for you. Bin wine is surprisingly delicious. Those are some nice looking glass bottles too.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2018 19:02
|
|
|
Wanna make wine in those
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2018 20:31
|
|
|
What, suddenly 63% efficiency? Did my malt supplier shortchange me a kilogram of pilsner malt or something? I used the same procedure as always :\ I think I'm going to go back to the old brewshop I frequented, I've been getting some really inconsistent results recently with the new one. I mean, it's probably me, but it could be the crush. thotsky fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jun 23, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2018 23:46
|
|
|
It's probably the crush. When I went from having the LHBS crush it to milling my own, I went from 60% to 90% efficiency. It makes a difference.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2018 14:55
|
|
|
Possibly silly question -- does this water report have all the necessary info to build a water profile from?
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2018 18:55
|
|
|
triple clutcher posted:Possibly silly question -- does this water report have all the necessary info to build a water profile from? Possibly, although some of the data is split up between the two water sources. For example, alkalinity and hardness are listed only for Skaneateles Lake, but some of the key cations (calcium and magnesium) are only listed for Lake Ontario. Given how water your water is sourced (primarily Skaneateles with Ontario as a backup), I'd probably just use as much as the Skaneateles data as possible and fill in with Ontario stuff as needed.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2018 19:38
|
|
|
triple clutcher posted:Possibly silly question -- does this water report have all the necessary info to build a water profile from? Looks like it, though the numbers you want may be a little buried.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2018 19:40
|
|
|
A long-lost friend recently moved back into town and we've been spending a lot of time together. This weekend, he got to tag along to a beer festival where my club was pouring and he's crazy about it now and wants to try his hand at a beer. I told him my personal #1 new brewer rule - Keep It Simple, Stupid (brew something easy), so he's settled on a Cream Ale. Anyone got a good recipe for me? I did a little browsing last night and found some really idiotic and overly-complicated ones (6 malts? 7.3% Cream Ales?) I'd like to keep this to 2-3 Malts, 1-2 hops, US-05 so he can concentrate on technique rather than fretting about all the other stuff right off. It's not my style, and oddly enough, not many places make them so it's hard to find good examples. His favorite was from a place in SC, but he couldn't recall the name.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 13:13
|
|
|
robotsinmyhead posted:A long-lost friend recently moved back into town and we've been spending a lot of time together. This weekend, he got to tag along to a beer festival where my club was pouring and he's crazy about it now and wants to try his hand at a beer. I told him my personal #1 new brewer rule - Keep It Simple, Stupid (brew something easy), so he's settled on a Cream Ale. If you want to be a little less traditional, I'd go with maybe 25 IBU of a more 'modern' hop ( I like Motueka ) at FWH and a little more at flameout.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 14:04
|
|
|
That's pretty much what I've done. You can cut in some 6-row if you want, but it works fine with just 2-row and corn. S-04 is my favorite yeast for it, but I haven't tried the White Labs cream ale blend. Once he's done this one, mention that there's this thing called a Kentucky Common which is basically a cream ale with rye. He may find he likes that style too.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 15:06
|
|
|
Agreed with the KISS rule. I'd add that good beer comes from good ingredients. I have done a cream ale I liked with a mix of American 2-row ale malt, German Pilsner malt, flaked corn or rice, and Cascade hops. I really, really like the character I get from White Labs' Cream Ale Blend (WLP080?). If he did not want to jump straight into all-grain brewing, some extra pale or Pilsner DME and some corn sugar could sub in for the mash. I think Cream Ale is an underappreciated style, TBH.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 15:08
|
|
|
Jo3sh posted:Agreed with the KISS rule. I'd add that good beer comes from good ingredients. Nearly all of my beer recipes begin as either a preprohibition lager, helles, cream ale, or imperial milk stout and then I adjust to what I need. Seems to work well.  I am slowly making a transition to RootShoot malting for their Genie and Odyssey malt. It’s ridiculously good if you can find it. Genie works as a great light toast 2-row with better extraction and fermentation efficiency. Odyssey is a superior version Weyerman pils with a fresher and crisper flavor. Highly recommend both.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 15:20
|
|
|
This weekend I'll be brewing for the first time since...early April? drat. I'm way too busy  Planning on a v2 of a stout recipe I'm playing with and a saison for the rest of the summer. I dunno, probably a dash of rye and 2row for the saison recipe? Something simple like you guys are talking about haha.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 15:29
|
|
|
KISS rule got slam dunk tested this weekend. Another brewclub member got his GF interested. She's very eager and has a good palate, but his beers are middling-to-bad, and I'm afraid she's taking too much of his advice. She wanted to do a "Firecracker Pale Ale" and they decided to put red-hot candies in the primary (I think) and it came out loving terrible. Some sort of violently astringent off flavors. Either way, we're trying to encourage her to do her own reading and maybe she'll fix HIS beers as well. As for my new padawan, we'll be using my gear, so I'm going to introduce him to Brew in a Bag all-grain, but I'll show him the traditional mash tun setup as well so he understands the mashing process. On the opposite side of KISS, I finished and served most of my new Blueberry beer this week and it was extremely good. It ended up being a Kettle-Soured Wheat Milkshake Shandy. I did my normal 50/50 Wheat/Pale base, kettle soured with goodbelly, fermented with a half gallon of blueberry juice, then kegged with 1lb of Lactose, 3/4c of Vanilla, and another half gallon of black cherry juice. No hops. It's really stunning, but it's verging on not really being a beer anymore. We've been pouring for these local events as a club lately and I'm gaining a bit of notoriety for these kettle soured beers, so much so that I don't even have time to brew anything else this summer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 15:40
|
|
|
gamera009 posted:I am slowly making a transition to RootShoot malting for their Genie and Odyssey malt. It’s ridiculously good if you can find it. Cool. I just sent them a message asking if they have any distributors in SoCal. Barring that, I may have to find a reason to make a trip to NE Colorado. Have you tried their Metcalfe pale ale malt? That sounds right up my alley.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 15:56
|
|
|
robotsinmyhead posted:She wanted to do a "Firecracker Pale Ale" and they decided to put red-hot candies in the primary (I think) and it came out loving terrible. Some sort of violently astringent off flavors. Lol, It works for flavored vodka, so it'll work for beer, riiiiiight? Although that doesn't sound like a bad idea for a beer flavor... I'd try adding cinnamon (or mint?) flavoring only, trying to add a spice like cinnamon into the primary seems like it would be a PITA to not get off flavors.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 16:51
|
|
|
Regular cinnamon is so cheap and has a long usage history in beers (usually novel stouts) that it's a bit perplexing to me that they'd want to add all that artificial poo poo in there. I think they got the idea because we'd had a bottled bomber that was primed with an Atomic Fireball instead of priming sugar, and another with candy root beer barrels.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2018 19:02
|
|
|
Jo3sh posted:Cool. I just sent them a message asking if they have any distributors in SoCal. Barring that, I may have to find a reason to make a trip to NE Colorado. Not yet, but we're in the process of securing a contract, so I may be able to ask the rep to send over a 50# bag to play with.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2018 03:03
|
|
|
Simple Cream Ale recipe completed 80/20 2-Row/Flaked Corn 17ibu of homegrown whole leaf Cascade in as FWH (0.6oz) 1.051 OG US-05 Adding 1/4c of Vanilla at bottling (I'll have to make sure I do an offset on the priming sugar) Normally, I'd be against adding something like vanilla to a beer like this, but it's my friend's first beer and he has Anosmia (no sense of smell), so we're making some concessions on his behalf. We're doing this recipe as simple as possible because it's his first beer and it's supposed to be like 105 degrees when we brew it. If we do it again, I'd love to add a little C-10 and more specialized yeast.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 13:45
|
|
|
gamera009 posted:Not yet, but we're in the process of securing a contract, so I may be able to ask the rep to send over a 50# bag to play with. Cool, I will be interested to hear your results if you get a chance to play around with it. I haven't heard back yet on SoCal distribution though. robotsinmyhead posted:Adding 1/4c of Vanilla at bottling (I'll have to make sure I do an offset on the priming sugar) I don't think vanilla extract has any sugar in it, so I would be surprised if you have to offset the sugars for carbonation. Maybe I am misunderstanding, though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 17:06
|
|
|
I had to double check that. One of the bottles I have has added sugar, the others don't.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 17:16
|
|
|
Well, poo poo. It appears I am actually 100% wrong. Even the good extract I get from Penzey's has sugar in it. Weird.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 18:28
|
|
|
The good news is that, even in 4Tbsp, that's only about 6.4g sugar (assuming it's sucrose) out of the 146g of Corn Sugar I'll use for the priming. Sucrose is a bit stronger than Corn Sugar, so I'm gonna round it off to like 7g equivalent, so 139g + vanilla = priming. Pretty insignificant. It amounts to ~0.1vol at this amount.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 19:01
|
|
|
Now that I have fermentation temperature control, what does everyone cold crash to? I'm guessing the mini fridge I have will probably only get down to the high 30s. Does anyone have suggestions on how to sterilize cucumber juice? Once I cold crash, I'm going to start mixing small parts to get an idea of what tastes good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 22:22
|
|
|
calandryll posted:Now that I have fermentation temperature control, what does everyone cold crash to? I'm guessing the mini fridge I have will probably only get down to the high 30s. Potassium metabisulfite or an appropriate amount of a campden tablet in the juice. It won't sterilize it, but it will get it to a sufficiently microbial unfriendly place. Make sure to take a gravity reading of your juice, as cucumbers should have some sugars in it, but nearly as much as most fruits.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 22:29
|
|
|
calandryll posted:Now that I have fermentation temperature control, what does everyone cold crash to? The colder you can get it, the faster and more effective the crash will be. I think my ferment fridge drops down to about 34 with its current settings, and that works fine for me - but I could get it lower if I twiddled the knobs some. Just don't freeze the beer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 22:33
|
|
|
calandryll posted:Now that I have fermentation temperature control, what does everyone cold crash to? I'm guessing the mini fridge I have will probably only get down to the high 30s.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2018 23:05
|
|
|
A co-worker has a soda stream that he lets me use and we depleted the CO2 canister. Since I have a kegerator at home for my homebrew I looked into ways to refill it using my tanks instead of paying so much for the refills. I found this product, and the instructions here. In the video, he kind of just connects everything and leaves it filling until he don't hear it fillin' no more. Is this safe? Or is there a better solution out there overall?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 17:50
|
|
|
I didn't watch the video but does he use a scale? As long as you're not going over the rated weight for the tank you're filling it should be fine. Though when I've filled tanks I've always had trouble getting them to that point because the gas would freeze in the line and I'd have to blow it out a bunch of times. Maybe we had a lovely filler so ymmv.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 18:00
|
|
|
He does not use a scale which is what concerns me. In fact he walks away for several minutes and walks back up and says he doesn't hear it hissing anymore so it must be full! I feel like this is disaster waiting to happen, no?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 18:09
|
|
|
I guess not if the soda maker's canister just uses pressurized gas rather than liquid-state CO2, and if you're just transferring from the headspace of an upright tank I imagine that's the only way it works -- recharging the cylinder to equal the headspace pressure of the 5# cylinder. Since you're not actually transferring any liquid state CO2 there should be no danger.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 18:19
|
|
|
It depends on the filling tank to have a dip tube to push the liquid to the sodastream bottle
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 18:23
|
|
|
Interesting I did not realize that's how that was done.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 22:04
|
|
|
Thanks guys! Another random question. I don’t normally do this but I have 2.5 gallons of kind of an experimental beer pictured below. The malt was all DME because my friend had nothing to brew with but he wanted to brew with me while I did my all grain. Hopped with some random stuff like williamette and some other pellets I had. Fermented nicely for a few weeks. It was kind of bitter when we moved it to secondary so we added a bunch of frozen fruit like raspberries and blueberries. This is what it looks like ~2 weeks later. Drain pour? It actually smells really good. I don’t now what to do. My other beer came out great. This was just a random afterthought. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 22:05
|
|
|
Is that mold or just foam?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 22:12
|
|
|
Looks like a pellicle if you look toward the bottom of the pic. Congrats you're making a sour! (could be wrong its hard to tell)
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 22:18
|
|
|
  Maybe mold?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 22:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 19:44 |
|
|
Looks moldy 2 me. How does it smell?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2018 22:30
|
|