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Hello new brewers! If you're thinking about homebrewing, stop thinking, just do it! Best hobby ever. I started about a year and a half ago with extract + steeped grain (the so-called "mini-mash"), but moved to all-grain brewing after two batches. It's easy, fun, and gives you more control. My secret is that I read just about everything published on beer. Thus I will do some book reviews. Beginner's books: The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing (3rd edition) by Charlie Papazian: A classic beginner's text. Well, it was classic in 1990, now it's just kind of outdated. Plus, there's Charlie himself, a huge fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-relax-and-have-a-homebrew hippie. If that sounds like your style, this is your perfect intro text. How to Brew (3rd edition) by John Palmer: The new classic beginner's text. Palmer was/is an engineer and so this book leans heavily towards the science side of brewing. If math scares you, stick to Papazian. It's also available for free in the first edition. If you're considering going all-grain, you want to read up on how to build a mash-tun from Palmer, not Papazian. Intermediate books: OK so you've got a few batches under your belt, and want to start making some recipes. There are two must-read books here: Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher: This is just a straight up amazing book. I have learned more about different types of malts and recipe design from this book more than any other. Mosher is a weird one: he's in love with historical beer research, but he likes to break those conventions when it suits him. My single favorite brewing book. Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainascheff: A good book and general style guide. I start recipes from here now. Classic Beer Style Series by various: A lot of these are made obsolete by Brewing Classic Styles, but some of them have a lot of traction still. They give histories of the style, plus commercial examples and how they're brewed by the pros. The series is very hit-or-miss; you really have to watch out. George Fix's book on Oktoberfest is crap, while Dornbusch's books on Helles and Altbier are amazing. Greg Warner's books on German Wheat and Kolsch are great too. If you're curious about a really specialized style, these are the books to go to, but ask someone if they've read it first before you spend money on 'em. Culture and craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition by various: These are all really good. Recommended if you like Belgians (and what beer nerd doesn't). Advanced Books: These books are packed with information but are not light reading. Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels: Good book, but intense reading. It's not a recipe book, first off: It's a statistical survey of what award-winning beers used in their grist. It's quite interesting, but get Zainascheff's book first. The Brewer's Companion by Randy Mosher: If you too fell in love with Randy Mosher in Radical Brewing, it's imperative you find this book. Classic mashing schedules (including the traditional ridiculously long Czech triple), lots of compressed information here. If you're an all-grain brewer, own this book. New Brewing Lager Beer by Greg Noonan: This book will gently caress your brain. It's tough reading but one of the absolute handbooks of advanced brewing. If you hate  turn away.The Principles of Brewing Science by George Fix: This is a chemistry book. That's all I really need to say about it. Hope that helps someone!
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Oct 15, 2008 01:07
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On the contrary, a thinner mash will give a less fermentable wort, but in general the difference is tiny (2% tops). I would do something around 1.2 to 1.3 quarts/lb for an IPA. That's actually the dilution I use for just about every infusion mash. You'll want it thicker for a strong beer, thinner for a weaker one. But it really doesn't matter much. As for the sparge, unless you have a really permanent setup, your best bet is to batch sparge: drain the entire contents of the mash into the brew kettle, throw in another batch of water, let it rest for 10 minutes, then drain that as well, until you get to your desired volume. It is worth noting that you should cut off the sparge when you hit 1.010 but this is hard to measure because the temperature is way too high, so I generally sparge to volume and don't worry about it (it's only really an issue for weaker beers). If someone has a clever way of deciding when to stop sparging I'd love to hear it. Run off something like 7 gallons and you should be gravy.
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Oct 15, 2008 23:05
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Josh Wow posted:Do you want the lovely plastic tasting scottish ale? I don't have any problem sending you a bottle but it's gonna be loving gross. I just dumped my underpitched Helles. It tasted solventy, kind of like paint thinner. I think that was from severe underpitching at cold temps. Maybe it's a similar disaster?
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Oct 15, 2008 23:16
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il serpente cosmico posted:Thanks for the info. When you add more water to batch sparge, do you generally shoot for water in the 150-155*F range? Or is it advisable to deactivate the enzymes with something in the 170* range? Here are the magic temperature ranges for all-grain: 140-149 beta amalyse happy zone (creates maltose, highly fermentable, takes longer) 150-159 alpha amalyse happy zone (creates dextrins, mostly tasteless mouthfeel, denatures beta amalyse) 160-169 mash-out/sparge temp happy zone (denatures just about everything) 170+ can mess up the ph and start extracting tannins So for an IPA, I would do a single infusion at 149 or so for 90 minutes. Stronger IPAs would probably need a multi-rest mash. Sparge with water that's 170 so that it takes the mash no higher than 169. There are a few tricks you can use to crank out more IBUs, like mash hopping, but I don't generally like IPAs so I can't really elaborate. Are you dry hopping your last IPA?
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Oct 15, 2008 23:26
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Where can you get a refractometer that measures in SG?
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Oct 16, 2008 00:07
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What about oxygenation? I admit I am terrible about that myself, but I've considered getting a little kit for lagers.
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Oct 16, 2008 04:37
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Jo3sh posted:I'll say again that low attentuation (and thus sweetness) has something to do with malt flavor perception, but I have done twin beers from the same wort, but with separate yeasts, and had varying results - American Ale is really clean, but Thames Ale leaves a nice grainy flavor, even with FGs within a point or two. My pseudo-Oktoberfest has a nice grainy finish despite a FG of 1.006. I just listened to a Jamil show episode (munich helles) where he talks about this. I bring it up because he said basically the same thing I have been saying: that yeast will only mask or get out of the way of maltiness, that malty doesn't equal sweet or low attenuation, and that malty only really comes from the grain (type, quality) and what you do with them (decoction, for example). The show is worth a listen.
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Oct 17, 2008 08:26
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Jo3sh posted:If you only have bleach, this will work, but I suggest you look into a no-rinse sanitizer like Star-San or iodophor. I always used to just put all the bottles in a big tub of prepared sanitiser solution as the first step of the bottling process. By the time I was filling them with beer, they might have been soaking 30 or 60 minutes, which always turned out fine. Yeah, don't use bleach at all if you can help it; use something like Star-San, One-Step or Iodophor. For bottles, though, just clean em out and and put them in a dishwasher at the highest setting and let the heat sanitize everything. It's what I always did and I never had a problem. il serpente cosmico posted:There are a lot more available strains in liquid form, and some will insist the quality is higher. The quality of dried yeast has improved a lot, but liquid yeast still has the pedigree advantage. Only a few dry yeasts have the "name brand" backing. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Oct 18, 2008 |
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Oct 18, 2008 01:24
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If anything, it belongs in a sister thread in Ask/Tell, because not many folks make it out this way. Hell, if they can have repeated threads on how to talk to women, we can have one thread on a cool loving hobby. dopaMEAN posted:I'm going to grab a copy of the scientific brewing guide when I have a chance. Up until last week I was a biochem major (yay for senior year major changes!), and I always loved making stuff in lab. It requires a certain amount of prerequisite knowledge of brewing and chemistry, so I'd get some brews under yalls belts before you jumped in headlong. But kudos on jumping in headlong. Now just be like il serpente and jump into all-grain brewing before his first batch is even bottled  Also, welcome to the best hobby ever! Jo3sh, I would stick the plans for the fermentation chiller in the OP. This goes out to everyone: the faster and more precise you get temperature control issues down, the better your beer will be. Temperature is really what separates homebrew from commercial quality beer made at home. Getting it under control is your absolute priority. One of the best ways to do it on the cheap, if you have space in a garage or somewhere, is to get a small chest freezer on craigslist and a temperature controller. You'll need something like that for lagers anyway. If you're tight on space, a fermentation chiller is definitely the way to go. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Oct 20, 2008 |
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Oct 20, 2008 08:25
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dopaMEAN posted:My boyfriend and I were looking at used fridges at Goodwill- we can get one for $30 if we go there on half-off day. Could you put a temperature control unit in something like that? Oh that'll work fine.
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Oct 20, 2008 10:00
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il serpente cosmico posted:So just how much does bottle-conditioned beer improve over time? I hear it peaks right around 3-5 months, but there's no way I can hold out that long. I'm thinking I'll give it a try after a week, and then "debut" it on election day or so, and then save a few 22s for a few months to see how they change. It is a general misconception about alcohol that age automatically is better. The graph for both beer and wine looks something like a squished up bell curve: after the initial conditioning phase (which happens fast, from a week or two for beer or a year or two for strong beers/mead/wine), it begins a slow ascent towards the plateau of taste. Once it hits that peak, it tumbles down to shite faster than the economy. How long that slow ascent is, hard to tell. What factors contribute to the length of that ascent, also hard to tell. What's pretty universal, though, is that you do not want to pass the peak. Basically, wine collectors are gamblers: they look at soil conditions, rainfall, all sorts of random crap and make an educated guess that a certain vintage is gonna last the long haul. Sometimes they're right, and sometimes a bottle ages for 5 years and tastes like vinegar. That's why aged wines are so expensive: because not every batch can make it that long. Beer and wine are, 95% of the time, best if relatively fresh. That's why a 2005 vintage can taste pretty goshdarn good, and brewpubs can keep a pretty much non-stop selection. Watch the brewpubs, though: you can tell when a batch is a little green, and when it's hitting its stride (if there's any left by then). The problem is, beer's timeline is so much more compressed than wine, it's easy to miss the peak. Evidence: try Paulaner fresh in Germany, and then try the bottled version you can get in the states. The imported version has a crackery stale taste to it, and the fresh version tastes like liquid heaven. Heineken, essentially made just to be exported, tastes like skunky catpiss. More delicate flavors, like those found in lagers, seem to go kaput fast; ales tend to last longer. Strong ales tend to last longer still (largely the reason Belgians travel so easy). Exactly why this is will make sciencey types scratch their heads a lot. There's a phenomenon called "bottle shock" that modern wineries have to deal with; that is, they bulk age wine in big stainless steel tanks (sorry if any of you have romantic notions of wine still being conditioned in barrels) and then stick them in bottles. When they go in the bottles, for whatever reason, the wine freaks the gently caress out and will taste wrong for quite a while before settling out (which is why wineries will cellar their wine in the bottles even after bulk conditioning). I don't know if any of yall are mead or wine makers too, but a lot of folks will bulk age in the carboy for a long, long time and then throw it in the bottle expecting the aging to be done. BAM bottle shock! At the same time, the presence of the yeast in the conditioning phase does something unquantifiable to the mead/wine. That was a long digression on random alcohol-related trivia but it has bearing on this discussion for the following reason: drink your drat beer. Even if you make a strong beer, give it some good secondary time, toss it in bottles/a keg, give it time to carbonate and go to town. If it tastes like catpiss, give it some time and try again. If it tastes wonderful, devour your beer and treasure the memories. Each batch is a unique creation that will never come again.
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Oct 20, 2008 23:14
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tonedef131 posted:I would say fermentation temperature control is probably the most important thing you can do for your beer after maybe proper pitching rates. I'd say the other way around, but they go hand-in-hand. My suggested upgrade path, ranked in decreasing order of importance: 1) Control the temperature: Brewers make wort; yeast makes beer. All you are doing is laying the foundation for the yeast to build upon, and no matter how good the foundation, if your yeast sucks your beer will suck. You take the best brewer, with the latest and greatest all-grain equipment, the best recipe, and you stick it in a closet in a 75 degree apartment it's probably going to taste like homebrew (remember: that closet is maybe 5 degrees hotter than the apartment, due to lack of airflow, and the fermentation maybe 5 degrees hotter still due to heat created from fermentation). "Taste like homebrew" the way people often say to me, "yeah, my friend makes homebrew, but it tastes kind of like poo poo. He really likes it though." Don't be that guy. Make your yeast happy, and they will make you happy. 2) Pitch enough healthy yeast: make or buy a stirplate, and make yourself some wicked sick starters. Homebrews are chronically underpitched. Yeast will crap out different flavors during their different life cycles, and if you underpitch and the yeast struggles to reproduce, you're going to have a bunch of catpiss off-flavors, as my disaster helles and Josh Wow's disaster scottish ale prove. This matters more when yeasties are cold, because unlike frequently thought, even cold-resistant yeasts like warmer temperatures more: it's just that they can handle the cooler temperatures and not go dormant. You can make a lager at room temperature, but everything that's lagery about the yeast will not be there. It is important to note that I considered this to be one of the LAST things to upgrade. I chose... poorly. Do not repeat my mistake. If you are getting your fermentation chiller to do lagers, get a stirplate or be prepared to do a shitload of starters/buy a lot of yeast. If you are doing big beers, get a stirplate or the yeast will struggle to reproduce, use up all the oxygen, and poop out at a high gravity. To make matters worse, all the alcohol that's being produced is going to hamper the yeast. Hey, you don't want to eat where you poo poo, either. So you want to have a whole buttload of yeast munching up maltose from the moment they hit the wort so that minimal time is spent reproducing in the fermenter. My current avenue of research, as I mentioned here earlier, is oxygenation, which I believe homebrewers are doing badly. Even dedicated homebrewers who make starters all the time, like me. Every single one of my beers seems to get a little more gumption when I rack it, and I'm pretty careful to avoid oxygenation. So just that LITTLE amount is enough to kick it back into fermenting mode, which suggests to me that they're oxygen starved to begin with. No one really talks about it, except maybe if you're making belgian quadruples or (god forbid) strong lagers, which have to be the pinnacle of yeast babysitting. Ignore this digression, folks. I just provided it because my mind wandered to it. 3) Large outdoor burner and big pot to do full boils: The difference in minimizing the "extract twang" is night and day from a partial boil to a full boil. I'm not kidding. While I'm on it, make sure your extract is fresh or your beer will taste like a ball-point pen. Again, I'm not kidding. A big online site like Northern Brewer goes through a metric buttload of liquid extract, so they are almost always safe bets. If your LHBS doesn't seem to move a lot of it, buy online or buy dry, which lasts longer. A fun anecdote from working at a LHBS (fight club answer to which: "A major one," though you internet detectives can probably figure it out easily enough): Extract comes in big 55 gallon drums that are poured out into easily shippable containers. One time, the extract started fermenting. Turns out that people had been taking the air release valve totally off because it would pour out faster, and some wild yeast got in there. This is only one of many reasons why you should buy fresh extract. Oh and take your brewing outside. It will get you off your fat goony asses, but more importantly lets you get a good roiling boil, which helps everything from clarity to reducing off flavors. Plus you get to meet the neighbors. I am "that guy who brews all the time." 4) All-grain: I am an all-grain fanatic, and I regularly tease my brewing friends still doing extract with grains, but I put this last on my list of importance. Why? Because all it will affect is the malt flavor. Malt flavor (as you can see from my and rocko's discussions) is a tricky, subtle beast, and while changing out an English bitter from generic Brewer's 2-row extract to 100% Maris Otter will make a huge difference, it's huge in relative terms. The flavor change is still pretty subtle, and if it's a highly hopped beer, it's largely covered up by hop flavor. If you're largely making American style ales, the switch to all-grain offers minimal improvement at best. It will taste richer and maltier, of course, if you're looking for it (and you do your mash right). If you're all about mimicking European styles to the letter, you gotta go all-grain. It's just about impossible to get the right OOMPH of malt flavor from an English bitter or (god forbid) anything German/Czech from extract. Though I should note, if you are enticed by German/Czech brewing perfection, you are looking for trouble. Big trouble. I know this from experience. I personally just made a beeline to all-grain. For a while (and you can see this if you read the beginning of the last thread, when I was a wee brewing newbie), I was doing all-grain batches totally indoors on a small gas stove. I had the pot on multiple burners going full blast and I still got a weak boil. Then I would just stick my carboys in a near 80-degree closet. Oy vey. Pay attention il serpente! Don't make the same mistakes I did! Boy I have I written a book today.
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Oct 21, 2008 00:23
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Politicalrancor posted:The closest brew shop to me is Beer Beer and More Beer in Riverside. Anyone know anything about it? BB&MB is one of the biggest homebrew stores, you're in good hands. In particular they pump their extract into little vacuum sealed baggies, instead of just pouring it in a bucket and sending it on its merry way.
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Oct 21, 2008 00:59
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Generally it seems the cooler I get the lager, the maltier the end result. Noticed this with ales. I think it has to do with my earlier thesis: yeast flavor either covers up or gets out of the way of malt. Fermenting cold minimizes that. We'll see how my cold fermented scottish ale turns out in a week or so.
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Oct 28, 2008 08:11
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zedprime posted:Thats largely a holdover from the past for liquid yeast when they didn't come with enough cells to properly get going. Most liquid yeast now comes with enough cells for a good start when under 1.060 OG. For dry yeast its a good idea to rehydrate them, but thats not really a starter and lots of people don't with great success. No, it's still an issue. Most homebrewers underpitch even with dry yeast, but the side effects of underpitching are not too noticible in most styles. Also whatup dudes, it's been a while. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Dec 29, 2008 |
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Dec 29, 2008 08:36
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Here in Texas there's a kind of cursive "Samuel Adams" embossed in glass around the neck. One couldn't use that for BJCP competition. Most competitions are chilling out about that because it's a nonsense rule, though.
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Feb 6, 2009 06:26
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hellion00 posted:For you all-grain brewers, how do you measure the temp of your mash tun? We have been using a probe thermometer like this, but I'm not sure if they're meant to be used this way. We had one go wacky yesterday and start reading 140*F at room temperature. I would assume, since they're made to go in the oven, that they'd be perfectly fine submerged in hot water. I'm just curious to find out what others are using. For reference, our mash tun is a converted rectangular cooler. where the probe is fixed to the cord on those is usually just a small crimp, so if you dunk it in water the probe gets water in it and goes haywire.
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Feb 10, 2009 03:52
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Jo3sh posted:And even then, I think you have to denature the product my mixing it with gasoline or something. The BATF really doesn't want people making "fuel, if you know what I mean" in their garages. If you do decide to say "gently caress THE PO-LICE" (ATF) just be careful about it. Stills stink and are easily noticible if you have nosy neighbors. As someone who grew up in the south, though, I can honestly verify that you don't wanna be drinking moonshine.
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Feb 12, 2009 03:36
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BerkerkLurk posted:I'm brewing tomorrow and I'm trying to avoid tannin extraction, something I've had a problem with in my last two batches. The plan is to make sure I don't sparge above 170 degrees and to use Five Star 5.2 pH stabalizer (the water here is something like 7 pH). Stop pulling at 1.010 is what I've always heard, but that's for Real Breweries who can actually measure that poo poo. For me, I would have to stop, take a sample, correct the sample, and blah blah blah I just sparge to volume because I am lazy and it's only a problem on outliers, either really weak or really strong beers.
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Feb 21, 2009 14:09
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Jo3sh posted:Baby steps. Stir plates are a bitch in general to get started, even lab grade ones. You really need a really fine tuned speed control on that thing and it needs to be very consistent or the centrifugal force will send the bar flying. I can't imagine coating a bar yourself would be a good idea. You need something totally inert. Lab grade ones use teflon coating usually, just get one of those, they're like 5 bucks apeice. Even if you do find something to coat it in, it's probably not worth it to make one stir bar.
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Mar 1, 2009 05:07
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Jo3sh posted:Well, sending beer through the USPS is a class 2 misdemeanor, not a felony, but the point holds. Weird thing is, it's even against the law to receive beer in the mail, even if you didn't order it, weren't expecting it, are over 21, etc. It's not really weird, if it were only illegal to send and not receive then that's a loophole that could be easily abused. As it is, anything illegal that the USPS finds they will just confiscate unless it costs a lot, and even then the only way they can prove it's yours is by taking it to the door with an undercover cop and making you sign for it. So let that be a lesson to you if you've ordered yourself a pound of nice, fresh cannibis hops. Just mail the beer you timid little babies. residence to residence, there's like a 0.000001% chance anyone will find out, and that's only if the box gets mutilated so badly that they have to disassemble it (Very rare- most of the time they'll just stick some tape on the outside and send it on its way). It's not like the USPS will have dogs sniffing for beer. If you want to pay the price premium for private shipping on the off chance that you get caught, it's up to you. But for gently caress's sake don't TELL them it's beer. BerserkLurk says it is not worth the effort. BerserkLurk is a big vagina. Take the bottle or bottles you want to send, wrap in plastic packing bubbles, tape. Place in box with newspaper or other filling material. Tape box. Address label and return address (if you are really worried you could always use a fake return address). Take to post office. Place on automatic postal weigher machine. Pay dollars. Get stamp. Place stamp on box. Put box in mail chute. Congratulations! I just saved you from having to go through a "wealth of information" about how to mail a loving package.
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Mar 17, 2009 11:21
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BerkerkLurk posted:I'm working on an ice wine kit right now and it says at the end of the directions to filter out excess sugar to prevent fermentation in the bottle. They recommend renting a wine filter from a homebrew store. I assume I could just kill the yeast with campden tablets, if I didn't mind the excess sugar. Does that sound right? What brand kit is that? The ones I used to hock at the LHBS didn't recommend filters, and we always recommended against it. Most filters are lovely and you'll only really want them for a wine where you made the must (have to switch to my wine jargon now, beer nerds) from scratch and it might have little chunkies left in it. Even wine with the skins in it will clarify fine on its own. But wait, using a filter to get rid of sugar? That doesn't even make sense. Do you know how small the filter would need to be to stop dissolved sugar? Wines with residual sugars (and icewine most def is one) work like the following: Ferment to dryness, yeast armageddon with campden, add some sugars back to it (the kit should come with a little juice bag to hold onto until this stage), "secondary", bottle, age. Edit: A funny story from my days at the LHBS comes to mind. Someone comes in with money to burn, wants to get a filter because his beer is always cloudy. I investigate and discover that the culprit is likely the dreaded "chill haze." I pointed him to some literature on the subject (as that is how I roll). He finds me in a bit and says he still wants a filter, and I say "for something that won't be filtered?" and he says that it's worth a try. So I show him our crappy selection of filters, tell him the low end one is terrible and the high end one is meant for wine. He gets the high end one, which is really expensive. I flat out tell him not to buy the filter at all for beer, let alone for chill haze. He buys it anyway, I made a couple bucks. Good times. Terrible job. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Mar 17, 2009 |
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Mar 17, 2009 19:39
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Oh, I also encourage you to try those low end fruit wine kits, they are really cheap and some of them are loving great. Like this: Mango Citrus Symphony A delicious blend of ripe mango flavors and crisp citrus notes combined with the grapefruit, peach, banana, and papaya aromas of Symphony. Goes well with spicy foods or sliced mangos. I have no idea what that is, but I god damned bet you it would taste really good cold and kegged up. You can look down at me all you want, I kegged a liebfraumilch once. I regret nothing.
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Mar 17, 2009 19:45
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il serpente cosmico posted:My immersion chiller works pretty well, cooling off 5 gallon batches in 10 minutes or so. It's top loaded (or bottom loaded, depending on how you look at it), so the entire coiled portion is under the wort. It's also 25 feet. Do you stir the wort rapidly as you're cooling? I've found that this makes the biggest difference. 50 feet of coil may be overkill for a 5 gallon batch. Depending on your kettle, it may not even sit completely under your wort. Cooling from boiling to warm-hot is easy and quick with an immersion chiller but it's VERY difficult to get it sub 80 without a pre-chiller. Counterflow chillers work really well for getting it down to pitching temperatures, but you really need a pre-chiller for those anyway. The problem with counterflow chillers (including most kinds of plate chillers) is that getting from boiling to below DMS generation temperature (which is what, 140 or something? I forget) is CRITICAL. If it takes 30 minutes to go through the counterflow, much of that time is spent above the threshhold. On the other hand, immersion chillers do leak often, and exposing the cooling wort is risky especially if you're outside, and the loving whirlpooling sucks. Right now, for 10 gallon batches, I crash it down with a medium sized immersion chiller for 5 mins or so. Then I gravity feed through a plate chiller using the same immersion chiller as a pre-chiller. Really the only system that doesn't suck balls is a pump plus a therminator. You can blow through so much wort so fast that the DMS is not an issue. They rule, but you need a pump to take advantage of them, and the only kind of setup you want to use a pump with is a permanent one. Edit: I forgot another con of counterflow chillers: you have to have a filter of some kind in your brewpot (and your brewpot has to be ported). Having a ported brewpot is a good thing to have but you can't do it to cheapass stainless steel pots most homebrew stores sell. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Mar 23, 2009 |
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Mar 23, 2009 12:41
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drewhead posted:Not quite sure I get why one needs a pump with a therminator? I use mine with nothing but gravity, an can drop 10 gallons to within about 3 degrees of what ever tap happens to be at that time of year in roughly 10 minutes. It works so well that I have to be careful and restrict the tap counterflow when doing ales in the winter months or I'll cool below the yeast range. My therminator remains my favorite piece of equipment, and it also is the single biggest time saving device I have on brew day. Worth every penny IMO. Do you have some nightmarish gravity feeding contraption? I gravity feed through a little shirron plate chiller and it's a pain in the rear end if you lose the siphon. Then again, I brew in a quasi-permanent brew sculpture in the middle of my apartment complex so I'm far from the ideal brewing environment.
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Mar 23, 2009 13:51
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Have we had a discussion of getting into brewing professionally? I want to, and don't know how. Assume I do not have the money to pay for a fancypants beer college degree.
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Mar 29, 2009 23:09
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GOOCHY posted:I think the only other way would be to go kiss some micro-brewer's rear end enough that you could become an assistant. There's usually a waitlist a mile long for assistants. I have thought about just randomly going to microbreweries and brewpubs and asking if they need an extra goon, but don't really know how to go about doing that if I have no "ins". I talked with a very successful brewer last summer, and he was very frank about the schools: they cost a lot of loving money, and they're only really useful if you want to get a job in the big side of the biz (the only place where there's money). He did it the old fashioned way: he and another fellow from a homebrew club decided to make a microbrewery on a shoestring budget, and they managed to raise enough money to do it. Of course, in the current economic climate that's not so easy, yes?
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Mar 30, 2009 00:35
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Here is a fine complement to this great experiment: My stir plated starter just went bananas and is spewing out the tinfoil like a mad science experiment gone wrong. I guess I got the starter a little too started. The moral of the story: stir plates cause yeast to go into an utterly debauched hedonistic orgy, so leave a LOT of extra room! Ever since I made the starter, I have seen fruit flies about. I really hope one did not take a swim while I was changing the tinfoil. Also the way to go with starters is to make up a whole bunch of wort, then can it with a pressure cooker and ba-jam instant starters. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Mar 30, 2009 |
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Mar 30, 2009 22:00
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Chances are that the fruit flies did get in there. It's like they can send their critters through glass or something. You may have been lucky in that all the crud your yeast expel pushed it all out though. The little pricks are demons, I hate them so much. I wonder if it's worth going forward with possible contamination in mind? I hate paying for more yeast but I would rather pay for more yeast than drink fruit fly infected beer.
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Mar 31, 2009 01:08
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:naw it's not the yeast doing all the gobbling, it's the enzyme, oddly enough. You can put it in a secondary where the yeast are dormant and watch your gravity plummet, apparently. No, tonedef is right, Beano will just break down complex sugar chains and starches. The reason "dormant" yeast will eat it slowly over time is that fermentation is anaerobic. Provide a new source of food for them and it's go time. The problem with drying a beer out with beano: most of the malt flavor comes from complex sugar chains and starches that carry through from the mash and are never broken down. It's not the loss of sweetness you're worried about, it's the total loss of flavor. While on this sub tangent people are confused as to what actually adds "sweetness" to their beer. Dextrins themselves are not very sweet. Maltose is only slightly sweet, which is why if you taste malto-dextrin it usually tastes like nothing. You won't add any sweetness or flavor with malto-dextrin. If you're at 1.050 FINAL GRAVITY and it's already 15-17% abv, your problem is not the complex sugar. Your problem is that the yeast spent too much of their time in your fermenter reproducing. Now, the environment is pretty much toxic due to the high alcohol level. Your only way to jump start it again and leave the flavor is to pitch a high alcohol tolerant yeast, which usually taste like dog poo poo. But then again I think super high gravity beers taste like dog poo poo anyway so whatever. Just loving distill it if you want something that's 20% alcohol. Edit: Went back to see your original post: tonedef131 posted:...found a couple packs of dry yeast (S-05 and T-58) that I had no plans for. This is so incredibly underpitched that there are no words. Trying to ferment a 1.134 beer with 2 packs of dry yeast not particularly known for high alcohol tolerance is like trying to evaporate lake eerie with a hair dryer. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Apr 1, 2009 |
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Apr 1, 2009 03:25
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tonedef131 posted:But 05 regularly goes above its recommended alcohol tolerance, there is a guy in our club who pumps out 13% abv beers with it all the time. 13% with chico is loving nuts, even if you are pitching slurry. How did he do it? I'm impressed that he managed it, but I still don't know why anyone would ever drink it. Anyway at 1.050 I'm pretty sure that the yeast is more stalled than out of sugar. If you threw in that Whitelabs 99 it'd probably take it down as low as it could go, but that yeast makes beer that tastes like gasoline.
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Apr 1, 2009 04:53
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Golden War posted:problemos Problem the first: I can think of no reason why a pack of safale 05 would crap out at 126. I have had these stumper batches before and they are loving irritating. My first inclination would be something got fubared in the mash, and not the yeast. Mash in too hot, perhaps? That'll leave an abundance of complex, unfermentable sugars. Problem the second: Poorly crushed grain will stick a sparge every loving time. Most homebrew shops will demolish the grain to easier facilitate steeping, but that will cause a gigantic clusterfuck in the mash tun. I've never used munton's pre crushed grain, but judging by the rest of their quality homebrewing products, I would be shocked if it wasn't garbage.
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Apr 1, 2009 13:03
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tonedef131 posted:Alright, I will avoid the beano for now since I have heard nothing but bad stuff about it and don't like the idea of total loss of control. So first I will try putting a more alcohol tolerant yeast. So do you think 99 tastes like poo poo because you don't like alcohol flavor in your beer or because of it's ester profile? The beer already has a pretty pleasant Belgian thing going on from the Chimay strain so if 99 is pretty neutral I am okay with that. If it has a terrible flavor profile that is going to clash with the already existing characteristics I might try some thing more neutral. I've never heard anything but bad things about the taste of the 99 from people who actually like beer that tastes like paint thinner to me. You might try champagne yeast, as someone mentioned?
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Apr 1, 2009 13:25
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BerkerkLurk posted:Plus there's the usual benefits for canned beer: cheaper to ship, easier to pack in and out of the wilderness for outdoors-y drunks, light can't skunk the beer, and they have liners now that prevent any metallic taste. On the other hand, the constant churn of aluminum cans is wasteful gently caress you to the environment.
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Apr 1, 2009 13:33
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Jo3sh posted:Strike temp seems a bit high to me. When I dough in at 1.25 qt./lb., my strike water is usually 10-11 degrees warmer than my target conversion temp. In my rig, doughing in with 168 degree water would put me at a rest of 156-158, I would think. At 1.25, 170 degree water should put you at about a 152 rest temp, excluding all other variables (which should only make the rest temp lower). Denaturing the enzymes could be a problem, but only if you mixed the entire contents of the strike water with the grain at once. Even then, in order for it to be a problem you'd need grain that didn't have a lot of surplus enzymatic activity for it to matter. There's so much surplus diastic power in normal american 2 row that you could denature half the enzymes and it'd probably still convert fine. In the future, mashing highly modified grain is best done a little cooler and for a little longer. But I can't see anything with Golden War's technique that would have buggered the mash.
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Apr 1, 2009 18:20
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Jo3sh posted:Wow. That's way outside my experience. I've got my brewing spreadsheet here, and to hit a rest at 152, assuming 12 pounds of grain at 70 degrees F and a ratio of 1.25, I would use 3.75 gallons of water at 162 degrees. Scuse me while I whip this out [randy mosher's Brewer's companion, an excellent text from an excellent author] In an unheated tun, his chart gives 170 degree water at a 1.25 dilution getting you to 151.5 Looking at the traditional infusion mash schedules, Pale Ales call for a 1.3 dilution at 170 F for a rest at 152 (for 2 hours and 35 minutes). I've used exactly that before and it's come out fantastic. Systems will vary obviously but the point is that 170 is not too hot out of hand.
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Apr 1, 2009 18:43
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Jo3sh posted:Ah, that's the key there. Yeah, that's better than you'll ever get by "preheating" a cooler. I just don't waste my time any more, since Mosher's numbers are spot on anyway and it just simplifies my life. In other news, Riwaka is the single greatest hop I've ever used. Discuss.
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Apr 1, 2009 19:00
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il serpente cosmico posted:Does yeast tend to consume sucrose more quickly than other, more complex sugars? I primed with table sugar for the first time (3.5oz in a 5 gallon batch), and I already have pretty good carbonation after just two days. Here's hoping I don't end up with bottle bombs. Did you boil it first? Yeast will eat sucrose but they have to invert it. If you boil it, you'll break the bonds between the fructose and the glucose and then they can go hog wild. Corn sugar, on the other hand, is pretty much pure glucose, which yeast prefer to fructose. Even boiled sugar shouldn't carbonate faster than corn sugar. Dirk Pitt posted:I got a nice brew kit for my birthday that i ordered through the help of this thread and right as i put the airlock on after pitching the yeast the seal for the airlock popped though the lid and fell into the soon to be beer. I washed my hands up to my elbows with dial and then rinsed them off and sanitized a spoon and reached in. will someone please reassure me that my first batch is not busted Irritating poo poo like this happens for every homebrewer. It'll help you create a shopping list for the future. For example, rubber bungs work better than little rubber washers, so pick one up. Also, if you don't have a stainless steel spoon that's a couple of feet long, now is the perfect time to get one! Avoid sticking your grubby little fingers in beer the next time, though. Humans are walking petri dishes and "antibacterial soap" doesn't really help (and you could've gotten some residue in the beer, which is bad too). The most important thing is not to worry. Worrying doesn't help because it's quite literally all out of your control now. There's only a tiny chance that anything got infected*. Yeast are hardy little buggers, too, and quite good at dominating the environment they're put in. My dad always reminds me that in lab experiments, the worst thing that can get in there is not some kind of bacteria, but yeast, because yeast will just run slipshod over everything. And what is beermaking but a controlled yeast infection! *all bets are off if a fruit fly got in there. Fruit flies are the worst. Death to fruit flies. RegularK posted:How far should the bung go into the carboy? Right now I only have the rubber(?) part half-way in. Most homebrew stores sell these little doohickeys called "universal stoppers" that work really well. They have a lip on the outside rim that prevents the thing from falling in there. They also hold easier when dripping wet with sanitizer. I use them in place of rubber bungs on all my carboys. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Apr 2, 2009 |
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Apr 2, 2009 12:00
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Generally I've seen beers using table sugar ferment very aggressively. However, I tend not to add corn sugar so I don't have a comparison there. I never use corn sugar either out of a hatred of the US corn industry, which can suck my balls. Haven't bottled a batch in for-ever though.
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Apr 2, 2009 19:41
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 15:41 |
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Most of the up-front costs are in professional equipment so that you aren't fermenting in plastic buckets and mashing in igloo coolers. There's a huge barrier to entry because of health code requirements and so forth. If all it took was some expensive licensing and a location outside your home, you'd have a lot more people making kegs in rented places and selling them to local bars to get their name out. Like everything else in America, everything is biased toward the rich, and starting out is extremely difficult. So if you have enough money to start all that poo poo up, you might as well take it seriously, and if you didn't want to be a full time brewer, get yourself one who's willing to work for peanuts (Like me, I would do this). Unless of course you have so much loving money that you can afford a quarter million dollar hobby like those extract only breweries we were talking about earlier. In which case you can suck my balls, you rich dilettante motherfucker. I kid, I kid. Well, not about hating rich people. Question though: are brewpubs illegal in Florida if you can't have both a brewing license and a distribution license?
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Apr 3, 2009 21:20
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