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For those of you who haven't been reading the last thread I made a scottish ale little while ago that tastes like poo poo, it's got a plasticy aftertaste from me pitching too little yeast and trying to ferment it too cold. I brewed up my second attempt at this beer this past Saturday, using the exact same recipe except for making it a little bigger and using different hops,but the type of hops in this recipe really isn't important since they're only for a little bitterness. Well I pitched my yeast on Sunday and it was going within 12 hours. Unfortunately there's a tiny bit of the same smell coming from this batch that was completely dominating in my last batch, I imagine it's because I let the beer get up to 66* while I was at work (not that I could really help it) while I wanted to keep it in the 58-62* range. It's very faint and maybe it's just all in my head but I really want this batch to turn out well. I've decided to leave the lid off my bucket while I've still got krausen for 2 reasons. 1) I'm hoping leaving the lid off while fermentation is most active will help the smell dissipate more than it would if I had left the lid on. 2) I'm sick of reading about people being all worried about little crap like opening their bucket to take a gravity reading because they're afraid of getting an infection. That's right, I'm going to leave my bucket open for several days out of spite for what people say on the internet. Josh Wow fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Oct 14, 2008 |
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Oct 14, 2008 22:55
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Edit: Josh Wow, would you like to send me a bottle or two of this ale? I would like to check myself. 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.
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Oct 15, 2008 21:31
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toenut posted:Did you use a Scottish ale yeast? Could the aroma and the flavor somewhat also be described as "yogurt" like Yoplait? It's something I've noticed that Scottish ale yeasts give off a lot and in large amounts it is stale/plastic sort of tasting. Yes, I used Wyeast 1728 both on my gross lovely plastic tasting one and on my one that is currently fermenting now that seems to be coming along pretty good. As soon as the krausen drops on the one I have in my fermenter I'll give it a taste and see where it's at. Ajaarg posted: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? Yea, I'm pretty positive the off taste came solely from me underpitching and trying to ferment it too cold.
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Oct 16, 2008 02:54
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Ajaarg posted:What about oxygenation? I admit I am terrible about that myself, but I've considered getting a little kit for lagers. I've never had problems with it before, so I'm inclined to think that isn't the problem. I usually just hardcore shake up my bucket for 3 or 4 minutes, although I'm considering getting a cordless drill and a mix-stir to make sure I'm aerating well enough. Josh Wow fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Oct 16, 2008 |
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Oct 16, 2008 04:47
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Well it's your postage, right? Well it was going to be but I just went over my student loan stuff in detail last night and I'm more hosed than previously anticipated, so I'm trying to cut down on most if not all of my non-essential purchases and that includes sending people beer because it gets expensive quick. I'm also going to attempt to drink only what I brew for a while as well, I would normally go to the store once a week and buy a six pack and a bomber of something but I'm going to cut that back to special occasions. Good thing most of what I brew is pretty drat good, and this will encourage me to brew a little more and make sure everything is going to turn out right.
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Oct 16, 2008 11:39
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Paradox86 posted:So... I started a home brew of Dead Guy Ale back in early May. Long story short, life got in the way/I've been out of town a lot the past few months/I don't have any bottles and need to buy some. It's now mid October. Is this beer completely hosed or is it even worth bottling now? Was it in the primary or in the secondary? If it was left in the primary on the yeast cake you might have some autolysis issues. You also might not. Either way it's worth bottling, unless you 100% know you have an infection and there's no possible way it could get better always bottle and see what happens. Worst case scenario you lose an hour of your time and $0.50 of sugar, but you might come out with some kickass beer.
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Oct 17, 2008 12:00
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That's funny, just this morning I decided I wanted to brew tomorrow so I'm doing a mild as well. It actually got kinda bumped up to more of an English brown ale but whatever. Here's my recipe, it's based on Jamil's mild recipe out of Brewing Classic Styles, I just made substitutions based on waht my homebrew shop had and bumped up the base malt a bit: 8.75 lbs maris otter .5lb crystal 60L 6 oz dark crystal (133-165L) 2 oz chocolate malt 2 oz black patent I might toss in a couple ounces of brown malt as well, I need to check to see if I'll have any leftover after using it for the recipe I actually bought it for. For hops I'm just going with whatever gets me to 17 IBUs, I have an ounce of Argentina Cascades to use up and if that's not enough I'll throw in some Saaz as well. Just a 60 minute addition so it doesn't really matter what I use. I'm using Nottingham for my yeast just because I have a pack in the fridge I need to use up. I'm planning on brewing this tomorrow and bottling it next weekend so we'll see how that goes. I also picked up some 5.2 stabilizer, how much do you guys normally use? The guy at the brew shop said 1/3 oz per 5 gallon batch, but he wasn't positive on that.
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Oct 17, 2008 21:52
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tonedef131 posted:Use 1T per 5 gallons. tablespoon? teaspoon?
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Oct 17, 2008 22:40
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Josh Wow--did you pour out that Scottish Ale? I was thinking about your problem while looking up the positive effects of lagering. I am was thinking some of those compounds might be related to any darker grains you might have used. If you crash chilled a few bottles and let them sit a few days, try them afterwards and see if it knocks out that off flavor. I haven't gotten around to pouring it out yet. This beer was 99% maris otter and 1% roasted barley. I thought cold conditioning might help as well so one night I put 2 bottles in the fridge. I opened one that night and then opened the other one a week later, they both tasted the same.
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Oct 18, 2008 08:07
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Brewing my mild went well today, although it turned into an english brown ale. I was shooting for an OG of 1.040 and hit 1.050. I assume this is because the 5.2 did it's thing so I got better efficiency, I got 75% instead of my usual 60-65%. I also boiled off a little more than usual, I only put 5.25 gallons in my fermenter when I'm usually at 5.5 so that helped some as well. As I was finally finishing up my brewday and cleaning my brewpot when I turned on the water it ruptured my loving water heater. I heard a weird gushing sound, opened the utility closet and water was just pouring out. We moved into this place not too long ago so I didn't know where the water shutoff valve was, so that was a fun time finding that. I am now using a shop vac attempting to get as much water out of the carpet as possible. Fun times, hopefully my beer will be good and at least it happened after I was all done and had pitched my yeast.
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Oct 19, 2008 04:45
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I don't use the tap, so I was wondering how I might plug that up while simultaneously running my thermometer probe through the hole. Maybe grab some foam insulation to plug up the hole and then just cut a big enough hold in it to run your probe through? Maybe use that expanding spray foam insulation to hold it in place, and you could even shoot it around where your probe goes in as long as you won't be needing to move it.
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Oct 21, 2008 08:51
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ZyklonB posted:I have made two batches of beer in the past year, and both turned out horrible due to the ambient temperature (76-80 deg)--but now I have a dedicated fridge! So as soon as I can get a temperature regulator, I plan on kicking into high gear making brews. I feel like this is a dumb question, but for a 5 gal. batch when using dry yeast, are you using only 1 packet (anywhere from 7-11 grams)? If your beer is under about 1.080 I'd say one pack should be fine, if it's above that you might wanna go with two packs. Also don't be afraid to order supplies online, I've found Northern Brewer to be a very good store and they have $8 shipping on most stuff. You could order a couple of kits from them and still get $8 shipping. The only problem with them is their hop prices are really high, almost everything is $4+ which is way too much. If you don't wanna do kits you could always do one big hop order from somewhere like https://www.freshops.com then order all your grain/extract/yeast/etc. from Northern Brewer or some other online site. I'm all about supporting your local homebrew shop, but only if they're a good shop. When I lived in Columbia our homebrew shop kinda sucked, I'd shop there if I really needed something but most stuff I would order online. They charged like $3 for a pound of grain (and this was back before grain prices went up), $3+ for any kind of hop, and they'd charge me to mill my grain even if it was just a pound I was picking up. Hell if I was doing an extract batch I'd expect to spend $50+ at their store where I could get it for $35-40 online even with shipping. Plus they wouldn't even let you buy a sack of grain if you wanted, when a homebrew shop opened up in Charleston (2 hours away) a ton of people from Columbia would go down there just so they could buy their grain in bulk. My local shop here in Athens rocks, $1.50 per pound for grain, free milling, $2.50 hops and he has a good variety. If he doesn't have something he'll order it for you if he can or tell you where to find it online and he's one of the nicest and most helpful guys I've met. I've only ordered stuff twice online since I've been to his shop, and both times it was an order under $10 for something he couldn't get me. Josh Wow fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Oct 22, 2008 |
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Oct 22, 2008 11:58
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Melonhead posted:By the time my wort was cool and I was ready to pitch (five hours later), they had barely inflated at all. I pitched both of them anyway w/ the wort at about 75F. There was no activity for about 60 hours @ 66F. Don't rush your yeast, you want optimal conditions for your yeast so they'll make the best beer possible. If your smack packs hadn't swelled you should have just waited longer, it doesn't hurt to seal up you fermenter and wait to pitch the yeast. If they hadn't been able to eat up the sugars in that tiny amount of wort in the pack, why do you want them in your wort? It usually takes me about 24 hours from when I put my wort into the fermenter to when I actually pitch my yeast so I can make sure it's at the correct temperature. Also you want to pitch your yeast at or below the temps you'll be fermenting at. A majority of off flavors are made during the beginning of fermentation (even before you have krausen) so you don't want to start them off high and bring the temp down. For fermenting at 66* I would have pitched at 62-64 and let them warm up. dopaMEAN posted:How are you guys smelling the fermenter? My fermentation has slowed down, and I'm super tempted to peek, but as I understand it opening the fermenter to sniff would introduce contaminants into my brew. I was thinking about pulling the bubbler momentarily, but then I started wonder if that would gently caress the process up, since yeast manufacture alcohol in anaerobic conditions... Though I guess being in a solution would be anaerobic enough. This has already been answered but I just want to reiterate, you aren't necessarily going to contaminate your beer by opening the lid or taking off the airlock. During fermentation there's CO2 being produced and that will keep any nasties out, and after fermentation your beer has alcohol and that's good at keeping things at bay. I left the lid off of my bucket during the primary of my last beer for 4-5 days and it's doing great, and I usually take the lids off my buckets at least once every other day to smell things and see how fermentation is doing. To get a quick smell a lot of the times I'll just push down on the lid slowly and smell through the airlock. I like to take the whole lid off though, give it about 10 seconds so you're smelling things other than CO2 and just stick my head in there and take a big whiff. Mmmm beer. I'd let your beer sit in primary for 2 weeks and then bottle if you don't have a hydrometer handy. It'll probably be done fermenting after 7 days but letting it sit for longer will let the yeast clean up some off flavors and just all around make it taste better.
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Oct 23, 2008 12:09
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vwman18 posted:Thanks for the kid story drewhead. And to go with that, one about mine. When I came home last night I found that she had gotten into the fermentation cooler and left it open. So, the fermometer was reading 82 degrees, I can only assume it got higher during the day. Crap. I brought the temp down as quick as I could and this morning it was reading at 65 degrees. How bad is this? It was within the first 24 hours of fermentation. Will the beer clean itself up over the next 2 weeks before bottling? During the first 24 hours is one of the worst times it could have happened. You'll definitely want to leave it in primary for at least 2 weeks, maybe 3 if it's still tasting funky. The yeast will clean up some of the off flavors, possibly all of them. Honestly there's nothing you can do about it now so don't worry about it, it'll probably turn out fine if you give it enough time in the primary to work itself out. It all depends on what kind of beer it is and what kind of yeast you're using as well.
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Oct 24, 2008 22:37
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Melonhead posted:Heh. My way-too-small blowoff tube got clogged with some solid crap and pressure was building up. A tiny amount of stuff was seeping through the seam between the carboy lip and the carboy cap. If you have big chunks of stuff blowing out and clogging your tube, just take the carboy cap off altogether and leave the thing open until things slow down a bit. You might even be ok with leaving the carboy cap on with no tubing coming out of it as well as long as it doesn't get blocked up. Nothing is going to get in with all that stuff constantly coming out. You can loosely put some aluminum foil over the top if it makes you feel better about it as well.
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Oct 25, 2008 03:20
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quote != edit and all that crap
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Oct 25, 2008 03:21
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vwman18 posted:Oh well, now I know what not to do. So much for my first brew. It was a Mild Ale extract kit, using Danstar Nottingham dry yeast. I was going to start taking hygrometer readings the first week of November, is that too soon now? It's not necessarily ruined, so don't give up just yet. I actually used Nottingham on my english mild that got turned into a brown ale because I got better efficiency than normal and because of my water heater blowing up it went unnoticed for a while and got to 74 during the first two days of fermentation. It smells and tastes great, I'm debating whether to bottle it this weekend or wait a few more days right now. This is only the second time I've used Nottingham so I'm not really sure what it does at higher temperatures, but I think I've read that it's pretty forgiving. You can take a hydrometer reading as soon as the krausen falls (you can take it before then too but I don't like to have to mess with the krausen and if it's actively fermenting you know it's going to be dropping anyway), or if you want to wait that's fine as well. I usually take one as soon as the krausen falls to see where the beer is at and if I need to do anything if I have too high or low of a FG. If you're just checking it to see if it's alright to bottle I'd just wait and take a reading somewhere around 2 weeks after your fermentation started. It's a mild so it should be done pretty quickly, you don't need to give it much time to age. Josh Wow fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Oct 25, 2008 |
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Oct 25, 2008 04:17
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vwman18 posted:Ok, dumb question: what is FG and why do I care? FG is final gravity, meaning where your beer finishes at. You care because it affects body, mouthfeel, and alcohol content among other things. For example if your mild had an OG (original gravity, what you measured before you added the yeast) of 1.040, you wouldn't want it to finish at 1.020 so if your krausen dropped and you took a reading at 1.020 you'd want to warm your fermenter up a bit and maybe swirl it to try and get the yeast going again. If you measured it and it was at something like 1.012 that might be a bit too dry and you wouldn't want it to drop any further so you might cool it down to try to get the yeast to stop. Vander posted:If I want to make an oatmeal stout, do I need to go all grain or can I still hybrid extract brew it? You'll need to do a partial mash, you have to have some base malt to convert the oatmeal. Luckily this is really easy, and the equipment to do it will cost maybe $20 if you don't have it lying around. Here's the article I used to get started, if you have any specific questions let me know and I'll answer them: http://www.byo.com/feature/1536.html As a bonus one of my favorite beers I've made is a partial mash oatmeal stout, so here's the recipe if you'd like to use it. It's a shakespeare stout clone although I toned down the hops just a bit. I sent one of these to Tonedef when we were doing a beer trade and he seemed to like it, and I think somebody else on this board used it as well but I'm not sure. 6 lbs light LME 1 lb light DME 1.25 lbs chocolate malt 1 lbs roasted barley .75 lbs extra dark crystal (I used 150L) .7 lbs flaked oats .3 lbs 2 row (you can bump this up a little bit if you have room) 2 oz cascade 60 minute 1 oz cascade 15 minute US-05
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Oct 25, 2008 14:09
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tonedef131 posted:That is really a lot of roast barley for a 5 gal batch, I never would have guessed that much. However, I did drink this ale and it was fantastic. Josh is right that partial mash is really easy and is the natural progression from just steeping grains. It really opens up a lot more malts and adjucts that cannot be steeped. Is there any reason you couldn't use all DME in that recipe? You could definitely use all DME in that recipe as long as you figured out how much you'd need to equal the amount of LME. I just did the recipe as is because I didn't come up with it, the only thing I did was change the hop schedule (I dropped 1 oz of cascades near the end) and use US-05 instead of Pac Man yeast. The roast barley was just what the recipe called for, and I love roast barley so I went with it. I actually used 1.5 lbs roasted barley in my cream stout, I'm kinda wondering if I went a little overboard on the specialty grain and that's why it ended at 1.030. I used 1.5 lbs roast barley, 1 lb chocolate wheat and .5 lb chocolate with 11 lbs munich. I didn't think that was too much specialty malt when making the recipe but I can't think of any other reason this beer would have stopped that high and it's really bugging me.
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Oct 25, 2008 15:20
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tonedef131 posted:What temp did you mash at and what yeast did you use? Mashed at 154, used US-05. My thermometer is fine, my hydrometer is off by 4 points so I guess I actually ended at around 1.026-1.028 which is still really high. After the krausen dropped it was at 1.030 and no amount of yeast rousing or warming it up (I let it get to 74-76) would get it to drop any lower.
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Oct 25, 2008 16:18
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It was light Munich, it's just listed as Munich I at my homebrew shop and it's with all the base grains rather than the specialty grains. I figured if it didn't convert well that would have shown up in my OG as well but that was pretty much on target. I have no idea what went wrong with this beer.
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Oct 25, 2008 18:26
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I'm bottling my english mild that turned into a southern english brown ale today, it stopped at 1.016 down from 1.050 so it should be around 4.5%. I just brewed it last Saturday, I'm experimenting with seeing just how quickly I can get a beer from kettle to being able to drink it. Smells and tastes great, I'm excited to see how it is carbonated.
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Oct 26, 2008 16:45
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I let my scottish ale ferment in the low 60s for the first week, and the krausen dropped within that time. The second week I also had my english brown in the fermenter so they both stayed in the mid-high 60s. So I'm just starting the 3rd week with my scottish ale and since my fermentation chamber is empty I figured I'd cold condition it for two weeks as cold as I can get it in there. After a day it's down to the low 50s, so I figure my steady temp will be the mid-high 40s. Do you think I'll need to re-yeast at bottling time or will there still be enough yeast in suspension to carbonate it? Also I'm going out of town this weekend from Friday night to mid-Sunday so the beer will obviously warm up a bit, I don't imagine that'll cause any problems because active fermentation is over but I just wanted to check with what everyone else thought.MajorMajor posted:Everything went smoothly, but my OG is only 1.035 at 70 degrees F. Any idea why it is so low? I just racked to my primary carboy, but is there sugar or anything I can add to bump the gravity up? It's almost 10pm here now, so I wouldn't be able to add anything until I get home from work tomorrow evening. Will it be too late at that point? Please tell me this batch isn't ruined. I assume you did a partial boil, meaning you didn't boil the whole 5 gallons, and added water at the end to reach your 5 gallon mark. If this is the case you probably just didn't have everything stirred up well enough to get an accurate reading. If you don't get the water and your wort stirred up really really well you'll often get a lower reading by pulling from the top. The other option would be that you added too much water at the end and diluted it a bit but are at 5.5 gallons or so. With using extract you pretty much know the gravity contribution of it, so if you only added water up to 5 gallons you can just say your OG is 1.045 even though you got a different measurement. I definitely wouldn't add sugar, if you really want to do something you can add some more extract that you boiled in water and cooled back down and that'll bump up the gravity. However if I were you I'd just let it go, that's a pretty solid recipe and you'll come out with some good beer even if the alcohol content is a little lower than you expected. If you add sugar it would thin the beer out and can give it some hot alcohol or cidery characteristics. Your yeast you're using will take your beer down pretty low, so you should be fine regardless of whether your OG is 1.035 or 1.045. Josh Wow fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Oct 27, 2008 |
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Oct 27, 2008 11:59
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I'd rather have a cooking thermometer too, but I had a CDN for awhile and went through about three probes before figuring out it can't ever, ever get wet where the probe meets the cord, or it's ruined. Give that most of the time, that is what I need of it, it made it functionally useless to me. I picked up a probe cooking thermometer from Target for like $25 or so and I've soaked that thing from the probe to the actual unit and it's still chugging along fine. Granted when I dropped the unit in water it acted funky and I thought it was broken, but once it fully dried it started working again.
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Nov 2, 2008 11:07
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I keep a spray bottle filled with star san around, I just refill it whenever I sanitize a bucket. Works great for sanitizing random stuff. I use a glass measuring cup to take beer out for a hydrometer sample, but I use buckets.
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Nov 2, 2008 14:48
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Star San does lose its effectiveness after a while, but I refill my bottle every 2-4 weeks so I really don't worry about it. You can use boiled water to sanitize it as well. Honestly though once your beer has been fermenting and has alcohol in it you don't have to worry too much about sanitization.
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Nov 2, 2008 16:54
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Has anybody here used millenium hops? I picked some up for my latest brew since they were 15% and they didn't have any of the 14% magnums the recipe called for. From a quick look online they're supposed to be kinda like an amped up nugget, which would be great since I love nugget. I'm just using them for the 60 minute addition so I'm not too worried about what they taste/smell like now, but I'll be using them for a late addition at some other point since I won't be using the full ounce. They smell pretty good as is, I think I might use them for a late addition in a pale ale, I haven't made anything hoppy in forever.
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Nov 4, 2008 18:04
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You should definitely pull a sample and check the gravity, if it fermented really hard it could have mostly finished in two days. Also did I read that right and you have a hydrometer in your carboy? Definitely don't do that, as you can tell you won't be able to read it and the activity from fermentation could easily cause it to break and then you have glass all in your beer. Plus you have to spin a hydrometer to get a correct reading, and you can't do that with it in a carboy. Good luck getting it out without breaking it!
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Nov 9, 2008 21:51
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ScaerCroe posted:I thought everyone just left them in there. Last 7 batches I have done it with no breakage problems. I can't really say how likely it is to be done, there's really not much of a way to know without taking a hydrometer reading. I'd just leave it for another week or so then do whatever you were gonna do (transfer to secondary or bottle) and take a reading when you do that to see where it's at then.
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Nov 10, 2008 02:41
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tronester posted:I made a super simple pale ale today; 2.5 gallon batch, 2.5 lbs of Muntons Extra Light Extract Malt, .5 oz cascade for 45 minute boil, .5 oz cascade for the last 5 minutes. Safale S-05 dry yeast. With that low of a gravity, using US-05 and fermenting at 70 degrees you should be fine bottling it after 6 days. I'd say after 4 days take a gravity reading, and then take another one at 6 days. If they're the same, or within a point or two of each other you're ok to bottle. il serpente cosmico posted:I was thinking about canning the manifold portion and using one of those stainless steel braids. I take it this would take care of the flotation problem. I use a stainless steel braid and I've never had any problems with it floating.
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Nov 11, 2008 12:47
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tonedef131 posted:False bottom: 1 Actually stainless braid:1 because my stainless braid doesn't float at all and I use a water to grain ratio of about 1.6 qts/lb which is pretty high from what I've seen a lot of people use.
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Nov 11, 2008 23:45
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ScaerCroe posted:What do beer drinkers mean when they refer to lacing? Lacing is when you're drinking a beer and a bit of the head sticks to the side of the glass. It's usually just some white residue on the glass, and it looks a little like lace.
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Nov 14, 2008 12:58
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I made a coffee porter somewhat based on Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter (minus the bourbon and vanilla of course) and it came out amazingly. I just tried the first bottle last night and while it isn't carbonated all the way it is one of the best beers I've ever made. I used a 1/2 lb of coffee malt and then cold brewed 48 oz of coffee and added that to the bottling bucket. Luckily 1 oz per bottle of coffee gave me a really good coffee flavor, and just enough aroma. I've made coffee beers before that tasted more like beer flavored coffee than coffee flavored beer so I was really worried about overdoing this one.
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Dec 5, 2008 00:44
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For Christmas I'll be getting one or two Cubitainers, these nifty little things Northern Brewer just started selling. You can check em out midway down this page: http://www.northernbrewer.com/mini-kegs.html Has anyone ever used these? I got the 1 gallon ones with the spigot, and I plan on using it to dispense 'cask' ale. I figure as long as I drink it within about a week it should be fine, the beer will oxidize a bit but it does in a real cask as well. I'm gonna try to plan it to where I'll drink the whole gallon in 2 or 3 days, I doubt that'll be a problem. I'm just wondering exactly how low I should prime the beer for this, I was thinking around 1-1.5 vols. I also don't know how I'm going to keep them at a good temperature, I got those stick on thermometers for them and I'm gonna put those on the side and the current plan is to leave it in the fridge then just take it out and set it on the counter and let it warm up til it's at the temp I want. Does this sound like a bad idea for any reason? Anybody else used these or had any experience with them?
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Dec 14, 2008 14:06
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If you wanna use a Mr. Beer go to town, but definitely don't start on your second batch until you've tasted your first. If you like your first batch well enough then go on with your second, but if you don't like it don't waste your time and money on doing a second batch with the Mr. Beer and just step up to extract brewing. You can do it on the cheap, all you need is two 5 gallon buckets (one for fermentation, one for bottling) and a pot big enough to boil like 2.5 gallons of water which you probably have laying around already (or could pick up on the cheap at a resteraunt supply store). You have a ton more options with extract brewing even if you don't steep any specialty grains at first, and it's as simple as boiling the extract for an hour and adding hops at the appropriate times. ScaerCroe posted:I would scrap your next planned batch if you havent bought the ingredients yet, and save up to get a 5 gallon bucket minimum. Once you get 5, you will never look back. Since you have to do an hour long boil anyways, might as well make 5 gallons instead of 2. I'm pretty sure with a Mr. Beer you don't even have to boil water, you just mix all the ingredients together. It's kinda like the EZ Bake Oven of brewing, you get your little pouches of stuff, mix it all together and in a few weeks you have beer.
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Dec 16, 2008 12:58
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Anybody here made a hopbursted beer? I'm planning my next brew and I think I wanna do something hoppy since I haven't in forever and I was thinking a hopburst pale ale would be interesting but I've never done one. I was thinking of doing a mix of centennial and columbus and then maybe 1 or 2 different hops for a total of 4 oz added at 4 or 5 different intervals at something like 20 min, 10 min, 5 min, flameout. I was considering amarillo and cascade for the other hops as I think those 4 would work well. Would 4 oz be enough for a pale ale? It'll probably end up being around 5-5.5% like most of my beers, and I'm seriously considering making it all munich or a 50/50 munich/maris otter split. I'll probably be making a really basic porter or stout as well, I haven't been able to brew in several weeks so I wanna crank 2 batches out in January if I have the time.
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Dec 24, 2008 03:14
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I would love to do Simcoe but it's impossible to find. I'm considering dry hopping but I'm probably more likely to do a FWH instead. I'd like to see what kind of aroma I get from just the hopbursting. I know the centennial and cascade may be a bit redundant so I might just leave out the Cascade, but I think the Amarillo and Columbus are both very different from each other and from the Centennial so I think they'll be a good combo. Maybe I'll throw some Mt. Hood in there in place of Cascade, I might be doing my all cascade stout soon so I wouldn't want to use it too often.
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Dec 24, 2008 04:02
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Midwest does have them and the $3/oz price is good, but it's $7 shipping so it's pretty pricey to buy some. It comes out to about $4/oz which really isn't that bad for Simcoe, but I just can't afford that. I know the centennial/cascade/amarillo/columbus kinda combos are really overdone and all, but they're used a lot for a reason and I almost never make hoppy brews. I've literally only made 1 hoppy beer since June, and it was only mildly hoppy using 3 oz of hops. I need a sweet rear end American pale ale, I blame me drinking a bunch of Celebration for making me wanna do this. Anybody got any suggestions on my malt bill of either 100% munich or a 50/50 munich/MO split or if 4 oz of hops is enough for a hopburst with the hops I'll be using? I definitely have a problem with underhopping, I don't think I've ever even used more than 5 oz of hops in any beer and that includes dry hops with an IPA. I suppose I should get over my aversion to using a lot of hops and just go to town with this one. Maybe do 5 or 6 oz total, I'm sure the munich will help balance things out.
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Dec 24, 2008 05:59
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il serpente cosmico posted:Are you trying to make an IPA or just a regular pale? I'd say go with a 2-row pale as half of your bill of you're only going to use 4oz. I just wanna make a regular pale ale. I can afford to bump it up to 5 or 6 oz if I need to, for some reason I always just seem to hop things low. I've got plenty of centennial left in my freezer, and I know I already have an ounce of Columbus so I'd only have to buy probably 3 oz of hops to hit 6 oz so maybe I'll just really go to town on it. Rocko Bonaparte posted:I thought I was a knowledgeable guy, but I had to look up "hopburst." I think the goal is just to get all your hop bitterness/flavor/aroma simply from late additions, you don't have to use high alpha american hops but if you wanted to do a hopburst with something like EKG you'd have to use a whole lot of it. Supposedly it gives you a unique hop flavor and aroma you don't get any other way so I'd like to try it out at least once. drewhead posted:Freshops has them at 2.25 an ounce in whole leaf. Alright, you got me. Their shipping is only $5 so I can get 8 oz of hops for $24 which is only $3/oz. I'm sure I won't regret it. I don't like not buying from my LHBS since the owner is so awesome but he said it's almost impossible for him to get Simcoe. Can't wait to try it out.
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Dec 24, 2008 14:30
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:48 |
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I'm antsy to get brewing so I came up with a recipe for my hopburst APA, I'm not around my copy of Beersmith so I just used the calculator at TastyBrew.com. I pussed out on going all munich or 50/50 munich/maris otter because I'm using so many hops I don't wanna get too far out there with the malt and have it turn out crappy because of that. I'll probably mash around 152*. Here's what I came up with: 6 lbs munich 6 lbs maris otter 1 lb crystal 60 L US-05 for hops I'm going with a total of 6 oz of hops, 2 each of Simcoe, Amarillo and Centennial. I'll be doing a mix of .5 oz of each hop for four seperate additions. .5 oz each of Simcoe, Amarillo and Centennial at: 20 min 15 min 5 min 0 min So how does that look to everybody? It'll supposedly give me around 70 IBUs and the beer should finish around 5-5.5%. I'm also going to be doing some kind of english style as well soon, probably a bitter or ESB so if anybody has a good recipe for that I'd appreciate it. edit: I've actually heard a lot of good things about The Innkeeper kit at Northern Brewer so I might do that but subbing in what's available at my LHBS and adjusting it for my efficiency. All the would change would be a tiny bit more malt and using maris otter instead of golden promise. I'd probably end up having to use US-04 because he doesn't generally get the limited strains from Wyeast. http://www.northernbrewer.com/docs/kis-html/1813.html Josh Wow fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Dec 26, 2008 |
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Dec 26, 2008 15:19
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