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Biomute posted:All my beer blogs are dead because the authors started breweries. ugh, like yes I wish I had time to brew more but I for sure don't want to do it professionally.
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Feb 27, 2019 17:12
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Are there any active blogs besides brulosophy anymore?
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Feb 27, 2019 17:48
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Did the bertus brewery blog guy die or just have kids and stop posting updates?
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Feb 28, 2019 02:08
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I haven't thought about that blog in a long long time. There was also Bear Flavored that went pro in 2016 I think. I don't even remember what I used to frequent besides The Mad Fermentationist. I think tomorrow I'm going to brew a mild. Just nice and easy. Enough MO to get to 4% and half a lb of some crystal malt.
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Feb 28, 2019 18:09
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It was a toss up between a standard bitter, mild, or west coast IPA for me tomorrow. I think I'm going to do the IPA though. I have a few too many hops to use right now and I have a hankering for a good and fresh west coast IPA. Thinking about giving a Simcoe and Sabro mix trial. Then again, I have some Ekuanot cryohops that I need to use too. Decision paralysis I guess.
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Feb 28, 2019 19:09
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Sabro sounds wild. I'd love to give that a shot in an IPA. Go for it!
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Feb 28, 2019 20:16
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ChiTownEddie posted:Sabro sounds wild. I'd love to give that a shot in an IPA. Go for it! It's delicious. I've used it quite a few times. It used to be called HBC438, but released widely this year. It makes some amazing stuff. I may use some of the Pekko in the IPA too. See what sort of herbal and fruit I can get out of a whirlpool. The other new release that's really pretty nice is Pahto (HBC682). That's super herbal, but super high on the AA% so it'll probably be relegated to big beers if I end up using it. An ounce is almost too much for 5 gallon batches.
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Feb 28, 2019 21:16
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Jhet posted:It's delicious. I've used it quite a few times. It used to be called HBC438, but released widely this year. It makes some amazing stuff. I may use some of the Pekko in the IPA too. See what sort of herbal and fruit I can get out of a whirlpool. Sabro is a fantastic hop. I don’t know why it’s being discontinued. It could be that the cotton candy finish is unsettling for some people. We’ve used it in braggots and ipas successfully. It’s not a great dual use, but for broad dry hopping schedules, it’s fantastic. As far as going pro, once you’re doing it for a living your life is basically a nonstop whirlwind of activity. I do mostly QC work and R&D for a brewery, and that’s already 10-12 hrs of my day. Add on the free beers and that’s a solid 11-13 hour day.
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Mar 1, 2019 04:34
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They’re probably discontinuing it because HBC685 is up for being released this year and it should basically just be an upgrade on Sabro. Similar cross and it smells great. Pretty sure 685 what was in a beer that the guys at Berryessa brought up for the Yakima Chief hop thing I went to last Labor Day. It was the stand out beer all weekend and that includes the stuff that Trevor Rogers brought with him from de Garde.
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Mar 1, 2019 04:42
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Today I ended up going with Simcoe for bitter, and Ekuanot:Pekko at about 3:1 for late additions and dry hopping. The ekuanot and pekko in the bowl smell amazing together. Must brew more.
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Mar 1, 2019 18:46
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While reading some news about Flint, MI, I discovered that in the US, if I'm reading things correctly, piping and fittings associated with garden hose outlets and utility faucets is not regulated under the safe drinking water act and doesn't have to meet its standards for things like lead content. https://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techref/nsf/pip_watact.html Might change your brew day a bit, depending on how much you trust your construction. It will mine.
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Mar 4, 2019 20:40
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eviltastic posted:While reading some news about Flint, MI, I discovered that in the US, if I'm reading things correctly, piping and fittings associated with garden hose outlets and utility faucets is not regulated under the safe drinking water act and doesn't have to meet its standards for things like lead content. Some cities it’s from a different water source too. My outside water bill and source are different from my inside water.
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Mar 5, 2019 03:07
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rockcity posted:Some cities it’s from a different water source too. My outside water bill and source are different from my inside water. That's just crazy to me. In the last three places I've lived I can just look at the plumbing in the unfinished basement ceiling and see the pipes that go to my outside spigots. It's just been the same plumbing supply the whole way through.
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Mar 5, 2019 04:40
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Jhet posted:That's just crazy to me. In the last three places I've lived I can just look at the plumbing in the unfinished basement ceiling and see the pipes that go to my outside spigots. It's just been the same plumbing supply the whole way through. Sometimes people will be hooked up to municipal water indoors, and have well water outdoors.
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Mar 5, 2019 04:50
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Jhet posted:That's just crazy to me. In the last three places I've lived I can just look at the plumbing in the unfinished basement ceiling and see the pipes that go to my outside spigots. It's just been the same plumbing supply the whole way through. I wasn’t aware it was a thing until we moved into this house 5 years ago. This is a new build home if for some reason that is a newer thing. I’m also in Florida where we don’t have basements to even look at the plumbing supply.
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Mar 5, 2019 05:56
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Voss kveik is awesome. Too bad it can’t seem to seal the deal past 1.008, even with krausening. I used amylo to make it a brut, but the kveik just refuses. Otherwise, it’s a goddamn juice bomb. I love it.
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Mar 6, 2019 06:46
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In the process of getting my fermentation chamber set up and was wanting to try out a Kolsch style beer as a bit of a test run for temp control...anyone have any opinions on the various Kolsch yeasts that are available? I like ones that are a little fruitier but still nice and crisp, would the standard White Labs/Wyeast strains work (WLP029 or WY2565) or should I look at some of the other companies? Usually I just go with White Labs but I always wonder if I should branch out a bit. Also I just noticed Bootleg Biology is about to be releasing some kind of Kviek strain that ferments hotter but still is clean and lager-like? Maybe I will just try that out as I wanted to do a Mexican Lager for the summer if my Kolsch test run turned out ok. I guess it defeats the purpose of learning to dial in temp if your yeast can handle anything, but in the end I just want some nice "crispy boys" for spring/summer drinking. https://bootlegbiology.com/2019/03/...zO1PBoMnzAg4EFg
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Mar 7, 2019 19:14
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I like 34/70
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Mar 7, 2019 20:30
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I really like Gigayeast's Koslch. Really interesting is a friend replicated my Koslch recipe with the same yeast and his came out really sulfury, which I've never had happen. Ran it at the same fermentation temp as well.
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Mar 8, 2019 04:38
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eviltastic posted:Might change your brew day a bit, depending on how much you trust your construction. It will mine. While looking into things, I found a study on garden hoses containing/leaching things like lead or BPA into the water. The short story is don't skimp and get hoses meant for drinking water. https://www.ecocenter.org/healthy-stuff/pages/executive-summary-garden-hose-study-2016
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Mar 8, 2019 17:59
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FireDooley posted:In the process of getting my fermentation chamber set up and was wanting to try out a Kolsch style beer as a bit of a test run for temp control...anyone have any opinions on the various Kolsch yeasts that are available? I like ones that are a little fruitier but still nice and crisp, would the standard White Labs/Wyeast strains work (WLP029 or WY2565) or should I look at some of the other companies? Usually I just go with White Labs but I always wonder if I should branch out a bit. I have had very good results with Omega's Kolsch II @ 65F.
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Mar 9, 2019 22:06
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Hey thread, It’s been about a year since I’ve brewed, been busy with school, kids and work and just moved into a nice new space with lots of room to brew. I have all my poo poo at my dads house where I was brewing while I lived in an apartment, so I’m looking forward to bringing it all over and getting some brewing done. My 3 kegs are nearly empty and all my bottles are gone so yeah haha. Last I was brewing lots of Trappist style stuff and some German ales here and there. I had a biere de garde for the first time the other day and I want to make that. I read a bit about the style and I see there’s 3 different “colours” so I may try to do one of each or maybe just the pale and brown. In addition, I’ve never brewed anything sour, so I wanna try my hand at one of those this year. Probably also in the Belgian style. I was wondering if anyone had any recipes/tips/resources for some BdGs and a simple babbys first sour. I can do 4 batches at a time and I’d like to preferably knock em all out in one weekend if possible. And I don’t want to go too hardcore on the sour yet, something I can drink in the spring/summer. It’s pretty cold here also right now so my basement is like 50-60f, though I could bring buckets upstairs if need be I suppose. All grain, have a stir plate/flasks, fermentation chamber, etc. Anyone got some ideas?
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Mar 11, 2019 02:25
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Sure, BdG is, like Saison, a pretty diverse style, so it would help to know a bit more about what you are looking for. In addition to variation in color there is a a school of thought that larger, more commercial breweries will generally use simpler grain bills using mainly a base malt (usually pilsner malt) with small amounts of roasted malt for color adjustment, if any. These are considered by some to have better aging potential than the more artisinal style grain bill, which uses a combination of specialty malt to achieve their flavor and color. Read the book Farmhouse Ales, it is good. You might also want to look at Jolly Pumpkins lineup for inspiration. As it is currently March, maybe make a Biere de Mars? This is generally an amber Biere de Garde with a high proportion of wheat used in the grist and more hop character than what is usual for the style. Something like 1.060 OG, 30 IBU, 50% Pils, 33% Wheat malt, 7% Dextrose, 7% Dark Munich, 3% Medium Crystal thotsky fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Mar 11, 2019 |
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Mar 11, 2019 08:55
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Currently reading Farmhouse Ales by Phil Markowski. There is a big section on Biere de Garde in that book (I skipped that part because I'm interested in reading about the Saison history and traditions). There are lots of recipes in that book, so I imagine you could find what you are looking for in there.
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Mar 12, 2019 12:33
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We had our monthly brew club meeting over the weekend and one of the guys brought a chocolate peanut butter porter that he made with PB2. He was a bit coy on how much he added, anyone play around with PB2 before? I have a good base porter that I'd think it'd pair well with and wouldn't mind trying it.
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Mar 13, 2019 00:16
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thotsky posted:Sure, BdG is, like Saison, a pretty diverse style, so it would help to know a bit more about what you are looking for. In addition to variation in color there is a a school of thought that larger, more commercial breweries will generally use simpler grain bills using mainly a base malt (usually pilsner malt) with small amounts of roasted malt for color adjustment, if any. These are considered by some to have better aging potential than the more artisinal style grain bill, which uses a combination of specialty malt to achieve their flavor and color. LaserWash posted:Currently reading Farmhouse Ales by Phil Markowski. There is a big section on Biere de Garde in that book (I skipped that part because I'm interested in reading about the Saison history and traditions). Thanks guys! Looks like just the book I was searching for
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Mar 13, 2019 00:55
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I’m really sure why people do that. I wish I knew how much PB2 to use because I’d just tell you. Even a lot of pro brewers will just tell you what they did. Has anyone pieced together spunding valves for their kegs at all? I want to start dry hopping and close transfer for hoppy or sour things. I’d also settle for reviews on valves bought somewhere because I expect they’ll be similar in price. I have a West coast IPA that’s turning out good, but I expect it can be better yet.
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Mar 13, 2019 01:13
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Jhet posted:I’m really sure why people do that. I wish I knew how much PB2 to use because I’d just tell you. Even a lot of pro brewers will just tell you what they did. I buy my valves and fittings from Foxx, but they’re local to me. GW Kent is also fantastic. I typically operate completely on 1.5” butterfly now, mates to TC. I’ve still got cam fittings (which are great), but prefer the ease of the TC personally. I’m trying to avoid ball valves since they’re a huge pain in the rear end to clean well.
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Mar 13, 2019 01:20
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gamera009 posted:I buy my valves and fittings from Foxx, but they’re local to me. GW Kent is also fantastic. Foxx isn't local to me, but I'll stick them on my supplier list because it can always get longer. I won't be able to do wholesale until I can get my family moved back to the land of mountains and constant rain and get to open my nano finally. Only 3 years behind schedule so far, but that just means I'm not losing money yet and have more time to save so less investment needed. Positives and negatives. I tend to forget GW Kent for whatever reason. I'll have to see what I need before piecing it all together, the spunding stuff probably won't hit minimum order by itself. It'll be on a ball valve because I'm just using cornys. I'd love to upgrade everything to TC, but I'm going to do that when I scale my system up to 1/2 bbl. Not really worth dropping the  on fittings when I only have a couple to clean.
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Mar 13, 2019 02:08
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I'm not a PB2 convert. I've had 3-4 homebrews by different people and they all come out pretty similar - a lot of 'peanut' but not much 'butter'. I've heard people using upwards of 2lbs in a 5g batch. Apparently, PB2 is just defatted peanut flour, so that makes sense about my perception of it. Working on the 'butter' portion seems to involve other adjuncts and additives.
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Mar 13, 2019 12:46
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He used the PB2 with chocolate and it had a nice balanced flavor, but I could see how it would be missing that fat feel. I'll have to do some looking into it a bit further, I think 2 lbs would probably be over kill for my tastes.
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Mar 13, 2019 14:14
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Brewing failures out of the blue - I brewed up a base beer for one of my kettle sours today and came in like 50% of my expected OG. I ended up doping it with cane sugar because I didn't want to redo the mash or anything extensive like that. Thankfully, it's so fruit-forward that I'm not too concerned with the typical malt flavors or mild weirdness from cane sugar. The only thing I can think of is that I used a second thermometer (old school mercury) to cross check my thermapen and noticed a ~4ºF difference, so there's a chance I overcooked it on the dough-in or something.
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Mar 16, 2019 17:19
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Maybe a combination of glucose and betaglucan could help with balancing PB2. Like, use 1318 and a bunch of oats/rye.
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Mar 16, 2019 19:21
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Got a hold of a small vial of the mixed-culture Muri "kveik" strain. Pitched it in a starter with some dregs from Eik & Tids raw ale. I doubt the result will be anything like the typical kveik beers I've seen, but hopefully it should be good. Will be using 5 kilos of Norwegian pale malt (apparently made in someones garage) and to that I'll add about 5% each of flaked spelt and Simpsons T50 (a similar grainbill and gravity as Anchorage Love Buzz). Shooting for 40 IBUs of all whirlpool EKG hops. thotsky fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Mar 27, 2019 |
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Mar 23, 2019 18:01
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Hey goons! I've been brewing since Sept. last year, some 5 batches in and trying for a Belgian Golden Strong Ale, as per Jamil's book. I'm doing BIAB with two 30-liter steel kettles, and using a floating thermometer. Thing is, my bag is a bit small for the kettles, so I just leave it to the side like so:  For all past batches, i've been measuring temperature by submerging the thermometer in that little side part with the wort, but this time I tried just putting it in the mash-- it worked wonders, i thought, until the water started boiling while the thermometer read 65ºC... I panicked and threw some cold water in there, and am now measuring with the side bit of water once again. I'm expecting a tannin-filled cloyingly sweet beer now, and have no idea how to use the thermometer anymore, or if I should just get a bigger bag. Any thoughts?
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Mar 26, 2019 20:09
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Try bringing your water to the temp you need, plus hotter for temp correction before adding your grain and the bag. Then stir and take the temp in a few different places after 2 minutes. If you wrap your kettles with a blanket and a lid (I just use a blanket during the winter with it indoors), you probably don't need to turn the heat on again until you're removing the grain and boiling. BIAB might end up losing a little more heat because the mass is more water than I'd use for a mash, but I'm not sure. I only lose a couple of degrees per hour and that's no problem for good conversion.
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Mar 27, 2019 02:19
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Jhet is right. Find the right strike temperature, add grains, stir and leave it alone. Back when I did BIAB I put the whole kettle in the oven at lowest setting, it kept the temperature perfectly. Depending on your oven it might make stirring difficult, but it worked wonders for me.
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Mar 27, 2019 09:04
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El Pipila posted:I'm expecting a tannin-filled cloyingly sweet beer now, and have no idea how to use the thermometer anymore, or if I should just get a bigger bag. Any thoughts? The batch may well turn out ok, if not fully to style. Speaking from experience doing the same thing, it may not finish as dry as it's supposed to, but it's still got a good shot at being a good beer. That recipe is entirely base malt and cane sugar, so you've got enzymes to spare. If a bunch of your grains didn't get above your target mash temperature, those enzymes wouldn't be denatured and would still do their thing during the rest of the mashing process. You probably still had plenty around and active for your mash. I'm not into Belgian styles, so I don't have any practical experience tweaking recipes here, but there's stuff you can do if you're worried about it coming out dry enough. You could add some more fully fermentable sugars. You could also consider being more aggressive about rousing the yeast or oxygenation than usual. Oaking is another option, if the tannin extraction wasn't too bad.
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Mar 27, 2019 17:57
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Awesome, thanks! I'll try the blanket approach since my oven is too small, and I oxygenated pretty vigorously. Let's see what happens...
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Mar 28, 2019 06:06
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New to all-grain (and really brewing in general, I did some extract a bunch of years ago) and I did my first batch a couple of weeks ago that's happily fermenting, but I'm left with a few questions regarding water volumes after brewing my first all-grain, and pretty much going through most of this thread. I don't have my notes with me here at work so my numbers in this post aren't going to be 100% accurate. For my first all-grain brew I wasn't terribly concerned with efficiency and all of that although I did take gravity readings, I just wanted to focus on working with my set up, and going through the steps, etc. I picked the Speckled Heifer recipe off of Northern Brewer and was going to ask when I went into the store to get everything but I totally forgot. I think the grain bill was something like 8.5lbs and has a sacch rest for 60 minutes and mashout for 10 minutes, but doesn't specify volumes for a five gallon batch, so I found a calculator online and just rolled with it. I think it had something like 3.4ish gallons for my first rest and 5.6ish gallons for mashout. I'm probably not really understanding the mashout process either, but I did the 3.4 gallons at 152F for an hour and settled the grain bed and drained into my kettle, then did the 5.6 gallons at 170F for 10 minutes, and drained into my kettle. I drained a total of 6.5 gallons into my kettle, and I still was able to drain out 1.5 gallons of mash runnings after that. Is that just a case of whatever random mash volume calculator I found being bunk? Is this just tweaking that I need to take note of and consider for next time? What do you all use for a calculator, or equation to get your mash water volumes? My other question, arising from just glancing around at possible future recipes, is "traditional" multi-step mashes. I know this thread has kind of discussed in the past about how that's relatively pointless, but for example, Northern Brewer's all-grain Hefeweizen has an option for multi-step mashing, which looks like: Protein rest: 122F for 20 minutes Beta sacch rest: 149F for 30 minutes Alpha sacch rest: 158F for 30 minutes Mashout: 170F for 10 minutes Obviously I'm not going to be trying something like that for a while, but how would you figure out your volumes for that? Sorry for the long rambling, and thanks in advance!
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Mar 29, 2019 19:12
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