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I'm looking to move beyond the offerings of my local shop (it's a farm and garden warehouse with some Brewer's Best kits) and wondering if there was a goon-preferred online shop. I live in Virginia so East Coast would be better; a day or two for shipping compared to a week.
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Mar 3, 2012 17:18
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If you're already going to splurge on something you're intending to use just for brewing, why not buy something intended for it from a brewshop? Homebrewing does not seem like a market rife with inflated prices as far as I can tell.Angry Grimace posted:Professional brewers/cooks/etc. don't use aluminum because it can't be cleaned with the same type of caustic chemicals that you use for stainless steel and because it dents/scratches much easier than steel. This is the biggest thing for me (and I do come from a pro cook background so v  v): I don't care about the chemicals angle (aluminum stands up fine to dishsoap) but steel wool is an important tool, especially for efficiency, and, being stronger than aluminum, it eats aluminum pots. It's a catch-22, aluminum helps prevent scorching, but if you do scorch aluminum it's so much worse to clean out. And yeah, off-flavors abound, at least in the ones I've used. Aluminum always seems like a goofy also-ran to me, where someone said "Hey, I wonder what else we could make pots out of?"Plus I'm not sure how much this comes up in brewing but I'd be uncomfortable running anything with a low pH in aluminum, because tomato juice eats it.
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Mar 5, 2012 15:02
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Oh, my bad, I didn't realize you were not in the US; in the US there's a lot of catering/foodservice grade pots that aren't ideal (for any kind of cooking, really  ) and it's hard to sort the wheat and chaff. From what I was looking at this weekend, the better homebrew shops here carry purpose-chosen examples of the type of stock pot you're talking about. I didn't mean to say you needed to go right for the pro-brewer stuff, sorry if that's what it came off as.And yeah, echoing that you'd probably be well-served by a 7-gallon pot for 5-gallon boils. If you're really worried about scorching, you could put a 7-gallon pot into a 10-gallon pot with a couple of 20mm nuts as spacers on the bottom between them, making a double boiler. I'd wager you could get away with using some dirt-effing-cheap pots if you did this, plus the outer pot would catch any boilover.
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Mar 5, 2012 16:40
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Prefect Six posted:This is still a pretty lovely thing to do, no matter what brewery. Why is that lovely? If $55 wasn't a reasonable price for a used keg, the deposit would be higher; since you get it back when you bring back the keg, they could make it $100 or $300 or whatever if they needed to without causing you any greater loss in the end. For example, tool deposits are usually the retail price of the tool. Not trying to pick a fight; genuinely confused. I thought deposits were always an assumption of loss. Splizwarf fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Mar 5, 2012 |
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Mar 5, 2012 20:17
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Jo3sh posted:The deposit is just enough to make sure most people bring the kegs back, but it's nowhere near the actual cost of the keg, because if they had $100 deposits (which is approximately fair price for a keg shell), no one would buy $80 kegged beer. This is a weird disconnect to me; if I can expect to get my $100 back when I bring back the keg, why wouldn't I pay $180 for an $80 keg? Do people not have faith that the brewery will give the deposit back? What you're describing seems out of line with the other deposit-based rental systems I can think of, except maybe propane tanks for grilling? But even then you have to buy the first tank outright. Usually, the whole point of a deposit is to cover the loss if the item doesn't come back or comes back damaged. I guess the other question is "If $100 is a reasonable price for a new keg, what's the depreciation on one that's been a daily rental beater for a couple years?", like the difference between a new car and an off-lease fleet car with 2 years and 200,000 miles on it. I've certainly been served from some that looked like they'd lost a fight in the street, are the beat up ones worth $55? Less, more? Do any breweries simply sell them used, like at the end of X years or X hundreds of rentals? Like I said, not trying to fight about it, still honestly confused coming from a world of full-price deposits for equipment rentals. It sounds like keg deposits started out as a token thing back in the day, rather than a calculated part of the business model? Or maybe they were part of the business model but people were generally nicer and more reliable in Olden Times, so the loss figure being lower meant the much lower deposit still covered any costs?
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Mar 5, 2012 22:34
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LeeMajors posted:Also, at least here in SC, there was a new tagging system put in place that requires you keep this paper tag on the keg. If it is lost or falls off, you lose your deposit and have to keep the shell (I think our deposit is 50 or 55). This seems like a system designed -=- I am looking at doing this Brew In A Bag thing, since I have the funds at the moment for equipment or beer but not both. In fact, I only have the funds for beer because I'm instructed to make some beers my wife will enjoy. Luckily, I like much the same beer spectrum. Can I accomplish the Dragon Stout recipe in Clone Brews using that method? Am I in for a world of anger and pain? I'm a giant of a man so getting it out of the pot won't be a problem, my concerns would be: 1. Will heating it on an electric stove be enough BTUs? 2. What to make the bag out of. Why wouldn't cheesecloth work? It's specifically intended for basically this activity but with more protein and some fat. 3. Some of the stuff in the recipe, I don't know what I'm shopping for, like the grain bill is clear right up to "2oz Roasted Barley". Er, what, any old roasted barley? Not really specific enough when Northern Brewer is selling probably 20 types in multiple flavors. Maybe this is a "to taste" thing, as long as it's some type of barley? Just seemed odd for a book about trying to mimic existing flavors to have something so uncertain, so I assume I'm missing something there. Also, more generally, can I bottle wort after the boil for future use? I assume there's some risk of wild yeast with that, although I'd think it'd be minimized by standard refrigeration and proper sanitization. Or, to go to the land where nothing grows: are there any bad/interesting side effects of freezing wort? Splizwarf fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 04:58
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The main reason I was wondering was coming from a catering background where everything's easier and more efficient when done in big sessions. If wort can be successfully stored in a refrigerator, then I could just make several worts all day one day, then always have something waiting when I wanted to get another fermentation pail going; ie Wort Day on Sunday and then pitch a pail after dinner every day for two weeks. I envisioned freezing it in a chest freezer in a Better Bottle with a gallon of headroom. A full-size chest freezer will hold 6 or 8 (I think) depending on if it's deep enough to lay 2 of them sideways between the necks of the other 6. That was more of an academic question, though, I really just want to be able to refrigerate it so I don't have all my fermentation pails finish up on one day.
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Mar 6, 2012 14:01
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Easy there, it's speculation. I'm mostly trying to find out is where the edges/limits are. What techniques can I apply from my previous related experience? What are my options? This isn't something I'm currently able go out and do tomorrow. That being said, Josh Wow posted:I really am confused by what your purpose for this is, do you really want to make like 30-40 gallons of beer in a two week timeframe? For some background, I'm currently cooking, brewing, and baking for 5 adults during the week, and between 15 and 40 on Sundays. We tend to go through about a case to a case and a half of craft beer, hard cider or homebrew in a week of dinners (and occasionally a bottle of wine); I believe in matching food and drink as well as possible and accordingly keep a wide selection in the second fridge. On Sundays, anything in that fridge or the garage is fair game for our guests. To answer your question: yes, probably at minimum six to eight times a year I'll want to do 40 gallons or so, and once a year I'll want to do at least triple that. I have a lot of helping hands available who want to participate and also like beer. 40 gallons is only 15 or 16 cases, which isn't a lot when everyone takes home a case or two. Participation is limited only by floorspace in the (nice-sized) kitchen.
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Mar 6, 2012 15:44
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Jo3sh posted:I have not seen an off-the-shelf solution that is capable of such large batches. I wasn't thinking about huge single batches, I wasn't very clear (sorry!). I was thinking several different smaller batches done same-day. In my experience, setup and teardown for a big thing like this is a given time-sink to be worked around by trying to fit as much in between as practical. To put it another way, making two batches instead of one may increase the setup and teardown time but it certainly won't double it, and if they're cooking at the same time on different burners they won't double the cook time either. Daedalus Esquire posted:You're probably aware of this, but what it sounds like you want to do will probably be extremely questionable legal department. Especially if this is part of a catering business... This isn't an issue in Virginia, the homebrewing limit is 200 gallons/year/person; the precedent is that each person involved can take credit for up to 200 gallons, so two people working together can produce 400 gallons/year and so on scaling upward. This isn't part of a catering business (and won't be done for money). However, I worked catering from about age 12 to age 24, so it's often the lens I'm seeing the world through. I have no loving idea how to cook for two.
Splizwarf fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 17:15
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Why not run multiple chillers? It's just copper tubing with hose fittings on the ends, not too pricey. Can anyone who's done BIAB speak to the possibility of needing to increase the grain bill? I had planned on buying supplies from Northern on my lunch break today for BIAB. Splizwarf fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 18:15
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Josh Wow posted:If you do single pot BIAB (meaning you don't sparge at all), which is what I was saying you would need to do earlier to run like 3-4+ batches at a time, you will definitely need to up your grain bill if the recipe is designed for a traditional mash tun. How should I approach calculating that? The BIAB how-to that I linked a couple posts ago doesn't mention changing the grain bill. Why would I need to increase?
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Mar 6, 2012 18:49
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Northern just offers "crushed", should I try to ask them for a finer crush or will it be sufficient?
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Mar 6, 2012 19:25
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I have some food milling equipment, worth running it through?
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Mar 6, 2012 19:35
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Huh? I was just talking about using a standard chest freezer. On the other hand, I don't see why using professional-grade equipment would make a difference; I have a professional-grade mixer but I'm not running a commercial kitchen with it. Having the specialty timing belt tool for my car doesn't mean I'm running an auto shop either. Heh. Why would anyone bother making my life difficult about it? Are there places where people actually go around checking if you're making beer in the kitchen, and inspecting the basement freezer?
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Mar 6, 2012 20:29
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quantegy posted:I have also read that doing a dunk sparge can greatly help for higher gravities. Can you elaborate? I'm new to this.
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Mar 6, 2012 21:50
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Does the term "sparge" boil down (haha) to "hot rinse"? What's the story with aerating, I understand that it's getting extra O2 into the mixture and circulating the yeast, but is it a boon to add to any recipe or something done only when called for, to achieve a specific result? I have a good stick blender so it's not just academic curiosity. Splizwarf fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 22:27
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Thanks for the explanation on aeration. It sounds like what that means is if you made two batches and aerated one, in that one the yeast would run through the sugar faster by breeding faster and in larger amounts, ending fermentation sooner? Is there an advantage to it beyond speeding up fermentation? Why not do BIAB with less water, then sparge the bag as it hangs over the pot? To put that another way, what's the difference between a) boiling a pound of grain in a gallon of water and b) boiling a pound of grain in a half gallon of water and then adding another half gallon of plain water and stirring it up? Is it that a half gallon of water will not as readily absorb double the material from the grain? Is that what people are trying to accomplish when they talk about longer mash times? It's funny, while typing this out I've started framing soup-making in terms of extraction in my head and it's a weird way to look at it; certainly that's how making stock works, though.
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Mar 6, 2012 23:04
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Help me out with the acronyms. The recipe I'm going to be trying for my first whack at non-kit brewing is from Clone Brews, predating BIAB by probably 10 years, so I'm trying to work out how I need to approach it. I don't have the equipment for doing it without the bag, and don't know what specifically to call that equipment so this sentence is awkward (sorry!).
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Mar 6, 2012 23:19
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How good a deal is that?
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Mar 7, 2012 20:09
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Speaking of kits, my first beer (a Brewer's Best Hefeweizen) came out nice after two weeks bottled, although a little brown for a hefe; however, it's been about a month since then and yesterday's bottle was noticeably more sour. What's going on? I realize that I can expect flavors to change as it ages; I'm not complaining but rather asking that at face value: what's changing, how, why, etc. I also realize that it may have been a fluke bottle: beginning or end of the batch, infected, etc. More "trials" tonight. Seemed like it affected me more than usual as well (but then I was also exhausted so it's a tossup whether that's all in my head), could it have had more bottling primer than the other bottles and produced a significant extra alcohol kick? Would that manifest as a sourness? It certainly wasn't the same effect taste-wise as I'd get from adding a shot of vodka or grain to the bottle.
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Mar 7, 2012 21:09
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Super Rad posted:certain styles even require infection with lacto to get its unique sourness so you can just pretend like you were shooting for some of those advanced homebrewing techniques What I'm hearing here is I did a great job.  Can you go into more detail on lacto infection?
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Mar 7, 2012 21:35
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For what it's worth, I'm a big fan of glasses from Goodwill; 8 locations in the area, high stock turnover, and 99 cents apiece. The downside is the selection is completely off the wall and there's never more than 3 of anything. Found some real neat ones, though.
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Mar 8, 2012 13:58
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I understand why using a CO2 dispenser (a wine preserver) would be a good idea for bottling, ie preventing oxidation and therefore flavor drift; would filling your headspace with CO2 this way be useful? The explanation about aeration earlier made sense, but does the yeast take advantage of the available O2 in the headspace during fermentation or is that just doing harm?
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Mar 8, 2012 20:49
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What would happen if I pulled a vacuum on the secondary fermenter after racking into it?
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Mar 8, 2012 21:12
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withak posted:The metal can definitely get hotter than the boiling point of the wort. It is probably the convection keeping the sack for staying in contact with the hot metal long enough to burn or melt. My plan for dealing with this (this weekend) is to put a metal colander in the bottom of the pot. Any reason not to?
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Mar 10, 2012 07:43
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I use a big candy thermometer.
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Mar 11, 2012 03:51
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Were you checking the gravity to see when it finished fermenting, or did you just wait "long enough" before bottling? How does this work? All the recipes I've seen so far just say "5-7 days in the primary" and don't list a way to tell beyond that. Although it makes sense, I didn't really think about how a tighter timeframe might be observable. Puts a damper on "Started it on Sunday so I'll rack it to the secondary when I have time this upcoming weekend."
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Mar 12, 2012 21:11
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Daedalus Esquire posted:There are people who claim that pellets aren't as good as whole hops, but a plenty of very good commercial breweries use them so I personally think its just the purist snobbery that tend to show up in most hobbies. You're probably right about negligible differences (I'm too inexperienced to have an opinion on that), but I disagree with your justification. In my experience in commercial food production, only occasionally is the reason "because it's the perfect/right thing to use", and that's if the person/people making the recipes got lucky or is a good talker (or because the company is privately held by owners with specific principles). Usually commercial food and drink ingredients are selected by compromises in at least a couple different metrics, even for small-time mom-and-pop operations. For example, in this case maybe whole hops are better overall but cost more per gallon than using a few extra pellets, or pellets are simpler to store or fit better in an automated dispenser. Who knows? There's as many selection patterns as there are people. Usually one of the underlying elements of purist snobbery is the freedom from rigid recipes and fixed costs, that people making stuff for themselves can choose to get "the good stuff" for every ingredient, and drat the budget (for some, there is no budget). Commercial breweries have to make it work on a per-bottle budget, even the expensive ones. Or, to put that another way, there's probably not a lot of commercial beers made with truffles. 
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Mar 13, 2012 16:46
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Oh dang, Bell's Winter White is my favorite beer of all time, thank you very much for the reminder that I should grab some before it's all gone for Spring. I'd try to clone it but given the wide-open field I'd rather make things that aren't my favorites already. I'm really happy that Clone Brews has a lot of beers I can't get locally. It'd never be quite as good no matter how well I did. Unless I did too well, and then it'd be ruined from the other direction. 
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Mar 13, 2012 20:49
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Hey, speaking of which, I got my Dragon Stout clone into the primary on Sunday night, and it's in the basement bubbling away. The yeast is Wyeast California Lager and the temp listed for it is 50F to 62F. The thing is, while the bubbling is fast and regular (faster than my heartbeat), the crystal thermometer strip on the side of the pail is reading 66F. What's the story? Is the temp range less of a hard rule and more of a guideline to the most vigorous range? I expected that a) the basement was colder, and b) I wouldn't have any activity above 63/64F or so. My plan is to put the whole thing in a Rubbermaid tub full of water and drop enough ice in the Rubbermaid to get it to 49/50F at the end of each day, since it's only going to be another week at most. I don't have the resources to set up a dedicated fridge/cooler yet.
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Mar 13, 2012 21:02
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Well, dang; I sort of expected as much. Better get on that tub of water, then! I figured on trying to drop it casually over several hours, looks like I should go more slowly.
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Mar 13, 2012 21:16
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Josh Wow posted:Pellet hops are great and can make amazing beer, but in my experience whole hops just have a little more aromatics and flavor in them, and they seem fresher for lack of a better term. This would make sense if for no other reason than oxidative exposure. I wonder if they're processed by metal equipment?
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Mar 14, 2012 12:50
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icehewk posted:Mashing is soaking the grains at certain temperature (or series of) for a set amount of time, in order to set off an enzymatic process that I'm not entirely clear on (starches to sugar, sugar to starches? sugars to be absorbed in to the wort?). I can field that one, I think I understand it pretty well now. Please call me out on any of this if it's incorrect! Grains are hard little bundles of densely-stored starch to begin with. They're given ideal sprouting conditions (nice temperature, and watered), and the sprout wants sugar for building blocks. It dispenses enzymes that efficiently convert its particular starch to sugars, and if it were in the ground this would proceed unchecked and produce a little growing plant. Instead, however, as soon as it begins to sprout, it's thrown into a roasting kiln (basically a big oven). It's heated dry enough to freeze the enzymes, without ruining them, and picks up interesting flavors along the way as Maillard reactions develop. When the roasted grains are held in hot water (mashing), the starches, enzymes, and any already-produced sugars are extracted from the grains like tea from tea leaves. The grains have to be crushed (just cracked open, really) before mashing to open up the innards, because the sprouting process is hopefully arrested before the sprout does any real development (and certainly before it breaches the husk), and if a seed were to dump out its contents in any rainstorm it'd hardly be a viable species. As everything sits in the hot water, the enzymes are activated by this ideal temperature and liquid slurry, so they start converting the starches into the sugars we want. As far as I understand it, the temperature and duration are specific to the grains used, and have to do with how well the enzymes will work at a given temp and how long they need to work before diminishing returns makes further soaking not worthwhile. The sugar produced is molecule-by-molecule, so it's starting out already in a solution, which I assume is nice compared to DME and syrup (which are at least more likely to scorch, and there may be other mild solubility-related issues). This solution is called "wort". At the end of the mashing process, the wort is poured off (probably directly into your wort-boiling pot) and more water at the same high temperature is poured slowly over the grain mixture to rinse off any remaining sugar/starch/flavor. If you have a pre-built mash vessel (a "tun") with a false bottom and a spigot, the grain will be strained out of the wort by the false bottom (a screen that sits above the spigot), and the sparge water pours out the same way. It looks like the easiest way to achieve a purpose-built vessel is to buy a false bottom made for a water cooler, and buy a 5-gallon orange jobsite cooler to put it in. If you don't have the gear, cheesecloth or a Brew In A Bag bag is enough to strain the grain (just keep the grain in the bag through the whole mash, pulling it out at the end and letting it drain into the mash tun), although it makes sparging awkward. What people are talking about when they describe "efficiency" with relation to producing wort from grain is the percentage of the mass of a batch's grains that were converted to sugar during mashing. I'm not clear on whether the grain husks (ie the material that isn't starch or sugar) are included in that percentage measurement or if 80% efficiency means that 20% of the available starch is unconverted. Splizwarf fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Mar 15, 2012 |
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Mar 15, 2012 19:04
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Okay, so it's the latter, where you're measuring total starch converted. I don't understand yet why that lab-created 100% efficient wort would be less tasty, can you explain?
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Mar 15, 2012 19:23
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Interior diameter's probably different between the two sizes (unless the 10 gallon is twice as tall), so I'd assume you'd need to buy a specific bottom for the correct size. You'll need a way to keep the liquid at the correct temp, too. I wonder if I could use a generic version of Whiskey Stones to keep the heat up in a cooler? I did my first mash on the stove in a stock pot because I couldn't come up with a good way to keep the cooler at the correct temp. Splizwarf fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Mar 15, 2012 |
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Mar 15, 2012 21:23
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What did you clean them with? Could a little cleaner residue in the bottle have killed most of your yeast?
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Mar 19, 2012 17:26
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The trap often works as a sump, though; there's usually going to be a little liquid or at least residue from previous batches. Also, that won't clean the inside of a bottle very well (learned that one the hard way  ).
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Mar 19, 2012 17:32
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I agree that it'd be bottle-specific, so I'd be more inclined to guess a contaminant in the dishwasher. We've been sanitizing the bottles with a tool, the style where the bottle goes on upside down and pushing on it pumps sanitizer into it, right before the bottles are used (they dry on a bottle tree). Personally, I wouldn't trust a dishwasher for final sterilization. vv
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Mar 19, 2012 17:59
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I've been doing exactly that with a 6 gallon pail and a tall square cooler (after getting some advice in this thread last week). I add ice every night and have been rocking a steady 57. I'm hoping fermentation finishes before I have to remove water to add ice.
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Mar 20, 2012 20:39
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Super Rad posted:The solution for this is to use icepaks/frozen water bottles instead of ice cubes once you reach this point.  Dammit, why didn't I think of that? Thanks!
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Mar 21, 2012 12:53
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