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Oh thank god! What would I do without the brewing thread? Does anyone have a recipe similar to rogue saint red? It's a nice red ale with plenty of hop flavor and aroma, and only some hop bitterness. Here are the ingredients (but not the proportions) listed on the website: Malts: Great Western Harrington, Klages, Munich & Hugh Baird Carastan 30-37 & 13-17, Crystal 70-80. Hops: Chinook & Centennial.
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Sep 17, 2011 17:12
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Is the issue that you use the larger plastic buckets as primaries, and the exactly 5 gallon carboys as secondaries? If so, I would just brew a slightly smaller batch and put it in the carboy with a blow off tube. I wouldn't transfer a beer while it's still working.
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Sep 18, 2011 16:04
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I've seen that BYO recipe online, and it doesn't look right to me. So much crystal! The beer has a more mild sweetness and a decent amount of hop bitterness. I ended up making up a recipe yesterday that I think is what I want. A little bit of crystal 120, and a lot of the IBUs coming from late hop additions for a smoother bitterness, as recommended in this Jamil article.. It may not match the rogue beer exactly, but it should taste good.
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Sep 18, 2011 16:16
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My fiance asked about brewing an imperial red - I think because she likes Rogue's Imperial Red. After some googling, this sounds like a really vaguely defined style. What would you consider an imperial red ale to be?
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Sep 22, 2011 01:41
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Sorry - to clarify, what would a recipe for an imperial red ale look like? Like a less hoppy IPA, maybe, or a strong malty beer that still has some hops?
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Sep 22, 2011 02:22
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What would you consider "moderately hard?" The 50-60 ibu range?
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Sep 22, 2011 03:32
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Edit:^^^ awesome info, thanks!Docjowles posted:There's a "west coast red" that is basically Pliny the Elder with some more crystal malt and color, and the traditional Irish red that is way more malt focused. I've never had Rogue's but just based on the brewery I'd shoot for like 80 IBU's and multiple big late hop additions. She's your fiance, how bitter does she typically like her beers? Hard to say - pale ales and hoppy red ales, definitely. IPAs, maybe, if they're on the gentler side. IIPAs, definitely not. I still don't have a good sense for how IBUs translate to taste, especially since IBUs don't seem to tell the whole story. Some high IBU beers seem to down a lot smoother than others. I'm guessing that has to do with how much malt sweetness is in there, and probably some other factors as well.
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Sep 22, 2011 07:04
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I would just buy the basic kit and add items as you need them (like a good thermometer and a big pot, if you don't have them already). You probably don't need two carboys AND a bucket, a test jar, and whatever else that deluxe kit comes with to start out.
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Sep 22, 2011 21:52
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Listen to that man. Five gallons seems like a lot, then suddenly it's gone and you have to wait six weeks for the next batch.
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Sep 24, 2011 16:54
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I think I've read that it should be wort, not water, that you boil the hops in, for sciencey reasons. You can always do a late addition of extract - put a little in at the beginning of the boil, hop away, and add the rest of the extract in the final minutes of the boil.
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Sep 24, 2011 22:49
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Josh Wow posted:I've actually decided recently after having a few beers come out too dark with me adding 2 oz of roast barley or carafa for color that I'm done with that poo poo. If I want to make a scottish ale and my grain bill is gonna get me a golden beer rather than red/brown unless I add a little roasted barley then my scottish ale is just gonna be golden. It's one of those weird things - adding ingredients purely for color seems like cheating, but it's so tied to how most people think about beer. It's like the artificial smell they give gas. You almost need that color to know what you're drinking. I read about one of those experiments/pranks where they gave wine drinkers white wine that had red food coloring, with predictable results.
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Sep 25, 2011 19:15
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Has anyone used a food processor to crush grain? I have 1.5 lbs of uncrushed grains out of a 20 lbs grainbill. (I roasted my own brown malt, so I bought that 1.5 lbs uncrushed.) The rolling pin method has failed me in the past, so I'm thinking I'll try the food processor, and since most of the grain was milled correctly, I'm hoping that an uneven crush won't matter too much for one specialty malt.
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Sep 28, 2011 17:48
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Because of the difference in grain size, only the biggest grains were being crushed, while smaller grains were passing underneath the roller untouched. I eventually started smacking grains individually with the end of the rolling pin, and the whole thing was a pain in the rear end. If anyone has tips for the rolling pin or other ways of crushing without a mill, I'd like to hear it. My other option is spending an hour or more driving to the homebrew store and back to crush a small bag of grain.
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Sep 28, 2011 18:40
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Did my second ever all-grain brew this weekend, and my first ever high-gravity brew. Both my mash temp and my sparge temp were low, and I ended up adding a half-gallon of boiling water to each to bring it up. Then I boiled the wort for an extra hour before adding any hops to boil off that extra gallon. In the end, I got pretty close to my target OG. (Was supposed to be 1.083, I got 1.080.) Hopefully this will all work out OK. I don't know why the temps were low this time. I nailed them with my first all-grain batch. I preheated the cooler both times. The only thing I can think of is that the large grain-bill threw off the online calculator I was using.
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Oct 3, 2011 23:33
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I've had one batch become infected, and it was a stout with cold-brewed coffee. I don't know for sure, but I think it was the unsanitized coffee that did it. I would definitely soak the coffee in vodka for a day or two first.
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Oct 4, 2011 00:16
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Last summer I made some cider by throwing some S-04 into jugs of apple juice. (No dextrose or anything else.) Tried it occasionally for a few months after, and it was intense. Tart and harsh. Not terrible, but not really that enjoyable either. Just opened up a bottle this weekend, after a year and change. It's a whole different experience now. Smooth, appley, mildly sour. Pretty good.
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Oct 4, 2011 22:16
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What about roasting your own brown malt? The shop didn't have the stuff, so I put some 2-row in the oven, following instructions I found online. But of course, I have no idea if what I got is close to the stuff I would buy, and I have no taste comparison I can make.
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Oct 7, 2011 20:15
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What kind of grains? Some don't have fermentable sugars, in which case you just want to dunk them in hot water for 30 minutes or so, like making tea. Others you would want to mash properly, watching your temps more carefully.
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Oct 10, 2011 23:57
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I've got a conditioning question. My beers usually have a bit of chill haze that goes away after a few weeks in the fridge. Maybe it's my imagination, but I think the beers taste a bit cleaner after the time in the fridge as well. I'm currently brewing a ton for my wedding next year, and I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense to rotate beers through the refrigerator to knock out the chill haze. If I put a beer the refrigerator for two weeks, then take it out and leave it out, will it stay clear? Or will it go back to its pre-conditioned state?
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Oct 20, 2011 20:14
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I'm making a red ale this weekend with wyeast 1272 (American Ale II), and I want to reuse the yeast cake for a strong porter. I tried googling, but haven't found much about this yeast being used in a porter. Any reason not to do it?
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Oct 21, 2011 21:24
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Ugh. I bottled a red ale (around 1.06 og, 1.15 fg) two and a half weeks ago. Cracked two open, and they're flat. I don't think I forgot the priming sugar - but maybe I did. Should I wait? Pour them all into a bucket, add some sugar, and try again?
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Oct 22, 2011 03:03
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They've been at around 70 degrees, behind my couch. Put the beers in the fridge for a day before I drank them. They're also very, very slightly carbonated, but that's only noticeable if you're really looking for it. There's also some sediment at the bottom of all the bottles, which makes me think the yeast has been up to something, at least. Hmm, now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't be keeping that bag of lactose next to that bag of dextrose... wafflesnsegways fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Oct 22, 2011 |
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Oct 22, 2011 07:14
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Yeah, I use cheap vodka too. I occasionally get suckback (because I don't have a fermentation chamber and the temperature fluctuates a little), and I'd rather have vodka falling in than water, like from the toilet.
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Oct 24, 2011 02:31
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But since it's root beer, it would presumably have a lot of sugar in the drink for the yeast to go to town on. (the issue isn't how much yeast you add, it's how much sugar is available for the yeast to turn into c02. Generally speaking, the yeast will reproduce and keep on working until all the fermentable sugars are gone.) I think you would need to add something (sulfites?) to knock out the yeast when the carbonation is at the right level.
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Oct 26, 2011 15:37
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I have a friend with a 2-gallon barrel that he uses for oaking cocktails. I don't know where he got it from or how much it cost him. I'll ask.
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Nov 23, 2011 21:38
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I once stuck my head into a homebrew shop in New Zealand. "hey, what's this contraption, with all the pipes and valves? This doesn't look like a brew stand... oh my...."
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Nov 29, 2011 07:35
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I have an infection concern myself. I've had one seriously infected batch, a mocha stout. When I first started drinking it, it poured with a massive head, like half the glass. Then it started gushing when I opened the bottles. When the first bottle exploded, about 5 months after I bottled, I dumped what was left. This week, I opened up one of my last bottles of a hefe I brewed almost a year ago. Poured it in a glass, and the whole thing turned to foam. It didn't use to do this. Now I'm worried that everything i've brewed has been slightly infected. Normally we drink it pretty fast, so its not a problem. But we're banking hundreds of beers for my wedding next year. What if they all turn into gushers right before the wedding?
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Dec 2, 2011 21:08
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This seems like the place to ask this question: Does anyone have a good source for cheap, non-obnoxious bottle bags? Most of my gifts these days seem to be bottled, and I'm thinking I should just order a bunch of gift bags. But a cursory google search turns up a bunch of things that are more expensive and more frilly than I want.
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Dec 13, 2011 17:16
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So a few months ago, I mentioned that I bought a Miller home draft and planned to refill it with homebrew. It didn't go great. The Miller home draft is basically a modified Tap-A-Draft, made by the same people. It's a 1.5 gallon plastic bottle and a tap. I refilled the bottle with homebrew, and let it naturally carbonate. Earlier this week, I got a C02 cartridge (a 16 gram cartridge, not the 12 gram cartridge the normal Tap-A-Draft system uses). This cartridge was slightly too short, so I ended up folding up a piece of paper to push it into place. This didn't seem to work so well, as I could hear a brief hiss every 60 seconds or so. After the first glass, the system lost pressure, and beer was just dribbling out. So I went and bought another cartridge - threaded this time, instead of unthreaded. It was slightly longer. But when I went to switch them, the needle that punctures the cartridge popped out with the old cartridge, along with the rubber ring that holds the cartridge in place. I used tweezers to jam that back up there, but who knows if I did it right. Screwed in the threaded cartridge, and this one was the right size. But two seconds later, a loud noise from the release valve. Figured out later that it basically emptied the entire cartridge at once and blasted the C02 through the release valve. We ended up giving up on the tap and pouring the beer out of the top. Luckily, this was at a party, so we finished up the gallon and a half before it went flat. But overall, not a good experience. Maybe someone more knowledgable than me would have been able to get it working better, but it seemed clear that this was not designed to be taken apart or reused. Too bad, because it was cheap and it would have been fun to have a little keg I could carry around with me.
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Dec 18, 2011 20:57
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Docjowles posted:I did a search, apparently the HBT thread titled "Brewing with Human Remains" was (mercifully) deleted. It was linked in the old homebrewing thread by BerkerLerk. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2984156&pagenumber=434&perpage=40#post392671478 If only he referred to his late wife as "SWMBO." Then it would have been the ultimate homebrewtalk thread.
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Dec 19, 2011 07:01
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I just opened a bottle of that cider I made 1.5 years ago. It used to be an unpleasant, tart, harsh drink, as recently as 6 months ago. Now it's got a mildly tart white wine flavor. So it does mellow, just very very slowly.
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Dec 22, 2011 16:57
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If you really want to save money, start stealing ketchup packets from fast food places and ferment that, prison style.
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Jan 8, 2012 18:28
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Jo3sh posted:Bread yeast and beer yeast are both S. cerevisae, so you might get something out of it, but bread yeast strains are selected for their ability to eat some longer sugars than beer yeast can. Next brewday I'm trying this. I usually make some bread or pizza dough with the spent grains anyway. Will report back.
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Jan 12, 2012 02:04
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Dolemite posted:Make pizza dough from the spent grains? I usually do pizza or focaccia or some other flatbread. I usually start with Peter Reinhardt recipes, swap out a fourth or a sixth of the flour for grain, and reduce the water since the grain is saturated. You can also add a little more yeast if you like, since the grain can sometimes prevent the dough from rising as much as it would otherwise.
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Jan 13, 2012 20:00
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How do you do that exactly?
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Docjowles posted:Fixed. Joking, but bottling gets pretty tedious after a few batches. Start saving for that kegerator I don't know about that. I mean, I didn't start brewing because I value my free time.
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Feb 4, 2012 07:04
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The siphon will stop when the liquid in bucket 1 is at the same height as the liquid in bucket 2. Keep the receptacle lower - the lower it is, the faster the siphon will go.
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Feb 10, 2012 01:35
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So the last batch I brewed boiled off more liquid than I expected, and I ended up about 3/4 gallon short and with a higher gravity than I intended. I'm bottling it tomorrow, and it somehow just occurred to me that I can just add water. Any reason not to add in the missing 3/4 gallon with the priming sugar tomorrow to get a few more beers out of this batch at the right strength?
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Feb 12, 2012 09:10
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So I'm brewing all the beer for my wedding, and decided to make some of northern brewer's patersbier recipe as the the low-alcohol, yellow fizzy beer of the night. After two weeks of fermenting, and 10 days in the bottle, I just tried one. (Really early, I know, but I am on a SCHEDULE here, and need to know if I should make more or switch recipes.) It tasted... great, actually, but really, really Belgiany. So I'm worried it may not actually be a good beer for people who just want something light and familiar. So will that belgian funk die down much? Or is it just going to be a strong-tasting beer? This is the first time I've used a belgian yeast, so I'm not really sure how they age.
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Mar 10, 2012 19:02
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Yeah, I spent a while messing around with a crazy partial mash system involving five or six pounds of grain and my oven, but finally gave up and bought the cooler. I had been trying to avoid it, because I didn't want another big piece of equipment to store. But brewing has been so much simpler ever since.
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Mar 22, 2012 02:19
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Most drug stores will give you the syringes for free. They might think you're a junkie, but hey. That's where I got mine, which I only use for weird cooking projects.
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Apr 5, 2012 04:20
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