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So I've moved to NYC and my old propane system is waaay too bulky. So, I'm going to make a brewing wand from a water heater. I've found some specs online but I was hoping someone had already tried it and had some suggestions. I'll just be doing basic 5 gallon AG batches. Also, any tips for brewing in confined spaces? Shbobdb fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Feb 20, 2012 |
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Feb 20, 2012 21:37
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:01 |
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If you want sours, just do Berliner Weisse or other related styles (Gose, Broyhan, etc.). Pitch the lacto first, wait 24 hours, then pitch the yeast. Boom. Nice, easy tart beer that is done in the same amount of time as a normal beer. You miss out on the brett but during the summer months where you want a quencher, why not just go for the lacto?
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Mar 1, 2012 22:49
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Why not just do an open fermentation for primary? Saves the whole issue of creating a nasty mess and is healthier for the yeast. As long as you have a curved airlock you won't get contamination. Think Pasteur man. It does wonders to prevent foaming during log phase.
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Mar 12, 2013 06:03
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I've done it a ton of times with 3787. I use that strain for my BIPA which was a house beer for some time (OG 1.070), I have also used it on a single (~1.050) and used some of the yeast from that for a monster Tripel/pale Quad (1.102 -- though there were only 5 gal not the normal 5.5). No explosions. Room temp was ~72. It really isn't that crazy unless you let the temperature get completely, Saison-temperatures crazy. Then it will totally explode but that's anything.
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Mar 12, 2013 08:18
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Re: Oatmeal Toasted oats in beer are awesome! Supposedly toasted oats can add an astringent flavor to beer. If you want them really roasty, put them in a muslin bag and let them air out for a week after toasting (this is supposed to help). For me, toasting 1lb/5gal recipe (OGs having ranged from ~1.030 to ~1.090) for 40 mins and using them directly with no problems. If you are using real oats, you have to cereal mash them, I'm lazy so I use quick oats. They add a really wonderful creamy mouthfeel to the beers, which is why many wits use untoasted oats. Untoasted, they are relatively flavor neutral at the levels I've been using them. Toasted they add a nice "oatmeal cookie" flavor that really compliments darker English and American beers. Supposedly, the high oat content beers from the 19th century were incredibly bitter. I haven't gone higher than 10% so I don't really know but if you are going that direction I'd probably go a little light on the hops. Also, oats have plenty of protein so a protein rest would probably be worth your while. Doubly so since you are probably using 6-row for the conversion in a high adjunct beer. It will be an adjunct beer because oats are evidently really hard to malt. The super thick head from just 10% oats suggests that a higher oat content beer would be a heady affair indeed. Thinking of oats has me curious. I'm thinking about an oat sake. That would be pretty wild. Anybody know what a high protein content does to a sake? Re: Sanitation Always remember that people have been brewing beers for thousands of years. As long as you aren't grinding grains where you are brewing and aren't planning on aging your beer for a significant period of time and are pitching correctly basic kitchen sanitation works just fine. People freak out about this stuff too much. You don't want to be too lax because you can catastrophically ruin your beer (or let it sit and make an artesianal Flemish sour!) but in general I think that most home brewers freak out too much over sanitation. That said, whatever you use to dechlorinate your water (provided it is sodium metabisulfite, which you should be using unless you are using distilled water and adding salts to avoid chlorine) should also be able to take care of bleach at slightly higher concentrations. So if you want to use bleach, go for it. Then again, metabisulfite is also pretty good at taking care of beer spoiling organisms, so just treat your liquor in the carboy with a little bit more of the campden tablet or a few more drops of the dechlor you bought from the pet store.
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Mar 13, 2013 05:44
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hallo spacedog posted:Is it true what they say about needing separate plastic items to brew a Berliner Weisse or other sour beers, or can yeast issues be avoided with careful sanitation? No, it is not true. I've brewed lambics in plastic containers and reused them with no difficulty. BW is even easier since those normally just use lactobacillus.
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Mar 21, 2013 17:33
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I know I'm a little late on this, but for shandies consider making a more bitter pale beer -- think a northern German Pils like Jever. The bitterness counterbalances the sweetness of the soda. Plus that way you have a good beer as well as a shandy beer. For a different twist, brew a Koelsch and add some Coke. Coke is a more savory soda and Koelsch is a sweeter beer so the mix is quite pleasant. 17 year old me loved that stuff. Other good combinations are pale Weizens (Kristall or Hefe) with banana juice, sour cherry juice or banana juice and sour cherry juice. Very good. And, of course, Berliner Weisse. Plenty of great options for mixing things up. For a more British twist, buy the Better Bottle and use it to make cask ale. When the cask starts to turn, start making shandies. That keeps it nice and traditional.
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Mar 31, 2013 18:59
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Munich malt can convert itself but it usually struggles. German rye malt is also very undermodified (basically, the Roggenbier breweries wanted to use unmalted rye but couldn't so they used the least modified rye they could get away with under the RHG). Plus rye is tricky and tends to lower mash efficiency anyway. Given the grainbill, I'd say that is pretty good.
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Apr 1, 2013 08:45
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Midorka posted:I don't think it's possible to avoid sediment when bottle carbonating. If there is I would love to know! I generally cold crash for 3-5 days and still get some yeast sediment at the bottom. Maybe I need to cold crash colder/longer? Nottingham yeast flocs down to pretty much no visible sediment. It is a fairly neutral yeast as long as you keep it cool, so you can switch it for US-05. I do want to stress it is much less forgiving about temperature than US-05! Keep it cool or your beer will be pretty awful! Since flocculation is a function of lignins and stuff on the surface of the yeast, for other beer styles you can add some Nottingham yeast (try ~1/4th a packet) to secondary once fermentation is complete. The lignins and stuff on the Nottingham should grab onto the other yeast, pull them down and hold them down. quote:A buddy of mine who's brewed much longer than I said that he doesn't like buckets because after a few uses they tend to let a lot more oxygen in (opening and closing the lid making the seal weaker I suppose). He said this after noticing oxygenation in my mild. The mild had been sitting in a bucket I'd used 4-5 times and was sitting there for 3-4 months. I had to transport it in a car for 20 minutes and I did rack it off of the yeast before cold crashing. There's a poo poo ton of variables here that I would first attribute the oxygenation to, but has anyone heard of buckets letting more oxygen in over time? He said Better Bottles are much better and let less oxygen in. While buckets are more porous to oxygen, my guess is that the transport is what did it here. After a couple of months the CO2 layer is basically gone and buckets have a lot of headspace. Shaking it around in the car is probably what did it. Though in my experience when a brewer is experiencing oxygenation problem it is from hot side aeration. What is your set-up and workflow? It is possible that you've had some level of HSA in all your beers but are only noticing it in the mild because there isn't as much flavor to cover it up. Also, how are you bottling? When I first started brewing I didn't have a bottling wand. That lead to some horrifically oxygenated beers.
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Apr 4, 2013 18:58
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The only times I've had a been get contaminated have been when I've added a handful of crushed grains to it during secondary. Or the dregs of a bottle of Gueuze.
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Apr 6, 2013 08:53
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iodophore is awful for the environment. Brewing in general isn't a green hobby -- we generally waste a ton of water, but consider not doing the iodophore thing.
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Apr 7, 2013 09:27
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Kvass can have mint in it. It is usually added after the boil. Not having done it myself, I can't comment on how to brew it with any real experience but I figure if there are people who do it and like it then that is a good starting point for exploration. Plus, dry minting is something that could be done on a pretty small scale, even bottle-level while not messing up the entire brew. Also, could I grab the recipe on the jerkum (grapes make wine, apples make cider, pears make perry and plums make jerkum)? I've been curious about those but can't seem to find any solid traditional sources on recipes. The only thing I have been able to find is that it makes you poop. So watch out for that.
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Apr 16, 2013 04:33
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internet celebrity posted:So anyone who has experience with bourbon soaked oak, is there anything wrong with soaking my cubes for a very long time? I threw 1oz of French oak in a mason jar with 8oz of Larceny bourbon back in February and I haven't really been inspired to brew with it yet. Most recipes I see say to soak them for a couple days to a week at most so I'm just wondering if I'm over-extracting the oak character or something. A lot of tannins will have leeched out into the bourbon. If you just add the oak, the contribution to your beer will probably be fairly mild. If you add the oak and the bourbon the beer will probably be quite tannin-y. In the past I've only soaked for a few days and then added the oak cubes to primary and then racked to secondary when the beer is sufficiently oaky. That is because one time I added 1oz of oak to a beer in secondary and let it sit. Wow. That bad boy had to be aged and blended. The oak character was quite strong. Granted, it was American oak so it is going to be much more robust but an over oaked beer is a pretty nasty thing so I'd err on the side of caution.
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Apr 16, 2013 21:20
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If lye is a little too REAL for you, you can also use washing soda. If you can't find washing soda that doesn't have . . . other things for washing, you can bake baking soda at 400F for 1/2 hr (or 300F for 1hr). It will be much more basic than baking soda but not quite as HOLY HELL THAT IS NASTY as lye. It is more than enough to kick off the milliard rxn that pretzels crave.
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Apr 20, 2013 17:56
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hellfaucet posted:If I'm using pilsen liquid extract, should I still boil it for 90 mins to get rid of the DMS? It should already have the DMS boiled out. I'd do the short boil technique as normal.
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Apr 20, 2013 19:01
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Counterflow chillers are great if you are dealing with large volumes, but they make aroma hops substantially more tricky. Immersion chillers are great at smaller volumes but can't deal with larger volumes. If you are planning on brewing more than 15 gallons at a time, consider getting a counterflow chiller. I like to brew 5-10 gallons. It keeps things fresh and lets me experiment. I think most homebrewers are on that scale as well. Also, http://www.taylor-madeak.org/index.php/2009/03/31/akaisake-the-red-sake Sake stuff.
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Apr 21, 2013 10:35
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wafflesnsegways posted:kombucha There is acetobacter in the scoby, so the alcohol content is quite low because most of it gets chewed up into acetic acid. Plus, a lot of wild yeast don't have the alcohol tolerance of yeast we've selected for generations to have a higher alcohol tolerance. If you kept the O2 levels at a minimum, you're probably looking at 5-6%. 7-8% if you are lucky, 4% if you are unlucky.
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Apr 22, 2013 17:01
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I've gotten a metallic flavor from dark beers when they are really dry. What is your attenuation? Is it overcarbonated? That can also do it. I don't even wanna talk about my attempts to brew a Baltic porter inspired Belgian stout. Great idea. One whose execution I've long since given up on. Also, really alkaline water can contribute to an astringent flavor in dark beers, which can kinda give a metallic taste. Sure, dark beers are designed to deal with alkaline conditions but really hard water? Nah. When I brewed in Indianapolis, this was a huge problem until I started cutting the tap water with distilled water and adjusting for pH.
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Apr 23, 2013 04:23
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I'm thinking about brewing a "Shbobdb is the best!" Braggot for an upcoming celebration. I was gonna go with a no-boil method and basically sparge onto a shitton of honey. Does anyone have a solid braggot recipe I could work with?
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Apr 27, 2013 01:42
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At 20% I wouldn't worry, but when I use rice hulls I just throw those suckers in with the grain. Supposedly, there is some minor darkening but I favor longer boils anyway so that ship has sailed. That said, I still make some pretty pale wheats.
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Apr 27, 2013 06:11
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Just brewed a double wit. This isn't a style I like so I don't have much experience with the spices. If I've underspiced it, can I add some spices (def corriander, possibly lavender) and zest to the beer after the primary fermentation is done? Or will that make it "vegital" and/or extract more than I want?
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Apr 29, 2013 19:58
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Buy a good thermometer. It really makes a difference. Less is more. You've got all kinds of crazy grains you can use. When formulating a recipe, don't cram in everything. Keep it simple.
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Apr 29, 2013 20:38
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Rye is sooo three years ago man.
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May 5, 2013 03:49
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There are a few things which have increased the quality of my brewing, such as not brewing with an idiot, using a properly calibrated thermometer for mashing and not using huge amounts of flour as a money-saving adjunct. But none of those things increased the quality of my brew as much as controlling the temperature during fermentation.
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May 6, 2013 06:33
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I've had good luck boiling some sugar, some whole wheat flour and yeast nutrient for an "emergency" starter. Yeast Nutrient and molasses is basically what Llalemand and Red Star use for their yeast, so that is also a good option. For wild yeast, I like a mixture of simple and complex carbohydrates. Then I cold crash, pour off. Brew a regular beer and save some wort. Use that for the "real" starter and go from there.
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May 11, 2013 03:35
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Daedalus Esquire posted:Some of the sour bugs like complex starches. Bingo. If it is bugs, I'll use a mix. If it is just yeast, I'll use molasses + yeast nutrient.
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May 13, 2013 03:33
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Saint Darwin posted:Does anyone sell a super concentrated culture that will sour in a month or whatever people here get it down to instead of 8 months? Because I would buy that as I am exceptionally impatient. If you just want lactic souring, when I make BW, I pitch the lacto once I am done brewing and keep it fairly warm. I wait ~24 hrs and then add the yeast. Gives it a nice tartness. But my best experience with sours is to start a solera system. In an old 15 gallon keg, I've got a nice set-up that yields a nice sour every 3 months. When there has been a huge demand for them, I was able to pretty much deplete it (went through 20 or 25 gallons, I forget which, in a little over 2 months) but there are enough bugs in there that it sours up pretty nicely pretty quickly. It got super tame after that but soured again really nicely after 3 months of waiting. Sure, there is the initial time investment but once that is over you are good to go. Also, where do you live? This kind of set-up isn't terribly uncommon so I have to imagine there is an experienced sour-loving brewer with this set-up. If there is, see if you can trade him something for a 5 gallon starter for your sour. Shbobdb fucked around with this message at 19:25 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 19:21
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Belgian yeast are pretty versatile. You could probably just swap in it to your favorite pale ale recipe and be pretty much good to go. If you want the yeast to show off a little bit more and be a little more "Belgian-y" try 80% pils, 10% munich, 10% sugar, hit about 25 IBUs and finish with an ounce of your favorite aroma hop. Shoot for somewhere around 1.050, 1.060. If you want it to be more sessionable than that, maybe swap out the sugar for carapils and go for 1.040 and 1.045.
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May 14, 2013 19:33
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Stonedog posted:The store did a whoopsie and sent me WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale Yeast instead of WLP800... They sent me WLP800 the next day, but now I have a tube of WLP300 that can't go to waste. You've got a nice looking Belgian wit above. If you are looking for something more German, try: 6lbs Pils 4lbs Wheat 2oz Honey malt Mash @ 150-152 ~ 15 IBUs bittering and 1/2 oz Tettnag hop @ flameout For a lighter beer, swap out 1lb pils for wheat. For a heavier beer, swap out 2lb pils for Munich I and ditch the honey malt. For something just a little different, swap out 1lb pils for 1lb rauch.
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May 15, 2013 12:29
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Stonedog posted:Trying smoked malt is pretty high on my list, ever since drinking a commercial Rauchbier, but in a wheat? Now that is very interesting. Might have to do a small batch of that... Or maybe do a full batch and use the yeast cake of the Wit... Oh yes, this is definitely going on my brewing schedule. Come on you drat lagers, stop hogging the ferment chamber so I can fill my empty buckets Smoked wheat beers were a thing. While the Graetzer style beer is now technically extinct you can bring it back to life in your brewery! http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/gerstyle.htm Though for a Graetzer, you'd probably want to swap out all the pils for rauch. Which would be . . . a bit much for me. At 1lb it just adds a nice hint of smoke. It is pretty delicious. But as Kaiho said, smoked beers in general aren't for everybody. Doubly so for smoked wheats because people aren't expecting bacon bananas.
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May 15, 2013 14:45
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internet celebrity posted:Idea: Add some PB2 in secondary for an Elvis sandwich beer. That is an awesome idea. After I move, I may have to try that.
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May 15, 2013 15:10
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Jacobey000 posted:Not to nit pick, but technically, it's 100% oak smoked wheat malt that Graetzer is made with. A guy in a in brew club and I did one. The smokiness is VERY subtle in comparison to a rauchbier and has a different 'smoke' profile (see: less bacon). That isn't nitpicky, that is AWESOME! I had no idea. Do you have a source on that? I love reading about old beer styles that fell by the wayside. Syrinxx posted:Thanks. I assume fermentation will go fast; is it still best to leave Belgians sitting on the trub for a couple weeks? Or can I just bottle whenever it's finished. I've gotten probated enough for trolling lately, so I'm not gonna touch that one with a ten foot pole.
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May 16, 2013 04:36
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fullroundaction posted:
With modern malts, you really don't need an acid or protein rest. Alpha/beta sac can be good.
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May 20, 2013 05:45
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fullroundaction posted:What I don't get about decoctions is how you're not supposed to sparge at over 170 to avoid extracting tannins but ... raising the temperature above that to boiling is okay? Or is it just that a long rest at 170+ will eventually extract them? Totally different chemistries. During a decoction you've got your grains and wort at around 5.2. When you boil them you concentrate from there. Also, you've got a whole bunch of protein and boiling the grains is only going to release more protein. That will help buffer the reaction. During sparging you are diluting, which can raise the pH and leech tannins. That is why some brewers acidify their sparge water. That way they can't extract tannins even if the water is boiling. Also, tannin extraction is overrated. That said, if you want to do a decoction mash it can make a big difference. Choose an inferior malt, like say Breiss, and do a decoction. Totally different animal from an infused beer. For a superior malt, like Weyermann, decoction makes less of a difference*. Given that decoction is a pain in the rear end, I'd rather skip it and add an ounce of melanoidin malt if I really want that extra depth of flavor. Not 100% the same but if I'm using good malt I can't promise the difference I've noticed ins't the placebo effect. *excluding Weyermann's undermodified malts meant to be used in a decoction mash, obviously.
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May 21, 2013 06:41
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Cpt.Wacky posted:What about these brands of malts make them inferior or superior? I figured they were all pretty much the same. My brew shop doesn't list the brands on their grain bins or price list but I could probably get it out of them if I asked. How does the quality of malt compare to other factors like sanitation, temp control, starters, etc? Way near the loving bottom. Way near the loving bottom. Around "sanitation" and "starters for ales". As for what makes one better than the other -- gently caress if I know. Taste 'em and you'll know the difference. Part of it is degree of modification. Part of it is kilning. Part of it is the quality of the source malt. Lots of stuff. That is also why Chinese beer is bad for you. Major maltsters sell their "off" malts to Chinese breweries (other countries as well but the Chinese market is loving booming for this poo poo) for cheap. I can't say but I also imagine it is a lot like vodkas where the difference between the good stuff and the cheap stuff is about how much of the bad stuff they are willing to let creep in while still being within the lines of what is allowed.
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May 21, 2013 08:03
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tonedef131 posted:I'm not sure what you're talking about here but if you're saying decoction is a catch-all malt enhancer, it's not. Overmodified malts like the ones Briess makes will not take well to decoction. New Glarus would disagree with you. I agree decoction isn't a magic bullet but I do find I notice it more with garbage malts than with quality malts. I need to do a nice decoction with Moravian malt but I can never find the stuff to get the real goods.
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May 21, 2013 14:57
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Welp, I stand corrected.
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May 21, 2013 15:45
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Bitter pollen in a sweet beer or mead sounds awesome. So, looks like I'll be moving to a place with a sweet garage. Does anybody here know anything about making essential oils for perfume?
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May 21, 2013 16:46
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The stalling Saison yeast plays a little too well with bugs. One time, I had a sour that got MASSIVELY overoaked. Just woodchips everywhere. I beat it by serial dilution. The first beer was a saison and when I transferred to secondary it was still pretty sweet, despite having fermented at 78 degrees for ~two weeks. It was a 10 gallon batch, but I filled each secondary with 1 gal of the overoaked sour and 4 gal of the saison, adding the other two gallons of saison back to the overoaked beer. Fermented the Saison at around 72 and, wow. Stomach bile. Just stomach bile. I still drank it but it wasn't my most popular beer with other folks.
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May 24, 2013 05:27
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:01 |
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So . . . It looks like my brew buddy traded 1/2 of our solera Gueuze for some sketchy Flanders Red. The beer smells quite acetic. I haven't brewed a Flanders Red so I'm not quite sure how to deal with this problem. Dilution + time, I suppose but if you have any other suggestions I'm all ears. It is in a 15.5 gal keg with an oak chair leg in the top, if that helps. Does anyone know if Brett production of esterase is oxygen-dependent? If so, cutting off the O2 might help. Anyway, figured someone might have some suggestions.
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Jun 4, 2013 23:44
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