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That is basically me and my girlfriend, Jo3sh  Though she was the person more keen to make mead, it's falling on me (predictably) to monitor fermentation. Speaking of monitoring, it's oddly satisfying to see bottles ever so slowly starting to clear. Of course, these are that tripel I bottled only a week ago, but seeing some change in them is heartening. I'm cracking the first one open at the 6 week mark just to see if the mold ended up loving things up, but expect to have the stuff maturing for far longer. Ironic that I should make a strong-rear end beer that will only be drinkable during the summer months... Anyway, that was just a musing post for a lazy afternoon
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Mar 14, 2012 17:04
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Has anyone here started a homebrew club or run a homebrew club? I've checked around locally, and it seems like any clubs I can find listed near me are pretty much defunct. My city has a surprisingly decent beer culture with regards to bars (Irish and English pubs, a biergarten, a belgian pub, a "beer tour" bar with 300+ beers, etc). Not surprisingly, after I started home brewing and talking about it, I've been meeting a shocking number of other home brewers, my kickball league alone has at least 8 brewers. Anyway, if anyone has any advice on starting and running a successful home brewing club, I'd love to hear about it. Everything from finding a bar or other meeting place to picking member dues or examples of meeting agendas, etc.
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Mar 15, 2012 00:19
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You might check with Prefect Six, I think he was pretty involved in the conversion of his gang from "guys who hang out and brew" into a real club.
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Mar 15, 2012 00:40
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Yeah, the club I'm a VP of is now four years old and finally really pushing towards being a capital H Homebrew Club (hosting a 150+ entry competition this year that is AHA pro-am eligible  )and whatnot, and just being a group of people that like beer at first seems to be a necessary evil. From my talks with the club founder, it was a real scatter-shot organization at first that wasn't even majority brewers for the first two years. PM if you want to ask any questions.
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Mar 15, 2012 03:51
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I'm the president or our local homebrew club that's been going for about 3 years now. The way it started was just one guy really wanted a homebrew club so he talked to the owner of the homebrew shop, then talked the local brewery into letting the at the time non-existent club meet there and put up fliers and advertised in the free weekly paper and online. Since he got a good location and did all the leg work himself a bunch of people showed up and we had a club. Unfortunately we had to stop meeting at the local brewery because of legal reasons (no outside alcohol allowed on premise), so we bounced around locations for a year before we found our current place. This drat near killed us because people didn't know where we were meeting month to month. A little over a year ago we started meeting at a Unitarian church and have been there ever since. With a stable location with good parking we've been getting more and more people to the meetings. We do two meetings a month, one public and one members only. The public one you can come whether you are a dues paying member or not and we just take 5-15 minutes to talk about club business, homebrew contests, and local beer events. We're trying to have a presentation on some kind of homebrew related topic as well, but it can be difficult to get people to commit to doing it. After that we just stand around and drink and talk homebrew. Our members only meetings are much more structured and you have to pay your dues to attend. These meetings are for more serious critique and discussion, we all try one beer at a time and then tell the person why it sucks or is awesome. I really like these meetings because I never want to really lay into somebody at the casual meeting even if their beer is terrible because some dudes just want to make beer in a bucket and aren't interested in improving it. Our dues are $20 a year and right now don't go to a whole lot but we're working on fixing that. We use them to reimburse people for gas for driving entries to not so local contests, we use them to pay for things like shirts so people don't have to pay upfront and we pay for food for 2-3 club parties a year. We're going to buy a small barrel soon and are working on organizing a trip to some breweries a few hours away.
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Mar 15, 2012 11:39
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Have any of you done no-sparge BIAB before? I'd like to try it to jump in to all grain but according to my calculations I'm going to need room for 7.8 gallons, and my kettle is only 8. Could I leave a gallon out and then add it back before the boil, since the grain will soak up about 3/4 of a gallon?
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Mar 15, 2012 16:58
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It should work, but the efficiency will drop even further. I understand doing BIAB if you have space concerns, but for monetary concerns it's a little counter-productive, IMO. It costs $50-60 to make a very decent homemade mash tun which is something you'll earn back in money saved on grain/extract within a year if you brew every other week.
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Mar 15, 2012 17:36
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icehewk posted:Have any of you done no-sparge BIAB before? I'd like to try it to jump in to all grain but according to my calculations I'm going to need room for 7.8 gallons, and my kettle is only 8. Could I leave a gallon out and then add it back before the boil, since the grain will soak up about 3/4 of a gallon? I do 3 gallon BIAB batches (with sparge) in a 5.5 gallon kettle on my stove. I start with 3-4 gallons in the kettle. My grist usually removes around a gallon which brings me down to 2-3 after the mash. When I'm done with the mash I put it in a strainer over the kettle and sparge with the amount I need to bring me back up to 4 gallons before the boil. My boils usually remove a gallon of water in 60 minutes. I brewed this way last Friday and hit 3 gallons on the nose with exactly the efficiency I was planning for, 70%. I love BIAB, it's so freakin simple and easy. edit: fixed some numbers internet celebrity fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Mar 15, 2012 |
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Mar 15, 2012 17:58
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internet celebrity posted:I do 3 gallon BIAB batches (with sparge) in a 5.5 gallon kettle on my stove. I start with 3-4 gallons in the kettle. My grist usually removes around a gallon which brings me down to 2-3 after the mash. When I'm done with the mash I put it in a strainer over the kettle and sparge with the amount I need to bring me back up to 4 gallons before the boil. My boils usually remove a gallon of water in 60 minutes. I brewed this way last Friday and hit 3 gallons on the nose with exactly the efficiency I was planning for, 70%. I love BIAB, it's so freakin simple and easy. Sorry if this seems like a really basic question, Edited cuz I need to study my brewing terminology more. Sirotan fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Mar 15, 2012 |
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Mar 15, 2012 18:05
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Sirotan posted:Sorry if this seems like a really basic question, since my mind always goes to the acting of mash(ing) potatoes when I think of mash in terms of beer. But in this case, that just means pouring water over the grain (slowly?) to get the volume of water you want, right? The mash is the process of extracting the sugars from the grains. Sparging is the process of rinsing the grains from your wort, and the amount of sparge water used is calculated based on the your batch size and the expected loss from evaporation during the boil.
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Mar 15, 2012 18:12
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Sirotan posted:Sorry if this seems like a really basic question, since my mind always goes to the acting of mash(ing) potatoes when I think of mash in terms of beer. But in this case, that just means pouring water over the grain (slowly?) to get the volume of water you want, right? Without getting too technical, mashing is the process of mixing crushed grains and water and holding it at a specific temperature to convert the starches into fermentable sugars. efb; content: In case anyone was curious, the way I sparge with my BIAB setup is by heating my sparge water towards the end of the mash and using a Pyrex measuring cup to scoop water out of my sparge pot and slowly pour it over my bag o' grain (which is resting in a strainer over my kettle). internet celebrity fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Mar 15, 2012 |
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Mar 15, 2012 18:13
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Sirotan posted:Sorry if this seems like a really basic question, since my mind always goes to the acting of mash(ing) potatoes when I think of mash in terms of beer. But in this case, that just means pouring water over the grain (slowly?) to get the volume of water you want, right? If you're talking about the sparge then yes. Think of it as rinsing the last of the sugars from the grain into your wort. Internet Celeb - What do you use to ferment your 3 gallon batches? I would like to start trying small BIAB but I'm not sure if my 5 gallon carboy (smallest I have right now) is too big for the headspace
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Mar 15, 2012 18:14
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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?). Pouring water over the grain is called sparging. Fly sparging is continuously pouring sparge water while draining it off, ideally at the same rate on each end (on the fly sparge). Batch sparging is draining all of the liquid off from the mash and then throwing the entirety of sparge water in and draining that off. No-sparge is just that, mashing with the total amount of water you're going to use immediately. Here's the Basic Brewing podcast on no sparge, as well as the ten minute video if you don't want to wade through an hour of spargechat. re:Super Rad - It's a combination of electric stovetop (a canning element is on the way) and an attempt to see the difference between extract and AG. I'm also making an APA for the first time. I should probably stop trying new styles and new methods at the same time. According to BBR since more grain is required due to lowered efficiency, more flavorful beers result since more husks = more flavor. icehewk fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Mar 15, 2012 |
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Mar 15, 2012 18:16
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lazerwolf posted:Internet Celeb - What do you use to ferment your 3 gallon batches? I would like to start trying small BIAB but I'm not sure if my 5 gallon carboy (smallest I have right now) is too big for the headspace I use a standard 6 gallon plastic bucket and a 5 (or are they 5.5?) gallon Better Bottle. The head space hasn't been an issue for me, unless I'm trying to pull a sample from my carboy. I know I've posted this before but it's such a great video for anyone who wants to move from extract to BIAB http://vimeo.com/35571624
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Mar 15, 2012 18:21
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Er sorry yeah, I got my terms mixed up there. I did mean sparge. But thanks for answering my question!
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Mar 15, 2012 18:31
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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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Splizwarf posted: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. Not quite. They are talking about their extraction of sugars as compared to a mash conducted in a lab, in which everything is optimized for extraction rather than good-tasting beer. So they likely crush the malt to flour, do a long conversion with a large volume of water, agitate the mash, and sparge until no more sugar can be extracted. This represents 100% efficiency, but the resulting wort probably is not as tasty as that produced in a brewery.
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Mar 15, 2012 19:18
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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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Splizwarf posted: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? From what I understand you will also extract not-so-tasty things from the husk of the grain.
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Mar 15, 2012 19:27
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Yep, the lab wort is probably (I am just guessing, I have not seen it done or tasted the result) astringent as hell, oxidized from agitation, thin from large volume of water, etc.
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Mar 15, 2012 19:42
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Splizwarf posted:5-gallon orange jobsite cooler So I should just get that $7 thrift store jobber and not be so picky about getting a 10 gallon? I'm assuming the conversion kit will fit both so if I run across a cheap 10-gallon I can slap the kit on that.
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Mar 15, 2012 21:14
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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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Is there some reason a 'bazooka screen' wouldn't work as well as a false bottom in a cooler? I'm starting to reconsider my idea of doing BIAB and converting a cooler instead. I even have one now (rectangular) that maybe I could convert and still use as a food/drink cooler when I'm not making beer?
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Mar 15, 2012 21:29
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Splizwarf: I think even if a false bottom is smaller then the diameter of the cylindrical cooler it will still work, you're going to have some dead space anyway. Also, a decent cooler should hold heat pretty drat well, a lot of people will run hot water from the sink into their cooler and let it sit with the top closed for a few minutes to get the cooler temp up, then they only have to worry about heat loss from grains. If you put the lid on, you should only lose a few degrees at most during mash, and if you are doing a multi-step infusion or other method, you'll probably be adding additional heat over the course of the mash. I have yet to use my own 10 gallon cylindrical, but since it's an industrial water cooler, I expect to lose very little heat with the lid on. Sirotan: As for using a bazooka screen instead, a lot of people use them with no problem. It seems like most people who use a rectangular cooler lean towards using bazooka screens over building a manifold or other alternate.
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Mar 15, 2012 21:59
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Unless where your cooler is sitting is very cold, you lose maybe 1 degree over an hour long mash. There's also no need to preheat your cooler. The first few times you brew you'll have to figure out exactly how much of a temp drop you're gonna get anyway, so you might as well just figure it out without preheating and save yourself a step.
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Mar 15, 2012 22:36
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For what its worth I am incredibly disappointed in how much grain and water you can get into a 5 gallon so I would really recommend something bigger.
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Mar 15, 2012 23:30
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Sirotan posted:Is there some reason a 'bazooka screen' wouldn't work as well as a false bottom in a cooler? I'm starting to reconsider my idea of doing BIAB and converting a cooler instead. I even have one now (rectangular) that maybe I could convert and still use as a food/drink cooler when I'm not making beer? As long as you batch sparge, yeah it's a perfectly acceptable solution. Not ideal, as you'll have a bit more deadspace and won't get all the wort out, but you can always just gently tip it towards the valve. e: you can get away with higher gravity preboil at equal volume if you do a really thick mash and a split batch sparge. 10g coolers are still ideal, though.
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Mar 15, 2012 23:33
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My stout has been in the primary for 2 weeks, started at 1.060 and is currently at 1.015. There's still that thick, creamy krausen on top. Should it have fallen in by now? I used the same yeast for my Irish red and it had flocculated. There's also quite a few large bubbles on top of it. Is the only sure bet repeat hydro measurements? It took about a week to go from 1.020 to 1.015. Should I give it one more week?
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Mar 16, 2012 00:22
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Sirotan posted:Is there some reason a 'bazooka screen' wouldn't work as well as a false bottom in a cooler? I'm starting to reconsider my idea of doing BIAB and converting a cooler instead. I even have one now (rectangular) that maybe I could convert and still use as a food/drink cooler when I'm not making beer? That's what I use w/ my round cooler (batch sparging). Works great, 75+% efficiency.
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Mar 16, 2012 00:38
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Oh hey, related to 10g coolers! http://www.homebrewfinds.com/2012/03/great-deal-10-gallon-igloo-beverage.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F6SHTK 10g Igloo cooler for $40 is a pretty drat good deal.
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Mar 16, 2012 00:48
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That's a nice deal! The lowest I've found is about 54+15 shipped, which is no deal at all.
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Mar 16, 2012 01:12
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icehewk posted:That's a nice deal! The lowest I've found is about 54+15 shipped, which is no deal at all. My 10 gallon gott cooler was $29.99 at the local home depot
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Mar 16, 2012 02:30
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Hypnolobster posted:Oh hey, related to 10g coolers! Isn't that the same basic thing as those $40 10g coolers at Home Depot?
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Mar 16, 2012 03:37
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Daedalus Esquire posted:Has anyone here started a homebrew club or run a homebrew club? I've checked around locally, and it seems like any clubs I can find listed near me are pretty much defunct. Our club started out as me and another dude getting together to talk about homebrewing a couple times and then added another guy. It stayed pretty small for a while and then we had an explosion this fall. We decided to organize the club and pass bylaws. We looked at several different club's bylaws and created a document that worked for us. I'd start slow, just advertise and see who show's up. We've actually had a dropoff in participation it seems since we finalized the bylaws and started taking dues. I wasn't able to go to the meeting last week due because I was sick, so I'm not sure if more people were able to attend this month. We also had to do a sudden change in venue since the place we were meeting closed down. Just get people together and try to talk about what they want out of it and go from there. If you want to ask specific questions feel free to e-mail me - username@gmail.com.
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Mar 16, 2012 18:22
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Thanks for that NorthernBrewer code. I ordered an American Wheat and Ryan's Face Puncher IPA which have both been on my list for a while now. Woohoo
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Mar 16, 2012 22:40
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Woaaaaah boy are my feet tired. Triple brew day today. I have a brewing contest at a local bar in June and we got three of our entries done. I'm glad we only did 1 gallon batches, since we were using the colander lautering method on a stove top, we could have one batch mashing while the other was boiling, it was still about 6.5/7 hours of brewing. I'll post recipes and categories later but the batches we finished were a India Black Ale, Chocolate-Bacon Oatmeal Stout, and an all brett B specialty beer. It was made with a Pilsen and carapils grain bill and has cardamom and blackberries in it. Also, thank you to everyone who posted about their local clubs, I'll probably be emailing a few of you!
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Mar 17, 2012 00:33
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Woohoo! I finally got a bag to try BIAB. I'm looking for suggestions for either a red ale or american pale ale recipe that would be good for a 2.5-3 gallon BIAB batch. I haven't brewed either of those styles yet, and I'm thinking they would be a good starting point for attempting all-grain.
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Mar 17, 2012 02:15
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Hmmm, one of the bottles of the pale ale I bottled a couple weeks back definitely tasted off; it had a somewhat sour flavor to it that it definitely did not have at bottling time. I disinfected most of the bottles using Star-San but I've always been told the dishwasher's heat cycle should be sufficient, so I reserved a few bottles (and then in a stroke of insane idiocy, failed to mark those bottles) and used the dishwasher without a Star-San soak since I wasn't entirely convinced of that. Either my dishwasher doesn't get hot enough, something got into the bottling bucket at racking or maybe it's just a random off-flavor that will clear up over time. It's certainly not undrinkable if you know it's coming. I guess I'll just let it sit and see what happens to it. In any case, if anyone gets one of those bottles and comments that its sour, I'll just tell them some "wild yeast" got in there as opposed to "the batch is infected," because well, if I give someone a bottle of something and tell them it was "infected," they're unlikely to want any more of anything I give them. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Mar 17, 2012 |
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Mar 17, 2012 04:06
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Angry Grimace posted:In any case, if anyone gets one of those bottles and comments that its sour, I'll just tell them some "wild yeast" got in there as opposed to "the batch is infected," because well, if I give someone a bottle of something and tell them it was "infected," they're unlikely to want any more of anything I give them. But...It's also possible that they could become bottle bombs. Infected strains can ferment more sugars than regular yeast and up your pressure. Be careful.
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Mar 17, 2012 05:49
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Were the bottles clean? Heat from the dishwasher won't help if there is crud inside there. Neither will Starsan for that matter but at least there is a chance that some rinsing might occur.
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Mar 17, 2012 06:55
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