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LaserWash posted:I also had it in my mind that I was going to experiment with smaller batches so I wasn't making 45 bottles of beer I didn't end up liking. As I found my groove I was planning on expanding. Aside from the "give it away" method, which works pretty well, I also enjoy the "make soup\stew with it" and have lunch for the next week. If you don't like soup, I havew used beer as parts of marinades, as a partial water replacement for pasta, deglazing pans for sauces. I'm sure there are other ways to use it well, I am not exactly well versed with cooking techniques. I think you'll find your own beer to be quite palatable. Especially at first, since you will tend to stick to recipes of styles that you enjoy. However, I am not trying to strong-arm you into doing more than you are comfortable with doing. There is nothing inherently wrong with doing one gallon batches. It's just that, to me, a one gallon batch wouldn't feel worth my time. If it fits your time\value equation, then go for it, and welcome to a fun hobby!
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Jul 20, 2012 03:19
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Hypnolobster posted:Spent way too much time tonight redoing some kegerator stuff. Cleaned all the lines, bottled 10 gallons of cider and applewine and filled 4 kegs with beer. I need to pick up a 5 or 6 way gas block. Tees strike me as a terrible idea. As a semi-unrelated aside, I've been using a full on 3-way secondary regulator to split my gas line. The only thing that's a little weird is that using the secondary regulator knobs is quite bit slower than adjusting the PSI with the main regulator - my assumption is that it's because the input PSI is a lot lower, but I don't know. It was pretty spendy though.
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Jul 20, 2012 05:17
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Paladine_PSoT posted:Anyone know any good beers that come in swingtop brown bottles? I'd love to have a few of these lying around for transport to parties. Not beer, no, but I use Villa Teresa Prosecco bottles which have so far been fantastic (and which I have a fuckload of).
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Jul 20, 2012 05:35
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Hypnolobster posted:Mine isn't really the ideal method, but I was drinking Homebrewing in a nutshell. There's a billion different ways to go about it, something I was tipped off to doing that I'm glad I took the time to construct was a hinged collar. Allows for lower clearance when lifting those full kegs into the keezer and gets a lot of the tubing up and out of the way when you need to muck with anything else in there.
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Jul 20, 2012 06:56
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Paladine_PSoT posted:Anyone know any good beers that come in swingtop brown bottles? I'd love to have a few of these lying around for transport to parties. Protip: I bought three 1L bottles to do just this. Works really well for not lugging a bunch of bottles around and isn't nearly as big as a growler. They also nicely work out for a dinner too.
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Jul 20, 2012 12:23
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I'm picking out a Stout kit to do in preparation for the Fall/Winter months. I've decided on giving this kit a go but I want to try to experiment some and beef it up. http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/ChocolateMilkStout.pdf I'm thinking about adding another 3.15 lb of LME (Dark, Gold, pilsen?) or should I go with some amount of DME. The kit looks like its around 5% ABV and I want to get it up to 7-8%. 9# of DME looks to get to the 7% range but I'm wondering if that much malt extract would leave the stout too sweet. Also I am considering adding some Vanilla beans, maybe some coconut shavings into the secondary along with the cacao nibs. Anyone ever use coconut before? I wonder with the addition of more LME if I should also add some baker's chocolate to the boil to boost the chocolate flavor. Sorry for all of the questions, this building recipes part of brewing is foreign to me right now
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Jul 20, 2012 15:39
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Angry Grimace posted:As a semi-unrelated aside, I've been using a full on 3-way secondary regulator to split my gas line. The only thing that's a little weird is that using the secondary regulator knobs is quite bit slower than adjusting the PSI with the main regulator - my assumption is that it's because the input PSI is a lot lower, but I don't know. It was pretty spendy though. I've noticed this same thing when using my secondary regulator. I think you're right about the lower pressure. Good thing its not dependent on the primary regulator setting (so long as the primary is set higher than the secondary) or it'd be a pain having to re-adjust every time I changed the primary pressure to force carb or whatever.
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Jul 20, 2012 15:43
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Keezer looks awesome, nice work. I've been dragging my feet on making the leap from lovely picnic taps to actual nice faucets and organization... you're making me want to spend some money 
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Jul 20, 2012 16:25
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I bottled my weizen Monday, and Thursday my curiosity got the better of me, and I put one of the beers in the fridge. When I drank it, I there were two weird flavors: the LME taste and an inordinate amount of (not really hop-flavored) bitterness. What happened?   Please, feel free to call me an idiot for trying one only 4 days into bottle conditioning, or for any other reason. This homebrew poo poo is awesome amounts of fun, but any advice pointing out what I might have goofed is appreciated!
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Jul 20, 2012 16:38
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I tried boiling a gallon on my hot plate and it wasn't even close after an hour. I guess I'll try and find a better hot plate or maybe I'll just go ahead and get the burner. I can just boil 2 or 3 gallons down to one gallon.
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Jul 20, 2012 17:03
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Xiuhteuctli posted:This homebrew poo poo is awesome amounts of fun, but any advice pointing out what I might have goofed is appreciated! Did your recipe involve any steeping grains? If so, how hot was the water when you steeped them? If it was near boiling (above 170F-ish) you can extract tannins which are kinda bitter and astringent. Think of the sensation you get on your tongue after drinking very strong tea or dry red wine, that's from tannins. Not sure what you mean by tasting LME. Like, it tastes the same as if you just dipped your finger in extract and ate it? That could maybe be an attenuation problem caused by a number of things from yeast health/quantity to brand of extract to fermentation time/temp to steeping grains. EDIT: Looked at your post history, if it made it down to 1.011 it's probably not attenuation. If you post a full recipe and procedure with times and temperatures maybe we can help narrow it down more.
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Jul 20, 2012 17:05
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Docjowles posted:Did your recipe involve any steeping grains? If so, how hot was the water when you steeped them? If it was near boiling (above 170F-ish) you can extract tannins which are kinda bitter and astringent. Think of the sensation you get on your tongue after drinking very strong tea or dry red wine, that's from tannins. The recipe can be found here: http://www.brewersbestkits.com/pdf/1030_Weizenbier.pdf The LME taste I described is the taste of the raw, just-opened LME (kind of bitter, semi-sweet).
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Jul 20, 2012 17:17
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space pope posted:I tried boiling a gallon on my hot plate and it wasn't even close after an hour. I guess I'll try and find a better hot plate or maybe I'll just go ahead and get the burner. I can just boil 2 or 3 gallons down to one gallon. You could go outside, dig a small hole, make a wood fire and set the pot on it. I'm almost serious. digitalhifi posted:I've noticed this same thing when using my secondary regulator. I think you're right about the lower pressure. Good thing its not dependent on the primary regulator setting (so long as the primary is set higher than the secondary) or it'd be a pain having to re-adjust every time I changed the primary pressure to force carb or whatever. I usually just have the primary regulator set to 35 or so, although I don't really notice a difference; someone just told me it didn't matter (and it doesn't seem to). Docjowles posted:Did your recipe involve any steeping grains? If so, how hot was the water when you steeped them? If it was near boiling (above 170F-ish) you can extract tannins which are kinda bitter and astringent. Think of the sensation you get on your tongue after drinking very strong tea or dry red wine, that's from tannins. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jul 20, 2012 |
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Jul 20, 2012 18:14
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Angry Grimace posted:I've got a hunch that the weird tastes are the result of scorching the liquid malt extract. I hadn't considered that, but there was scorching in the bottom of my brew pot. I didn't think anything of it because a friend of mine (who brews quite a bit) said it was normal. If it is this, is the entirety of my beer ruined? Xiuhteuctli fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Jul 20, 2012 |
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Jul 20, 2012 18:29
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Xiuhteuctli posted:If it is this, is the entirety of my beer ruined? I wouldn't even start to worry until it's been in the bottle for 2-3 weeks. Even then it may improve after a month or three.
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Jul 20, 2012 18:46
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I got my California common kegged this week and it is coming camping with me and some friends. Red solo cup camping!
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Jul 20, 2012 18:54
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I'll be brewing a Patersbier tonight for the first time. Recipe is all Belgian pils, Ahtanum hops to about 27 IBU, and WY3787. Any tips for the mash schedule? I was going to do a single infusion at 147ish and mashout at 172 to get it nice and dry. I'm looking at the NB Patersbier kit and they recommend a multi-step mash. Am I going to lose anything by skipping the protein and alpha sacc rest on this beer?
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Jul 20, 2012 19:55
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Skip the protein rest IMO. They say it's "traditional" because back in the day it was necessary, but with modern malting techniques it's pointless and could actually damage head retention and body. Unless you're buying malt specifically labeled as undermodified (like this one) I wouldn't bother.
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Jul 20, 2012 20:06
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Safe to bottle after one week? I had 3 days of vigorous fermentation, and a day of very light. I'm not seeing any more bubbling after a minute or two of watching, and naturally am pretty anxious.
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Jul 20, 2012 22:36
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Mortanis posted:Safe to bottle after one week? I had 3 days of vigorous fermentation, and a day of very light. I'm not seeing any more bubbling after a minute or two of watching, and naturally am pretty anxious. Give it more time. Even if its not actively fermenting the yeast is cleaning up fermentation byproducts. Try to give it a minimum of two weeks on the yeast cake before bottling.
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Jul 20, 2012 22:43
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My Primary Fermentation bucket is bubbling through the airlock! I came home this afternoon to find thick foam had bubbled up through the airlock, clogging it, and the lid was bulging. It's bubbling so hard that if I pull the airlock out, foam just pours out of the hole, and any it clogs the air lock back up as soon as I plug it back in. Not sure how to fix this, besides lifting the edge of the lid a little bit now and then, but I don't want it to oxidize. Advice?
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Jul 20, 2012 23:23
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Blowoff tube
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Jul 20, 2012 23:28
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Awesome, that worked pretty well. Now I have an active fart bucket going in the brewkettle, though some foam is still working through the siphon tube.
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Jul 20, 2012 23:55
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Don't worry too much, that foam is probably just yeast, not lost product. Also, that much foam bursting out is a good thing, the foam on top of your beer is the yeast creating a protective layer to prevent other microorganisms from getting in, all the CO2 blowing through will also help prevent oxidation if you ever do have to pop the lid to prevent the bucket from exploding. 
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Jul 21, 2012 02:09
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I need to step into GWS more, I didn't even know this thread existed I've been brewing for about 2 years now and i'm just now making the step into all grain Still haven't made the decision if i want to just do a BIAB rig, or whether to go all out on a 3 vessel system I've currently got a batch of IPA fermenting, which is smelling amazing right now hops used for this one are Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin, Cascade and Amarillo
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Jul 21, 2012 06:55
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I just poured a sample of an Amber Ale I made (a fairly long time ago, to be fair) and its looking star bright and clear like I filtered it.  beer I brewed while drinking and forgot the whirlfloc
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Jul 21, 2012 08:51
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Mayor Poopenmayer posted:
I'd say skip BIAB and go straight to batch sparging. A rectangular cooler tun with steel braid and fittings should only set you back ~$50-70 - I got lucky with some sale prices. Your hot liquor tank can be anything that will hold 5 gallons so don't go crazy and buy a nice kettle or anything for it. You will be very happy with the transition from extract to all-grain, it's no where near as intimidating as I thought when reading up on it and it's such a HUGE step up in creative freedom. Not to mention it's also cheaper than extract brewing meaning the investment will eventually be earned back. Super Rad fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Jul 21, 2012 |
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Jul 21, 2012 18:11
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Hot liquor tank? I just eyeball consistency while dumping a pot of hot water in until I reach mash temp. I've kept saying i was going to get a larger tun and use my small 5 gal cylinder as a hot liquor tank and O still just haven't. $50 is definitely on the higher end of what you can pay for a cooler tun if you can swing a deal on a cooler and its one of the simpler DIY things you can do for your beer. I figure BIAB is more of a space thing than cost savings or transitional period. If you have the room for a tun set up, go for it.
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Jul 21, 2012 18:58
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Anybody have a favorite imperial IPA recipe? This is going to be our first higher gravity brew so I'm not totally sure what to expect. More grain + mash at a higher temp? Definitely going to do a starter and a blowoff tube.
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Jul 21, 2012 18:58
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Blistering Sunburn posted:Anybody have a favorite imperial IPA recipe? This is going to be our first higher gravity brew so I'm not totally sure what to expect. More grain + mash at a higher temp? Definitely going to do a starter and a blowoff tube. I've only brewed one IIPA but all the conventional wisdom says that mashing low will help accentuate the hops. Keep it simple in the grain bill and don't go too heavy on the crystal malts. I've seen a few Pliny clone recipes and it's just base malt, a small amount of C20, and corn sugar.
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Jul 21, 2012 19:26
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Blistering Sunburn posted:Anybody have a favorite imperial IPA recipe? This is going to be our first higher gravity brew so I'm not totally sure what to expect. More grain + mash at a Fixed that for you. In bigger beers, you really need to mash lower to get a fermentable wort that is going to finish with some level of dryness. If you mash higher, you will get more unfermentable sugars, leading to a sweeter beer. This is going to be accentuated by the nonlinear nature of attenuation at the higher gravities, and you'll end up with a sticky, cloying beer. So... The grain bill should use minimal crystal malts. Nothing wrong with all pale ale malt or maybe chuck in some Vienna or something for some character, and maybe a touch of something roasted if you want some red in it. Dough in at 149 or 150, do a longer saccharification rest (I usually go 90 minutes for big beers), and use a crapload of hops.
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Jul 21, 2012 20:03
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Blistering Sunburn posted:Anybody have a favorite imperial IPA recipe? This is going to be our first higher gravity brew so I'm not totally sure what to expect. More grain + mash at a higher temp? Definitely going to do a starter and a blowoff tube.
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Jul 21, 2012 21:38
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If I could only do one, is it preferable to cool the beer more quickly or boil a fuller volume? I ask because it is quite hot in my apartment and it is sort of coming down to doing one or the other. I understand that you want to boil as much as possible (I'm still doing extract), however, with my wort chiller and the warm-ish water we've got in my building, cooling 4+ gallons can take an hour. My roommate did his first batch the other day and we were strapped for time so we only did a 2.5 gallon boil and in addition to the speed and ease being alluring, I wondered if a quicker cool-down would result in a better beer despite topping off with water. Also, I've been wondering what could be causing this. After about 3 or so weeks my bottled beers seem to get almost an oxidized taste on the finish? It might be my imagination and maybe oxidized isn't the word for it because I am very careful about that. But it seems after 3 or so weeks they start to degrade, and this is almost consistent across brews. I'm speculating it's a carbonation issue, as for every beer I've been assuming that just racking on the priming solution would be enough to distribute the sugar. It was only yesterday on my 20th or so batch that I gently stirred it to distribute... global tetrahedron fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jul 21, 2012 |
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Jul 21, 2012 22:05
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Jo3sh posted:Fixed that for you. Just got back from the LHBS. Here's the recipe we came up with and bought stuff for (aiming for sort of a hybrid red imperial IPA): 17 lb two-row 2 lb Munich .5 lb roasted barley .25 lb crystal 120 hopped with (1 oz each) columbus and simcoe at 60, magnum at 30, and cascade at 15 and 5, about 100 IBU Wyeast Scottish Ale yeast (2 L starter) Unfortunately my brewing partner accidentally milled in our whole pound of crystal instead of the quarter, so molasses beer here we come. We'll keep the mash temp low but I'm still expecting our final product will be way too sweet. I guess we need to learn to be meticulous at the mill not just on brew day 
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Jul 21, 2012 23:21
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global tetrahedron posted:If I could only do one, is it preferable to cool the beer more quickly or boil a fuller volume? I ask because it is quite hot in my apartment and it is sort of coming down to doing one or the other. I understand that you want to boil as much as possible (I'm still doing extract), however, with my wort chiller and the warm-ish water we've got in my building, cooling 4+ gallons can take an hour. My roommate did his first batch the other day and we were strapped for time so we only did a 2.5 gallon boil and in addition to the speed and ease being alluring, I wondered if a quicker cool-down would result in a better beer despite topping off with water. With extract I would think cooling it off would be more important. People make good beer all the time doing partial boils, but cooling wort quickly is important for a lot of different reasons, it reduces chances of infections getting a foothold, it makes your beer clearer, it reduces the chances of having DMS flavors etc. That said, I'm surprised your water doesn't get cool after running for a while, pipes are all under ground so water shouldn't be that hot despite the weather. It's mid-summer where I am, 85-105 degrees these past few weeks, and I still get plenty cold water if I let the tap run for a minute or two.
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Jul 21, 2012 23:28
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I cool my wort by putting the kettle in my bathtub with cold water (ice if necessary) up to just above the wort line. The sheer volume of the bathtub allows it to cool the wort without the cooling water getting too hot like it would in the sink.
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Jul 22, 2012 00:08
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Blistering Sunburn posted:Just got back from the LHBS. Here's the recipe we came up with and bought stuff for (aiming for sort of a hybrid red imperial IPA): If you use the whole 8 ounces of roast barley, that thing is dark brown to black. Not that that's a bad thing, I'm just saying I was thinking more like an ounce. I used 4 ounces of a comparatively light roast malt to get a nice brown color in ten gallons of beer, just to give a reference. One ounce in five gallons might give you a red look. With all that C120, you've probably already got all the color you want, so if you can, you might skip the roast malt altogether. Not to say it won't be good, especially if you mash low and long, but the C120 will give it some residual sweetness for sure.
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Jul 22, 2012 01:03
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So I harvested some of the yeast from the primary of my latest batch, and I'm planning on making a starter today. I followed the yeast washing video that was posted earlier in the thread, and now I have a (sterilized) 3 L glass jar in my fridge with about a cup of nice creamy looking yeast on the bottom, and about 1 L of clear liquid on top; should take it out and bring it to room temperature, then decant off the clear liquid and add the yeast material only to my starter wort? Or should I decant off the liquid, add some boiled and cooled water to the stored yeast, and then pitch? Also, this starter is going to be for an apricot wheat ale (hopefully close to a clone of Pyramid's apricot ale even if it is from extract), I'm planning on using both wheat and pale malt extract in the boil, should I use both for the starter as well?
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Jul 22, 2012 01:03
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Take it out of the fridge, decant off most of the liquid, swirl it back into suspension, and pitch into your starter. You can let it come up to temp if you want but decant straight out of the fridge so you keep the most amount of yeast down at the bottom as you can.
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Jul 22, 2012 01:21
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Jo3sh posted:If you use the whole 8 ounces of roast barley, that thing is dark brown to black. Not that that's a bad thing, I'm just saying I was thinking more like an ounce. Interesting - beer smith gave us an SRM of 19 or something (before figuring in the full pound of 120), which I was interpreting as a deep red. Sounds like it's more like a brown.
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Jul 22, 2012 01:39
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