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this was my alternative to tablets : http://www.amazon.com/Camco-40043-TastePURE-Flexible-Protector/dp/B0006IX87S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375322224&sr=8-1&keywords=rv+filter
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Aug 1, 2013 02:58
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We can't easily get campden tablets around here but plain potassium metabisfulfite is everywhere and cheap. It sucks to try to measure out tiny amounts of it even with a gram scale so I usually just add a "pinch" to the water and call it good. Still debating on making that Mead Day recipe due to the cost. The best I can do for honey is about $4.10/lb shipped and with a $37 can of black currant juice it comes out to around $165 not including tax, bottles or corks (which I have some of already). I could drop the black currant and use some cheaper elderberry concentrate or just it all together I guess.
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Aug 1, 2013 03:27
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Roundboy posted:this was my alternative to tablets : http://www.amazon.com/Campden-Tablets-potassium-metabisulfite-bulk/dp/B0064O9HPK 730 batches for a couple bucks more. Not saying you're incorrect or anything, just pointing out how cheap Campden is.
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Aug 1, 2013 03:33
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I've been using 1 tablet per batch (5g) for about a year now. The only time I've had something off happen was when I drunkenly used like 3 tablets, because I forgot I had already done it, in 1 batch. That beer came out totally fine just took like FOREVER to really get going.
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Aug 1, 2013 03:51
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My water mostly originated in the Colorado river and seemingly dissolved every piece of limestone on the way here. It's got about 500ppm hardness and a bunch of chloramine added for good measure. I always used a charcoal filter to remove the chloramines but switching to RO to cut the hardness really improved my beers. The key to using a RO system for brewing is teeing a valve off the output and putting a float valve in a collection container. I've got a 5 gallon homer bucket with a float valve installed between the ribs near the top and I can plug it in, turn the water on, and come back later for a bucket full of RO. I collect strike water first to get it heating, then collect the HLT water as the RO regenerates directly into my collection bucket. Since my source water is so hard I end up with 12-15ppm (calcium carbonate) hardness in my RO. This is perfect for soft water beers with a couple percent sour malt, and with some minor mineral additions every other type of beer is possible. I'll cut with filtered water sometimes for really dark or hoppy beers but it's hard to stay consistent and you end up with a ton of carbonate hardness.
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Aug 1, 2013 06:21
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I tend to only really add 1 campbell tab for 10 half of 1 for 5 UK gallons. I thought of using a charcoal filter but mainly for if I want to do lagers, my hardness is 242 mg/l but just do ales at the moment because I have no idea where to get a charcoal filter thats not for one of them 5liter jugs. And doing 5-10 liters of filtering with them every time would be painful.  Edit: Would something like this EZ carbon filter be ok? Fluo fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Aug 1, 2013 |
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Aug 1, 2013 06:45
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A tablet would be easy, but for my particular setup outside simply plugging it inline to the hose lets me fill many gallons of mash / sparge water right away. I would love to do a mead for mead day, but with how my ciders have turned out, and since im still getting my legs in making a 'good' beer, im afraid im going to ruin a good bit of expensive honey. Unless i relyl just need to pitch honey / yeast / nutrient and let it sit in a dark corner for 3 months. How is temp control with mead ?
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Aug 1, 2013 07:29
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wolrah posted:What'd you get that chart from? The data nerd in me wants to start doing the same with a lot of my appliances but there seems to be a big gap between the Kill-a-Watt I have and anything that interfaces with a computer. Bruinator posted:My water mostly originated in the Colorado river and seemingly dissolved every piece of limestone on the way here. It's got about 500ppm hardness and a bunch of chloramine added for good measure. I always used a charcoal filter to remove the chloramines but switching to RO to cut the hardness really improved my beers. The key to using a RO system for brewing is teeing a valve off the output and putting a float valve in a collection container. I've got a 5 gallon homer bucket with a float valve installed between the ribs near the top and I can plug it in, turn the water on, and come back later for a bucket full of RO.
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Aug 1, 2013 14:20
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My mistake on the gallons for campden. Now back to my question, what kind of cocoa powder should I use to get sweet cocoa flavors and how much is recommended for a prominent cocoa?
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Aug 1, 2013 14:46
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Cpt.Wacky posted:We can't easily get campden tablets around here but plain potassium metabisfulfite is everywhere and cheap. It sucks to try to measure out tiny amounts of it even with a gram scale so I usually just add a "pinch" to the water and call it good. gently caress da mead day recipe, make the mead you wanna make. I'll be making a strawberry mel and a bourbon oak vanilla hydromel in short succession.
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Aug 1, 2013 15:13
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Marshmallow Blue posted:gently caress da mead day recipe, make the mead you wanna make. I'll be making a strawberry mel and a bourbon oak vanilla hydromel in short succession. Yep, it looks like I'm gonna do cheap-rear end Costco clover honey and whatever fruit is available locally, definitely keeping it under about $75.
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Aug 1, 2013 15:49
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Marshmallow Blue posted:gently caress da mead day recipe, make the mead you wanna make. I'll be making a strawberry mel and a bourbon oak vanilla hydromel in short succession. im curious to know this recipe, and what temps you do it all at. I have someone bugging me to make a mead and im looking for a good solid recipe i can make sure works.
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Aug 1, 2013 17:39
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Since it's campden talk, what is the purpose of campden tabs in beer making? If I have plenty of K-meta sitting around from winemaking could I use that instead? I've never used it for beer 
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Aug 1, 2013 17:49
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It's not the Mead Day recipe, but this is basically what I did to make mine: First, I read this paper about a dozen times, and bought the nutrients and such recommended in it: http://morewinemaking.com/public/pdf/wmead.pdf Then I went to a local honey farm and bought 15 pounds / 5 quarts of honey. I got sage, but use whatever you have locally that you like the flavor of. I bought a PET carboy with a valve on the side so I could draw samples without opening the carboy. I built a doohickey to stir the mead without opening the carboy by taking a long plastic brewing spoon, grinding the bowl so that it would fit through the neck of the carboy, and grinding the handle into a taper; then inserting this through one of those orange carboy hoods. I put an airlock in the second hole of the carboy hood. I filled the sanitized carboy about halfway with warm water from the kitchen faucet. I stirred into this one crushed Campden tab to strip chlorine. I warmed the honey slightly in a warm water bath, then poured it into the carboy and topped up with more warm water to the 5 gallon mark. I installed the sanitized stirring doohickey and used it to stir the must until it was well mixed - just hold the carboy hood steady with one hand and wiggle the spoon with the other. I followed the directions in the paper linked above to rehydrate and pitch Lalvin D-47, Cotes du Rhone. I added nutrients very roughly as described in that paper. I stirred it daily for a couple of weeks and then got lazy and just let it go. After it had been in primary for three or four months, I got impatient and kegged it. It's been more than a year now, I think, and it's getting pretty darn good.
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Aug 1, 2013 17:51
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Syrinxx posted:Since it's campden talk, what is the purpose of campden tabs in beer making? If I have plenty of K-meta sitting around from winemaking could I use that instead? I've never used it for beer I use it in very small amounts (1 tablet per ten-gallon batch). It reacts with chlorine and chloramine in brewing water to form some tiny amount of salts. This avoids a lot of potential issues with off-flavors. Yes, you could use powdered K-meta the same way - use 1/8 tsp or so to treat up to 20 gallons of water.
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Aug 1, 2013 17:52
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Roundboy posted:im curious to know this recipe, and what temps you do it all at. I have someone bugging me to make a mead and im looking for a good solid recipe i can make sure works. Here's my plans: Strawberry Currant 1.5gal batch (will be racked into a full 1 gal carboy; I'm calculating serious loss from the strawberries) •8lbs strawberries •1.5 lbs Orange Blossom Honey •20oz of Red Currant jelly •Red Star Cotes Des Blancs Room Temp ferment (~72F) Process Add some water to a pan and boil all the strawberries and jelly to sanitize em good (just 10-15 min) as well as soften them up even more. Pectin ain't a problem since I'll already have to deal with it from the jelly. Add the strawberry currant slush to the fermenter. Add water and honey. Pitch yeast (dry is fine, low grav + low batch volume). Rack onto pectic enzyme and fill carboy as high as it will go. Any extras I'm just gonna drink. Bourbon oak vanilla Hydromel 1gal batch •1.5 lbs Orange Blossom Honey •2oz of Vanilla Bean, split and chopped • ~1/3oz bourbon soaked oak chips (medium toast) •Red Star Cotes Des Blancs Room Temp ferment (~72F) Process Heat honey to over 150 in water  (yeah I'm cooking off the OB aromas on purpose since I don't want them in my vanilla bourbon nose). I'll keep it there for a good long while to cook off as much of those aromas as I can. Add water to 1 gal and ferment. I'll move this to secondary In secondary add the vanilla and oak for 2-3 weeks. Bottle form there since hydromels are typically where they need to be (bottling wise) in the 4 month range.
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Aug 1, 2013 18:49
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CapnBry posted:Is there a float valve that can connect to the poly tubing that comes off the RO tanks? I have John Guest push fittings connecting my system together and really like the idea of just putting the bucket out the day before and having it fill up on its own. The float valve I use came from a reef supply place and connects to the ro system tubing push fittings. A ro system and float is a common application for fish tank guys. I have a tee and valve under my sink and use poly tubing to go to the bucket and valve only when I'm using it. The valve was about ten bucks from bulk reef supply.
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Aug 1, 2013 19:28
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Here's my plans: interesting, what does this translate to a 5 gal batch ? 15lbs of honey and $texas lbs of strawberries ? for the time invested i might as well make enough it make it worth it. Im comparing hydromel to pure homey based mead. i have no experience in taste vs whatever .. so a hydromel + fruit seems the 'safe' bet? Roundboy fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Aug 1, 2013 |
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Aug 1, 2013 20:02
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So a hyrdomel is essentially a "light" mead with ABV ~7.5%. It can apply to any other style as its just a fancy name for less abv. Example: like a "Perry Hyrdomel" would be a mead with pears that is between 7.5-9%. 5Gals equivalent would be something for the strawberry. Starting volume would be closer to 6 gallons. 11.5 lbs honey You can cut the strawberries down if you want (15-20lbs would do). I have so much because I went strawberry picking and picked way too much and have a metric shitload frozen. 100oz red currant jelly, you can cut that too but Im hoping it adds a nice tartness complexity For the bourbon oak you can just multiply everything by 5 I think. But cut the oak to 1-1.25 oz.
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Aug 1, 2013 20:19
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oh you are pitching fruit in primary fermentation too? I can get access to a LARGE amount of raspberries or peaches when i visit family on the 27th.. but i want to get this going in the next couple weeks to drink in 3 months.
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Aug 1, 2013 20:51
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Roundboy posted:oh you are pitching fruit in primary fermentation too? I can get access to a LARGE amount of raspberries or peaches when i visit family on the 27th.. but i want to get this going in the next couple weeks to drink in 3 months. Im doing all primary because  but secondary would be better, especially if you aren't using irregular levels of fruit per gallon. Ken Schramm made a chart of fruits with amount per gallon to flavor intensity. I don't have the book in front of me right now but I can get it on here soon.
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Aug 1, 2013 21:05
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Im doing all primary because Im sourcing 12lbs of honey in amish country when i visit there next week. I can then get bulk vanilla bean via amazon, or bulk strawberry in the same place in lancaster which will probably end up being pretty cheap. I have a 6 gal carboy i can use, and yeast nutrient already, I only need a packet of yeast which would be the biggest point of debate on the flavor. I see you are using wine yeast vs sweet mead yeast. Actually, this is pretty big. The yeast you are using explicitly does not ferment dry, which lends itself to a semi-sweet, which i am shooting for. The northernbrewer kit for semi-sweet is reccomenting - Wyeast 4783 Rudesheimer Yeast, which i know personally from my first cider will go dry. Well at least to 10-12% which i dont think this mead will top. I hate finding out the hard way where i went wrong.
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Aug 1, 2013 21:14
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Roundboy posted:Im sourcing 12lbs of honey in amish country when i visit there next week. I can then get bulk vanilla bean via amazon, or bulk strawberry in the same place in lancaster which will probably end up being pretty cheap. I have never had a bad mead from cotes des blanc. It goes to around 12-14% (unless its a cyser, I've pushed it to a freak 16%) so its easy to control. You can also back-sweeten if you need to.
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Aug 1, 2013 21:19
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welp then im sold. I can grab a pack, and make a starter which might end up better for me. i have a 2oz bottle of nutrient i can use pretty much 1/2 of that i think for the primary.. and the rest after the first plateau. Honey from amish town, and if i can get POUNDS of strawberries / blueberries / etc from farmtown, USA .. i'l ldo so.. otherwise i have a line in on bulk vanilla beans to try the other route. Next weekend is my target start date
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Aug 1, 2013 21:36
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Sounds good, It'll be interesting 2 people making the same/ similar recipes, mayhaps a bottle trade will be in order.
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Aug 1, 2013 21:59
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I'm more then okay with that.. I'm curious to see what I source locally. And to see if it will let me keep it in the served room 
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Aug 1, 2013 22:20
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Sounds good, It'll be interesting 2 people making the same/ similar recipes, mayhaps a bottle trade will be in order. I would be down for a bottle exchange. I'm planning to use Sweet Mead with a starter for tomorrow and for the drinking mead part I'm going to crack open bottles of raspberry melomel and tart cherry melomel I made last year.
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Aug 2, 2013 00:06
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I don't think I've ever seen a more annoying "holiday" unfold on my Facebook feed than IPA DAY. Holy poo poo who cares I hate all my friends and untapped and the homebree/beer companies I follow. In unrelated news, I'd like to find a word that describes the continuous sucking sound that freshly rinsed bottles make when you leave them upside down on a flat surface.
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Aug 2, 2013 02:21
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fullroundaction posted:I don't think I've ever seen a more annoying "holiday" unfold on my Facebook feed than IPA DAY. Generally I feel the same, I don't know. A lot of my beer friends are in CAMRA and  about anything if it isn't cask. I love cask but I enjoy keg and bottles just as much, then I get lectures from them about how amazing Brewdog is (fun pointing out most brewdog is bottle and keg now adays) and they think I'm insane for thinking that they do ok beer but alot of it as PR and trendism. 
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Aug 2, 2013 02:43
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The LA Times headline was: IPA Day: Craft beer drinkers unite. Today is your day All craft beer is IPA and IPA is the only beer you can drink as a craft beer lover. In other news, I just kegged my rye beer. Trip report in three weeks or so.
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Aug 2, 2013 02:55
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Cpt.Wacky posted:I would be down for a bottle exchange. I'm planning to use Sweet Mead with a starter for tomorrow and for the drinking mead part I'm going to crack open bottles of raspberry melomel and tart cherry melomel I made last year. I'll get in on the "same recipe" train. All my ingredients are sourced from Michigan, and mostly in a 10 mile radius around South Haven. Unless it's strawberries, I'd had to get them from Trader Joes or something now.
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Aug 2, 2013 03:03
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Jacobey000 posted:I'll get in on the "same recipe" train. All my ingredients are sourced from Michigan, and mostly in a 10 mile radius around South Haven. Unless it's strawberries, I'd had to get them from Trader Joes or something now. Cool. My sweet mead starter is stirring now so I'm committed. I was cleaning out my freezer and found some old LME, grains and hops. What could I make out of these? I think I got a lot of it for replicating a kit that was out of stock and then forgot about it, and I have no idea what kit it was supposed to be. 8 lbs Ultralight LME 0.5 lbs Aromatic malt 0.5 lbs Caravienne 0.5 lbs Caramunich 1.0 lbs Crystal 120L 1.0 lbs Honey Malt 1.0 lbs Special B 1.0 lbs Black Roasted Barley 1 oz Cascade, whole (homegrown) 1 oz Willamette, pellet 1 oz Northern Brewer, pellet
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Aug 2, 2013 05:51
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Cool. My sweet mead starter is stirring now so I'm committed. Looks like a solid Belgian Dubbel to me. Use all the LME (add a pound or so of table sugar if you want to bump it up) and steep .5lb of the aromatic and .5lb of the special B. Bitter with .5oz of the Northern Brewer and finish with Willamette and use your favorite Belgian yeast (hint: use Wyeast 3787 and a blowoff tube).
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Aug 2, 2013 13:58
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Jo3sh posted:The LA Times headline was: Its too bad to hear. All these 2 years I thought I was a home-brewer I only drink IPAs in the spring usually. Winter is porter party (or as us Bostonians say, Portah-Potty).
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Aug 2, 2013 15:42
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My hops have really taken off this year after basically just establishing roots last year and doing nothing else. Right now the cones are feeling a little dry and looking a little brown here and there. There's still some spring to them and no yellow lupulin yet, so I think I still need to wait until the end of August at least. Please make reassuring noises at me.
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Aug 2, 2013 15:44
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I've never grown hops, so take this with a grain of salt. But it was my understanding that you harvested / dried /froze as they were ready instead of all at one harvest if some are ready and some aren't.
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Aug 2, 2013 16:01
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Its too bad to hear. All these 2 years I thought I was a home-brewer I was pretty shocked myself - 20 years in and apparently I have been doing it wrong all this time.
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Aug 2, 2013 16:25
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I did a little Googling and papery, springy hops might be a sign that they are ready. I need to pick one and check for lupulin. I was going to brew this weekend anyways! This is exciting.
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Aug 2, 2013 16:30
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BerkerkLurk posted:I did a little Googling and papery, springy hops might be a sign that they are ready. I need to pick one and check for lupulin. I was going to brew this weekend anyways! This is exciting. It shouldn't feel cool to the touch (still damp) and when you pick one and slice it in half lengthwise you should be able to see the yellow bits of lupulin inside. My cascade plant from last year is doing better in a larger container this year. The vines have already grown up to the eaves of the house and then dropped down another 2-3 feet. The odd thing is I'm only getting cones on the last 5 feet of each vine. I think the lower part is too hot with the southern exposure/sun trap/microclimate I've got them in.
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Aug 2, 2013 17:55
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Its too bad to hear. All these 2 years I thought I was a home-brewer I didn't even like IPA styles until these last few months. Even now I've only really tried Dogfishhead. Do I still qualify for being a home brewer? 
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Aug 2, 2013 19:34
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