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LaserWash posted:Cider: Do I need to siphon or is there no risk of oxidizing with cider? Trying to eliminate unnecessary steps and get my dry hopped cider in kegs before I leave for Christmas. Siphon it. You can get vinegar flavors from the oxygen.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:54
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Jhet posted:Siphon it. You can get vinegar flavors from the oxygen. I agree, siphon at every point after fermentation. Acetobacter needs oxygen to eat the ethanol and produce acetic acid aka vinegar. Oxygen can combined with other compounds to cause off flavors too. My first sour was a Flanders red. It's been about 13 months and is developing nicely so I brewed a second one yesterday for blending in 6-9 months. Paper grain bag had a tear in it and I spilled about a pound on the floor right before milling it. Swept it up and tossed it in the mill. Dropped the thermapen in the mash. Overshot OG by about 4 points and ended up with 3/4 gallon more wort than expected. It was also raining, windy and cold... But it was a good brew day.
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Dec 14, 2015 22:48
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Paper grain bag had a tear in it and I spilled about a pound on the floor right before milling it. Swept it up and tossed it in the mill. Dropped the thermapen in the mash. Overshot OG by about 4 points and ended up with 3/4 gallon more wort than expected. It was also raining, windy and cold... But it was a good brew day. I've had way too many of those "everything that can go wrong does" brew days, and in the spirit of "always learning" I thought I'd share a tip: Bring a bucket with you to the LHBS to hold your grains. It will never tear, holds more grain, and if it gets splashed before you have a chance to brew... who cares! It's a great use for a decommissioned fermentation bucket. I've been homebrewing upwards of 4 years and this didn't click until last month. 
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Dec 15, 2015 00:33
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Anyone have a go-to product for lowering mash pH? My tap water is generally good for brewing, but everything I read says the pH is just too high and it should be in the 5.x range. I'm kinda looking for something simple, if it's Acidulated Malt additions, or some other kind of water additive. edit: source water 7.8pH (Ward Labs report - though I usually "cut" my water with 2gallons of distilled) and most guides says 5.2-5.5pH as a target. double edit: I guess I was undereducated on this, but the grain itself will lower mash pH. The last beer I made ended up 6.2pH in the mash. An addition of 7% acidulated malt would have adjusted that into the 5.5 range. robotsinmyhead fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 01:32
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robotsinmyhead posted:Anyone have a go-to product for lowering mash pH? My tap water is generally good for brewing, but everything I read says the pH is just too high and it should be in the 5.x range. I'm kinda looking for something simple, if it's Acidulated Malt additions, or some other kind of water additive. Yeah, you don't want your water at 5.2-5.5, you want your mash at that. I'd recommend using some form of software, Bru'n Water works great for this (and it's free). It will really depend on what your grain bill is on if you'll need any tweaking to your water/mash to get the pH right. As for what you to use to lower it need be, lactic acid is the best way.
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Dec 15, 2015 04:02
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nullfunction posted:I've had way too many of those "everything that can go wrong does" brew days, and in the spirit of "always learning" I thought I'd share a tip: Excellent reminder. I had thought of that in the past and actually remembered to do it once already. Hopefully this latest experience will help me remember. I also enjoy getting the odd looks from people as I ride by on my bike with a bucket in the crate on the back.
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Dec 15, 2015 04:51
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rockcity posted:Yeah, you don't want your water at 5.2-5.5, you want your mash at that. I'd recommend using some form of software, Bru'n Water works great for this (and it's free). It will really depend on what your grain bill is on if you'll need any tweaking to your water/mash to get the pH right. I have the Brewer's Friend premium and their good (but overly complicated) calculator. That overcomplication is nice, but it's obviously taking me some time to figure it out.
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Dec 15, 2015 13:16
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robotsinmyhead posted:I have the Brewer's Friend premium and their good (but overly complicated) calculator. That overcomplication is nice, but it's obviously taking me some time to figure it out. I haven't tried theirs. I've tried the Beersmith one, but ended up liking Bru'n Water better. They all seem to take some getting used to though.
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Dec 15, 2015 16:18
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Brewed my first stout last night. Pardon the house, still working on things as we just moved in. Speaking of, I no longer have a nice cool basement. I do have my kegerator so I threw it in there and put it at one of the lowest settings. I checked it this morning and it's at about 68. So I should be ok using my kegerator for fermentation period?
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Dec 15, 2015 16:19
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ChickenArise posted:I wish the learning curve for sours wasn't so slow. Each batch has been a big improvement (and age seems to fix tons of stuff), but dammit I wish I didn't have like 60 bottles of super-sour. Blend it then. Brew a regular beer to blend with (usually a blonde) and find the right ratio to make it less sour. Do you ferment your beer with a neutral yeast before adding the bugs?
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Dec 15, 2015 16:22
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Anyone have a simple AG or Partial Mash oatmeal brown/stout beer that I can turn around in 2 weeks (with kegging obv)? I was going to just brew my mild that I can turn around in 7 days but if I can get something with a bit more body that would be nice too.
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Dec 15, 2015 16:27
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Get RocketMermaid's stout recipe! http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3437782&pagenumber=691&perpage=40#post448960088Cointelprofessional posted:Blend it then. Brew a regular beer to blend with (usually a blonde) and find the right ratio to make it less sour. Yeah, I'll do that at consumption sometimes. The sours all have tended to mellow out after 1.5-2.5 years in the bottle. It's been a learning process. Like...when you have a beer that's on the "too sour" side, maybe don't add a shitload of super-tart raspberries to it. Now, at 2ish years, it's actually really good with the citric/lactic mix, but goddamn. I currently add bugs on day 3-4 of fermentation and it's way better. My first batch was a combo pitch of bottle dregs + sacc. Subsequent batches all pushed my innoculation time further into fermentation, and it got better each time. My house culture is strong. /flex ChickenArise fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 16:44
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ChickenArise posted:Get BocketMermaid's stout recipe! http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3437782&pagenumber=691&perpage=40#post448960088 Cool, I'll make a nice lil 1.040 ver like that. Thanks!
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Dec 15, 2015 16:56
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I found a small chest freezer on my local equivalent of Craigslist, listed for 30 Euro. It's older and a model that I've never heard of before, but hey, 30 Euro is the cost of a cheap dinner for two. It's also in the same zip code as me, which owns as I don't have a car, so I'd have to schlepp the thing on foot with a dolly or something. Is there anything to be on the lookout for when buying something used like this (especially older), if I'm planning on converting it to a fermentation chamber? Is the only additional investment beyond that going to be a temperature controller and a probe?
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Dec 15, 2015 20:51
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Drone posted:I found a small chest freezer on my local equivalent of Craigslist, listed for 30 Euro. It's older and a model that I've never heard of before, but hey, 30 Euro is the cost of a cheap dinner for two. It's also in the same zip code as me, which owns as I don't have a car, so I'd have to schlepp the thing on foot with a dolly or something. Mostly just checking the internal dimensions. Make sure there is enough clearance for your vessel plus the airlock. You can build a collar need be, but it's a hell of a lot easier if you don't have to.
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Dec 15, 2015 21:20
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Just another thing if you're buying a large, old appliance that generated warmth - check for mice. I bought a kegerator off craigslist and it worked great, but upon opening up the area with the compressor I pulled six mouse carcasses, complete with nests and copious amounts of feces that took me days to fully clean. Just sayin'.
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Dec 15, 2015 21:22
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Finally got around to taking a picture. This was my As Soon As loving Possible Pale Ale (ASAFPPA), all Pilsner with Cane Sugar, US-05, and almost all late-addition hops, and it shows. REALLY juicy with mostly Citra and a little bit of Amarillo in the dry hop. It's got some pissyness from the Citra, but otherwise it's really clean. Gelatin fining is the business - it got this clear even forgetting my Whirfloc.
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Dec 16, 2015 00:31
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yamdankee posted:Brewed my first stout last night. Pardon the house, still working on things as we just moved in. Speaking of, I no longer have a nice cool basement. I do have my kegerator so I threw it in there and put it at one of the lowest settings. I checked it this morning and it's at about 68. So I should be ok using my kegerator for fermentation period? I want to pat the dog
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Dec 16, 2015 11:25
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robotsinmyhead posted:Finally got around to taking a picture. This was my As Soon As loving Possible Pale Ale (ASAFPPA), all Pilsner with Cane Sugar, US-05, and almost all late-addition hops, and it shows. REALLY juicy with mostly Citra and a little bit of Amarillo in the dry hop. It's got some pissyness from the Citra, but otherwise it's really clean. Gelatin fining is the business - it got this clear even forgetting my Whirfloc. How long between brewing and taking this pic? I'm curious because of the name :p
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Dec 16, 2015 16:21
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ChickenArise posted:How long between brewing and taking this pic? I'm curious because of the name :p So the name was devised because I wanted to go grain-to-glass ASAFP. It ended up being just over 4 and a half days, but I let it sit for 6 total because I wanted a decent dryhop time. It was carbed and in the glass in 6 days, but this is roughly 1 month out. It only really started to clear up after week 2, and it tastes a lot better now as well, which is why the keg is almost gone already. robotsinmyhead fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Dec 16, 2015 |
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Dec 16, 2015 17:02
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nullfunction posted:I've had way too many of those "everything that can go wrong does" brew days, and in the spirit of "always learning" I thought I'd share a tip: I've never had a brewday go bad enough that beer wasn't created on the back end  Oh, except that one time I tried to make an IPA and somehow ended up with 1.035 OG. I coulda fixed it with some dry malt extract, but I was too frustrated and just dumped it. No, I still don't bother to measure before the very end 
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Dec 16, 2015 20:19
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Angry Grimace posted:I've never had a brewday go bad enough that beer wasn't created on the back end Heh. I threw out my first all grain batch. It was supposed to be a stout. I ended up massing at about 143, screwed up my crush, and probably way overcomplicated the recipe in a bad way. It did not taste good. Oh, and then I used some yeast that wasn't all that healthy as well as they'd been foolishly washed from a high gravity batch and were about 8 months old. It never made it to bottling. But now I know how my equipment stores or leaches heat, have my grain mill dialed in, don't use old yeast that have been through the ringer, and have simplified my recipes to a point where it's much easier to taste what it is and how to balance things moving forward. Not only that, but it's so much easier to dial in the recipe if it's not tasting like I want it to taste. I can just balance one of the 2-4 malts that will go into the mash. Like the tripel I'm making hopefully this weekend. Pilsner, White Wheat, sucrose, with Mt Hood and Goldings. I really just need to figure out how to get corks into champagne bottles now.
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Dec 17, 2015 02:10
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Not sure if this is the right beer thread or not, but... I just rejected a 1/2bbl of Boston Lager because it was warm. Not cool, warm. I've never bought a non-chilled keg of beer in my entire life and I thought I remembered hearing that you cannot store kegs at room temperature (otherwise I'd be stocking up!). Some light reading seems to confirm this, since (lagers especially) are non-pasturized and have low hop levels. HOWEVER, the homebrew forums seem to think it's acceptable. So, is storing commercial kegs at room temp ok or not?
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Dec 17, 2015 21:03
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Heat is bad for foodstuffs of all kinds and doesn't help shelf life. This is as true for beer as any other product, but beer's real enemies are UV light and oxygen. In a keg, beer is as safe as it can be from all kinds of degradation, but the heat isn't doing it any favors. It's more a question of just how hot it got and how long it was warm. If it got warm in the truck on the ride over from the distributor, but was cool to cold up until then, it probably would have been fine. If it had been at say 110 degrees F for three weeks, it'd probably be pretty badly damaged. The only way to know for sure is to chill it and have a glass. Some kegged beer is pasteurized, but it appears that Sam Adams kegs are not. But room-temperature storage of unpasteurized beer is not necessarily bad - after all, ales typically ferment at temperatures not very far below room temp, and some Belgian styles are fermented at very warm temperatures. I've stored kegged and bottled beer (unfiltered and unpasteurized homebrew and commercial beer alike) for up to several years at room temperatures, and if the beer is robust enough to age that long, it does okay. It would be better to keep it at 50 to 60 degrees, but I just don't have the facilities to do so. It drank just fine after all that aging. In fact, one of the best beers I've ever had in my life was a Stone Russian Imperial Stout that had been aging for four years in my closet. To the best of my knowledge, Stone does not pasteurize their beer. I've been on lots of brewery tours, and the only places I've seen pasteurization equipment was in the really big places, like Anheuser-Busch. Boston Lager is a pretty mild beer, so It's not something I would try to age for years, but I'd guess that it would have been okay once it was chilled. That keg might have had a shorter shelf life than one that had been kept cold from packaging until it ran dry, but I'm pretty sure that, even if they were cold when you got them, many of the kegs you have accepted were warm at some point before you got them. TL;DR: Maybe.
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Dec 17, 2015 21:27
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Ok thanks for the thoughtful response. As I said before, I've never in my life bought a warm keg, plus alarm bells were ringing already because they wanted $200 for it. I had just given them $200 for a keg of SN Celebration Ale, so it seemed WAY OFF that they'd charge that much for regular old Sam Adams. I was expecting $120-$130. I called my old regular keg supplier and they'll have a 1/2bbl of SN Torpedo in tomorrow, less time than it would take for that Boston Lager keg to chill to temp. BTW they had Boston Lager kegs for $160. I think in the future I'll still reject warm kegs regardless of whether it really harms them or not. To me it shows a lack of attention to detail and makes me worry about how else the keg has been treated, regardless of whether or not it matters. Probably more of a concern in the summer though. Either way, this is the first time I've ever seen a warm keg and I've been buying kegs since probably 2001 or so. Thanks again. (I'm still getting back into homebrewing one of these days! Wife works at a brewery so I'm trying to finagle some sacks of grain)
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Dec 17, 2015 21:40
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Well Torpedo > BL so it sounds like you won!
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Dec 17, 2015 21:41
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Well Torpedo > BL so it sounds like you won! Haha. I actually really like both. The wife prefers Torpedo though, so it's all good. Boston Lager is one of those weird beers that I despise in bottles but absolutely love on draft. Inversely, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is actually not great on draft.
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Dec 17, 2015 21:43
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revmoo posted:Thanks again. (I'm still getting back into homebrewing one of these days! Wife works at a brewery so I'm trying to finagle some sacks of grain) No problem, glad to help (even if that help was not really a conclusive answer). Let us know how the eventual return to homebrewing goes, too.
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Dec 17, 2015 21:50
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I shall. It's not happening until I have a proper three-tier system. I'll document it once I get my poo poo together.
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Dec 17, 2015 21:52
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Jerome Luois, your Secret Santa gift has been shipped! If you want to  the tracking number, send an email to nmfree@writeme.com.
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Dec 17, 2015 23:35
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  I'm not sure I can actually fit all these in the box, but Christmas beers are all labeled and ready to ship! Hopefully will go out on Saturday. Labels were kinda fun to make. Just resume paper and spray glue.
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Dec 18, 2015 17:51
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I have a general question about base malts. I bought 2x 25kg bags recently, one of Vienna, and one of Pilsner and have been playing around with using them as a 1:1 replacement for boring old 2-Row. However, I've noticed something: A lot of recipes I see online are people using something like a 10% addition of Vienna or Munich with their normal 2-row based recipes, and I'm wondering how in the world you'd ever notice that? As far as I can gather, it goes like this, from light/low-kiln to darker/maltier Pilsner->6-Row->Vienna->2-Row->Munich-> (Golden Promise?/Marris Otter?). I really favor lighter/dryer beers, so the profile of Pilsner/6-Row/Vienna are much more in line with what I generally want to make. Has Brulosophy or anyone done a side-by-side comparing an All X recipe with an All Y? edit: I suppose I should drop Munich out of this as it's not used much a "base malt". robotsinmyhead fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Dec 18, 2015 |
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Dec 18, 2015 17:53
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robotsinmyhead posted:I have a general question about base malts. I bought 2x 25kg bags recently, one of Vienna, and one of Pilsner and have been playing around with using them as a 1:1 replacement for boring old 2-Row. However, I've noticed something: It's more like: Pilsner -> 2-Row -> 6-Row -> Maris Otter -> Vienna -> Munich, although there is quite a lot of variation in pilsner malts, and many are much more distinct than 2-Row. It depends on the style. A 5% inclusion of Vienna in an otherwise all-pilsner saison recipe can be quite noticeable if the recipe is not hopped to poo poo. It bring out the maltiness a bit more, and can affect color if you're boiling for a long time. All light munich malts can act as base malts, and also some of the dark munich malts (Weyermann/Best Malz). thotsky fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Dec 18, 2015 |
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Dec 18, 2015 18:27
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Biomute posted:It's more like: Pilsner -> 2-Row -> 6-Row -> Maris Otter -> Vienna -> Munich, although there is quite a lot of variation in pilsner malts, and many are much more distinct than 2-Row. Yeah, I should have put a bunch of footnotes in that question because the variations on the malts differ a lot from Maltster to Maltster and the information about them from various sources are just all over the board. I guess since I tend to brew dry IPAs and beers with weird adjuncts in them as opposed to styles that highlight these small differences, I don't ever notice them.
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Dec 18, 2015 18:36
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Jhet posted:Heh. I threw out my first all grain batch. It was supposed to be a stout. I ended up massing at about 143, screwed up my crush, and probably way overcomplicated the recipe in a bad way. It did not taste good. Oh, and then I used some yeast that wasn't all that healthy as well as they'd been foolishly washed from a high gravity batch and were about 8 months old. It never made it to bottling. I don't dial anything in, I just make beer and trust it will be good because I'm likely to drink all of it within a couple of weeks regardless. This probably belies the fact that I'm (in my opinion) a very good brewer and *CAN* be anal about the details, I just never am because it makes it way less fun. Example: I have 2 different stirplates and several different flasks, they just don't see use for anything because dry yeast consumes less of my time. My March Pump kind of suffered the same fate. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Dec 18, 2015 |
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Dec 18, 2015 20:32
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 Just opened this. It is good. It has a few flavors from the soemwhat lax brewing process (I can't even full boil, and the yeast took a while to start) but it has an beautiful color and good solid brown ale flavor. Very drinkable too. I under-carbonated it by a lot (I used 2.5 oz. or corn sugar instead of like 4) but It is still pleasant.
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Dec 18, 2015 22:01
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Well I did it, I ordered a ball lock keg with a regulator, tank, and lines and also an fr464 fridge to eventually turn into a 2 tap kegerator  gently caress bottling.
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Dec 19, 2015 03:02
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Angry Grimace posted:I don't dial anything in, I just make beer and trust it will be good because I'm likely to drink all of it within a couple of weeks regardless. I'm likely to drink it all still too. But the next time I make my standard bitter, I want it to taste a certain way with a certain balance or malt and hops. It tastes good now, but it can taste better next time.
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Dec 19, 2015 07:50
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 Tomorrow is my first brew day since the summer. Super excited. 
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Dec 19, 2015 17:55
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It's brew day! Currently 30 minutes into a 3 hour boil for an English Barleywine.  For those curious about the massively late-hopped wheat-heavy IPA (foreground), it's fantastic. Solid bittering backbone, huge flavor and aroma. It's basically opaque, but I wasn't shooting for a pretty beer, I was looking for a tasty one, and this definitely checks both boxes. Depending on which person you ask, it tastes like mango, pineapple, grapefruit, mandarin orange, tangerine, or passionfruit. Santee, prepare your taste buds. 
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Dec 19, 2015 20:16
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