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Toebone posted:Don't bother with fancy beans, you'll lose the flavor and fresh beans can give a green pepper-like off flavor. Make a separate batch of cold brew concentrate, then mix to taste and scale up at bottling. make cold brew, then boil it; once the beans are gone, you don't have to worry about adding acidity or astringency to the beer VVV that will definitely give you the best flavor, just depends on how paranoid you are about sanitation funkybottoms fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Dec 4, 2019 |
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Dec 3, 2019 00:49
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Bread Set Jettison posted:Any advice on adding coffee in the secondary? Its a 5gal batch of American stout and I was planning on 4-5oz of medium-dark roast coldbrew (hopefully some fancy single source kenyan beans if I can get a good one.). Im guessing that'll give way less astringency or weirdo flavors than adding some coarse beans in the carboy. I've done three different coffee beers. One with cold brew, one with freshly pulled shots of espresso and one that was "dry beaned" (added whole beans into the fermenter after primary. The best coffee flavor came from the one that was dry beaned. This seems to be the new way people are doing it and it seems to be pretty well received across the board. I think I did something like 3oz of coffee beans in a hop bag and left them in there for just 24 hours.
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Dec 3, 2019 04:45
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I've worked in specialty coffee forever and cold brew is generally used as a method of using beans that are too old for good espresso or filter. At one of the roasteries I've worked at we did some tasting with a local brewery adding coffee to an american style ale. We had best results with adding the coffee to secondary, and using immersion cold brew rather than espresso or cold drip. What rockcity is suggesting is basically immersion brewing straight into the beer which sounds good too! Haven't really mucked around with this at home but I'd like to try it with a brown ale soon. Had a couple of good brut ipas lately and wouldn't mind trying out one at home. Is it as easy as using champagne yeast instead of beer yeast? Ill probably aim for something lowish abv and dry hop with something like simcoe or mosaic, gonna need a good summery session type of thing.
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Dec 6, 2019 03:26
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The thing I’d think about with cold brewing right in the fermenter is coffee oils ruining head retention. Brut IPA is done with amylase enzyme to get an ultra fermentable extract. You’d use a regular beer yeast to do it.
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Dec 6, 2019 04:14
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After breaking a couple floating thermometers, I got a cheap thermapen-style digital thermometer and was pretty happy with it for a while, until the water vapor got into its little screen, and now i can't get it to work again. The local brew store tells me to use a glass thermometer for the hot side and the digital one for the cold side... are they right or is there a smarter way of using these digital thermometers?
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Dec 9, 2019 18:02
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I use dial thermometers installed in my kettles. I wish I could find a good digital thermo with 1/2" NPT threads, but the dials work just fine. In the past I have used: A long-stem dial with a clip for the edge of the pot An actual Thermapen (pricey, but nice) Cheap probe-on-a-cable thermometer from Walmart Floating thermometers (made of fail)
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Dec 9, 2019 18:29
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El Pipila posted:After breaking a couple floating thermometers, I got a cheap thermapen-style digital thermometer and was pretty happy with it for a while, until the water vapor got into its little screen, and now i can't get it to work again. The local brew store tells me to use a glass thermometer for the hot side and the digital one for the cold side... are they right or is there a smarter way of using these digital thermometers? Get a digital with a probe like you'd use for BBQ grilling and you won't have to worry about it breaking. You can clip it onto the pot, which is the lowest effort method of doing it. My mashtun has a thermometer port, so I just use that and a thermapen. The people who make thermapens also make digitals with the long probes and the bbq probes.
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Dec 9, 2019 19:12
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field balm posted:I've worked in specialty coffee forever and cold brew is generally used as a method of using beans that are too old for good espresso or filter. At one of the roasteries I've worked at we did some tasting with a local brewery adding coffee to an american style ale. We had best results with adding the coffee to secondary, and using immersion cold brew rather than espresso or cold drip. What rockcity is suggesting is basically immersion brewing straight into the beer which sounds good too! Haven't really mucked around with this at home but I'd like to try it with a brown ale soon. I went with a Dark Roast columbian blend, and cold brewed in my french press overnight. The recipe I was working from said add 4oz, and I ended up adding a bit over 4. Next time I do this, I DEF wanna experiment with when/the methods to add the beans though. Clearly theres a lot of opinions on all this. I've toyed with the idea of doing several 1 gallon experimental batches at once, so I can experiment with variables like that. But I only have so many 
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Dec 10, 2019 20:22
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I've got a new control panel coming from electric brewing supply, gently caress off propane! 
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Dec 10, 2019 22:36
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Ghostnuke posted:gently caress off propane! 
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Dec 11, 2019 16:04
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Haha. I started looking for one of those last night before getting distracted. I’d go electric too if I thought it would be an upgrade. Really though if I were going to upgrade I’d want steam. Because why not go completely mental and over engineered for a home brew setup.
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Dec 11, 2019 16:38
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Hello thread. A friend and I have been talking about a pretend wine-like substance called El Tarantula. Basically the idea is that it is a kind of liquid satan. Things progressed, and now we're talking quite seriously about making chilli wine. As in, wine, but grapes replaced by chillies, the notoriously pleasant and reasonable fruit. I've made wine in the past, but I'm slightly terrified about the idea of it. Has anyone here done this before? Am I going to get drunk on agony? Will my pee burn? Is boiling a load of chillies and Seeing What Happens a completely awful idea?
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Dec 16, 2019 13:32
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Sounds like you want to make fermented hot sauce which is a real (and delicious) thing. Are you adding a ton of sugar to boost the abv or something?
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Dec 16, 2019 13:37
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That was the plan. Something around the abv of wine, and with the clarity/consistency.
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Dec 16, 2019 14:19
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I've never made wine, but I have made hot sauce, so let me give you a beginners tip: do not put your head over the pot and take a nice big whiff of that simmering chili aroma.
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Dec 16, 2019 14:49
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I've made both wine and fermented hot sauce and you're going to want something to give some body to that fortified hot sauce. Otherwise it'll just be some ethanol blast to your face. Can always go with other vegetables to keep the theme. Beets and carrots would give some wicked look to that elixir. Whichever way you go, make sure to rack off those lees or it'll have a hard time clearing.
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Dec 16, 2019 16:29
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Ooooh. Beets is a good idea. Then my burning pee will look like I'm also internally bleeding! Win-win!
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Dec 16, 2019 16:41
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The only other thing I’d recommend thinking about is what chiles you use. The hot portion won’t have anything to moderate it, so don’t go overboard with the superhots unless you like that burning ring of fire. I can see it easily becoming undrinkable if you use the wrong ones. I had Caribbean Reds and Carolina Reapers in the garden this year and used sparingly they taste great and bright citrus fruit almost. You could toss in a chipotle with the earthy beats for a little smoke too. So many options, but they will all hurt. Let us know how it goes! I’ll just keep using mine for hot sauce for now. And you could always turn it into vinegar, so no loss here for trying.
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Dec 16, 2019 17:06
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I have been a novice mead maker for five-ish months. For about three of those months, there were some murky so-dark-brown-it-looks-black bottles sitting in my closet. And for about three days, there were some nice clear-ish pink bottles in my closet. I've had some good ones. I've had some real stinkers. Some were weird, like the elderberry manuka monstrosity. But these two were my greatest successes to date. I took both to a family white elephant thing and the results were much better than expected. It's either family being family or they actually enjoyed it, but one of the dudes was someone I've never said more than three words to so I think he was probably genuine. Over the course of many "you should open a winery"s and one case of bottle theft when someone insisted that they should take a bottle so someone who was not at the party could try it, pretty much all of the product disappeared. On display were a cranberry melomel (with cranberry juice in place of the water; I'm fairly certain my addition of pectic enzyme hosed something up as the hydrometer kept reading increasingly high sugar content as it fermented) and my first successful bochet with some cherry added in secondary. I think the latter may have been sweet instead of tart as I detected some unpleasant cough syrup notes but people really enjoyed the bitterness when contrasted with the insane sweetness of the melomel. If all goes well, I hope to cease software development in the coming years and open my own meadery sort of like the dude behind the ihatemoney budgeting app. Flail Snail fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Dec 17, 2019 |
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Dec 17, 2019 21:09
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I don't have much to add to mead talk since it tends to be too sweet for me (dry meads notwithstanding), but there's a world-class/multi-gold medal winner Mead/Melomel guy from my tiny Indiana town and he's blown my mind with some of the stuff he makes. I think the most impressive thing to-date has been his Tupelo Honey Mead. I never bought into the idea of significant flavor changes from origin of the honey (it's mostly just wildflower and fruit tree blossom honey around here), but holy poo poo the flavor profile was amazing on this stuff and it's not even something I could put into words because it was so unique. From what he told us, he paid some sort of exorbitant price for the honey, so it's not something I'll probably ever get again.
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Dec 18, 2019 14:58
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Flint_Paper posted:Hello thread. Jack Keller has a recipe for jalapeño cooking wine that might be a useful starting point. If you want to make an actual drinking wine I'd consider using some sort of fruit with the chiles. And if it turns out undrinkable you could always turn it into vinegar. e: forgot to post the link https://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques32.asp big scary monsters fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 17:37
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One of my experiments was a capsicumel, a chili mead, using jalapeños. I'm sure someone would have enjoyed it but mine was overwhelmingly vegetally flavored. Nice burn, though. The suggestion of using fruit would probably be a good one. If I revisit the idea in the future, I'll probably go mango habanero.
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Dec 18, 2019 18:05
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Flail Snail posted:One of my experiments was a capsicumel, a chili mead, using jalapeños. I'm sure someone would have enjoyed it but mine was overwhelmingly vegetally flavored. Nice burn, though. I love pineapple for spicy flavor additions because it's cheap, everywhere, and you can get it frozen, canned, fresh, or juice it yourself. I've got a couple rounds done of a Pineapple Habanero kettle sour that's been fantastic.
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Dec 18, 2019 21:00
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robotsinmyhead posted:I don't have much to add to mead talk since it tends to be too sweet for me (dry meads notwithstanding), but there's a world-class/multi-gold medal winner Mead/Melomel guy from my tiny Indiana town and he's blown my mind with some of the stuff he makes. Honey pollen source definitely has a huge flavor impact in both the honey itself and on mead. In Florida we have no shortage of apiaries and it’s awesome getting to taste all the different versions out there. Hell, I have one they call swamp honey and it’s a wild honey with some form of bacterial culture in it. Pretty drat good. And tupelo is a great honey so I’m not surprised it makes great mead.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:43
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rockcity posted:Honey pollen source definitely has a huge flavor impact in both the honey itself and on mead. In Florida we have no shortage of apiaries and it’s awesome getting to taste all the different versions out there. Hell, I have one they call swamp honey and it’s a wild honey with some form of bacterial culture in it. Pretty drat good. Yep, this. Leatherwood has a minty, almost menthol quality to it. I have a 3kg tub of it I've been meaning to make into a mead for like a year now. Good thing it keeps...
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Dec 19, 2019 22:49
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So I've been looking for something interesting to brew, and have settled on trying to brew a hard seltzer for the lols (and also I think it may win my brew club competition in the spring). Anyone ever try to make these things?
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Dec 22, 2019 01:42
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I don't even really know how I would approach that. My first idea would be a low-gravity mead, with some fruit juice or extract or something. It would have to ferment out bone dry, and then be highly carbonated.
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Dec 22, 2019 03:48
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There are kits for this purpose. They use extract flavoring and dextrose. You could do it another way and try squeezing lemons, but it may end up cloudy and not crystal clear. You can probably just buy the bottles of flavoring too. I've done it for soda and they're somewhere around $3-5. https://www.homebrewing.org/search.asp?keyword=seltzer E: I did just make a 5 gallon keg of ginger ale yesterday. I only used 0.75kg of ginger and about 1.25kg sugar. Unfermented though so my child can drink it too. Jhet fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Dec 22, 2019 |
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Dec 22, 2019 04:05
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There was an episode of the Experimental Brewing podcast that went over how to brew hard seltzers a while back.
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Dec 22, 2019 04:15
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I did a hard seltzer this year, just filtered water, lime vodka, and "secondaried" on lime peels. It tasted ok, but for whatever reason, I couldn't get it super-sparkly and effervescent, probably owing to my lovely keg line balancing.
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Dec 23, 2019 20:18
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robotsinmyhead posted:I did a hard seltzer this year, just filtered water, lime vodka, and "secondaried" on lime peels. It tasted ok, but for whatever reason, I couldn't get it super-sparkly and effervescent, probably owing to my lovely keg line balancing. It needs extra high pressure like sodas, so that doesn't surprise me. Someone in one of the area clubs made an in-line carbonation thing for a homebrew topo chico water that I thought would probably work really well for sodas or hard seltzer.
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Dec 23, 2019 22:27
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I took a stab and made one by first bringing 1.5 cups of white sugar to a boil in 1 gallon of distilled water containing a pinch of epsom salt, kosher salt, and baking soda. Once it reached a rolling boil, I added two more gallons of distilled water and waited until it dropped to ~80 degrees, then I added 4.5 oz cherry flavoring and all of a 1.75 L bottle of vodka. This was stirred together, dumped into a keg, and carbed under 30 lbs of CO2. After a day, it fizzes ok but I may need more gas in there. It tastes dead on like a hard seltzer though, and a hell of a lot cheaper to make.
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Dec 24, 2019 02:58
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Does anyone use cam-locks for their hoses and fittings? Is it worth the cost? I've got my first pump on the way and trying to decide I wanna go ahead and go that route.
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Dec 24, 2019 15:20
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Anyone got a good yeast rec for a doppelbock? I tend to prefer dry for price/simplicity but my LHBS carries a good variety of White Labs and Wyeast as well
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Dec 24, 2019 16:06
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Toebone posted:Anyone got a good yeast rec for a doppelbock? I tend to prefer dry for price/simplicity but my LHBS carries a good variety of White Labs and Wyeast as well I've always just used the same yeast I was using for my other lagers/pilsners for my Traditional Bock. 2278 Czech Pils from Wyeast. I've also used it for Czech Pils and Vienna Lager recipes. I think if I were pressed I might look for a Bavarian strain for a doppel, but maybe the Munich Strain would be nice too?
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Dec 24, 2019 16:57
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Scarf posted:Does anyone use cam-locks for their hoses and fittings? Is it worth the cost? I do. I like them a whole lot. They are way, way better than barbs.
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Dec 24, 2019 17:07
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Toebone posted:Anyone got a good yeast rec for a doppelbock? I tend to prefer dry for price/simplicity but my LHBS carries a good variety of White Labs and Wyeast as well I like S-189 for bocks when I use dry, but I like WLP833 or WLP838 a little better if making a starter isn't an obstacle. Having said that, no non-brewer I've given beer to has been able to tell any two lager yeasts apart ever.
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Dec 24, 2019 17:58
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It's 58 F today in Northern Missouri, so I decided to do some brewing! I hadn't had my strike water in my mash tun for more than five minutes when this little dude came to investigate. Yep, a honeybee...in December in the Midwest. What figured she was starving so I mixed some water, wort, and honey together and put it on a saucer for her to recharge. Strange days...
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Dec 24, 2019 21:45
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Scarf posted:Does anyone use cam-locks for their hoses and fittings? Is it worth the cost? Yes and I cannot recommend them enough for that type of use.
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Dec 24, 2019 22:14
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Scarf posted:Does anyone use cam-locks for their hoses and fittings? Is it worth the cost? Just reading up on these now, it is tempting. I have had issues with hoses warming up and then slipping off the barbs. It cost me a heater element (slipped off when I was letting strike water come up to temp, element was glowing cherry-red when I came back out) so I use zipties, which is a pain.
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Dec 24, 2019 23:36
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