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A neighbour's been paying me in beer in exchange for a bit of logging on her property. The beer/hour rate is pretty good but it's been reminding me how much I like Pilsner Urquell and eventually the trees are going to run out. I think it's time to dust off the fermentation rig and re-purpose the CO2 equipment I have from another project. I'm thinking about doing small batches using 6 litre minikegs. Any buying advice for one of these? Any recipes for small batch Pilsner Urquell would be appreciated as well. If I remember correctly lagers can be tricky at the best of times and I'm not sure if going for small batches might be setting myself up for failure. Last time I brewed it was usually stouts or dark ales from grain ('cause I'm a geek and like that sort of fiddlyness).
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May 10, 2020 18:34
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 Dregs starter seems to have worked!
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May 10, 2020 19:04
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Hexigrammus posted:Any recipes for small batch Pilsner Urquell would be appreciated as well. If I remember correctly lagers can be tricky at the best of times and I'm not sure if going for small batches might be setting myself up for failure. Last time I brewed it was usually stouts or dark ales from grain ('cause I'm a geek and like that sort of fiddlyness). I don't have a recipe for you, but just expounding on your information: Lagers are tricky to make because they generally require more temperature control than most people can cheaply/easily hook up in their house. Generally it involves some sort of temp controller and fermentation chamber. A cool basement can suffice if you're in the right area geographically, and you can also do it with a lot of oversight and a water bath - and time. If you can't muster up this control, I would recommend a Kveik yeast or something in the Kolsch family of ale yeasts that are very "lager-like"
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May 11, 2020 03:01
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Vlex posted:I'll post the exact recipe later, but like I said I had a complete lapse of memory and didn't add the DME until the last 15 mins of the boil. 2kg in a 5 gal batch. If I had known it would make such a difference, I would have ditched the "wort" and started over again, since I had enough hops. Really hoping it mellows out in the bottle. From two pages back but the incredibly bitter wort (and sampler...and tester bottle) turned into maybe the best session ale I've ever made. Bright, light, quite clear, loaded with citrus and a nice bitter bite at the end, not too much. Very pleased in the end. 
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May 11, 2020 09:28
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 In brewing news, Woolworth's (Aussie supermarket chain) has started carrying their house brand beer kit again, a lager. Of course, the only DME they sell is the Cooper's Brew Enhancer #2, which is for dark styles (which they don't sell). I have 2x 1.7L cans and think I'd split it 4 ways into 5L demijohns. I'd like to try challenging myself to only use Woolies ingredients, basically "supermarket reinheitsgebot" rules. Will be with the kit lager - had one very unfortunate experiment using bread yeast in a pale ale, never again.
These are all pretty much thought-bubbles, so I'd be keen to hear some advice/suggestions. In brewing-adjacent news, wanted to feed the ducks near me so looked up what is safe/they like and apparently malted grain is way up on the list. Took a small baggie of 2-row down to the river this evening and they went absolutely bonkers. To be fair, the total lack of tourists and visitors to town right now probably played a role, but if you're like me and bulk bought more grain than you probably should have (or just have some old stuff laying around you don't want to risk brewing with), it's a good way to dispose of it. robotsinmyhead posted:I don't have a recipe for you, but just expounding on your information: Lagers are tricky to make because they generally require more temperature control than most people can cheaply/easily hook up in their house. Generally it involves some sort of temp controller and fermentation chamber. A cool basement can suffice if you're in the right area geographically, and you can also do it with a lot of oversight and a water bath - and time. Speaking of temperature control, I just chucked a Pacific Pale kit in the fermenter Sunday arvo, and was rudely greeted with a reading of 16.3C from the temperature probe on my Inkbird this morning (set temp is 22.5). After some experimentation it seems the Inkbird is fine, but the reptile heating cord I'm using for heating is barely working - to be clear it worked fine for a few years but I guess has gone bad. New cord won't get here for another 1-2 weeks, I think the one in there will give me at least around 17C now that I've wrapped it directly around the fermenter. Yeast is probably US-05 (is a Morgan's that came with the kit, but description matches US-05). Am supposed to do a dry hop on day 4 of fermentation. Not entirely sure what the best course of action is - was thinking I'd wait until Day 7 to do the dry hop and then let it sit an extra week before I try a gravity reading. Would any of you do anything different? Hexigrammus posted:A neighbour's been paying me in beer in exchange for a bit of logging on her property. The beer/hour rate is pretty good but it's been reminding me how much I like Pilsner Urquell and eventually the trees are going to run out. Something something The Lorax. Ethics_Gradient fucked around with this message at 12:24 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 10:54
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Ethics_Gradient posted:
So I was deliberately trying to get a citrus note out of the Voss Kveik strain I used, so I deliberately fermented at a very high temperature - 80F / 27C. I got the clean ale character and the citrus note I wanted, but it wasn't really very lager-like. What I did not get was the spicy, hot, fusel character I have had from more standard ale yeasts at those temps, or the Belgian character I got from Westmalle yeast in a quad. So I think you would get a very clean ale character if you used a Kveik yeast at standard ale temps around 65F / 18C. It might not be very lager-like, but I am betting it would be good.
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May 11, 2020 20:16
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Something something The Lorax. Drought-killed cedars. My soul remains as pure as Bavarian lager.
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May 11, 2020 20:51
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Doing my starter in the 5L flask went off (mostly) without a hitch. Definitely nice to just get it all done in one step rather than multiple. Boiling in the flask was a pain in the rear end being as full as it was (4.5L); it was wanting to boil-over like a motherfucker. But in the end, super happy with the purchase. As well as my new stir plate! Got it on a crazy discount from my LHBS because it'd been sitting on the shelf for ages apparently. 
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May 13, 2020 18:23
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Couple drops of Fermcap in the starter wort helps immensely with the boilover issue.
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May 14, 2020 15:18
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Posting to report experiments with Lallemand Sourviceae and lacto/kveik copitch works beautifully. I don't believe the sourviceae is commercial for homebrew yet, but the lacto/kveik copitch fermented wonderfully at 95F, and gave a really nice bright tartness to the beer. Makes a really beautiful, crushable 9% golden sour! Also, a drop of olive oil worked a treat!
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May 14, 2020 19:40
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gamera009 posted:Posting to report experiments with Lallemand Sourviceae and lacto/kveik copitch works beautifully. I don't believe the sourviceae is commercial for homebrew yet, but the lacto/kveik copitch fermented wonderfully at 95F, and gave a really nice bright tartness to the beer. Makes a really beautiful, crushable 9% golden sour! It sounded kind of interesting, because I really need a fast acting IBU tolerant lacto-producer that does not create diacetyl, but I'm sort of bummed out that its performance is apparently highly dependent on the amount of it in relation to other yeasts. I suspect adding it to my mixed culture could result in it either being crowded out by my saison strains and therefore not souring much, or the opposite happening and me losing a lot of yeast character / precursors for Brett.
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May 14, 2020 19:45
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Since we are talking sours, I've always been scared of them due to a combination of contamination scare stories and limited space to have an extra fermenter for extender periods of time. But I just realized that my immersion circulator can actually handle up to 8 gallons of liquid so I think I'm going to try my hand at a kettle sour. My plan for a rough berlinner weisse is: 3:4 white wheat:pilsner mash@148 boil 15 minutes chill to 115, crack ~5 probiotic capsules, keep at that temp until ~3.6ph boil with 1/4 oz Perle @ 60 minutes pitch some voss because due to corona that's all I have Seems straight forward enough?
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May 15, 2020 14:59
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Your first boil need not be any longer than a minute or two, with the ramp up and down that will kill most of the bad stuff. I would sour at no higher than 100 degrees if you're using a pure culture and not inoculating with grain. I'd probably use a couple of more capsules, but I guess it depends on the brand. Presouring to a pH of 4.5 - 4.6 with acid is a good safety net and can help with head retention. You could probably get away with only a short boil after souring. 15 minutes should be more than enough. It does not hurt though so if you're worried about DMS go for it. thotsky fucked around with this message at 15:24 on May 15, 2020 |
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May 15, 2020 15:13
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I'd also be careful about too much oxygen in the souring process as well. My last attempt it came out with a slight vomit smell, no taste just smell. Apparently, I'm super sensitive to it but no one else really is until I mention it and they sit there for a few minutes inhaling deeply. I can't think of what the compound is off the top of my head but milk the funk has a write up about it.
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May 16, 2020 01:27
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Butyric acid smells like vomit to a lot of people. Also smells of rancid cheese. If that happens again, Brettanomyces strains can turn that into Pineapple flavor.
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May 16, 2020 01:49
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How long do you guys typically go for a lager's diacetyl rest, 2-3 days?
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May 16, 2020 22:38
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Toebone posted:How long do you guys typically go for a lager's diacetyl rest, 2-3 days? If I'm actually trying to get it in the keg quickly, yeah. I'll usually just go weekend-to-weekend with the rest since that's usually the only time I have to do beer stuff.
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May 17, 2020 03:11
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Pretty productive weekend of beer related activity for me... Finally got around to etching my brew kettle. I hate that I didn't take the time to do it sooner, it was super quick and easy. Now to etch my HLT, although I'm not sure how well it will work on aluminum. Had my second brew-day with my pump, and the first with my new 70qt mash tun. The mash tun was perfect, tons of head-space for a 10gal batch at 1.054, fantastic heat retention, and not a ton of dead-space either. Last time, I had a stuck sparge a few times with the pump, particularly during the first runnings. This time around I just gravity fed the first runnings into the brew kettle since it was only going to be about 4-5 gallons. The pump worked great during the sparge and I was able to go close to full bore after just a few minutes of setting the grain bed. The pump worked MUCH better during whirl-pool and transfer to the fermenter thanks to the hop spider I picked up: https://www.homebrewing.org/Hop-Spider_p_9489.html The amount of trub in the bottom of the kettle was minuscule, so much so that I didn't need my bazooka filter.
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May 18, 2020 17:07
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Cracked my first bottle of the Chocolate Porter I made a few weeks back and it's almost exactly how I envisioned it - overall pretty good, but a little overly dry for what I was aiming for and that damned telltale metallic/iron flavor I get whenever I try to use chocolate in my beers. This is not a water issue, so I'm starting to suspect it's from the cocoa powder. Has anyone had anything similar before? It's not ruining the beer or anything, but it's definitely something I'd want to knock out if I did this again. Adjuncts were cocoa powder and lactose with toasted coconut, vanilla, and cocoa nibs in secondary.
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May 18, 2020 19:10
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robotsinmyhead posted:Cracked my first bottle of the Chocolate Porter I made a few weeks back and it's almost exactly how I envisioned it - overall pretty good, but a little overly dry for what I was aiming for and that damned telltale metallic/iron flavor I get whenever I try to use chocolate in my beers. I haven't, but I found some old threads on HomebrewTalk where several people report that cocoa powder is giving them metallic off-flavors. That sucks... Maybe it'll age out? I use original molsasses a good bit which can cause similar issues (but not as bad as blackstrap), but it always ages out after several months in the keg.
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May 18, 2020 20:09
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calandryll posted:I thought I heard that Bells had a slightly different variety of Centennial as well, like the taste profile was only available to them. It's mostly just marketing spin, but they are pretty aggressive with QC and the selection of what batches of Centennial they use for their beers. I ordered a clone kit direct from Bells to get back into brewing after a few years off. Ended up having trouble with my racking cane, and definitely oxygenated the beer a little at bottling. Still drinkable, but not a great return to brewing.
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May 18, 2020 21:10
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Scarf posted:I haven't, but I found some old threads on HomebrewTalk where several people report that cocoa powder is giving them metallic off-flavors. I doubt this will last long enough to age at all. It's still a very good beer, but this feels like it's significant enough to want to take out of the equation if/when I remake something like this again.
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May 19, 2020 03:17
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Jo3sh posted:I've made this recipe before, and it was close enough that I had to drink it side by side with Two-hearted to tell any difference. There was a diff, but not a huge one. But yes, I will keep you posted. Update on this - my Dos Rios has been on dry hops for three days now, and I don't have time to keg it if I don't do it today. So that's on the agenda, and I'm also planning to go to the local emergency alcohol superstore and pick up some Two-Hearted to have around for side-by-side tasting.
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May 19, 2020 16:26
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Does anyone have any recommendations on a good burner to buy? I've only brewed one batch so far, and I think it turned out pretty good, but I don't want to cook on our stovetop again.
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May 23, 2020 02:28
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BAE OF PIGS posted:Does anyone have any recommendations on a good burner to buy? I've only brewed one batch so far, and I think it turned out pretty good, but I don't want to cook on our stovetop again. If you think you'll move to a 10 gallon+ gas-heated system in the next couple years, spend the money on the Bayou Classic KAB6 or something like that. The blichmann burner is basically the same thing, but fancy. Otherwise, if you're probably going to be sticking to 5 gallon batches, the cheap burner is 100% fine. The Bayou Classic SP10 is the one I got, but they're about $50 and well worth it.
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May 23, 2020 06:03
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BAE OF PIGS posted:Does anyone have any recommendations on a good burner to buy? I've only brewed one batch so far, and I think it turned out pretty good, but I don't want to cook on our stovetop again. I know bayou classic has a solid rep... just dont buy one that has a drat timer built into the ignitor/regulator if you can help it. You can always remove it, but it's just an extra step. Scarf fucked around with this message at 16:56 on May 23, 2020 |
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May 23, 2020 16:47
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I think it's good to mention that more BTU isn't always better. I use a fairly low-quality Aluminum pot for a lot of smaller batch stuff and a Hellfire burner on full tilt could damage it pretty badly. When you're dealing with that kind of heat, you almost need a tri-clad bottom so you don't scorch things.
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May 23, 2020 17:03
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The prefab Bayou Classic burners all work really well. If you're going to do bigger batches, consider getting one with a higher-pressure (more than 10PSI) regulator. I used 20PSI into their burner castings for a long time, and it made a big, big difference in my brew days. Or, if you have a welder and time on your hands, or just want something custom, you can just get the burner casting and the regulator assembly and build your own. I've done that a few times, and two previous rigs are still doing good service for other brewers I know.
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May 24, 2020 17:51
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Thanks for the responses. I'll probably go with the bayou classic in that case and look for one without a timer. Like I said, I've only made one batch so far, so before I start getting in to things that are too complicated for my dumb rear end, and buying expensive equipment, I'll first try to get to a point where I can make beer without reading the directions. Thanks!
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May 25, 2020 20:44
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I've had my bayou classic for a decade+ and it still works great. For doing five gallon batches I don't foresee needing to upgrade unless the legs rust out or something.
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May 25, 2020 21:37
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Just bottled a batch for this first time since I got rid of my kegs. Holy poo poo, why don't shops push more people to buy the Ferrari bottle capper? That thing is so much better than the junk rear end black one I was using previously.
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May 25, 2020 21:50
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bengy81 posted:Just bottled a batch for this first time since I got rid of my kegs. My first time bottling my own brew instead of a friend's, I broke the kit-capper's arm off and shattered the bottle. Oops.
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May 25, 2020 22:11
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bengy81 posted:Just bottled a batch for this first time since I got rid of my kegs. The wing cappers are cheaper, so they can bundle them in bargain basement kits? I have both the Ferrari capper and corker, and the only problem I've run into is that I broke off the doweling that acts as the pivot in the hinge on the capper, so I just replaced it with a wooden spoon dowel and it works great still. I'll probably try to find a stronger piece of metal instead, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I'm going back to bottling for a while, but I have a mountain of stuff to move around before I even get close to unpacking my brewing gear and ordering yeast again. However, I did successfully move 3 kegs of spontaneous and mixed ferm brews 2000 miles without issue. The mixed ferm one was slightly over-carbed when I arrived, but the spunding valve put it back on target in 30 seconds. It was the warmest any of them had been. No CO2 though to serve, so I'm going to pretend I'm aging them longer.
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May 26, 2020 05:24
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Jhet posted:The wing cappers are cheaper, so they can bundle them in bargain basement kits? I have both the Ferrari capper and corker, and the only problem I've run into is that I broke off the doweling that acts as the pivot in the hinge on the capper, so I just replaced it with a wooden spoon dowel and it works great still. I'll probably try to find a stronger piece of metal instead, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I bought the Ferrari wing capper, not the lever one. Still way better than the cheap black one I had been using. I quit brewing for a while so I could move then life got in the way. Kegged beer travels well, I moved a half keg of an APA and it was still really tasty, had some pretty wild temperature fluctuations cuz it spent a hot July in a storage unit. I just checked and I'm finally getting some carbonation on a sour project I started *checks notes* four years ago? Sat in bottles for a long time and I couldn't get them to carb, so I popped the tops a few weeks ago and dumped in some S-04 and carbonation tabs, might be drinkable in a week or two! Curious if they are oxidized at all.
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May 26, 2020 06:07
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I'm pretty sure the latest batch I kegged got contaminated with soap. I have no idea what I didn't rinse enough but it's a bummer because the beer seems like it would be really good otherwise. I'll give it more time before I give up hope. Is there anything I can do to fix or reduce that?
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May 27, 2020 01:52
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Pretty sure no. That’s a bummer. Did you make sure to rinse your posts?
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May 27, 2020 03:48
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I think so? Soaked it in oxiclean free, rinsed, then I filled it with star San and pushed that out with co2 to purge it so I cant imagine any residual soap would have survived. Oh well.
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May 27, 2020 16:17
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Maybe interesting news to the other European homebrewers here: I just got an email from Brouwland that apparently Five Star products (StarSan etc) are going to be permitted for sale in the EU again, and it sounds like Brouwland is the sole distributor?
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May 27, 2020 16:55
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honda whisperer posted:I think so? Completely experiential but... The reason I switched from Oxi Free to PBW was that I always felt like no matter how much I rinsed, there was always a slight film/residue left on the equipment with Oxi Free. Unless I used scalding-hot water. Unrelated, I've had a ton of friends requesting growler-fills and bottles of my beer during this pandemic, so much so that I'm actually considering getting a Blichmann Beer Gun v2.  I know, but I also want to do some more competitions and this thing seems amazing from the reviews.
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May 27, 2020 17:41
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Drone posted:Maybe interesting news to the other European homebrewers here: I just got an email from Brouwland that apparently Five Star products (StarSan etc) are going to be permitted for sale in the EU again, and it sounds like Brouwland is the sole distributor? Brouwland has always been the one importer/distributor.
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May 27, 2020 17:47
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