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I had a couple of days off due to Hurricane Nicholas (thanks bro!) so I got to hang out with my kids and wife for an extended weekend and got my Helles in the fermenter. Did a 10 gallon batch using the Augustiner yeast from Imperial - so I'm kinda pumped about that.... in 3 months. We also went to a brewery we haven't been to on the opposite side of Houston and they had a pretty robust selection of sours, many of them fruited (or marshmallow'ed)  My go to on sours is to just try the base as all that other stuff doesn't appeal to me. Their base was pretty solid and reminded me a lot of Cantillon's base lambic. Soooooo... it got me thinking. I have some dregs from Cantillon and I need to do something with them. How far off am I on something like this:LaserWash's Thrown Together Cantillon Lambic/Geuze'ish Thing: 50% Pilsner/ 50% Wheat with an OG of 1.050 Some aged Hersbrücker pellets that have been sitting on the window sill, in the sun, for two years (quantity?) Cantillon dregs About a year of aging in an old carboy Voila, right? Any advice from you sour goons who do way more sours that I have the patience to work on?
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Sep 15, 2021 17:28
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People disagree about whether bottle dregs are a good source of inoculation. Personally, I have had good success growing up a mixed culture with dregs from many bottles I have enjoyed over the years. When are you planning to add the hops? And how much? If you're trying for something lambicish I would expect the aged hops to have about half the power they usually do, and aim for 25 IBUs, but if what's most important to you is that the beer be sour I would add as little as possible, no more than 5.
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Sep 15, 2021 17:34
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The goal is to do low IBUs - letting the innoculant do the talking for me. Haven't done the math - but I was planning on doing (insert number here) grams at flameout - after a 60-90 minute boil. Does that sound about right? Also, I should be using some sanitized oak cubes to create the barrel character, right? LaserWash fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Sep 15, 2021 |
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Sep 15, 2021 17:43
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LaserWash posted:I had a couple of days off due to Hurricane Nicholas (thanks bro!) so I got to hang out with my kids and wife for an extended weekend and got my Helles in the fermenter. Did a 10 gallon batch using the Augustiner yeast from Imperial - so I'm kinda pumped about that.... in 3 months. I like 60/40 pils/wheat for my golden sours. I use raw wheat for spontaneous, but malted wheat is much easier to manage for everything else. I’ve gone so far as to just add whole wheat flour to the mash too when I don’t want to bother with raw wheat. Can’t know how much to do with those hops without testing, but stick to around 5-10ibu if you want the LAB to be happy, hard to know unless you pick up some Jester King dregs. Then you’re fine at 10-15 easily (it’s very used to it). Dregs are fine. Mix and match. You can’t know what you’ll get, but as long as it’s not getting bottling yeast it’s good to just dump in. You’ll probably want to step them once at least before trying to pitch just to see if there’s saccharomyces left to multiply. Oak cubes are good, go with a light touch as they can easily run away with it. It’s faster than a barrel, so make sure you have a good way to fish them out. Also, name drop the brewery if they’re that good.
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Sep 15, 2021 18:45
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B-52 in
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Sep 15, 2021 22:02
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For anyone curious about the issue I had with low efficiency - I didn't realize that my LHBS is closed Monday-Tuesday so I was finally able to give them a call today. They mentioned that a) the Maris Otter doesn't crush as well as their base pale malt and b) for all-in-one electric kettle systems they recommend either doing a double crush or flagging down someone on the sales floor to adjust the mill to a finer crush - so presumably some combination of both of those issues are to blame. Additionally, I may just need to accept that I'll never hit quite the same numbers with the Mash & Boil as I used to with my rectangular cooler. I guess the tradeoff there is that the recirculating pump is more hands-off (and better for step-mashing) than going back to stir up the mash every 20 minutes.
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Sep 15, 2021 22:43
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What was your crush set at? I had a bad time with efficiency and it was because I was millimg too fine (like .025 instead of .05 that my lhbs uses). I also always keep an extra pound or 3 of pale DME to get things right if I miss it by a mile but usually I give zero fucks about getting the perfect gravity.
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Sep 16, 2021 00:22
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tater_salad posted:What was your crush set at? I had a bad time with efficiency and it was because I was millimg too fine (like .025 instead of .05 that my lhbs uses). I also always keep an extra pound or 3 of pale DME to get things right if I miss it by a mile but usually I give zero fucks about getting the perfect gravity. I mill at about .03 on my cereal mill. I get about 82% efficiency on most brew days in a 42qt kettle mash tun and haven't had a stuck mash since I put a load of pumpkin in quite a few years ago. I do get a little flour in the crush, but that honestly just seems to help efficiency and not end up being a problem setting the grain bed. Sticky mashes just get rice hulls.
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Sep 16, 2021 06:31
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Curious what more experienced people think about brewing a non-alcoholic beer (using only homebrew equipment, I obviously can't vaccuum distill or whatever): My plan to remove the alcohol is to boil it, but I know boiling changes the characteristics of hops additions. I don't think it really does with the grain part so much though, right? My thought was to mash as normal, short boil with no hops additions, then cool and add regular brewing yeast and let it ferment. Once that's done, pour the unhopped beer back into the kettle and boil the alcohol off, then do hops additions (kettle and dry hop) as normal with no further yeast added. The boil obviously would have killed any yeast in suspension so I shouldn't have to worry about fermentation starting back up, as long as I'm vigilant with my sanitation. After a couple days in the fermenter with the dry hop, filter, then keg/carbonate*. Would this work? Would the second boil to get rid of the alcohol after fermentation significantly impact on the flavour? The reason I'd bother is that I've slowed down my drinking considerably now that I'm in my mid-30s (something I'm happy about, although it means I've all but stopped brewing), but do still like the taste of beer. The variety of non-alcoholic beer in Australia is not great, and the better ones are not that far off the cost of regular beer. *I don't actually have a proper kegging system, but do have one of those 2L growlers with a regulator/CO2 bulb and a picnic tap that I'd use. I'd probably store the uncarbonated stuff in demijohns in the back of the fridge and decant/carb as needed.
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Sep 18, 2021 03:44
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I've got no idea about NA beer but if you've backed way off but not quit have you looked at really low abv beer? I had a heffeweizen get poo poo effiency once and came in around 3%. I make it all the time now as my go to I don't want to get drunk but I want a beer summer thing. Honestly having home draft has been a learning curve that led me to really appreciating low abv stuff.
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Sep 18, 2021 04:22
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honda whisperer posted:I've got no idea about NA beer but if you've backed way off but not quit have you looked at really low abv beer? I had a heffeweizen get poo poo effiency once and came in around 3%. I make it all the time now as my go to I don't want to get drunk but I want a beer summer thing. Nah, I prefer it to be an all or nothing thing; my personal rule is that I won't drive at all if I've had any alcohol (started in Japan where it's the law, just kinda stuck with it because I like the simplicity), and I just really like the physical act of drinking when I'm unwinding, whether it's alcoholic or not. I'd probably manage to drink enough of a session beer to get tipsy, which is not what I want. I'd also like to be able to offer it to people who are teatotalers.
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Sep 18, 2021 05:41
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Nah, I prefer it to be an all or nothing thing; my personal rule is that I won't drive at all if I've had any alcohol (started in Japan where it's the law, just kinda stuck with it because I like the simplicity), and I just really like the physical act of drinking when I'm unwinding, whether it's alcoholic or not. I'd probably manage to drink enough of a session beer to get tipsy, which is not what I want. I'd also like to be able to offer it to people who are teatotalers. I know very little about non alcoholic beer. Or sours for that matter because I don't particularly like them. But you could maybe start with a low alcohol beer and also use acetobacter aceti which would convert some alcohol to basically vinegar. I'm sure this probably produces vile results, but hey it's a thing that is possible. Also non alcoholic beer just needs to be under 0.5 percent legally, but I'm not sure what bar you're trying to hit. Honestly if you don't drink much and the good NAB isn't more expensive and is actually decent, I'd consider just buying it. If you want to do it yourself, may as well just try what you said- you wouldn't be out that much money even if it doesn't work and presumably you enjoy doing it. I'm not sure how you'd get an exact measurement of alcohol since most calculators are OG/FG based assuming fermentation, but it's probably not too hard to get a rough estimate. Also sounds borderline illegal in the US, so I definitely don't know what I'm talking about Mr ATF
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Sep 18, 2021 05:58
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Nah, I prefer it to be an all or nothing thing; my personal rule is that I won't drive at all if I've had any alcohol (started in Japan where it's the law, just kinda stuck with it because I like the simplicity), and I just really like the physical act of drinking when I'm unwinding, whether it's alcoholic or not. I'd probably manage to drink enough of a session beer to get tipsy, which is not what I want. I'd also like to be able to offer it to people who are teatotalers. https://www.whitelabs.com/news-update-detail?id=44&type=NEWS Some decent info on it. You can't really ferment a beer with no alcohol. Even vacuum distillation will leave some alcohol, but still very little. Check the laws about it where you are, but I'd expect that it would be defined around that 0.5% or less range. Though there are a few ways to make it very low, but wouldn't suit your desires. Still would be around 1% at best, but that's about as good as it gets for yeast. Malt soda is another option, and there's Malta for reference. Just mash and boil, then force carbonate. Finally, there's just trying evaporation. You can heat the yeast fermented beer to 180F or so and leave it to try to evaporate the alcohol, but that ends up with the same sort of issues from the first method. There'll still be some left, but much less and heating beer does change the flavor either way.
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Sep 18, 2021 06:31
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I would look into making kombucha, ginger ale or herb infusions.
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Sep 18, 2021 12:03
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Heat distillation is technically a crime? Though I suppose it would depend on the way the local law is worded. I find the concept of running a distillation to isolate the water personally offensive. Those yeast worked very hard to produce for you, why would you betray them like that 
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Sep 18, 2021 12:59
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thotsky posted:I would look into making kombucha, ginger ale or herb infusions. Yeah, ginger ale could definitely scratch that itch and it's a pretty simple project. It can accidentally become booze, but it isn't too hard to avoid that.
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Sep 18, 2021 14:21
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Rutibex posted:Heat distillation is technically a crime? Though I suppose it would depend on the way the local law is worded. I find the concept of running a distillation to isolate the water personally offensive. Those yeast worked very hard to produce for you, why would you betray them like that they're just making GBS threads, they don't care about their excrement
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Sep 18, 2021 14:42
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Rutibex posted:Heat distillation is technically a crime? Though I suppose it would depend on the way the local law is worded. I find the concept of running a distillation to isolate the water personally offensive. Those yeast worked very hard to produce for you, why would you betray them like that Distillation of alcohol is the crime in the US. Distillation of the water solution is fine. So long as you’re not capturing the distillate of alcohol and it’s just evaporating in an open container no one will care.
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Sep 18, 2021 20:44
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I wonder if you could do freeze distillation to get rid of the alcohol? It would be like creating applejack in reverse. Freezing should preserve more of the flavor than heat, but I don't know if you would be able to bring the alcohol percentage down low enough for your preferences.....
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Sep 18, 2021 21:36
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Rutibex posted:I wonder if you could do freeze distillation to get rid of the alcohol? It would be like creating applejack in reverse. Freezing should preserve more of the flavor than heat, but I don't know if you would be able to bring the alcohol percentage down low enough for your preferences..... Alcohol doesn’t freeze as high as water, it’s why you can put a litre of vodka in the freezer and it stays liquid. Freeze distillation just takes water out, not the alcohol.
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Sep 18, 2021 21:39
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Jhet posted:Alcohol doesn’t freeze as high as water, it’s why you can put a litre of vodka in the freezer and it stays liquid. Freeze distillation just takes water out, not the alcohol. Thats what I mean, you freeze the beer solid then pour the liquid alcohol down the drain ( ). Then you thaw the beer and carbonate it.
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Sep 18, 2021 21:41
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Rutibex posted:Thats what I mean, you freeze the beer solid then pour the liquid alcohol down the drain ( Ahh, yeah that doesn't work. Most of the flavor stays dissolved in the unfrozen alcohol and the ice is mostly just water. That's why things like Eisbock exist and taste so good and concentrated.
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Sep 18, 2021 22:13
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I don't really like the "scratchiness" of ginger beer, but might be worth experimenting. I may try a smaller batch of my idea over the upcoming holidays and report back as well. I am not really worried about accidentally commiting a crime; while distillation isn't legal here in Australia the homebrew shops in my area all have the spirit essence stuff at the front of the store and beer/cider/wine at the back. As long as you aren't selling it nobody cares in the slightest. I know I'm preaching to the choir in this thread, but I think it's completely moronic for governments not to at least offer some kind of home distillation license. Make the certification be through a weekend TAFE class or something to teach safety, limit output to X litres per year with no selling, maybe even a certification process for stills if you really want to be thorough. While I'm flippant about stuff like freeze distillation and the abovementioned process, I am generally a law abiding nerd and not gonna actually go out and buy/make a still or anything blatantly against the law, no matter how weakly enforced. Plenty of other people are happy to break the law though; home brew stores aside, there are craft distilleries springing up everywhere in Tassie these days and I doubt any one of them actually got the ATO permit before they started experimenting at home (definitely before they encorporated and everything, but I don't think anyone is going through the massive startup costs of a distillery without actually knowing they can distill an OK product first). It's a joke, really. One of my other hobbies is wet plate collodion photography, and I might also be a little annoyed about what I have to pay for our equivalent of Everclear. Jhet posted:Ahh, yeah that doesn't work. Most of the flavor stays dissolved in the unfrozen alcohol and the ice is mostly just water. That's why things like Eisbock exist and taste so good and concentrated. Yeah, that is what I assumed. I melted down and tried the "ice" part of an attempt at freeze distilled mead and it was just sad honey water. Ethics_Gradient fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Sep 18, 2021 |
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Sep 18, 2021 22:50
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The government in the US doesn't really care about the safety of it or anything, though that's what the theme is. They just like the tax money and the money they get from the liquor lobbies. While there are inherent dangers, the ability to manufacture electric kettles with temp controls or even voltage controls is easy enough that a lot of the old safety issues aren't really that difficult to design to minimize. There's a guy in NZ with well produced youtube videos that I've watched a couple times, and it seems that distilling is fairly easy to accomplish if you're paying attention, but there's also a lot of trash knowledge out there. So whatever. I figure it'll eventually end up like cannabis here and states will slowly start to just stop caring as long as you're only sharing and not selling without a license. I do wonder if you could try cold brewing barley, or using raw grain and then 'mashing', and then adding a hop tea to it. Then force carbonate in your fridge?
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Sep 18, 2021 22:59
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Jhet posted:The government in the US doesn't really care about the safety of it or anything, though that's what the theme is. They just like the tax money and the money they get from the liquor lobbies. I'm halfway convinced that there's a disinformation campaign in the US, waged by the BATFE, to convince people that distilling at home means instant blindness if you're lucky.
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Sep 18, 2021 23:07
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Jo3sh posted:I'm halfway convinced that there's a disinformation campaign in the US, waged by the BATFE, to convince people that distilling at home means instant blindness if you're lucky. Absolutely, and when crossed with the prohibition misinformation it's just terrible. It's not like distillation adds or changes anything that's already in your fermentation. I still routinely read people talking about the methanol making you blind. Which is true, but it doesn't just come out in the heads, and it's already in the beer you're drinking anyway. It doesn't help that the only people who do it are either pros or people in a shed and they both mostly post like they're 13 on the internet.
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Sep 18, 2021 23:52
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Total n00b at NEIPA but I have a bunch of unused malt and half a pound of mosaic that I need to get through. Sooooooo….. Is 28% flaked oats too much oats? Fwiw - I brew in a bag in a cooler so I’m not expecting stuck mashes. Basically for 7 gallons I’m thinking of this: 11 pounds pale malt 5 pounds flaked oats 1 lb wheat .5 lb Munich
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Sep 19, 2021 02:57
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I just took a sample from my philly sour beer. About 2 weeks into fermentation. It's pretty nice so far. Not a lot of sourness really (which is a plus IMO, I'm hoping it won't be super sour when I carbonate it) and doesn't really taste green or anything. Hasn't flocculated yet, still very hazy at least from what I just pulled. It will have to be in there until next weekend anyway, hoping it will clear out a bit. It's definitely got a nice fruity aroma to it, not sure how much is the yeast and how much is the hops. I've been doing no-chill but this time around I pointed a box fan at the cooling wort and it cooled down much quicker. Maybe that stopped the conversion much quicker than ambient cooling and I'm getting a bit more of my late additions.
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Sep 19, 2021 03:36
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What’s the best place to get recipes from? I’m almost through all my all grain kits and am looking to start trying out some recipes. Looking for NEIPAS, West Coast IPA’s, Stouts and Porters if that really matters.
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Sep 19, 2021 14:52
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Make a fake account on the Brew Guru app for free access to all the AHA/NHC recipes. It takes like two seconds, is repeatable and it lasts for thirty days or so. Beer and Brewing Magazine also has some good stuff from pro brewers, and people will sometimes host the paid exclusive ones on brewing calculator sites so it's worth searching their names.
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Sep 19, 2021 15:30
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Any recommendations on a good multi-bottle washer? I'm not too concerned about the price tag if it can reliably clean out 12 or so bombers at a clip. We got a bit overzealous this year and made 20 gallons for Halloween. We're reusing most of the empty bottles from last year and they've been sitting in our basements since last November. I'm sure some of them are kinda gross. There might not be any replacement for hand washing, but it'd be sweet to just wash, rinse, sanitize.
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Sep 21, 2021 02:10
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do you have a dishwasher? Toss em in that I usually will run old bottles thorough dishwasher a day before and then dunk in 1step day of. Wife is on rinse duty and I fill / cap. Generally how I handle bottles Get bottles back and rinse kuz friends suck at that.. let dry (I really need bottle tree) A few days before I stick in a 5 gallon bucket with baking soda to get old labels off Then they go in dishwasher then they go through 1step on way to getting filled.
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Sep 21, 2021 13:33
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Hub Dirt posted:Any recommendations on a good multi-bottle washer? I'm not too concerned about the price tag if it can reliably clean out 12 or so bombers at a clip. We got a bit overzealous this year and made 20 gallons for Halloween. The only one I’ve seen is the fast washer system. You can find it at Morebeer at least, but they make racks to hold 12 22oz bottles at a time, or 24 12oz. It’s a little expensive, but it will do the trick. I wouldn’t use the dishwasher unless you can tell it to not use the rinse aid. It can mess with head retention.
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Sep 21, 2021 14:54
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Jhet posted:The only one I’ve seen is the fast washer system. You can find it at Morebeer at least, but they make racks to hold 12 22oz bottles at a time, or 24 12oz. It’s a little expensive, but it will do the trick. Yeah I forgot to mention that.. I turn off rinse aid.
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Sep 21, 2021 16:35
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I find the "quickest" is to put all the bottles in my shower, then with a funnel and bar spoon add a small amount of pbw to each one, unscrew the shower head and fill them all, let them sit for 30 min, dump em then take em to the sink and rinse them with hot water before using one of those pumping cleaner thingies to rinse a second time with starsan. I once went for just using the pump with pbw, then directly pump with starsan, but even with gloves and safety goggles it felt sort of icky, and I was not confident in the efficacy of pumping and then standing without actually soaking.
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Sep 21, 2021 17:01
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Thanks, friends! I'll probably just elbow grease all these bottles a couple of batches at a time to make sure they're clean. I'm iffy on spending $160 on the keg/bottle washer on morebeer without rousing goon endorsement. I was just hoping to cheat a bit on bottling day.
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Sep 22, 2021 04:34
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Hub Dirt posted:Thanks, friends! I'll probably just elbow grease all these bottles a couple of batches at a time to make sure they're clean. I'm iffy on spending $160 on the keg/bottle washer on morebeer without rousing goon endorsement. I was just hoping to cheat a bit on bottling day. My favorite one is https://www.morebeer.com/products/stainless-steel-carboy-bottle-washer.html and a soak in PBW or OxicleanFree. Works great for rinsing before and after a soak. Those multi-bottle things have always looked a little easy to break.
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Sep 22, 2021 05:33
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My first mead was ready for bottling last night, I made it from a citysteading recipe with bread yeast and raisins so having learnt a bit since then I wasn't expecting much. It's surprisingly drinkable, no off flavours, not horribly dry. I filled 2 bottles as-is and back sweetened the remaining 3 1/2 just slightly with a little honey. Very pleased with myself. The cyser and 2nd traditional mead are bubbling away happily to themselves in the garage, they seem perfectly happy in the dark at 17°c I also found a way to stop my cheap corker pressing into the bottle too far so hopefully I won't need to replace that straight away.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:49
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I swapped the fitting on my taprite regulator for the default one (I had originally swapped it for a flare fitting to use duotight but decided to try out the traditional tubing) and just flushed it with a bit of CO2 at about 11PSI by turning on/off the tank valve and the mini valve a few times. It sounded like a balloon deflating, is that normal? I thought maybe it's the one-way valve or something. Also, is there any recommendation for number of turns after finger tight to get a metal flare fitting sealed onto keg ball lock disconnect fittings? I've got one of the CM Becker ones with a bit of plastic on the flare.
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Sep 24, 2021 02:23
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I put a little keg lube on the keg QD's and never have issues. I think the plastic on the end is intended to take the place of the silicone rings that you might see sold sometimes with QD's. To me, adding the extra ring is just another potential point of sealant failure.
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Sep 24, 2021 02:47
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