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wildfire1 posted:For all the talk that La Sirene does about their super secret saison strain, they sure do buy a shitton of 3724 and Brett brux from a certain Melbourne homebrew store! So when I added a vial of Brett trois to my fermenter on top of the wild and saisonette dregs it won't have much more to add? Interesting. I'm considering racking the saison soon too - it's got a dank pellicle going on and looks and tastes awesome - 4%, funky and delicious
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Jul 5, 2015 03:56
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wattershed posted:I did their kickstarter, I'll keep the thread posted. There's been a great deal of improvements from the first AUS/NZ version to what they're manufacturing for worldwide distribution now. I know I'm still beta testing their hardware by buying at this point but I'm excited about its arrival. I've got one coming from Kickstarter as well. Supposedly later this month or early next month it should arrive.
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Jul 5, 2015 14:52
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Well, got a new kettle for my birthday. Time to kit it out for use as a new, enlarged, and improved mashtun. 10-gallon batches of all-malt, high-gravity beers are now within reach. Of course, this means I also have to rebuild my brew stand to accomodate the larger kettle.
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Jul 5, 2015 17:34
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Got some new equipment... My grandfather was a big home-brewer (I didn't really know until I started and my mom and aunt brought it up, he passed away when I was about 3), so my aunt gave me his old bottle-capper. Still has some good movement to it, plenty of life in the spring. But I'll probably just keep it as a display piece 
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Jul 6, 2015 02:11
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Jo3sh posted:Well, got a new kettle for my birthday. Time to kit it out for use as a new, enlarged, and improved mashtun. 10-gallon batches of all-malt, high-gravity beers are now within reach. Our club president is in the build process at the moment - 200L (about 50 gallon) mash tun, 150 (33ish gal) HLT and boil kettle  we're talking about doing a Hunahpu inspired (aka shitload of booze) barrel aged stout sometime soon.Also had a regional case swap over the weekend and now I need sour barrels
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Jul 6, 2015 03:45
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Also for those of you Aussie goons, I got the chance to sample two of the sour barrel releases from two metre tall, the standard sour ale and the cherry ale. My god
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Jul 6, 2015 03:48
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Got back from Northern Cali, Oregon, Washington State, and BC on Friday evening. Whoa. That was a lot of flights of beer, especially the three days we did in Bend, Oregon.  If you haven't been to Bend, drop everything you are doing and go. Now. Seriously. Best breweries that we went to (did 9 of the 15 on the ale trail by bike): 1. Deschutes (these guys are the bees knees) - sucking from the tit of the sweet nectar that comes out of their faucets is some serious good poo poo. Is it even possible that the Mirror Pond from here tastes better than the stuff they ship out? Because it is. Also, their Twilight Summer Ale is pretty great, we took it with us on a camping trip to Crater Lake. I had never had that before and I think it's a better every day drinker than Mirror Pond. Their pub is all that. I could eat and drink here every night and never get bored. My girlfriend and I split a burger and some seafood. Soooooooo good. Probably one of the best pub experiences I've ever had. Then in no particular order: Crux (outdoors at night, good beer and food trucks - I think I've died and gone to heaven), Silver Moon (which has a bad assed hoppy Mexican lager - that is "randall-ed" on tap now, not distributed and a Mango beer that rocked socks - bar tender was really friendly - unfortunately they are moving to Redmond and thus off the map a ways from Bend), 10 Barrel (which was bought by InBev but is bad rear end - get a pizza and/or food here), Craft Brewing (which just opened two weeks ago, food was good, beer was too - they do a good job of staying on style) The rest of them were just kinda ehh... but the good stuff is REALLY, REALLY loving good. I'll say this - gently caress the breweries that choose your flights for you - they were mostly hop bombs and by the 6th or 7th brewery it all kinda runs together. Also, a special "gently caress you" goes out to Boneyard Brewing - your stamp for the ale trail is really loving big which means your dicks are probably really tiny. Your beer is kinda "ehh" and I wasn't impressed with all the name dropping you were doing to the guy from California that was "going pro." In the end, the beer is what matters and it wasn't all that great - MAYBE top 50% of the places we went. Portland - Go here too, you loving tool. This place is the poo poo (and really freaking weird). Rogue has a special beer on tap downtown called Wasted Seastar that is a Purple Ale. So good. My girlfriend and I took some in a growler to Mt. Rainier last weekend. It's the beer we couldn't stop talking about. Hair of the Dog is an interesting spot. The food is clearly the thing that drew me to this place - the food is well presented, has a unique take on pub food, and puts a special emphasis on "local." It's probably one of the best meals (under $50) that we had in two weeks. We didn't try too much of the really old beers, but the stuff they had on tap was pretty good. The food was the star for us. Cascade Brewing Barrel - If you like sours - go here. Now. We had two samplers and a 10 oz snifter of a honey/berry concoction. Sweet jesus, was it good. We were also there on "National Naked Bike Riding Day" so we got to see lots of fat boobs and tiny dicks flapping in the Portland breeze as the "protesters" rode by. Also of note: We stayed in Fremont while in Seattle - Fremont Brewing is some of the best beer I've had in Seattle. Pike in my experience has a better IPA though. Vancouver, BC: Didn't like the beer at Steamworks, but food was good. Brassneck Brewing: Really liked the Strawberry Sour that was a one off. Probably one of the top 5 of our beer-cation. The Blonde was perfectly to style, but just there... which I guess describes a blonde. Had a really good dry hopped cider at a pub in downtown, but can't remember who made it. I'll say one more thing to end my long rant: I'm noticing how a lot of breweries are going back to doing lighter colored, less hoppy beers. In my experience from the last couple of weeks, if the Kölsch or German/Czech lager of choice was good, then the rest of the stuff on the menu was good too. If those beers weren't good, you were in for a long flight.
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Jul 6, 2015 03:52
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That's really helpful info. I'm going to be in Oregon for 2-3 days in September and plan to hit a few of those for sure. I'm not 100% sure I'll have time for Bend, but I read that Deschutes has brewpub in Portland. I might have a hard time in talking my non-drinking wife to go with my to Bend for basically a brewery tour. If I can find some other things she'd want to do out there, I can usually work it into a visit. It helps when they have food too so at least that's promising.
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Jul 6, 2015 04:13
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rockcity posted:That's really helpful info. I'm going to be in Oregon for 2-3 days in September and plan to hit a few of those for sure. I'm not 100% sure I'll have time for Bend, but I read that Deschutes has brewpub in Portland. I might have a hard time in talking my non-drinking wife to go with my to Bend for basically a brewery tour. If I can find some other things she'd want to do out there, I can usually work it into a visit. It helps when they have food too so at least that's promising. Bend is full of cool stuff to do. We biked the trail - if she likes food, encourage her to try the food because it's worth it just for that. A weird Oregon law says that if you serve at the place you produce, you have to provide food. The people are super chill and they really celebrate good food and drink. If your wife likes to sit and talk, chill, and enjoy good weather, Bend is great for that. We kayaked, rode bikes, but at various times of the year you can climb or ski Mt. Bachelor or one of the three sisters, hike, tube, etc. etc. etc. It's pretty crazy the amount of outdoor activities you can do in Bend. REI has a flagship store because of the geography. When you complete the "ale trail" (don't really have to buy anything - but we did) you get a cool silicon pint and they take your picture celebrating your My girlfriend likes beer, but is more of a wine/champagne snob, having travelled and sipped from the best places in Chile, California, New Zealand, Australia, France, and Italy, but she had a blast and told me that she felt it was a valuable experience going with me because I was helping her identify styles, hops, and malts. Oregon has fairly well respected wine in the Willamette Valley FWIW. We didn't go to any places there, but found nice spot on Vancouver Island, north of Victoria, called Symphony. They had a barrel aged Pinot Gris that we enjoyed a bottle of and another bottle we took home with us. Also have to brag because I have a bottle of 2012 Rodenbach Vintage in my fridge from a spot in Pike's Place. Not sure what to expect out of a $30 bottle of beer, but my girlfriend and I are excited about opening that and a bottle of wine that comes from the city in Italy one side of her family emmigrated from. LaserWash fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jul 6, 2015 |
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Jul 6, 2015 04:25
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I've been working on a champagne style sparkling hard cider. I just bottled the batch in champagne bottles after 8 months in primary. The taste is not what I would describe as good, but I have no experience with dry ciders and I think I might have added a bit too much tannin. But this experiment is as much about learning the process as the result, so we'll see how it tastes once it is back sweetened, after I attempt degorgement. In the meantime, I need some sort of riddling rack. Does anyone know of a simple set of plans I can follow to try to build one of these? Leopold Stotch fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jul 6, 2015 |
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Jul 6, 2015 14:26
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LaserWash posted:[...] Super glad you had fun. I wish I had the time to drive around to do tours like that. I will say that the last time I was at Fremont Brewing there were plenty of hop bombs. They also some good other offerings, and some decent sours. I'll need to go around and see what they're doing again. I have a few others that I need to visit first probably: like Everybody's Brewing which did a stellar sour called Sprinkles. They're on the Washington side of the border if you just go north out of Bend. Deschutes is also my favorite for recycling bottles because the labels are easy to remove and more importantly the beer inside them is well worth drinking.
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Jul 6, 2015 15:32
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Been tweaking the plumbing on my rig, and accidentally broke open a valve. I'll be placing an order for 3-piece valves to replace all of my old 1-piece valves immediately.
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Jul 6, 2015 22:06
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Super newbie question (I've only brewed a kit and kilo batch, and am moving up to something a little more complex). I'm going to try attempting this recipe - http://www.hoptomology.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Hoptomologys-Tankhouse-Ale-Clone-Extract.pdf , which lists itself as an "extract" recipe. The recipe itself includes some grains that I thought would have required mashing (like Munich 20L), and refers to mashing, although the sparging directions sound an awful lot like steeping. I'm not *quite* set up for mashing - I have a cooler that would probably work, although it doesn't have a spigot so I'm not sure how sparging would work. Am I just reading this wrong? Should I just be steeping the Munich malt? Or "steeping" with the right volume of water at mashing temps (with "sparging" just being a good rinse with appropriate temp. water). Help!
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Jul 7, 2015 00:14
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enki42 posted:Super newbie question (I've only brewed a kit and kilo batch, and am moving up to something a little more complex). This is a recipe from beersmith, and whoever put it in hosed up. You're right that they've set it up as an extract with steeping grains recipe, but you have to mash Munich, so it's really a partial mash. Might I suggest buying a copy of Brewing Classic Styles? It has a bunch of great extract and all grain recipes and is perfect for what you're trying to do E: you could just steep at mashing temperatures for an hour or so and rinse with a bit of 75 degree water and that would work.
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Jul 7, 2015 00:56
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wildfire1 posted:This is a recipe from beersmith, and whoever put it in hosed up. You're right that they've set it up as an extract with steeping grains recipe, but you have to mash Munich, so it's really a partial mash. Might I suggest buying a copy of Brewing Classic Styles? It has a bunch of great extract and all grain recipes and is perfect for what you're trying to do You don't have to mash the Munich if it's just steeping grains added for color. That set of grains isn't going to convert much if you try and mash it. I'd just toss them in when you're bringing the water to temp and then rest it at 170 or so. Alternatively, grab some 2-row or something.
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Jul 7, 2015 02:47
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Plinkey posted:I'd boil them first to kind of turn them into a paste, I think you'd be ok just throwing them in after freezing, put I'm paranoid about that kind of stuff. Are you looking to active the pectin and boil off the volatile aromatic? because that is how you do it.
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Jul 7, 2015 03:18
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After yesterday's disgusting find, I tore down all the plumbing in my rig and put all the pieces in a hot Oxiclean bath overnight. It's all clean as a whistle now. Hopefully, the 3-piece valves I ordered will show up in a few days and I can reassemble the whole thing.
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Jul 7, 2015 16:50
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Via homebrewfinds, it looks like Inkbird has a new, prewired, 2-stage (heating *and* cooling) temperature controller coming out. Sure, you could buy an STC-1000 or an ITC-1000 and make your own, but the cost difference is definitely way down with this unit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011296704/
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Jul 8, 2015 15:51
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Jo3sh posted:Via homebrewfinds, it looks like Inkbird has a new, prewired, 2-stage (heating *and* cooling) temperature controller coming out. Sure, you could buy an STC-1000 or an ITC-1000 and make your own, but the cost difference is definitely way down with this unit: Oh wow, that's only like $10 more than what I paid to build mine.
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Jul 8, 2015 15:54
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Yeah, I ordered one immediately. I'll post here once it arrives from China but it seems pretty good to me.
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Jul 8, 2015 16:46
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Jo3sh posted:Via homebrewfinds, it looks like Inkbird has a new, prewired, 2-stage (heating *and* cooling) temperature controller coming out. Sure, you could buy an STC-1000 or an ITC-1000 and make your own, but the cost difference is definitely way down with this unit: Umm... wow.
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Jul 8, 2015 17:59
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I'm giving up on life and buying a hand pump for my corny kegs, something like this http://www.homebrewing.org/Cornelius-Keg-Hand-Pump_p_109.html The reason being I realllly don't want to mess with a CO2 tank while camping. Yes I will be having kegs while camping. When being served they will be served cold so I'm not worried about growth. What I am worried about is force carbonation. I'm v bad at kegs and don't know how to do it without a constant gas supply. Do I put it at my desired PSI and let it sit for a day? Or should I suck it up and get more of those picnic CO2 cartridges even though I keep blowing through them just trying to serve a drat keg? I'll still have to force carb beforehand but I swear I'm using the keg chargers wrong because I blow through multiple of them on just one keg.
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Jul 8, 2015 19:52
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Link from the OP about how to carb up your keg: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3437782&pagenumber=630&perpage=40#post442003548 Alternatively, put it at your desired PSI and leave it for a couple weeks. see also http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=73328 
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Jul 8, 2015 19:56
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Dang, guess I'll have to take off time from work to grab the Co2 so I can set and forget ahead of time. Shaking a keg in the hot hot heat over and over sounds like a bad time. Thanks
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Jul 8, 2015 20:02
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I do 30ish PSI for a day or so and then knock it down to serving temp just to speed it up. I've learned my lesson about rushing - it's always been better ime when I don't rush. n.b. - I will definitely shake-to-carb again anyway
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Jul 8, 2015 20:03
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It really is just a time thing at this point. While I have 5 gallons of beer and 3 gallons of cider each in a 5 gal keg I might dump the cider into bottles and rush a 10 day beer out beforehand just to have another 5 gallons of beer. It'll be hot as balls so a more drinkable beer is better anyway so it can be done and ready in time. There'd just have to be time for force carbing and I'd have to grab a pump handle to serve. It'll be kept very cold (tons of ice in a ~custom insulated box~) so pushing regular air shouldn't spoil it, esp since each keg will be done in a few days I imagine. e: Links for my own reference Pump: http://www.homebrewing.org/Cornelius-Keg-Hand-Pump_p_109.html Adult Sword Owner fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Jul 8, 2015 |
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Jul 8, 2015 20:09
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OK sorry to keep spamming but I'm actually now vexed on a related issue For the same thing I made 10 gallons of mead. I planned to serve it out of one of one of these fuckers.. The issue is that most of the people won't be there for 5-6 days before I would have put it in the container and hauled it will me. I'll be sterilizing it beforehand and using Potassium Sorbate and Campden on the liquid to stop growth, but I'm nervous that sitting in the container for days before being consumed might cause issues since I obviously can't push out the air with CO2 Am I way overthinking things at this point? I just don't want the time and effort and money to be wasted. People have high hopes for this stuff for some reason (they liked it when I made a test batch a few months ago)
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Jul 8, 2015 21:00
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How easy is it to run some chemical tests on water? Over the 4th I went up to Virginia with my gf and near her family's property is a spring/artesian well/aquifer/whatever. She said her family would always get drinking water from it when they'd come up for vacation. I got a jug of it and would love to test it and if it's got good characteristics, bring some big 5 gal jugs the next time we go up.. Scarf fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Jul 8, 2015 |
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Jul 8, 2015 22:26
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Adult Sword Owner posted:OK sorry to keep spamming but I'm actually now vexed on a related issue You can still purge the cooler with CO2, you just aren't doing it through a gas-in post. CO2 is heavier than air so put the tube at the bottom and fill it up with CO2 before racking. The sulfite should also help reduce oxidation. Scarf posted:How easy is it to run some chemical tests on water? It's not super cheap at $42 but it is fairly simple: https://producers.wardlab.com/BrewersKitOrder.php
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Jul 8, 2015 23:16
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I live right across the street from a spring that people drive hours to get to. Maybe I should use that for my beer. 
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Jul 9, 2015 03:36
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Is there any reason not to buy pre-ground grain? I just moved to all-grain and don't really want to buy a grinder yet. First all-grain went OK by the way, kind of poor extraction which I attribute to too low sparge temperature. Definitely learned a lot, will make a new and better batch as soon as I bottle this one.
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Jul 9, 2015 13:41
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Morholt posted:Is there any reason not to buy pre-ground grain? I just moved to all-grain and don't really want to buy a grinder yet. The last batch of pre-milled grains I bought from AiH were hardly ground at all... Luckily my lhbs was nice enough to mill them properly for me. So now I'm a little gun shy about ordering pre-milled
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Jul 9, 2015 13:56
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Scarf posted:The last batch of pre-milled grains I bought from AiH were hardly ground at all... Luckily my lhbs was nice enough to mill them properly for me. I'm supposed to brew an all grain stout from AiH this Sunday. I hope they milled it better this time. 
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Jul 9, 2015 14:16
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Morholt posted:Is there any reason not to buy pre-ground grain? I just moved to all-grain and don't really want to buy a grinder yet. If you're getting it freshly ground from your local homebrew shop... not really? It's slightly more expensive, and it does not keep as long so you can't save money by buying bulk, but we're not talking a lot of money here. It would take you a long time to break even on that grinder.
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Jul 9, 2015 14:49
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So how long does it keep? Would buying a 25kg (~5 batches) bag be a waste?
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Jul 9, 2015 15:00
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I don't find buying by the sack to be a waste. I generally keep two or three favorite base malts around in airtight bins and then buy specialty grains as needed. Unmilled malt can be kept around for months without issues so long as you keep it dry and free of vermin. If you'll brew those five batches and use up a sack of malt within six to eight months, or even a year, I'd consider you a good candidate for buying in bulk.
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Jul 9, 2015 15:06
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Scarf posted:How easy is it to run some chemical tests on water? Cpt.Wacky posted:It's not super cheap at $42 but it is fairly simple: https://producers.wardlab.com/BrewersKitOrder.php I just had an analysis of my post-filter water done by Ward Lab, total turnaround time from ordering to getting the PDF result emailed to me was about three weeks. Here's the result, which is perfect for entry into Beersmith or Bruin Water: 
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Jul 9, 2015 15:15
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Morholt posted:So how long does it keep? Would buying a 25kg (~5 batches) bag be a waste? With crushed grains you'll be hard pressed to notice staleness until about a month in, and you won't have to worry about it actually going rancid for 6 months as long as you keep it dry so if you're not too picky and you think you'll use all that grain before then go ahead. Personally, I want to use milled grain within a few weeks. Unmilled grains last much longer.
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Jul 9, 2015 15:16
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Cpt.Wacky posted:It's not super cheap at $42 but it is fairly simple: https://producers.wardlab.com/BrewersKitOrder.php j3rkstore posted:I just had an analysis of my post-filter water done by Ward Lab, total turnaround time from ordering to getting the PDF result emailed to me was about three weeks. Here's the result, which is perfect for entry into Beersmith or Bruin Water: Sweet. Thanks! My only hesitation is that we filled up old orange juice containers. They were washed out, but obviously still smelled a bit of OJ... Hopefully that wouldn't gently caress up any tests.
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Jul 9, 2015 15:33
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Morholt posted:So how long does it keep? Would buying a 25kg (~5 batches) bag be a waste? I think that's fine but I would bag it by batch, instead of one huge sack. I'd be worried that smaller particles would settle and you'd end up getting different efficiency each time you dug into it.
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Jul 9, 2015 16:47
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