What'cha brewin'? (Homebrew thread)

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

The entire copper ale batch is infected.  Very worried it escaped into my process.  If that's the case...everything is probably infected...  Will be verifying by tomorrow.  Hopefully everything survives long enough to still be drinkable if it is.  Starting next batch I think I'm going to start bleach deep cleaning everything between batches.

[Didzo]

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Gonna open one of the Heffes tonight and hope it's ok.  If everything's toast I got nothing...except a lot of really fucking amazing unique bottles/limited releases I've been saving for you guys for the last several months XD

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Good news.  I can confirm that 1 Liter of Hefe so far is quite good XD

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Black Ale now officially CONFIRMED for Barley Wine XD

*edit*

This shit will get you DRUNK

[Evil Cheese]

Brewed an adjunct-heavy American style lager over the weekend. While I'm not particularly fond of the style, this batch is affording me a few opportunities to experiment and test myself. This will be my first batch that I've done a mini-mash for since the recipe uses flaked corn. I feel like it went pretty well on brew day so I'm confident I could use this technique to do wheat or oat adjuncts in the future. Since this style of American lager is notorious for having a small margin of error due to the "clean" taste of the beer and off flavors not really having much room to hide, I see this as a good challenge to test my brewing processes. Yes, this is only my third real batch, but I've already done a lager so I have the cool fermentation and lagering parts of it down. I also like a challenge. This is also the first time I've used a dry yeast in a 5 gal batch, so I'm curious to see how it turns out in comparison to the liquid lager yeast I used for the bock. Who knows, I might even wind up with an American style lager that I don't mind drinking.

[Evil Cheese]

[Evil Cheese]

Racked American lager to secondary a few days ago for lagering. Chilling at about 34°F for the next 4 - 6 weeks. Looking good so far. This will end up looking more like a Yuengling than a Bud or Miller, and if it tastes anything like a Yuengling then I'll be happy.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Looking good.  I've been working through my blacks and hefes.  The hefe is only getting better.  Definitely a rebrew in the future.

[Vlambo]

I'm possibly looking at starting to home brew. Wheres a good place to start?

[Evil Cheese]

First off all I'd start by checking out this site: http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html. Go through the first section at least. If you want more supplemental reading, I'd also look for the The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Third Edition. The latter is a bit less technical and easier to read.

Now for equipment, which depends if you have a local homebrew store or not. I'd highly recommend trying to find one, even if it's a bit of a trek, or you're going to have to order just about everything online. If you're stuck with the latter, then I recommend starting off with either plastic carboys or a plastic fermentation bucket as your primary fermenter. Glass carboys are going to be expensive as fuck to ship unless you can find a good deal with free shipping. Personally, I prefer the glass ones, but obviously they're more expensive even without shipping. They make nice starter kits that include plastic fermentation buckets and even taking a quick look a Amazon they seem to have some with glass carboys (as a secondary fermenter) as well that aren't too wildly expensive. If you don't have a local homebrew store, then I'd also recommend getting a kit because most will usually have everything you need to get started and will save you from having to find all the different components yourself. By kit, I mean ones like this, not a Mr. Beer kit. If you have any questions about one you find, feel free to post. You'll also need at least a 5 gallon stainless steel or aluminum pot to boil your wort in. While 5 gallon is the minimum you'd want to use for a 5 gallon batch, an 8 gallon pot will allow you to boil all 5 gallons at once, instead of just 3 gallons with the the ingredients and then adding more water in the primary later. Also, bottles. The nice thing about bottles is you can just reuse glass ones you buy commercial beer in as long as they're not twist caps.

For ingredients, I'd suggest starting out with a liquid malt extract kit. A good quality one like this, but obviously in a style you prefer. I'd also stick to ales at first because you'll need need more equipment to do a lager due the lower fermentation temps.

[Vlambo]

Yea, we got a local brewery shop. They have an entire home brew kit for about 100. I may go give them a ring.

[Evil Cheese]

Yea, we got a local brewery shop. They have an entire home brew kit for about 100. I may go give them a ring.

Awesome. Now you have a bit more flexibility regarding which recipes to use as you can pick out specific ingredients and the amounts you want to use. If you really get the itch, you can search online for an extract-based recipe that looks good and follow that instead of buying a pre-assembled malt extract kit. You also get a bit more discretion on what types of equipment you use.

[Evil Cheese]

Forum etiquette be damned!

Converted a 10 gallon water cooler to a mash/lauter tun this weekend and brewed my first all grain batch. I more or less used this design with a few modifications including using a longer (this was more due to what we could find) 1 inch diameter stainless steel braided hose with 3/4 inch fittings. The most painful part of this build was finding 3/4 stainless steel washers to go on the inside of the cooler. The hardware store had plenty of zinc ones, but that shit's no good to drink. Luckily my dad has a tapered conical drill bit for boring holes in metals, so we just used a 1/2 inch washer and made the inner hole bigger.






Since this was my first all grain batch I decided to stick with a simple middle-of-the-road American pale ale recipe that shouldn't be too bitter, but should have a nice hop flavor and aroma. The recipe can be found here. Everything went fairly smoothly on brew day. It took longer than I expected to complete the vorlauf step, but I'm hoping this has more to do with inexperience than my setup. My original gravity was a little lower than expected, I haven't crunched the numbers yet, but I think I still need to work on my conversion efficiency a bit. Temperature probably plays a part in this because while I did preheat the cooler with boiling water, I didn't take any temperature readings after I mixed the grains in with my infusion water, so it could have been a little low. I may also have used a bit too much water in the infusion step which should have been saved for sparging. It also seemed a bit darker than I would have expected after transferring it to my primary fermenter, but I'll wait to judge the color until it's been poured into a pint glass.










After this and my American lager are ready to bottle, it should be time to start working on an Oktoberfest lager.

[at0m]

I guess I don't understand, what's the point? Do you cut slots in the hose so that you can filter out solids? And how do you sterilize the thing so it doesn't cross-contaminate your batches?

[Evil Cheese]

I guess I don't understand, what's the point? Do you cut slots in the hose so that you can filter out solids? And how do you sterilize the thing so it doesn't cross-contaminate your batches?

You cut the ends off the hose and pull the rubber part out so all you're left with is the stainless steel braiding. The braiding acts as a filter to strain out the wort from the grain. It's also longer than it needs to be. In reality it probably only needs to be about half - 3/4 the diameter of bottom in length, I was just too lazy to trim it down some more. While you do need to clean the braiding, the wort that you drain out gets boiled for 60 - 90 minutes, depending on style, which is more than enough to sanitize the wort.

[Litrecola]

I finally am all grain ready. I got a mash tun converted from a rubbermaid cooler. I opted for false bottom though. I started with a sweet porter, lots of pale chocolate malts and some lactose and cocoa powder added close to flameout time. My second is a irish red. So far I'm finding my efficiency pretty low, need to try and boost it a bit, seems like i'm sitting around 60%. I bought a turkey fryer which i'm using for boil, 9 gal aluminum pot, really feel like for 5-6 gal batches that you need at least 11gal for proper space to prevent boil over. Also made a hop spider so i don't have to deal with hop crap in my siphoning and fermentor. I also make starters now (although i'd prefer a stir plate and erlenmeyer flask) which are great, I usually get active fermentation within 8 hours. Next up i'm going to try a there floyds gumball head clone!

Overall a brew day from beginning to end, including cleaning, is about 4-5 hours and that was by myself.

[Evil Cheese]

Tasted both my American lager and American pale ale that I bottled two weeks ago today.

American lager:





It tasted like a Budweiser except with a more complex sweetness to it and more bitterness. Definitely a heavy rice flavor with a nice crisp, clean lager finish without too much bitterness. Adequate carbonation with a nice mouthfeel. The more complex sweetness likely comes from the flaked maize, as Budweiser is usually made with only rice adjuncts. The bitterness has a bit more of a bite to it in this one as well, which I attribute to the cascade hops I used, rather than the Hallertau or some other noble hops that Budweiser probably uses. I would say I prefer this homebrew over the usual BudMillerCoors; it goes down easy and makes for a nice summer beer while having a bit more complexity to it than the previously mentioned. My dad, who is primarily a Bud light drinker, also said he liked this one more than a regular Budweiser.



American pale ale:






The body of this beer was was a little thin, as I expected since this was my fist all grain batch and the OG was low. That being said, I found this beer to still be quite enjoyable. Despite the thinness, the cascade hops were really able to shine through in this one. Hop bitterness, aroma, and flavor were all very nice and really did a good job of showing off the notes and characteristics of cascade hops. Fermentation seemed to go better with this one than my last ale, as I didn't detect any fusel alcohols, esters, or any other signs of high fermentation temps. Overall while this beer could have come out a little better with a bit more balance, this recipe was a good opportunity to play around with a more complex hop schedule and see the results while still being enjoyable even if flawed. This one was a bit too bitter for Dad's liking, but he was able to drink it without complaining too much.




For anyone who might be interested, you can see below what lagering or aging at near freezing temps does for beer.

Ale that had been in the primary for 3 weeks at ~68°F without lagering or cold crashing:




Lager that had been fermented for 2 weeks at 48°F and lagered for 5 weeks at 34°F:

[at0m]

That's not your apartment.

[Evil Cheese]

Nope. It's at my parents' house where most of the brewing equipment is kept.