What'cha brewin'? (Homebrew thread)

[Chooly]

Today is bottling day! Yay!

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Racked the pumpkin ale to secondary last night.  Holy god I've never seen more trub in my life XD

[at0m]

Wat. Also A will love you long time to get her paws on that pumpkin stuff.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

[Chooly]

Karrde link=topic=6750.msg272194#msg272194 date=1381508285]
Racked the pumpkin ale to secondary last night.  Holy god I've never seen more trub in my life XD

Do you loose a lot of volume when racking into the secondary while trying to avoid stirring up the trub?
Over the course of our 5 gallon brew we lost almost an entire gallon for this reason.

Pictures, because yay 8)


Amazed at how clear the pale ale turned out.. Good acheivement for our first brew.. And it tastes awesome too!

Finished haul


And capping the 650ml bottles was a bitch because the rim that the capping tool is supposed to catch onto was too thin in our reused bottles.

[Evil Cheese]

Bottled my pumpkin ale and Marzen lager yesterday. The pumpkin ale is about 0.008 low, so I'm worried it's going to lack the body it should have. Hopefully after some more time to condition in the bottle it will turn out decent. Gotta watch those mash temps closer next time I try an AG pumpkin beer. The Marzen is looking pretty good so far and should turn out tasty.

[Chooly]

Labels turned out quite nicely!

[Evil Cheese]

Nice! Did you design/commission those?

[Chooly]

Designed them and put them together
Done using all public domain graphics too!

[Goffin]

every time I see  "American pale ale"  I have the movie American pie in my head.    F'n disturbing.


Bad ass Chooly!!!  I want a shirt

[Evil Cheese]

Tasted my Oktoberfest/Marzen today. I think it turned out fairly well for a first try. I compared it to a Dominion Oktoberfest, since the kind I made was more of the American style (think Sam Adams) than traditional German. It has a nice deep amber color to it, even clearer than the Dominion. It tastes very malty, but you can tell there's a difference in grain bill compared to the Dominion. That's not a bad thing necessarily, and I'm glad I got in the general ballpark for the style. Mine also has more of a hop flavor to it where the Dominion had very little.  It's not a strong bitterness, but you can definitely pick those earthy, spciy, citrus Hallertau notes. Mine also needs a bit more time to carb up. It's getting there, but the Dominion was definitely more carbonated. I think mine has more alcohol in it as well, as it was a bit "warmer" when I drank it. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it.

[Evil Cheese]

My pumpkin beer I brewed in September finished carbonating during late October, and I wasn't very happy with it originally. At first it seemed to lack body and maltiness, I couldn't really pick up on the pumpkin spice I had put in it, and it tasted a bit too bitter for the style. I compared it to a Dogfish Head Punkin' Ale, which had a lot more body and maltiness. Mine seemed more like a pale ale with a slight hint of pumpkin spice.

I've cracked a few open since then and it seems to have gotten much better with age. The one I had this weekend tasted much more like what I expect a pumpkin ale to taste like. It has a stronger pumpkin spice flavor towards the end, and the malt seems a bit more prominent. It tastes sweeter now and I can even pick up some of the molasses notes from the brown sugar I put in it. While it still has less body than some others, it doesn't seem "diluted" as it did before. The bitterness seems much more balanced now and kind of fades into the back instead of standing out like a sore thumb. Overall I'm very happy with how this beer has aged.

I also brewed the American lager from over the summer again this weekend with a few modifications. My dad wanted some for the Super Bowl, but unfortunately I think we'll miss that deadline. Fortunately we still have about a case left over form before. This time I used a different yeast, so I'm interested to see what differences it makes. Last time I used Saflager W-34/70 which is a European continental dry lager yeast that creates a more German-like lager. This time I'm using WLP 840 which is an American lager/pilsner liquid yeast that has lower attenuation and is supposed to produce a crisper, "cleaner", more BudMillerCoors tasting beer. I'm also interested to see how WLP 840 plays with the Cascade hops, it may end up with too "harsh" of a bitterness and I might have to switch to noble hop varieties next time.

[FlyingMongoose]

Wil Wheaton, we all know him, huge tabletop nerd (obviously since he has a show called "Tabletop" on youtube on the Geek & Sundry Channel)

Some people don't know he does a lot of his own micro-brewing, I figured I'd post something he linked to on his G+ page (he actually is more active there than on his public Facebook I've noticed).

Anchor Brewing: Why do craft breweries not use twist off bottle caps?

And here is his home brewing blog:
https://wilwheaton.net/tag/homebrewing/

He's posted a few of his recipes here and there and I've been told they're decent.

Also he's a co-creator of w00tstout if you've had that...

[Luinbariel]

Labels turned out quite nicely!

Oh god please make me labels

So the batch of mead I made a year ago is mostly completely gone... Just two bottles left, and at least one of those is for my family to test out.

Another bunch is in the works however! This time I have a couple of one gallon carboys, so I'm able to make some more variety.



From left to right, we have a ginger mead, then a strawberry one, and then a lemon lime. Unfortunately the lemon lime has already failed catastrophically, and had to be dumped. It was so acidic it couldn't even be saved...

They'll be racked tomorrow, and I'll take more shots then! This time I have an actual mead yeast as well as the proper (?) amounts of honey. They should be sweeter and less like rocket fuel when all is said and done.

[Evil Cheese]

Karrde link=topic=6750.msg271836#msg271836 date=1380234989]
[quote author=Evil Cheese link=topic=6750.msg271640#msg271640 date=1379632338]
[quote author=[fr31ns]Karrde link=topic=6750.msg271628#msg271628 date=1379568434]
Plans in the works now that it's cooling off again. Partial mash imperial pumpkin ale and an Non-Alcoholic (probably extract) IPA as a test to see if I can do it (kinda a complex process)

Nice! I'm going to be brewing a pumpkin ale on Sunday as well.


On an unrelated note, would anybody else be interested in doing a little homebrew competition at ACEN? We can pick a style to brew and participants can do their version of it then we'll pick a few people to judge them. Preferably a style that you don't need specialized equipment for, so nothing adjunct heavy, no lagers, no "big" beers that take 6+ months to condition, etc. Just a thought.
[/quote]

This would be wicked fun I think.
[/quote]

It's about time we start organizing this if it's going to be a thing. Is anybody else who is coming to ACEN interested? I'd like to try to get at least three participants if possible.

[Luinbariel]

[quote author=[fr31ns]Karrde link=topic=6750.msg271836#msg271836 date=1380234989]
[quote author=Evil Cheese link=topic=6750.msg271640#msg271640 date=1379632338]
[quote author=[fr31ns]Karrde link=topic=6750.msg271628#msg271628 date=1379568434]
Plans in the works now that it's cooling off again. Partial mash imperial pumpkin ale and an Non-Alcoholic (probably extract) IPA as a test to see if I can do it (kinda a complex process)

Nice! I'm going to be brewing a pumpkin ale on Sunday as well.


On an unrelated note, would anybody else be interested in doing a little homebrew competition at ACEN? We can pick a style to brew and participants can do their version of it then we'll pick a few people to judge them. Preferably a style that you don't need specialized equipment for, so nothing adjunct heavy, no lagers, no "big" beers that take 6+ months to condition, etc. Just a thought.
[/quote]

This would be wicked fun I think.
[/quote]

It's about time we start organizing this if it's going to be a thing. Is anybody else who is coming to ACEN interested? I'd like to try to get at least three participants if possible.
[/quote]

Too bad there isn't another brewer in my category of choice

[CaffeinePowered]

Too bad there isn't another brewer in my category of choice

De fault, the two best words in the english language!

7:35
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czum0Q_000c#t=455

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Ok so I think I know what I wanna make for ACEN.  Thinking a Belgian style Pumpkin Ale and a Rye Stout.  Also going to make a clone of Avery's Maharaja Double IPA but that won't last

[FlyingMongoose]

I'm curious, it's been out for a while, have any of you used any of the white house recipes?
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/respons...eer-recipe

[Evil Cheese]

That honey brown ale looks like it would be worth a shot. I'd do an all grain version though instead of extract. Well maybe when it warms up. Mashing in sub 30 degree weather is not fun an will fuck with your temps.

[Luinbariel]

Racked the two surviving meads yesterday into secondary.

Man, even the ginger one is tasting sweet and nice so far. WAY better than my first batch last year.