Well, I put together a fairly high-gravity bier de garde. Usually I ferment for three weeks, but due to a busy weekend I cut that to two. After letting it sit for three weeks I tried one out and, for the first time in three years of attempts, it actually tasted exactly like I was expecting. Finally, I'm a decent home brewer!
The very next day while I was away at work, a bottle exploded. As in, reduced the bottle to a pile of glass chips.
The day after, another bottle exploded. I had an after-work meeting, so my wife decided to take all the bottles outside and put them in a large bucket. For the next two hours, she and the general neighborhood were treated to a series of explosions that destroyed two-thirds of my stock, threw glass chips around the vicinity and scared our dogs.
Next time I'll stick to three weeks of fermentation.
Well, I put together a fairly high-gravity bier de garde. Usually I ferment for three weeks, but due to a busy weekend I cut that to two. After letting it sit for three weeks I tried one out and, for the first time in three years of attempts, it actually tasted exactly like I was expecting. Finally, I'm a decent home brewer!
The very next day while I was away at work, a bottle exploded. As in, reduced the bottle to a pile of glass chips.
The day after, another bottle exploded. I had an after-work meeting, so my wife decided to take all the bottles outside and put them in a large bucket. For the next two hours, she and the general neighborhood were treated to a series of explosions that destroyed two-thirds of my stock, threw glass chips around the vicinity and scared our dogs.
Next time I'll stick to three weeks of fermentation.
Keeping them refrigerated will help to reduce bottle bombs. I had a similar problem with a maple porter (I think the website I used to calculate listed the sugar content in maple syrup by weight and I measured it by volume, or something like that). Also make sure you open what bottles remain over a sink because they'll probably foam up a lot!
My latest batch, a cream ale flavored with a homemade hazelnut tincture was kind of a bomb of a different sort. Life caught up and it sat in the secondary fermenter for a couple of months. The clarity was excellent because of this, but for some reason, the beer turned out much darker than I would expect a cream ale to be. It was also a little more hop-forward than expected and the hazelnut flavor is more subtle than I had hoped for. Basically it's not a "share with friends" brew but a "drink in shame and get the empty bottles ready for the next batch" kind of beer :biggrin:
Thanks to tax return season, I'm jumping back into this after a 2-year hiatus with a 1-gallon kit. I think I may start with chocolate chili stout... maybe I'm being too ambitious, but it sounds so sexy
Le_Goat on
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
I also haven't brewed in like 6 months...need to get back on that train. I want to brew 3 gallon batches from now on if possible, simply because my brew pot is only 5 gallons and I need room for displacement. I've been doing brew in a bag with a self-grind mash but I wasn't liking the results. I need a new method.
I'm going to be kegging an ESB today or tomorrow, which will be my first English beer. I also have an ok NEIPA on tap and a pretty good Hefe.
I want to do a super clean lager next but we have a house part coming up that might see at least one keg get kicked, so I might try a quick American Pale Ale first so that I don't get stuck with an empty keg.
I bought 1 lb each of Citra, Mosaic and El Dorado, plus people tend to give hops away at the local homebrew club meetings, so I think this summer I might just do all IPAs and Pale Ales until the hops are gone.
I did a 5 gallon mead in 2016. had my last bottle of it in February.
I'm hoping to do another this summer if I can get some honey. especially since some friends are getting married in October and it would be nice to share. :biggrin:
we have to move around June though probably so it'll be after that. but I'm hoping to just get myself a 60lbs bucket of honey. that should do around ~4 or 5 batches at 5 gallons. that way I can play around with my recipes especially if I also get another carboy for aging 2 at a time.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Last night I hooked up my first ale not made from a kit. It was still made with extract, but it's my own recipe this time.
It was fucking amazing. No joke. I had friends over and it's apparently the best beer I've served yet.
Why did you have to mention it? I had glossed over it.
I have 3 batches sitting in fermentors because I ran out of kegs right now. I ran an experiment on a 10 gallon batch of Löbrau where I did half with Saison yeast and half with Munich lager yeast to see if me and my friends could tell the difference.
Also got the tap handles for my keezer now so I just need to coat them and put some chalkboard paint on them.
Question about aeration. I've been doing a lot of research and this is something I've never done anything with except manually stirring vigorously. I'm looking at possibly getting a 0.5 micron diffusion stone (stainless steel). What I've been told is that I only then need a basic aquarium pump and some tubing. Is it really that simple?
Le_Goat on
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
Question about aeration. I've been doing a lot of research and this is something I've never done anything with except manually stirring vigorously. I'm looking at possibly getting a 0.5 micron diffusion stone (stainless steel). What I've been told is that I only then need a basic aquarium pump and some tubing. Is it really that simple?
I think with an aquarium pump you want a 2 micron stone or larger. The aquarium pump might not be strong enough to push air through a .5 micron stone. Those stones are meant for use with an oxygen tank & regulator. But yeah, tubing, pump, stone, and some hose clamps to secure the tubing and you should be good.
Question about aeration. I've been doing a lot of research and this is something I've never done anything with except manually stirring vigorously. I'm looking at possibly getting a 0.5 micron diffusion stone (stainless steel). What I've been told is that I only then need a basic aquarium pump and some tubing. Is it really that simple?
I think with an aquarium pump you want a 2 micron stone or larger. The aquarium pump might not be strong enough to push air through a .5 micron stone. Those stones are meant for use with an oxygen tank & regulator. But yeah, tubing, pump, stone, and some hose clamps to secure the tubing and you should be good.
So if I'll just be using air and aquarium pump instead of an oxygen tank, how long does it need to run for? I've read 15-20 seconds for pure oxygen, but somewhere around 20 minutes for regular air. Is that accurate?
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
Question about aeration. I've been doing a lot of research and this is something I've never done anything with except manually stirring vigorously. I'm looking at possibly getting a 0.5 micron diffusion stone (stainless steel). What I've been told is that I only then need a basic aquarium pump and some tubing. Is it really that simple?
I think with an aquarium pump you want a 2 micron stone or larger. The aquarium pump might not be strong enough to push air through a .5 micron stone. Those stones are meant for use with an oxygen tank & regulator. But yeah, tubing, pump, stone, and some hose clamps to secure the tubing and you should be good.
So if I'll just be using air and aquarium pump instead of an oxygen tank, how long does it need to run for? I've read 15-20 seconds for pure oxygen, but somewhere around 20 minutes for regular air. Is that accurate?
I don't actually use either of these methods but yeah it looks like people tend to run the pump for 20-30 minutes.
My concern has been with this off-flavor that I've been dealing with. I haven't been able to figure out what it is, but have come to four possible reasons:
chlorine in the water - maybe I need to filter the water before using it
boiling the grains at too high of a temperature - I was told by my local homebrew shop that it can produce the type of off-flavor I've been describing
chilling time - I've been using an ice bath, but that takes a while. I'm thinking on getting a wort chiller.
lack of proper aeration - perhaps using the stone/pump solution could help?
I'm not going to claim i'm an expert or anything, but each batch I'm trying to correct things. Maybe I should hold off on the aeration until I do the previous 3?
Le_Goat on
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
1 - If it's chlorine get some campden tablets, I break one in half and put a half tablet per 5 gallons. Filtering won't necessarily get rid of it. Chloramine (A Chlorine ion?) doesn't break down without it
2 - I hope you're not literally boiling the grains, cause yeah that's to hot. You want them to mash (All grain) at around 62-67C, for steeping in partial mashes I think it's roughly the same. (Lower temp produces higher gravity for a short answer)
3 - A good immersion chiller is fucking amazing. If your sanitation is good then even taking a longer time isn't the end of the world but it's an area to aim to improve.
4 - I wouldn't worry about this unless you really want to go all in. A good shake of the carboy will likely do enough for you. If you haven't yet you can try doing a yeast starter (Pitch the yeast on some "wort" a day or two in advance to get them started), it can help get things going but isn't strictly necessary.
Your final point I agree, I wouldn't spend any money on aeration until you've done other things.
If you're worried about the water, you can always brew a batch from store-bought spring or purified water. The added cost is negligible compared to wasting the grains/yeast/hops from a bad batch.
I haven't brewed anything in over 3 years, I really need to get back into it. I found 2.5 Gal batches to be best for me (starting w/ a Mr Beer probably biased me in that direction). But I never fully got rid of that apple-cider off flavor, even when using full sanitation and hobby-grade extract and partial-mash kits rather than the Mr Beer canned kits. So I can totally related to how frustrating tracking down an unwanted flavor can be. Honestly, it's a big part of why I went on a hiatus from brewing.
If you're worried about the water, you can always brew a batch from store-bought spring or purified water. The added cost is negligible compared to wasting the grains/yeast/hops from a bad batch.
I haven't brewed anything in over 3 years, I really need to get back into it. I found 2.5 Gal batches to be best for me (starting w/ a Mr Beer probably biased me in that direction). But I never fully got rid of that apple-cider off flavor, even when using full sanitation and hobby-grade extract and partial-mash kits rather than the Mr Beer canned kits. So I can totally related to how frustrating tracking down an unwanted flavor can be. Honestly, it's a big part of why I went on a hiatus from brewing.
The sounds like Acetaldehyde, either:
You're yeast is weak so make sure you're not pitching at too high a temp and or try to get a starter going the night before
- or -
You're exposing it to too much oxygen when transferring to a secondary (if you do that)
If you're worried about the water, you can always brew a batch from store-bought spring or purified water. The added cost is negligible compared to wasting the grains/yeast/hops from a bad batch.
I haven't brewed anything in over 3 years, I really need to get back into it. I found 2.5 Gal batches to be best for me (starting w/ a Mr Beer probably biased me in that direction). But I never fully got rid of that apple-cider off flavor, even when using full sanitation and hobby-grade extract and partial-mash kits rather than the Mr Beer canned kits. So I can totally related to how frustrating tracking down an unwanted flavor can be. Honestly, it's a big part of why I went on a hiatus from brewing.
The sounds like Acetaldehyde, either:
You're yeast is weak so make sure you're not pitching at too high a temp and or try to get a starter going the night before
- or -
You're exposing it to too much oxygen when transferring to a secondary (if you do that)
The off-flavor is almost like an apple-cider (not quite), but there is an extra bitterness that I really dislike; it just has a... I don't know, kind of dirty taste to it; I can't describe it that well. Some of my friends that enjoy IPAs didn't mind it as much, but it was just that flavor in the background that had my eye twitching. And that taste has felt consistent from batch to batch, but I've moved a few times to two completely different cities and it persisted. It's like a ghost that's haunting the person and not the house. From what I've read of CH3CH0 (chee-cho just sounds more fun than acetaldehyde), oxygenating the wort is apparently an important part, among a few other things that could cause it. When racking to my secondary, I've always tried to be extra careful not to splash at all, so I don't think that's what it is.
From what you've all thrown out (and thank you, by the way), I think I may just try (1) some store-bought water, (2) keep an eagle-eye on the water temperature when steeping, and (3) ensure that the wort temperature is just right when pitching. Should that flavor still persist, then maybe it is indeed the inadequate aeration, which I can always try next time. Considering I'm doing a 1-gallon batch instead of 5-gallons, I'm not as concerned about a mistake, though I'd finally like to have a damn good batch again. It's so disheartening to look at cases of beer and know they suck.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
The other thing that might be happening if its a earthy bitterness, sometimes kit stuff has kind of shit hops and kind of shit recipe instructions, you almost always end up putting way too much bittering hop in and not enough aromatic hop. Try a recipe that involves very low hops and only put them in toward the end of the boil.
It's weird talking about all this, I forgot how much I know about beer.
The recipe I'm using this time around is using 10g of Brewers Gold hops: 5g at the start and 5g for the last 20 minutes. The estimated IBU is in the low 30s, so it shouldn't be that bitter at all.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
Going to store water is probably the best bet. If you're doing partial kits I have less useful knowledge but as long as you have a consistent temperature below 70C I think you should be fine for that. Don't pitch the yeast if the wort is over 30C or you'll kill a bunch of them, but under that it's a relatively low risk issue. For a 1 gallon batch you could try putting it in the fridge too if you keep it contained. I only do 5 and 10 gallon batches so I don't have lot of useful input on that.
I'd also second the kit, cause I've only been brewing all grain batches since June of last year and I've made 34 batches so far and they've all turned out fine. Some better than others but all drinkable. So I'd look at variables in your process that you can compensate for.
The recipe I'm using this time around is using 10g of Brewers Gold hops: 5g at the start and 5g for the last 20 minutes. The estimated IBU is in the low 30s, so it shouldn't be that bitter at all.
Yeah I'd break that initial battering hop into
2g - 60:00
3g - 40:00
5g - 20:00
For 1 gallon batch? My math shows that closer to 50 IBU, and that will have most of the bittering up front.
I just ran the numbers an it's showing ~28. I just used an IBU calculator and the hop information from another site. Like I said, I'm no expert and rely on the information I find elsewhere, lol.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
I may be able to brew this weekend, as my wort chiller shows up Friday. I'm pretty excited to be getting back into this. I just need to find my old homebrew journal binder. I try to keep meticulous notes about each batch.
Le_Goat on
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
I agree with trying a batch with distilled water from the store. I did one batch like that and it turned out ok, although I just use tap water with campden tablets now.
Another possible cause is fermentation temperature. Generally you want to keep ales below 70F for most of fermentation. Fermentation produces heat so the inside of your carboy/bucket/whatever will be a few degrees warmer than the outside/ambient temp. Also temperature swings can stress the yeast, so letting it get cold at night and warm up during the day isn't ideal.
Some kind of fermentation temperature control is usually one of the first things people recommend to improve homebrew quality. My setup is a $60 craiglist chest freezer and a $30 temp controller from Amazon. You can also do a swamp cooler with bottles of frozen water that you switch out every day or so.
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SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
I didn't realize we had a homebrew thread, though I shou ldhave guessed.
Our last batch of DME beer was also our first batch racked into a keg and it came out really, really good. It was a red rye and turned out to be my wife's favorite of the beers we've made.
The plan is to start doing all-grain brewing next, but it means getting some new equipment, including installing a burner outside. A friend who's been involved in beermaking for a long time is recommending a grainfather but that seems ridiculous.
Another possible cause is fermentation temperature. Generally you want to keep ales below 70F for most of fermentation. Fermentation produces heat so the inside of your carboy/bucket/whatever will be a few degrees warmer than the outside/ambient temp. Also temperature swings can stress the yeast, so letting it get cold at night and warm up during the day isn't ideal.
That's another thing I have to worry about this time. Previously, I've lived in apartments where I could control the temperatures better. Now I'm in a house in a totally different town and I'm trying to find the best place to store it. Luckily, a 2-gallon container takes up so little space that I can find a nice spot for it. I also picked up some crystal strip thermometers to help monitor the temperature.
Le_Goat on
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
The grainfathers are cool but they are ridiculous. I have a totally ghetto rig using a 16 gallon kettle my wife bought me for my birthday and a $20 coleman cooler I found used. I got a Bayou Classic SP10 burner for the boil which was the biggest cost for myself.
I also have a simple 15 gallon pot, burner, and cooler mash tun setup. My old 5 gallon pot from the extract days serves as a hot liquor tank for heating mash & sparge water.
I'm attempting round 2 of yeast banking this afternoon. The first batch straight up won't freeze, but I think I screwed up the glycerin ratio so I'm correcting that and trying again. Luckily I have lots of yeast in the fridge that I'm not worried about losing in my attempts.
Not going to bank the good stuff until I get my shit together, and since it's -9 here today there isn't anything better to do.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
At yeast you tried
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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The very next day while I was away at work, a bottle exploded. As in, reduced the bottle to a pile of glass chips.
The day after, another bottle exploded. I had an after-work meeting, so my wife decided to take all the bottles outside and put them in a large bucket. For the next two hours, she and the general neighborhood were treated to a series of explosions that destroyed two-thirds of my stock, threw glass chips around the vicinity and scared our dogs.
Next time I'll stick to three weeks of fermentation.
Keeping them refrigerated will help to reduce bottle bombs. I had a similar problem with a maple porter (I think the website I used to calculate listed the sugar content in maple syrup by weight and I measured it by volume, or something like that). Also make sure you open what bottles remain over a sink because they'll probably foam up a lot!
My latest batch, a cream ale flavored with a homemade hazelnut tincture was kind of a bomb of a different sort. Life caught up and it sat in the secondary fermenter for a couple of months. The clarity was excellent because of this, but for some reason, the beer turned out much darker than I would expect a cream ale to be. It was also a little more hop-forward than expected and the hazelnut flavor is more subtle than I had hoped for. Basically it's not a "share with friends" brew but a "drink in shame and get the empty bottles ready for the next batch" kind of beer :biggrin:
I've got the ingredients for another batch of Strawberry mead, but I'm ramping up the amount of honey. We'll see how it goes.
I'm also considering for the next one to change the yeast. I've got an idea.......
I want to do a super clean lager next but we have a house part coming up that might see at least one keg get kicked, so I might try a quick American Pale Ale first so that I don't get stuck with an empty keg.
I bought 1 lb each of Citra, Mosaic and El Dorado, plus people tend to give hops away at the local homebrew club meetings, so I think this summer I might just do all IPAs and Pale Ales until the hops are gone.
I did a 5 gallon mead in 2016. had my last bottle of it in February.
I'm hoping to do another this summer if I can get some honey. especially since some friends are getting married in October and it would be nice to share. :biggrin:
we have to move around June though probably so it'll be after that. but I'm hoping to just get myself a 60lbs bucket of honey. that should do around ~4 or 5 batches at 5 gallons. that way I can play around with my recipes especially if I also get another carboy for aging 2 at a time.
It was fucking amazing. No joke. I had friends over and it's apparently the best beer I've served yet.
Time to brew up some more.
I have 3 batches sitting in fermentors because I ran out of kegs right now. I ran an experiment on a 10 gallon batch of Löbrau where I did half with Saison yeast and half with Munich lager yeast to see if me and my friends could tell the difference.
Also got the tap handles for my keezer now so I just need to coat them and put some chalkboard paint on them.
That's one of the worst commas, I've ever seen!
I think with an aquarium pump you want a 2 micron stone or larger. The aquarium pump might not be strong enough to push air through a .5 micron stone. Those stones are meant for use with an oxygen tank & regulator. But yeah, tubing, pump, stone, and some hose clamps to secure the tubing and you should be good.
I don't actually use either of these methods but yeah it looks like people tend to run the pump for 20-30 minutes.
I'm not going to claim i'm an expert or anything, but each batch I'm trying to correct things. Maybe I should hold off on the aeration until I do the previous 3?
If its consistent batch to batch its probably your water.
2 - I hope you're not literally boiling the grains, cause yeah that's to hot. You want them to mash (All grain) at around 62-67C, for steeping in partial mashes I think it's roughly the same. (Lower temp produces higher gravity for a short answer)
3 - A good immersion chiller is fucking amazing. If your sanitation is good then even taking a longer time isn't the end of the world but it's an area to aim to improve.
4 - I wouldn't worry about this unless you really want to go all in. A good shake of the carboy will likely do enough for you. If you haven't yet you can try doing a yeast starter (Pitch the yeast on some "wort" a day or two in advance to get them started), it can help get things going but isn't strictly necessary.
Your final point I agree, I wouldn't spend any money on aeration until you've done other things.
I haven't brewed anything in over 3 years, I really need to get back into it. I found 2.5 Gal batches to be best for me (starting w/ a Mr Beer probably biased me in that direction). But I never fully got rid of that apple-cider off flavor, even when using full sanitation and hobby-grade extract and partial-mash kits rather than the Mr Beer canned kits. So I can totally related to how frustrating tracking down an unwanted flavor can be. Honestly, it's a big part of why I went on a hiatus from brewing.
The sounds like Acetaldehyde, either:
You're yeast is weak so make sure you're not pitching at too high a temp and or try to get a starter going the night before
- or -
You're exposing it to too much oxygen when transferring to a secondary (if you do that)
From what you've all thrown out (and thank you, by the way), I think I may just try (1) some store-bought water, (2) keep an eagle-eye on the water temperature when steeping, and (3) ensure that the wort temperature is just right when pitching. Should that flavor still persist, then maybe it is indeed the inadequate aeration, which I can always try next time. Considering I'm doing a 1-gallon batch instead of 5-gallons, I'm not as concerned about a mistake, though I'd finally like to have a damn good batch again. It's so disheartening to look at cases of beer and know they suck.
It's weird talking about all this, I forgot how much I know about beer.
I'd also second the kit, cause I've only been brewing all grain batches since June of last year and I've made 34 batches so far and they've all turned out fine. Some better than others but all drinkable. So I'd look at variables in your process that you can compensate for.
Yeah I'd break that initial battering hop into
2g - 60:00
3g - 40:00
5g - 20:00
I may be able to brew this weekend, as my wort chiller shows up Friday. I'm pretty excited to be getting back into this. I just need to find my old homebrew journal binder. I try to keep meticulous notes about each batch.
Another possible cause is fermentation temperature. Generally you want to keep ales below 70F for most of fermentation. Fermentation produces heat so the inside of your carboy/bucket/whatever will be a few degrees warmer than the outside/ambient temp. Also temperature swings can stress the yeast, so letting it get cold at night and warm up during the day isn't ideal.
Some kind of fermentation temperature control is usually one of the first things people recommend to improve homebrew quality. My setup is a $60 craiglist chest freezer and a $30 temp controller from Amazon. You can also do a swamp cooler with bottles of frozen water that you switch out every day or so.
Our last batch of DME beer was also our first batch racked into a keg and it came out really, really good. It was a red rye and turned out to be my wife's favorite of the beers we've made.
The plan is to start doing all-grain brewing next, but it means getting some new equipment, including installing a burner outside. A friend who's been involved in beermaking for a long time is recommending a grainfather but that seems ridiculous.
Then I spent a ton on kegging.
If you don't have a good outdoor space to brew or are starting from scratch on equipment, there are electric systems that are way cheaper than a Grainfather with less bells and whistles: https://amazon.com/dp/B075NNZ3KT/ref=asc_df_B075NNZ3KT5419632/?tag=hyprod-20&creative=395033&creativeASIN=B075NNZ3KT&linkCode=df0&hvadid=198083537724&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1153861199829031733&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010492&hvtargid=pla-384125410974
Not going to bank the good stuff until I get my shit together, and since it's -9 here today there isn't anything better to do.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades