I have brewed up another batch of Nova's Ale, it is bubbling away like a madman. The two kegs of a saison are 3 months aged now, they're going to be awesome once carbonated, I think.
Real news, though, is I finally got around to brewing up my latest recipe for strawberry mead. More honey, different kind of yeast.
I may....MAY....have overdone it. Initial gravity: 1.115
Oh god
@Nova_C let me know how it turns out. I'm making a strawberry mead right now as well.
Hi I usually contribute to the Beer thread in SE++, but I caught up with this one and loved seeing the 'cooler in the garage' rig @hawkbox is using. I snapped some photos today before getting started on a low abv Shandy to share with y'all. I brew gallon batch all-grain recipes in my single bedroom apartment, so if you're curious about homebrewing but feel like you don't have the space...it can be done!
Everything fits into the cabinet above the fridge, except for my bottle conditioning boxes which I keep in the bedroom closet. Behind the Little Big Mouth Bubblers I've got a pair of gallon glass jugs if I need to rack to secondary for a longer fermentation. The beer in front is a CDA I brewed last week, I'll be dry hopping it next week with Simcoe and I'll bottle it the following week.
All my gear, laid out before a brewing session. Starting from the left I've got a plastic bin with two six pack holders for bottle conditioning. The plastic helps contain any potential bottle-bomb situations. A little big mouth bubbler - 1.4 gallon glass primary fermenter. A few colanders and strainers for sparging and straining the finished wort. A 16 qt stockpot and a 14 qt mop bucket from Target that I use to collect wort during sparging. A plastic container that holds my malts, hops and other brewing ingredients and a plastic container holding all the little doodads you need, like a bottle capper, auto-siphon, hydrometer, etc. An induction cooktop I bought so that I can do the mash and the boil out on my little apartment balcony to avoid stinking up the joint. A restaurant supply bus tub for sanitation and a gallon pitcher for measuring out water for mashing and sparging. That's it! A gallon all-grain recipe will make me anywhere from 8-10 bottles of finished beer. I try to brew two weeks in a row with a week off, and it makes plenty for me to drink with a few spare bottles here and there to give to friends.
I made this shandy base today. It's a very basic blonde ale, just a pound of pilsner and a half pound of Vienna malts. Hopped with a pinch of Apollo for bittering, Sorachi Ace for flavoring and aroma. Before I bottle I'm going to spike it with a quarter cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice, and I can get local lemons at the farmer's market - one of the perks of living in California.
How do you lauter/sparge? Using the colanders as filters/false bottoms? Does that take a while to get the mash filtered? I just got a Brew Bag to use as a false bottom replacement, but I feel like you would get even better use out of one considering you only use one pot.
How do you lauter/sparge? Using the colanders as filters/false bottoms? Does that take a while to get the mash filtered? I just got a Brew Bag to use as a false bottom replacement, but I feel like you would get even better use out of one considering you only use one pot.
I heat my sparging water on the stove in a smaller stock pot kept with my other cookware separate from my brewing supplies since I use it all the time for soup. There's only two of us so that big 16 quart pot is only ever used for brewing.
The colanders sit on top of the red bucket, with the larger aluminum colander sitting inside the finer mesh strainer. The bigger colander forms the grain bed, the mesh strainer catches a lot of the particulates. I started out using only the mesh strainer but it tended to clog up on me and wasn't large enough for higher gravity beers with 3-4 pound grain bills. The colanders also fit on top of the stock pot so I can circulate the wort through the grain bed multiple times by going back and forth between bucket and pot. Sparge time varies depending on the beer, if there's rye or wheat in there it can take a while to filter through.
The cooler and bag is a great idea, and a 3 gallon cooler would be perfect but I'd be adding another piece of equipment to the pile.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Gotta say, Washington Brewers Festival delivers again! Great stuff out there with good ideas for what to do at home.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
How do you lauter/sparge? Using the colanders as filters/false bottoms? Does that take a while to get the mash filtered? I just got a Brew Bag to use as a false bottom replacement, but I feel like you would get even better use out of one considering you only use one pot.
I heat my sparging water on the stove in a smaller stock pot kept with my other cookware separate from my brewing supplies since I use it all the time for soup. There's only two of us so that big 16 quart pot is only ever used for brewing.
The colanders sit on top of the red bucket, with the larger aluminum colander sitting inside the finer mesh strainer. The bigger colander forms the grain bed, the mesh strainer catches a lot of the particulates. I started out using only the mesh strainer but it tended to clog up on me and wasn't large enough for higher gravity beers with 3-4 pound grain bills. The colanders also fit on top of the stock pot so I can circulate the wort through the grain bed multiple times by going back and forth between bucket and pot. Sparge time varies depending on the beer, if there's rye or wheat in there it can take a while to filter through.
The cooler and bag is a great idea, and a 3 gallon cooler would be perfect but I'd be adding another piece of equipment to the pile.
I think you could just mash in the bag in the pot you're currently using without adding a cooler. Heat the water to temp, put the bag in the pot, mash in the grains, then when the mash is done you pull the entire bag out and let it slowly drain while you heat up to a boil. Probably just set the bag on one of the colanders on top of the pot and let it drain that way. Seems like it would be a lot less labor intensive than sparging through colanders.
Thanks for the suggestion, that worked out well and took roughly a half hour off of my brew day. The brew is a Belgian amber, like Ommegang's Rare Vos, Belgian pilsner and caramunich malt, east kent goldings and US saaz hops, lallemand abbaye yeast.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
That's a beautiful thing.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
I have brewed up another batch of Nova's Ale, it is bubbling away like a madman. The two kegs of a saison are 3 months aged now, they're going to be awesome once carbonated, I think.
Real news, though, is I finally got around to brewing up my latest recipe for strawberry mead. More honey, different kind of yeast.
I may....MAY....have overdone it. Initial gravity: 1.115
I have kegged my new batch of Strawberry mead. It came to 10% ABV, and tastes amazing, though it definitely needs to age. In the background of the sweet flavour is a bit of jet fuel.
My project for next week? Watermelon mead. I'm going to use a bit less honey, and I'm going to carve up a fresh watermelon and blend the innards right into the mix.
You just need to be like the insane people in my homebrew club and buy your own beehives. Free honey! Thousands of $ in equipment and supplies and hours of labor, but 'free' honey!
I have to move all my brewing stuff to the new place soon. I tell you moving a 5 gallon carboy, even though it's empty, is gonna be tough since I am currently suffering from a kidney stone.
I think I want to get some stack-able shelves soon and some ingredients and do another mead this year though.
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
I have brewed up another batch of Nova's Ale, it is bubbling away like a madman. The two kegs of a saison are 3 months aged now, they're going to be awesome once carbonated, I think.
Real news, though, is I finally got around to brewing up my latest recipe for strawberry mead. More honey, different kind of yeast.
I may....MAY....have overdone it. Initial gravity: 1.115
Oh god
Shivahn
I have kegged my new batch of Strawberry mead. It came to 10% ABV, and tastes amazing, though it definitely needs to age. In the background of the sweet flavour is a bit of jet fuel.
My project for next week? Watermelon mead. I'm going to use a bit less honey, and I'm going to carve up a fresh watermelon and blend the innards right into the mix.
Or should I use two watermelons? Hmmmmm.......
Raaad
I've had some mead sitting with strawberries for months, that I have been meaning to rack and add more berries to. Bah. Good to know it works, let me know how the watermelon turns out!
I need that as a sticker on my primary. It's how I feel after sealing up every batch I've ever made, with the exception being my first batch. I was young and naive.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
Ey, I made some Kvass, it might be my first successful homebrew? I've made some other stuff before but it was never great. Sure, I drank it, but I wasn't getting anything that I couldn't just buy. It's fun brewing something, but if the end product is not as good as what I can get in the shop then what's the point?
This kvass is interesting. I drink it, think it's not great either, but I also crave a second glass. So maybe it is great? I'm keen to make another batch, this time properly, I didn't burn my rye bread the first time as the idea was fairly foreign to me and the recipe I was using said "well done". It tastes a bit like a fruit juice, I've added some raisins and lemon. Also, rye bread is really, really good toast, so I ate the rest of the packet pretty quick.
Summer's coming up soon and I think I need a big batch of kvass. This lot was just some small batches with a variety of additional ingredients. I've only tried the "plain" kvass so far, but I also have one that I added some apple juice to (so it's not really kvass anymore). I have a feeling that the apple juice one will not be as nice, but who knows.
The first two that come to my mind are a bit of opposites. The obvious would be a brown ale. However if you want to try something different, I think a pistachio saison could be excellent, if unorthodox.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
I was thinking that same thing. How would it interact with a pepper beer, I wonder?
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
Hey. Haven't posted any updates in a while but I've been trying out Iced Tea.
I think I made my first homebrew that I needed more of straight away. Usually the reason for homebrewing is the creation process and the end result is... ok. I get a kick out of the journey but not so much the destination.
But, I've been bolder with filtering out the yeast. Before I was worried about being wasteful but I've learned that it's better to chuck out more than less.
The ice tea was great. I filtered it twice, left it for the weekend and had a perfectly carbonated drink.
I'm giving kvass another go. This time with homemade rye bread. I was worried that I'd killed my yeast. I had had started them but then I remembered I had another step to go, so they sat in the bowl for a little too long as I finished the final mixing of the ingredients. There was still no bubbles in the airlock last I checked. But the raisins are dancing. So there's still life in the yeast yet.
Decided to go with a nice, neutral brown ale and made pistachio extract to go into it. Though the link said freezing it would cause the oils to freeze on the top, all I got was a sediment on the bottom of the extract. I strained that out with a cheesecloth and added it to the brown during bottling. The pre-bottled beer tasted pretty good but not very pistachio-y. Here's hoping it works after carbonation.
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
Ahoy hoy, all. I'm jumping into cider brewing for my initial foray into this jungle. I was lucky enough to discover a fantastic brewing supply store 10 minutes away from my house, so that makes me happy. It had pectic enzyme, malic acid, safcider yeast, all the cider-specific stuff I was looking for. Starting with store-bought cider (in glass bottles, natch!) and working from there.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Good luck! It was through cider brewing that I discovered that I don't care that much for cider, nor do the people I know.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
Good luck! It was through cider brewing that I discovered that I don't care that much for cider, nor do the people I know.
I am afraid of that, yeah. Even with beers I'm all over the place, greatly liking some and greatly disliking others.
Since you're a critic, I'm curious whether anything made much of a difference, whether alcohol content or tartness or sweetness or time or whatever.
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ApogeeLancks In Every Game EverRegistered Userregular
Mead is another surprisingly easy and tasty option. Much easier than making beer; the only downside is that honey is a lot more expensive than grain/cider.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Everything makes a difference, and I'm not being flippant about that. Everything from the mix of apples you use to the yeast strain changes things. I'd say the greatest factor would be the apple varieties used.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
Everything makes a difference, and I'm not being flippant about that. Everything from the mix of apples you use to the yeast strain changes things. I'd say the greatest factor would be the apple varieties used.
Yeah, my first impression is that store-bought juice is going to be way too smooth and sweet. I've made small amounts of homemade apple cider before, and, freshness aside, this store-bought stuff just doesn't have a lot of tart/bitter notes to work with.
jergarmar on
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Their are varietal apples that have been grown for the express purpose of cider making. I'd recommend a little research before choosing. Or, if your options are limited, dont worry about it and just try something. What I do know through my own research is that you probably don't want to just rely on one kind of apple. Always blend.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
Their are varietal apples that have been grown for the express purpose of cider making. I'd recommend a little research before choosing. Or, if your options are limited, dont worry about it and just try something. What I do know through my own research is that you probably don't want to just rely on one kind of apple. Always blend.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, I've blended my own apple cider in the past for immediate consumption, albeit in small quantities. I have a blend I would like to try, but getting the necessary quantities, the processing, and the necessary pasteurization or camden tablets... it's a lot to take in, on top of the brewing thing which is also new.
So whatever, I'm basically resigned to making stuff that's kind of "meh", until I can find/make some better cider... which might still be "meh", even after all that, ha! If I never make anything worth the effort, I'll transition to another kind of brewed beverage.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
There are some nice books specifically about brewing cider. I'd recommend doing a bit of research. There may be some beginners recipes that will skew towards the taste you're looking for.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
Decided to go with a nice, neutral brown ale and made pistachio extract to go into it. Though the link said freezing it would cause the oils to freeze on the top, all I got was a sediment on the bottom of the extract. I strained that out with a cheesecloth and added it to the brown during bottling. The pre-bottled beer tasted pretty good but not very pistachio-y. Here's hoping it works after carbonation.
Update: the brown ale tastes absolutely nothing like pistachios. But it's still a delicious brown ale, so I'm calling it a win.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
And that's how you do this thing we call brewing.
1. Have idea
2. Try it out
3. Doesn't work, but tastes good anyway
4. Fuck it
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
Have any of you guys tried making a sour/gose? Is it beyond the average homebrewer?
When I was a child, I had a fever... My BoardGameGeek profile
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Have any of you guys tried making a sour/gose? Is it beyond the average homebrewer?
I'd say no, but it can be really hard on plastic equipment like buckets and siphons... they tend to absorb the sourness and pass it on to subsequent non-sour beers you'll make. To be safe I'd pick up an extra bucket and siphon just for sours.
Hi folks. Hope this ok as I've read through the OP and all of the supporting "Getting started" links.
My old man recently retired and has expressed some interest in homebrewing in order to have a hobby beyond working on the house. I think this would be a good father/son activity for us to get into so he's going to provide the space and I'm going to buy all the equipment.
All of the links in the OP are super helpful but the issue I'm coming up against is that none of those sites are canadian so I'm looking at some nasty costs to bring the stuff over the border. I know there are a number of these sites operating out of Canada so I'm curious if a fellow canuck might be able to point me to a good site to help us get going.
Posts
@Nova_C let me know how it turns out. I'm making a strawberry mead right now as well.
Everything fits into the cabinet above the fridge, except for my bottle conditioning boxes which I keep in the bedroom closet. Behind the Little Big Mouth Bubblers I've got a pair of gallon glass jugs if I need to rack to secondary for a longer fermentation. The beer in front is a CDA I brewed last week, I'll be dry hopping it next week with Simcoe and I'll bottle it the following week.
All my gear, laid out before a brewing session. Starting from the left I've got a plastic bin with two six pack holders for bottle conditioning. The plastic helps contain any potential bottle-bomb situations. A little big mouth bubbler - 1.4 gallon glass primary fermenter. A few colanders and strainers for sparging and straining the finished wort. A 16 qt stockpot and a 14 qt mop bucket from Target that I use to collect wort during sparging. A plastic container that holds my malts, hops and other brewing ingredients and a plastic container holding all the little doodads you need, like a bottle capper, auto-siphon, hydrometer, etc. An induction cooktop I bought so that I can do the mash and the boil out on my little apartment balcony to avoid stinking up the joint. A restaurant supply bus tub for sanitation and a gallon pitcher for measuring out water for mashing and sparging. That's it! A gallon all-grain recipe will make me anywhere from 8-10 bottles of finished beer. I try to brew two weeks in a row with a week off, and it makes plenty for me to drink with a few spare bottles here and there to give to friends.
I made this shandy base today. It's a very basic blonde ale, just a pound of pilsner and a half pound of Vienna malts. Hopped with a pinch of Apollo for bittering, Sorachi Ace for flavoring and aroma. Before I bottle I'm going to spike it with a quarter cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice, and I can get local lemons at the farmer's market - one of the perks of living in California.
I heat my sparging water on the stove in a smaller stock pot kept with my other cookware separate from my brewing supplies since I use it all the time for soup. There's only two of us so that big 16 quart pot is only ever used for brewing.
The colanders sit on top of the red bucket, with the larger aluminum colander sitting inside the finer mesh strainer. The bigger colander forms the grain bed, the mesh strainer catches a lot of the particulates. I started out using only the mesh strainer but it tended to clog up on me and wasn't large enough for higher gravity beers with 3-4 pound grain bills. The colanders also fit on top of the stock pot so I can circulate the wort through the grain bed multiple times by going back and forth between bucket and pot. Sparge time varies depending on the beer, if there's rye or wheat in there it can take a while to filter through.
The cooler and bag is a great idea, and a 3 gallon cooler would be perfect but I'd be adding another piece of equipment to the pile.
I think you could just mash in the bag in the pot you're currently using without adding a cooler. Heat the water to temp, put the bag in the pot, mash in the grains, then when the mash is done you pull the entire bag out and let it slowly drain while you heat up to a boil. Probably just set the bag on one of the colanders on top of the pot and let it drain that way. Seems like it would be a lot less labor intensive than sparging through colanders.
Neat.
Well alright!
Thanks for the suggestion, that worked out well and took roughly a half hour off of my brew day. The brew is a Belgian amber, like Ommegang's Rare Vos, Belgian pilsner and caramunich malt, east kent goldings and US saaz hops, lallemand abbaye yeast.
@Shivahn
I have kegged my new batch of Strawberry mead. It came to 10% ABV, and tastes amazing, though it definitely needs to age. In the background of the sweet flavour is a bit of jet fuel.
My project for next week? Watermelon mead. I'm going to use a bit less honey, and I'm going to carve up a fresh watermelon and blend the innards right into the mix.
Or should I use two watermelons? Hmmmmm.......
Yeah, but, vikings, man.
I think I want to get some stack-able shelves soon and some ingredients and do another mead this year though.
Raaad
I've had some mead sitting with strawberries for months, that I have been meaning to rack and add more berries to. Bah. Good to know it works, let me know how the watermelon turns out!
This kvass is interesting. I drink it, think it's not great either, but I also crave a second glass. So maybe it is great? I'm keen to make another batch, this time properly, I didn't burn my rye bread the first time as the idea was fairly foreign to me and the recipe I was using said "well done". It tastes a bit like a fruit juice, I've added some raisins and lemon. Also, rye bread is really, really good toast, so I ate the rest of the packet pretty quick.
Summer's coming up soon and I think I need a big batch of kvass. This lot was just some small batches with a variety of additional ingredients. I've only tried the "plain" kvass so far, but I also have one that I added some apple juice to (so it's not really kvass anymore). I have a feeling that the apple juice one will not be as nice, but who knows.
I think I made my first homebrew that I needed more of straight away. Usually the reason for homebrewing is the creation process and the end result is... ok. I get a kick out of the journey but not so much the destination.
But, I've been bolder with filtering out the yeast. Before I was worried about being wasteful but I've learned that it's better to chuck out more than less.
The ice tea was great. I filtered it twice, left it for the weekend and had a perfectly carbonated drink.
I'm giving kvass another go. This time with homemade rye bread. I was worried that I'd killed my yeast. I had had started them but then I remembered I had another step to go, so they sat in the bowl for a little too long as I finished the final mixing of the ingredients. There was still no bubbles in the airlock last I checked. But the raisins are dancing. So there's still life in the yeast yet.
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
I am afraid of that, yeah. Even with beers I'm all over the place, greatly liking some and greatly disliking others.
Since you're a critic, I'm curious whether anything made much of a difference, whether alcohol content or tartness or sweetness or time or whatever.
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
Yeah, my first impression is that store-bought juice is going to be way too smooth and sweet. I've made small amounts of homemade apple cider before, and, freshness aside, this store-bought stuff just doesn't have a lot of tart/bitter notes to work with.
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, I've blended my own apple cider in the past for immediate consumption, albeit in small quantities. I have a blend I would like to try, but getting the necessary quantities, the processing, and the necessary pasteurization or camden tablets... it's a lot to take in, on top of the brewing thing which is also new.
So whatever, I'm basically resigned to making stuff that's kind of "meh", until I can find/make some better cider... which might still be "meh", even after all that, ha! If I never make anything worth the effort, I'll transition to another kind of brewed beverage.
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
Update: the brown ale tastes absolutely nothing like pistachios. But it's still a delicious brown ale, so I'm calling it a win.
1. Have idea
2. Try it out
3. Doesn't work, but tastes good anyway
4. Fuck it
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
I'd say no, but it can be really hard on plastic equipment like buckets and siphons... they tend to absorb the sourness and pass it on to subsequent non-sour beers you'll make. To be safe I'd pick up an extra bucket and siphon just for sours.
My old man recently retired and has expressed some interest in homebrewing in order to have a hobby beyond working on the house. I think this would be a good father/son activity for us to get into so he's going to provide the space and I'm going to buy all the equipment.
All of the links in the OP are super helpful but the issue I'm coming up against is that none of those sites are canadian so I'm looking at some nasty costs to bring the stuff over the border. I know there are a number of these sites operating out of Canada so I'm curious if a fellow canuck might be able to point me to a good site to help us get going.