Thinking of home brewing

ringsnort wrote:

It's late and reading six pages of this undoubtedly excellent thread is just not happening tonight. However, I am passionate about this subject so I'll take a risk and simply say...

The all powerful, all important, and singularly most critical component of all home brewing is not...

The grains you use...

The addition of specialty malts or extracts...

The kind of water used...

The hops selected...

The final temperature of your wort...

The variety of yeast...

Your preferred bottling and capping method...

No, the absolute most important, all critical, component of good home brewing is an obsessive attention to cleanliness. If the concept of "cross contamination" isn't in your vocabulary, you are unlikely to ever brew quality beer. Period.

Best advice so far in this thread.

As an experiment, I set aside a few bottles of each of the batches I brewed last year. I pulled them out and cracked them open last night.

My Gutter Drip Stout (from February of last year) actually aged rather nicely, the off taste that had plagued it is completely gone now. I'm looking forward to drinking the rest of that six pack.

My Finger In Your IPA (from March of last year) and Spoonbender Amber Ale (May of last year), unfortunately, did not age so well. They were virtually undrinkable, and I'll likely have to dump those six packs.

I bought a medium sized chest freezer yesterday. Once we get settled in our new place, it's time to pick up a temperature controller and tackle lagering. I'm hoping to get a marzen ready in time for Oktoberfest.

Teneman wrote:

As an experiment, I set aside a few bottles of each of the batches I brewed last year. I pulled them out and cracked them open last night.

My Gutter Drip Stout (from February of last year) actually aged rather nicely, the off taste that had plagued it is completely gone now. I'm looking forward to drinking the rest of that six pack.

My Finger In Your IPA (from March of last year) and Spoonbender Amber Ale (May of last year), unfortunately, did not age so well. They were virtually undrinkable, and I'll likely have to dump those six packs.

Did you brew either of these beers specifically with long ageing / shelf life in mind? The beers I've typically brewed are usually best enjoyed within a few months and completely unsuitable for months on the shelf. Anyway, I would have thought your IPA would have produced the best long term results. This beer thing; it can be quite funny stuff.

ringsnort wrote:
Teneman wrote:

As an experiment, I set aside a few bottles of each of the batches I brewed last year. I pulled them out and cracked them open last night.

My Gutter Drip Stout (from February of last year) actually aged rather nicely, the off taste that had plagued it is completely gone now. I'm looking forward to drinking the rest of that six pack.

My Finger In Your IPA (from March of last year) and Spoonbender Amber Ale (May of last year), unfortunately, did not age so well. They were virtually undrinkable, and I'll likely have to dump those six packs.

Did you brew either of these beers specifically with long ageing / shelf life in mind? The beers I've typically brewed are usually best enjoyed within a few months and completely unsuitable for months on the shelf. Anyway, I would have thought your IPA would have produced the best long term results. This beer thing; it can be quite funny stuff.

Which of the beers had the highest ABV? They certainly take longer to condition. The barleywine and Russian imperial stout my husband made me conditioned for 2 years and about 10 months, respectively, and they're great. Also, at what temperature were they stored?

Anyone running an outdoor burner on natural gas?

We're in the process of building a deck so we'll also be running a natural gas line out of the house for the grill. I was thinking of teeing the line at the grill and converting my bayou classic to NG but I'm not sure if there will be enough pressure in the line.

Hey! I got laid off and ended up with a month between the end of my old job and the start of my new one. I did many things during my time off, including three brew days.
We're drinking a summer wheat ale right now. It's very light and drinkable which is perfect for relaxing after these long hot summer days.
I have a big IPA in the secondary fermenter now. I dry-hopped with Citra, and have high hopes for it when it's ready in a week or two.
I also have a Czech Pilsner fermenting at a comfy 48 degrees right now. Once it's close to done with primary fermentation I'll dry hop it with a bit more Saaz, give it a diacetyl rest, and then lager it for a few weeks. I'm using this as a test run for what will be a late-for-season Oktoberfest which I'll start once the pilsner is in the keg.
What's everyone else brewing this summer?

Phishposer wrote:

Hey! I got laid off and ended up with a month between the end of my old job and the start of my new one. I did many things during my time off, including three brew days.
We're drinking a summer wheat ale right now. It's very light and drinkable which is perfect for relaxing after these long hot summer days.
I have a big IPA in the secondary fermenter now. I dry-hopped with Citra, and have high hopes for it when it's ready in a week or two.
I also have a Czech Pilsner fermenting at a comfy 48 degrees right now. Once it's close to done with primary fermentation I'll dry hop it with a bit more Saaz, give it a diacetyl rest, and then lager it for a few weeks. I'm using this as a test run for what will be a late-for-season Oktoberfest which I'll start once the pilsner is in the keg.
What's everyone else brewing this summer?

Phish: You doing all grain, or extracts? I'm curious what your experience with the wheat ale was. It's a style I haven't gotten around to brewing up yet.

On a side note, anyone seen Northern Brewer's new(ish) wide-mouth carboys? I'm pretty tempted to order one or two, even if the old fashion glass ones I have work perfectly fine.

Ive been brewing all-grain. The grain bill for the wheat ale was about 60/40 malt/wheat. I just mashed the wheat with the two-row base malt. There wasn't really anything different from a normal brew other than a bunch of extra protein to skim out during the boil. It's not my favorite, but it's been a huge hit with guests. I'm probably going to have to brew it regularly to keep up with demand.

I'm nearing the end of a couple of recent batches, I need to get something going again. I made a honey blonde that I was super pleased with. It was the first beer I've made that I have been excited to share with others. I'm definitely going to have another go with that recipe. I also did an attempted clone of Fremont Brewing's Summer Ale. It wasn't a perfect clone, but holy cow was it good. Light and refreshing.

I've got 5 gallons of California Common cold crashing in the fridge that I need to get into bottles this week. I look forward to seeing how this one turns out. I'm not sure what will be next to try, something simple is the plan. I'm thinking maybe just some Maris Otter and Kent Goldings hops, a nice basic british pale.

Lucky Wilbury wrote:

I've done a few homebrews myself and I decided to get back into it and dug out all my old brewing gear from my parents place. All is well except all my old 22 oz bottles were tossed. Because of that and this thread, I'm contemplating the idea of ditching the bottles entirely for a keg system, but the only problem is I'm having a difficult time nailing down all the things i would need and how much all those parts would cost (my google-fu is weak; my searches found cost estimates that ranged from dirt cheap to prohibitively expensive).

Arise four years ago me! Still never got around to doing the kegging and, due to bouncing around the East Coast the last couple years, haven't had time/space to brew since 2010. I've finally settled down (in a spacious house with a lovely woman who will allow me to brew beer) and will be looking at buying the kegging equipment in the next week or so. The only downside is that I had given away all my brewing equipment a few years ago so I'll have to essentially start from scratch.

Happy Brew Year!

I haven't seen one of the multiple homebrewing threads pop up in quite a while, is anybody still makin' beer? This past fall I happened into a couple big brewing related upgrades. I picked up some kegging equipment from craigslist and the guy ended up sending me home with way more than was listed. I picked up three kegs, a 20# CO2 bottle (full), a glass carboy, a copper immersion chiller. a couple boxes full of bottles, a counterflow bottle filler and a water filtration system. He was only advertising the kegs, carboy and a CO2 bottle (which I assumed was a 5# bottle.) The same week I found a large mini fridge on craigslist for $35 so I snatched that up too. I built a temperature controller for it and added a reptile heating cable inside so I can control the temp more closely. I still need to pick up a used fridge to convert to a kegerator, but for now I have the CO2 bottle and 1 keg in my current fridge (too small for kegerator duties) set up with a picnic tap. I have an IPA in there on tap currently, my first try dry hopping in the keg.

Here's my fermentation chamber with a batch of Dead Guy Ale clone bubbling away. The growler to the side contains StarSan for the blowoff tube and is bubbling over.
IMAGE(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b39/atomic_dog/E63B9306-380C-4705-AE73-167403763180_zpsdf3rnby2.jpg)

What have you goodjers been brewing?

Im just getting back into home brewing, which is to say I'm on my 3rd batch ever after doing 2 about 5 years ago. I got an Austin Homebrew Supply kit, which is to say I got a Brewer's Best kit with some nice stuff added on like a copper wort chiller, a huge 32oz pot and a 6 gallon glass carboy.

To start out with I got a simple Brewer's Best English Pale Ale kit. Brew day seemed to go great. I coooked the full 5 gallons in that enormous pot, cooled it down with the chiller, pitched the yeast and stored it away. That was Sunday. It's still not appearing to ferment I opened up the bucket today to have a look. There's some sediment up along the edges of the bucket near the surface and just a little foam on top. It doesnt seem like the yeast is active at all.

I gave it a good stir and wrapped it up in a blanket to try and keep it a little bit warmer. It's hovering in the low 60s in the house and this is in a closet with exposure to an exterior wall (its between 35-50 outside)

I can think of one thing I did wrong. I didn't aggressively aerate the wort before sealing it up, to mix the yeast in and give it lots of O2. Otherwise I think it just has to be dead yeast or its just a little too cold. I see estimations between 55 and 65 as to where yeast goes inactive. If its still doing nothing at all tomorrow night, I need to try something new.

Can I just throw new yeast in? Its the same company, but from a different kit, maybe I'll have better luck.

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Separately, I'm having trouble taking hydrometer readings. I tried to take one straight from the pot with the wort after it came down to pitching temp. There was too much foam. My best estimate is that it started at about 1.055 (the recipe kit estimated the high end of the range I'd get would be 1.045, so my batch might just be too concentrated. I probably should have added more water or something). I got a beer thief today and tried to take a reading from the bucket. It doesnt seem like I can get enough in the thief to take a good reading and there's still too much foam to actually see where the line is. Any tips?

What kind of yeast did you pitch? Was it just a dry yeast pack, or one of the liquid kind? Did get it started separately, or just toss it in? The combination of low temps (assuming this is ale yeast) and low oxygen would certainly stymie the fermentation. Pitching more yeast is definitely an option, and won't hurt anything. The only difference would be using a different strain of yeast resulting in a different flavor profile.

For hydrometer readings, I always just used a sanitized baster to transfer some wort/beer to the "test tube" thing (probably has a real name). It might take a more than a single baster-full, but double dipping isn't going to hurt as long as you've got everything sanitized.

I ended up opening up the bucket to pitch a new batch of yeast. (Both the original yeast and this one are dry yeast. The recipe instructions say in all-caps not to re-hydrate them. I've seen folks online saying that I should ignore that and re-hydrate, now that it's too late) There was still not much foam and a reading from the hydrometer was still hard to get, but it showed that fermentation HAD occurred, even though it doesn't look like it and no airlock action had ever taken place. I went from 1.055 OG to 1.01 which is about where the yeast's website says this yeast will take it.

To me this suggests that the bucket is not air-tight, though I did end up making about 4 gallons instead of 5 so maybe there was just so much head room that the pressure never increased significantly enough to burp the airlock. I am not hopeful that this will be very tasty beer I'll give it a week or so to settle and bottle it. I could throw it in the carboy I got but I'm not sure if that would serve a useful purpose.

I found this image after a bit of searching, if you have the same one, it looks like Nottingham is the yeast they provide. If that's the case then low 60s should be the perfect temp.

IMAGE(http://www.homebrewit.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/600x/040ec09b1e35df139433887a97daa66f/1/0/1006.jpg)

I wouldn't worry about what the beer looks like just yet, go by hydrometer readings. I haven't used a beer thief before, but generally what I do is sanitize a glass measuring cup and dip out enough liquid to fill my graduated cylinder most of the way to the top. I take it over the sink before I add the hydrometer, because I intentionally put too much in so that it overflows a bit and takes most of the bubbles with it.

Sometimes I sanitize the graduated cylinder and the hydrometer so I can pour the beer back into the bucket to not waste it, but most often I just pour it into a glass and drink it to see how the flavor is coming along. It takes about a cup of liquid at a time for my cylinder and I usually only test twice to be sure the gravity isn't dropping any more, so I'm out 16 oz at most.

polypusher wrote:

To me this suggests that the bucket is not air-tight

I've had batches do that, and yes it's usually due to a not-great seal on the bucket. Makes no difference in the end, though, the beer will be the same. It sure sounds to me like you've got a nice English Pale in the making.

Give it some time to finish fermenting, bottle it, and after a couple weeks put one bottle in the fridge to test. If something tastes "off" keep the rest of the bottles out at warm room temperature for 2 or 3 more weeks, then test another bottle. You'd be surprised at how much a little extra time can help. (Though I bet yours tastes just fine without the extra wait!)

I made 3 gallons of hard cider over the summer. I followed this site: http://www.howtomakehardcider.com/ for my "how to." I used 3 1 gallon jugs of organic apple juice I found at my local Molly Stones. I bottled it in 1 pint swing-top bottles. I only got 21 of them, thanks to losses due to racking.

The secondary fermentation worked nicely, giving me a nice fine fizz. The taste profile was a little on the dry side for my taste - it tasted very similar to Dry Blackthorne. As I'm more of an Angry Orchid guy, I'll add more Stevia and apple concentrate with my next batch.

If I can find a good kit for British Bitter, I may give that a go this year.

I purchased a starter kit on Sunday and brewed my first batch ever. It was an IPA recipe from the local brew shop. The starter kit came with "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" which I've been reading through.

It seems like this first batch was already what might be considered an "intermediate" brew, it came with grains that I steeped (although the pot did come to a boil ), though the majority of the beer is dry malt extract. Hoping the DME masks any bitter that came from boiling the grains.

As I read I keep seeing small errors I made as well. Did not take gravity reading pre-boil, although post-boil was at 1.070, which is apparently right where an IPA should be at. I also did not get the temperature though, so although it was room temperature, I'm hoping it was accurate.

Also did not aerate wort before pitching yeast. Fortunately it appears to be fermenting just fine. I did it Sunday night, and Monday there was bubbling, yesterday seems like it was pretty active at 1-2 bubbles per second. Today it's 1 bubble every 2 to 3 seconds, so still working. Smells great too

Overall no idea how this is going to turn out, but I'm so excited about it! Don't really expect my first batch to be amazing, but if it turns out great I'll be ecstatic. Already thinking about what to brew next. And since I got a 6 or 7 gallon fermenting plastic container and a 5 gallon carboy, I can move this first batch into second fermentation and brew a second batch as soon as this weekend! ohboyohboyohboyohboy.

I'm actually considering whether this IPA requires a second fermentation. I did unfortunately get a bunch of the hop pellet gunk into the bucket, so a second fermentation for a week might be a good idea. Just can't wait to try it though. I could do some dry hopping in the second fermentation....

The neat thing about brewing beer is that (almost) no matter how hard you try to screw it up, you'll still end up with beer. Making mistakes is part of the process.

If you want to brew right away, I'd say go ahead and transfer to the carboy so you can use the bucket again, otherwise just leave it where it is. I've only used a secondary fermenter once, and that was for an Imperial Stout that I aged for three months. I've had beer sit in the main fermenter for up to a month with no problems. All that hop gunk will sink to the bottom just fine.

I look forward to hearing how it turns out!

So after a good deal came up, I couldn't resist the opportunity to downsize my brewing gear. I hate propane, and have wanted to go electric so I've been researching the Grainfather. Just arrived at my house today, can't wait!

Sold almost all of my bits and pieces of gear that I've cobbled together over the last 8 years, and now have a self contained brewing system.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUuzIoPWIAAaxR-.jpg)

El-Producto wrote:

*The Grainfather stuff*

o_O. I'm going to have to keep that in mind for if I start homebrewing. Can't do it until I make a move at some point a year or two from now. That seems like a great way to go for me if I ever want to get into homebrewing seriously given I'll have a small living situation.

Cool! I love the idea of those all-in-one brewing systems, I may consider moving in that direction one day.

I picked up a side by side fridge last week for conversion to a kegerator. Hopefully over the next few weeks I'll have the thing up and running with two taps of beer to choose from. It will have a third tap as well, but that will be sparkling water for my wife.

That thing looks amazing. I wish I had ever heard of anything like that 4 weeks ago! (not sure if I could sneak it past my wife though )

My current beer will be 2 weeks old on Sunday (2 weeks from going into the fermenter) Fermentation seemed to be complete within 5 days. I'm considering either just going ahead and bottling it or sticking it in the nice glass carboy I got with my kit so that I can start my stout. What do you guys think? Too soon?

Edit: based on this http://howtobrew.com/book/section-1/... I should probably just bottle or leave it for now. I have 4 gallons instead of 5 due to miscalculations so there would be a lot of extra air in the secondary.

Man, that Grain father looks amazing! You'll have to let us know how it works out

So I went the the LHBS today and got ingredients for a Stone Arrogant Bastard clone. Going to rack last week's IPA over to the carboy, throw 2oz of hops in for some dry hopping, and start on the Stone brew.

Going to have a lot of beer in a few weeks. I'm not complaining

Polypusher, the only thing that might make me pause on bottling your beer right now is the fact that you added a second pack of yeast. I'm not sure how that would affect things, I suspect you'd be fine, though. What it really comes down to is how patient you can/want to be. An extra week or two for the beer to do its thing is rarely a bad idea. Maybe sanitize a shot glass and take a small sample to see how it tastes? If it tastes "off" in some way, let it sit.

Citizen86, what is your go-to store for homebrew stuff? My parents live down in Rochester and I think my Dad started going to a shop there in Olympia (or maybe it's in Lacey, not sure) for his brewing supplies.

El-Producto wrote:

So after a good deal came up, I couldn't resist the opportunity to downsize my brewing gear. I hate propane, and have wanted to go electric so I've been researching the Grainfather. Just arrived at my house today, can't wait!

Sold almost all of my bits and pieces of gear that I've cobbled together over the last 8 years, and now have a self contained brewing system.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUuzIoPWIAAaxR-.jpg)

Oh, man...I really like that. I've been scaling back my brewing hobby gradually. I got rid of this a couple of years ago, because I just wasn't producing enough volume to justify it anymore:

IMAGE(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d133/Salvaje1/fridge.jpg)

Now, I think I'm ready to get rid of my big-ass brewing system and go with something that's smaller and friendlier to indoor usage (and wintertime brewing!). A brewing setup that requires a ladder just doesn't fit my interests anymore.

IMAGE(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d133/Salvaje1/20151114_115555_zpsprhv4em8.jpg)

That Grainfather system looks just about perfect.

fleabagmatt wrote:

Citizen86, what is your go-to store for homebrew stuff? My parents live down in Rochester and I think my Dad started going to a shop there in Olympia (or maybe it's in Lacey, not sure) for his brewing supplies.

I got my starter kit which was pretty decent and the last two recipes at Rocky Top, in West Olympia. Also visited Cascadia in downtown Olympia, that's a pretty nice spot, the owner has beer on tap as well as supplies.

I haven't been to any HBS in Lacey

Ah, Rocky Top is the place he's been going. I went with him once, bought a copy of Designing Great Beers from them.