Thinking of home brewing

Rykin wrote:

Did a taste test of my various meads and wines currently aging in plastic bottles last night. The plain mead I started the day before Christmas is very nice. This was just some cheap super market clover honey. The cranberry is a bit better than it was, but I think I put too much cranberry stuff in it. The strawberry one is also a bit too strong as well. The same goes for the flavored sugar wines. The blood orange one is a little strong but the cherry lime one is overwhelmingly strong. I think I will order another carboy so I can have four going at a time and do 2 meads and 2 sugar wines to cut the previous ones with.

My very first mead had a single orange in it during primary fermentation and just has a slight hint of orange in the finished product so I need to remember to go easier on the flavorings in the future.

The story of homebrewing in a nutshell. Often the ones we have the most modest expectations of are the ones that turn out best.

As planned I started two more gallons each of mead and sugar wine yesterday. I think I need to see if I can find something to help keep the rubber stoppers in place because one of them keeps popping up on one of the meads.

Rykin wrote:

As planned I started two more gallons each of mead and sugar wine yesterday. I think I need to see if I can find something to help keep the rubber stoppers in place because one of them keeps popping up on one of the meads.

You're using glass carboys? It's really tricky to get those to stay in place if the stopper is wet, and it's always wet since you soak it in sanitizer....

Citizen86 wrote:
Rykin wrote:

As planned I started two more gallons each of mead and sugar wine yesterday. I think I need to see if I can find something to help keep the rubber stoppers in place because one of them keeps popping up on one of the meads.

You're using glass carboys? It's really tricky to get those to stay in place if the stopper is wet, and it's always wet since you soak it in sanitizer....

Never made mead, but the beer guy asks, "Do you airlock those?"

Citizen86 wrote:
Rykin wrote:

As planned I started two more gallons each of mead and sugar wine yesterday. I think I need to see if I can find something to help keep the rubber stoppers in place because one of them keeps popping up on one of the meads.

You're using glass carboys? It's really tricky to get those to stay in place if the stopper is wet, and it's always wet since you soak it in sanitizer....

Yea I usually soak for a bit then place them out on a paper towel to dry. This one was still popping out hours later, but it looked good this morning. Bubbling away through the airlock.

I'm gonna brew a Belgian quad this weekend and I'm excited. It's my favorite style of beer and I've never tried making one before. Here's hoping things work out well!

Nice!!! Belgian styles are my favorite. Not enough made in Oregon.

I also love Belgian-style beers, especially tripels, quads, and Belgian strong darks, such as Brother Thelonious.

Good luck with the brew!

Thanks, guys! The Belgian styles are my favorite too. I've already made both a dubbel and a tripel a couple times each, and a Belgian strong dark, and they've always come out great. The last tripel was especially amazing. A quad is more of a challenge to get right based on the recipes I've been checking out, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.

d4m0 wrote:

Thanks, guys! The Belgian styles are my favorite too. I've already made both a dubbel and a tripel a couple times each, and a Belgian strong dark, and they've always come out great. The last tripel was especially amazing. A quad is more of a challenge to get right based on the recipes I've been checking out, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.

I recommend going simple and using the Westy 12 project recipe off of homebrewtalk.com.

A BIG healthy starter of yeast is key, IMO as well as good quality 180 Candi Syrup. The recipe here from CSI is excellent. Probably have brewed it 4-5 times.

I use the Wyeast yeast nutrients, but same idea as the cervo called for.

bhchrist wrote:
d4m0 wrote:

Thanks, guys! The Belgian styles are my favorite too. I've already made both a dubbel and a tripel a couple times each, and a Belgian strong dark, and they've always come out great. The last tripel was especially amazing. A quad is more of a challenge to get right based on the recipes I've been checking out, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.

I recommend going simple and using the Westy 12 project recipe off of homebrewtalk.com.

A BIG healthy starter of yeast is key, IMO as well as good quality 180 Candi Syrup. The recipe here from CSI is excellent. Probably have brewed it 4-5 times.

I use the Wyeast yeast nutrients, but same idea as the cervo called for.

I've done this exact one a few times, and it's always turned out great. I bump it to three lbs D-180, and maximize its flavor by not adding it to the boil--1 lb at flameout, 1 after 24 hours, 1 toward end of primary. Stepped feeding is pretty typical for high abv stuff like sack mead, and it works great with this. I use WLP 530, but re-dose with WY 3787 for bottling, along with a smaller than usual amount of priming sugar. 3787 ends up chewing through a few more sugars than 530 was able to, so typical priming sugar amounts can make for some very fizzy beer.

conejote wrote:
bhchrist wrote:
d4m0 wrote:

Thanks, guys! The Belgian styles are my favorite too. I've already made both a dubbel and a tripel a couple times each, and a Belgian strong dark, and they've always come out great. The last tripel was especially amazing. A quad is more of a challenge to get right based on the recipes I've been checking out, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.

I recommend going simple and using the Westy 12 project recipe off of homebrewtalk.com.

A BIG healthy starter of yeast is key, IMO as well as good quality 180 Candi Syrup. The recipe here from CSI is excellent. Probably have brewed it 4-5 times.

I use the Wyeast yeast nutrients, but same idea as the cervo called for.

I've done this exact one a few times, and it's always turned out great. I bump it to three lbs D-180, and maximize its flavor by not adding it to the boil--1 lb at flameout, 1 after 24 hours, 1 toward end of primary. Stepped feeding is pretty typical for high abv stuff like sack mead, and it works great with this. I use WLP 530, but re-dose with WY 3787 for bottling, along with a smaller than usual amount of priming sugar. 3787 ends up chewing through a few more sugars than 530 was able to, so typical priming sugar amounts can make for some very fizzy beer.

Good call on feeding in the candi syrup. I THINK I remember that d4m0 has a kegging set up. If not, the above makes sense.

Nice, thanks for the tips! That homebrewtalk recipe is actually one of a couple that I based mine off, so it's actually very similar, and I'm glad to see I found a good one to work from! I picked up three lbs of the D-180 candi syrup, so that is going in for sure. That amount was based off another recipe.

However, on the feeding in of the syrup, on a recent episode of Brulosophy I'm almost positive they experimented with adding sugar during the boil and also afterward, and there was no discernable difference in the beer. Yeah, here it is. That was a Belgian Golden Strong though, so maybe the results would be different with a dark?

I do have a keg system set up now, so I don't have to deal with the bottling. Also, I'm using Imperial Yeast's Monastic for the first time as my yeast strain. Hopefully it will stand up to the wort. My last beer was a tripel that I fermented with one of Imperial's strains and it came out really, really good, and even without a starter brought the FG way down. It ended up being one of the dryest beers I've ever made. They claim 200 billion cells in a package, and in my tiny experience, it had to be at least that much. Here's hoping it works for the quad as well.

Yeah, I've never actually tried it without step feeding. It's just something I got accustomed to doing with high abv batches that take any kind of sugary adjunct. It's a necessity with some meads, but may not make a difference here.

I do the same with my Westmalle Tripel clone, and I'm super happy with both. But, now I'm going to have to try them with a single boil addition. And drink several of each for research purposes.

The brewing ended up going well! I had fewer dumb mistakes than usual, so that was good.

My only worry was with the yeast, which actually could have been helped by having a starter. It took forever to start! I saw no action after 24 hours and thought man, these little guys might be dead. The problem really was that I ordered the yeast online and it came in the mail, but even with a cool-pack and freeze bags, with this insane heat wave we've been having the yeast bag was literally warm to the touch by the time it was delivered and I took it out of the box.

Luckily after about 30 hours, I started to see some small bubbles forming, and by the next morning, it was going nice and strong. Hopefully it gets to the finish line!

I'm taking the plunge into home brewing this weekend. I got a Grainfather last Christmas and have slowly been picking up additional supplies since. I also picked up a Catalyst fermenter. Hit up the local brew store last weekend and got grains, hops, and yeast so I think I'm all set.

Figured I'd start off with something easy (I hope) so I'm just doing an Amber ale. It's like a 100 degrees in our garage so I was going to do the brew in our kitchen. The wife isn't thrilled about that but she'll be gone all day, so hopefully the smell doesn't linger too long. Can't wait for Saturday!

Good luck Vega! Amber ale should be fairly simple and easy to start with. My first one was a coffee stout from a kit.

It's the same with my wife - I only brew on the occasional Saturday when she has to work

Good luck, Vega! Don't stress out when things go wrong (they will, they always do). Just roll with it and realize you will produce something that tastes pretty darn good.

Man that was a lot of f*ckin' fun. So I started at 9:30 am and finished around 5:30 pm (that includes clean up). I see why everyone refers to it as "brew day".

So, everything mostly went okay. The mash was super thick (which the creator of the recipe I used did warn about) but it meant the sparging took a long time. By the time I was done the Grainfather had already gotten to a boil temp (which I don't think was a bad thing). I'd done a lot of reading about the Grainfather so to avoid any issues with clogged filters or heat element tripping I used a hop spider.

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/download/KcLAsPN)

When it came time to do the transfer to the fermenter I had the bright idea to use a submersible pump in an ice bath cooler instead of connecting the Grainfather's conical cooler to a normal water source. Our kitchen faucet isn't standard and if I eventually brew in the garage the outside hoses are really far away.

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/download/4ooSdnI)

I still think it's a good idea, but the pump I have is just too under powered. At first I had the "hot hose" re-cycling back into the cooler but I eventually found that was a bad idea as the water coming out was just too hot. The ice melted and the water temp just rose too much to be effective. As you can see in the picture I finally moved the "hot hose" to dump into a jug and just kept the water to use later for cleaning. But the bigger issue was the under powered pump and that I had to slow the Grainfather's output to a slow trickle for it to cool the wort. The transfer took well over an hour.. maybe two. The hose going into the fermenter felt cool to the touch, but once the wort reached the thermostrip I saw it was going in around 82-84 degrees. I definitely need to get a better pump for the next time.

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/download/a4M2Xjc)

Even with using the hop spider I was surprised at the amount of trub that made it into the fermenter. It's looking like I might have to remove and replace the trub collection jar a few times to get it all out, but I'll wait until after fermentation and it's compacted a bit.

Now here's where I think made the biggest mistake. Since I felt the wort was too hot to pitch the yeast, I figured I'd go ahead and move the fermenter down to it's intended location in the basement where it's much cooler anyway. Being new to this, 5 gallons of liquid is quite a bit heavier than expected. I took it slow, made it down the 20 or so steps and into the storage room just fine. On the last step before setting it down, it sloshed around... a lot. I didn't anticipate the chance the wort might touch the underside of the top lid (it did) and I think that might be the one place on the fermenter I didn't Starsan today. Wah, wah.. Guess we'll see what happens.

I let it sit in the basement for a couple hours and eventually pitched the yeast when it hit 74-76 degrees. That may have been too soon but I'll admit, good or bad, I just wanted to get it done.

So, now 5 or so hours later, I can tell by the liquid in the airlock there is pressure inside and it bubbles every few minutes, but there's no real visible activity going on. I can see at the bottom that a lot of the "white" stuff, yeast or it's nutrients or whatever, has mixed in with the trub. No idea if that prevents the yeast from activating or if it's normal. Guess I'll just see what it's doing tomorrow.

So, here's what I was talking about with the "white" stuff mixing in with the trub at the bottom.

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/download/AH1krtY)

But then while I was watching it, this thing came floating by in the middle of the wort.

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/download/P0HjkZu)

I'm assuming a clump of yeast. I debated whether to get the paddle, spray it with Starsan, and give everything a good stir, but in the end I just left it. Don't want to potentially contaminate it anymore than I might have already.

Vega wrote:

So, here's what I was talking about with the "white" stuff mixing in with the trub at the bottom.

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/download/AH1krtY)

But then while I was watching it, this thing came floating by in the middle of the wort.

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/download/P0HjkZu)

I'm assuming a clump of yeast. I debated whether to get the paddle, spray it with Starsan, and give everything a good stir, but in the end I just left it. Don't want to potentially contaminate it anymore than I might have already.

Or just a clump of protein from the cold break. I wouldn't worry about it just yet. If I'm reading this right, you attempted to combine cooling the wort and transferring it into a single step, so there was no cold break before transfer.

If you can use the GF chiller, that's the best way to go. I have a non-standard sink also, but fortunately running a hose up from the basement is no problem. I put quick release connectors on the chiller and the hose. Recirculating the wort back into the GF with room temp water for coolant brings it down pretty quickly, and the trub gets mostly caught by the filter when you then pump it out to a fermenter. Transfer usually takes 5-10 minutes, depending on how much stuff has built up on the filter.

I checked it this morning and it's finally doing something. Not quite the "vigorous" fermenting I was expecting, but it's something. There's a light krausen forming now and the airlock is bubbling once every 4 or 5 seconds. I did put some fermcap drops in before I pitched because I didn't want to deal with a blow out. Either it's doing its job or I didn't have anything to worry about.

Forgot to mention, I did remember to take the gravity during that long extended transfer process. I originally bought a refractometer so I wouldn't have to waste wort, but then later figured it wouldn't hurt to have a hydrometer as well. So, I checked with both. The hydrometer gave me 1.060 and the refractometer gave me 1.065/16 Brix. Though I found the hydrometer hard to read, mostly because the flask is plastic and a little cloudy, so it may have been 1.065. The recipe said it should be 1.065 so I'll just go with that.

conejote wrote:

If I'm reading this right, you attempted to combine cooling the wort and transferring it into a single step, so there was no cold break before transfer.

If you can use the GF chiller, that's the best way to go. I have a non-standard sink also, but fortunately running a hose up from the basement is no problem. I put quick release connectors on the chiller and the hose. Recirculating the wort back into the GF with room temp water for coolant brings it down pretty quickly, and the trub gets mostly caught by the filter when you then pump it out to a fermenter. Transfer usually takes 5-10 minutes, depending on how much stuff has built up on the filter.

Yes, I thought the use of the GF chiller was intended to be a single step. Hot wort goes in, gets chilled to pitching temperature, and then directly into the fermenter.

So, are you saying you run it through the chiller and go back into the GF until you're at your desired temp and then pump to the fermenter? How long does the cooling take when recirculating back in the GF? I thought about doing that, but the pump for the cold water hose was so weak it would have taken forever since the GF itself was so hot from the boil. I'm going to get a better pump for the cold water so maybe that will be an option next time. Between that and the lesson learned not to recycle the hot water into the cold bath will help I think.

Vega wrote:
conejote wrote:

If I'm reading this right, you attempted to combine cooling the wort and transferring it into a single step, so there was no cold break before transfer.

If you can use the GF chiller, that's the best way to go. I have a non-standard sink also, but fortunately running a hose up from the basement is no problem. I put quick release connectors on the chiller and the hose. Recirculating the wort back into the GF with room temp water for coolant brings it down pretty quickly, and the trub gets mostly caught by the filter when you then pump it out to a fermenter. Transfer usually takes 5-10 minutes, depending on how much stuff has built up on the filter.

Yes, I thought the use of the GF chiller was intended to be a single step. Hot wort goes in, gets chilled to pitching temperature, and then directly into the fermenter.

So, are you saying you run it through the chiller and go back into the GF until you're at your desired temp and then pump to the fermenter? How long does the cooling take when recirculating back in the GF? I thought about doing that, but the pump for the cold water hose was so weak it would have taken forever since the GF itself was so hot from the boil. I'm going to get a better pump for the cold water so maybe that will be an option next time. Between that and the lesson learned not to recycle the hot water into the cold bath will help I think.

Yes, exactly. You just hook up the chiller to the GF inlet, and run the outflow tube right back into the GF, then turn on the pump to get it circulating. For cooling, you do need to hook the blue/cool line to a water inlet, and the red/hot line goes out to wherever. You can run it into a bucket if you want to conserve water for cleaning, etc., but I usually just run it down the sink. It's never made a perceptible dent in my water bill. The GF temperature probe will tell you when it's ready, usually 20-30 minutes depending on the ground water temperature. When it's cool enough, just move the outflow tube over to the fermenter, and it will pump right out. No need for an external pump at all.

There are systems that transfer and chill in one step. I used to use a three-tier propane setup with a plate chiller that did just that.

It's a little more than 24 hours after pitching and the krausen has now spread over the entire surface. The airlock is bubbling about once every second so I guess things are in full swing now.

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/download/XLytKzQ)

So, I think everything is good. I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed about the possible contamination from the slosh onto the underside of the lid. Are there any tell tale signs of an infected batch? Everything I read says it can produce an "off" flavor, but I haven't seen any real description of exactly what it is. I've had the unfortunate chance to taste a couple different wines that had been corked. I can see the difficulty in describing exactly what it is if you haven't tasted it yourself. For the wine I can say it just had this odd musty, dankness to it. Is beer the same or is there some other component? Extra bitterness when there shouldn't be?

possible contamination from the slosh onto the underside of the lid.

I think you're going to have to try a lot harder than that to screw up a batch of beer. I've done worse than that plenty of times and never had any issues. I haven't ever had an infected batch, but I suspect it will be pretty obvious if that ever happens.

The only time I have ever seen a batch go bad was when someone absent-mindedly stuck their entire hand into the beer after cooling. Not sure what they were thinking, but definitely had to toss that batch after the infection started.

Vega, it's been great reading about your brewing trials. I know exactly how you're feeling! This learning process is one of those fun parts of brewing. Over time you learn things, you say to yourself, "god damn that was a stupid thing to do" about a million times, and you make better and better beer as you go.

I agree with fleabagmatt - I've definitely done worse things with my brews and haven't had any problems with contamination. My first brew took about as long as yours to cool down and get into the fermenter and it still turned out pretty well.

Thanks guys, I do feel better about it now. Everything I read and all the videos I watched there was so much emphasis on sanitation it had me paranoid that just breathing on the wort would be disastrous.

I guess I should have known better having toured Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco and finding out that their Steam beer used to be fermented in the open air on the rooftop of the brewery. Just sitting out there for bugs to fly into or birds to poop in. They still ferment in large open containers, but now it's indoors and in a positive pressure room.

Vega wrote:

Thanks guys, I do feel better about it now. Everything I read and all the videos I watched there was so much emphasis on sanitation it had me paranoid that just breathing on the wort would be disastrous.

Yep, so the thing is there's yeast everywhere. And bacteria. Some of it is helpful when fermenting beer, a lot of it may not give you the taste you're going for. The thing is we can't prevent stuff from getting into the wort, that's why we try to reduce it as much as possible, and to pitch a lot of the yeast we want in order for that to take over and do it's job before anything else.

So yeah, it's a good idea to get sanitizer on anything that's going to touch or even might touch your wort. The entire fermenter is a good idea, that krausen can get real high. I brewed a barley wine a month or two ago where I had put about 5.5 gallons into a 7 gallon fermenter. Generally there's no issue. Well that one blew the top off and foamed out for a good 12 hours. There's always a real chance it will touch the top of the fermenter.

But no worries, active fermentation is happening, so you're almost there

edit: Also, I haven't commented on your setup yet, but Grainfather and Conical fermenter? You went all in, kudos! That's a nice setup.