The Homebrew Beer Thread

[scootertig]

I've got a side-by-side yeast comparison going right now, too, with the Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager) and the Octoberfest Blend (2633). 10 gal batch, split to 5 and 5 with each yeast. Early results are interesting, as I think I like the Octoberfest blend more, but it's going to lager for another 11 weeks...

Do you use mostly dry yeast?


aaron

 

[ctenidae]

I've got a side-by-side yeast comparison going right now, too, with the Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager) and the Octoberfest Blend (2633). 10 gal batch, split to 5 and 5 with each yeast. Early results are interesting, as I think I like the Octoberfest blend more, but it's going to lager for another 11 weeks...

Do you use mostly dry yeast?


aaron

I've used liquid yeast a couple of times, but not enough to decide if I like it better or not. Really, the only reason I use mostly dry is that I order my supplies from beer-wine.com, and though they're usually very quick on delivery, you never know, and I'd hate for a shipment to get held up a week or something in either the middle of summer or the middle of winter, and have the yeast go bad.

 

[scootertig]

I've used liquid yeast a couple of times, but not enough to decide if I like it better or not. Really, the only reason I use mostly dry is that I order my supplies from beer-wine.com, and though they're usually very quick on delivery, you never know, and I'd hate for a shipment to get held up a week or something in either the middle of summer or the middle of winter, and have the yeast go bad.

True. I'm lucky to have a local shop that stocks fresh liquid yeast, so that's pretty much all I use (and I re-use yeast, when I can). I brewed a kolsch yesterday, and should be gearing up for an altbier in the next week or two... Gotta have those German-style beers ready for Oktoberfest, you know!


aaron

 

[ctenidae]

I'm just now getting my bottle supply up to levels where I can keep two beers in rotation. Next benchmark is having bottles enough for some longer term cellaring.

Mmmm, Oktoberfest...

 

[jaja111]

I'm just now getting my bottle supply up to levels where I can keep two beers in rotation. Next benchmark is having bottles enough for some longer term cellaring.

Mmmm, Oktoberfest...

One word for ya - kegging.

I fell into a stale period just not having the time or energy to bottle, but still wanted to brew badly. 4 Corny kegs, a regulator, and a CO2 tank saved my hobby. I should have done this in the first place. And with kegs, more time is free for just brewing.... time for some crazy shit:

Keg1: Peach Pale Ale (6lbs of peaches secondaried in a heavy Cascaded IPA..... tastes damn good - a winner)
Keg2: Sweet Cocoa Stout (learned that just a few heaping tablespoons of 65% cocoa powder in the boil is a winner)
Secondary: Smoked Pale (trying out 2lb addition of smoked malt to a Pale)
Primary1: Basil Beer (so what will handfuls of sweet basil added to the last 10mins of the boil taste like?)
Primary2: Who knows, maybe this weekend..... since I'm not washing, sanitizing, filling, and capping any bottles!

Do it - Keg. I don't even have a fridge yet, just a cold basement for now and its still worth it.

 

[ctenidae]

One word for ya - kegging.

Do it - Keg. I don't even have a fridge yet, just a cold basement for now and its still worth it.

Funny you should say that- just this weekend, I bought a whole Tap-A-Brew system, complete with 4 5-liter minikegs (like Heineken comes in, sort of). Uses 2 8 gram CO2 cartridges. And, today I got my ingredients in for a pilsner.

Life is good.

 

[tarponhead]

ok, Saturday is brew day again.

On order is a pils for the first go-around. I got the Victory Prima Pils recipe from Zymergy. Love that beer. Then brew #2 is my own tried and tested Octoberfest recipe. Last lager-fest of the season before I have to shut down the chest freezer.

I don't brew as often now so when I do it's double batches. Once I did a triple batch and I will do it again but that was a lonnggggg day (7AM till near midnight)

I brew whole grain, thats why it takes so long. But I like doing it, and when I buy grain in bulk (currently got 150 lbs in the basement) my costs for a 5 gal batch is under $15 (yeast/hops included).

I'll probably get one more brew session in before I shut down for winter (who can make beer when we got to ski?). That will be my favorate style - weizenbock - and probably an american pale ale or rightously hopped IPA.

 

[ctenidae]

Funny you should say that- just this weekend, I bought a whole Tap-A-Brew system, complete with 4 5-liter minikegs (like Heineken comes in, sort of). Uses 2 8 gram CO2 cartridges. And, today I got my ingredients in for a pilsner.

Life is good.

So, since I'm an idiot, life isn't as good as I'd hoped. After brewing the Pilsner, I went to prepare the yeast for pitching, and realized I forgot to order it. So, what to do? I put in an order, and put the wort into the fermenter, hoping it would hold for a couple of days waiting for the yeast to come in. I kept checking on teh fermentation lock, adn it wasn't bubbling, so I figured I might be safe. Got the yeast yesterday, and when I got home I popped the top off the fermenter, and lo and behold, it was going to town in there. Full foam head, and a powerful bitter smell. Apparently I didn't have the lid as tight as I should have on the bucket. I put the lid back on tight, and the lock started bubbling like mad.

So, I'll let it run its course, and maybe I'll have a geueze in the end. Probably won't bottle the whole batch, since it's just not worth the effort and space to have so many bottles of a beer style I don't much like, and will probably taste like the ass end of a dead camel, anyway.

 

[Marc]

Yeah, that doesn't sound good. I gave up on my plans for a hops arbor this year... maybe next year. Who am I kidding, I'll be happy if I find time to brew another batch from kit in the near future. That last stout I made was really good.

 

[jaja111]

So, since I'm an idiot, life isn't as good as I'd hoped. After brewing the Pilsner, I went to prepare the yeast for pitching, and realized I forgot to order it. So, what to do? I put in an order, and put the wort into the fermenter, hoping it would hold for a couple of days waiting for the yeast to come in. I kept checking on teh fermentation lock, adn it wasn't bubbling, so I figured I might be safe. Got the yeast yesterday, and when I got home I popped the top off the fermenter, and lo and behold, it was going to town in there. Full foam head, and a powerful bitter smell. Apparently I didn't have the lid as tight as I should have on the bucket. I put the lid back on tight, and the lock started bubbling like mad.

So, I'll let it run its course, and maybe I'll have a geueze in the end. Probably won't bottle the whole batch, since it's just not worth the effort and space to have so many bottles of a beer style I don't much like, and will probably taste like the ass end of a dead camel, anyway.

Definitely bottle your lambic there. Let it age for a loooong time and it may turn out to be pretty good.

 

[tarponhead]

Definitely bottle your lambic there. Let it age for a loooong time and it may turn out to be pretty good.

Alternatively, if the "pucker factor" is to high for you, you can blend it with another ale to cut back on the flavor.

After bottling, keep a heavy blanket or tarp over it just to ensure you don't have bottle bombs.

 

[jaja111]

Alternatively, if the "pucker factor" is to high for you, you can blend it with another ale to cut back on the flavor.

After bottling, keep a heavy blanket or tarp over it just to ensure you don't have bottle bombs.

I'll second that. My one experience with poorly mixed priming sugar yielded half a bottle's worth of glass embedded in a solid door. Scary stuff. Literally grenades.

 

[ctenidae]

Definitely bottle your lambic there. Let it age for a loooong time and it may turn out to be pretty good.

I went to bottle it, thinking I'd bottle a 12 pack or something and stick it in long-term storage. I opened the bucket, adn nearly gaged- no mold or anything funky growing, but the smell was clearly non-beer-like. I was going to press onward and bottle some, anyway, but then I realized I had already packed up all the brewing equipment, so I dumped it. All in all, a beatiful example of piss-poor planning, on my part. Oh well. $40 down the drain. Or, at least, dumped in the yard.

 

[tarponhead]

I went to bottle it, thinking I'd bottle a 12 pack or something and stick it in long-term storage. I opened the bucket, adn nearly gaged- no mold or anything funky growing, but the smell was clearly non-beer-like. I was going to press onward and bottle some, anyway, but then I realized I had already packed up all the brewing equipment, so I dumped it. All in all, a beatiful example of piss-poor planning, on my part. Oh well. $40 down the drain. Or, at least, dumped in the yard.

We have all had batches go to $__t. I had a pils that got infected because I got sloppy. Hopped it with a bucket-load of saaz, right when the hop shortage was driving up the prices and the noble hops were hard to come by... :angry:

 

[BeanoNYC]

Resurrection Bump!

BJ's has turkey fryers on sale. Picked one up for under $80 bucks. Came with a 7 1/2 gallon, stainless steel pot, one gallon pot, thermometer and some other things pertinent to frying but not brewing.

I plan on brewing a pale ale batch in the next few weeks and just bought a wort chiller to speed things up. My next project is to build a kegerator out of a chest freezer (haven't purchased it yet.) I'm planning on building a wooden collar around the keezer to put taps into. Nothing too fancy, maybe three taps at most. Probably getting a smaller, square-shaped freezer. I already have two cornie kegs and a co2 cylinder with a double regulator. Will eventually keep two of the kegs at the same pressure and use a "t" for the gas to save some $$.

I am thinking about making some tap handles with some junk ski tips. Anyone know where to get junk skis on the cheap? Would be nice to build a nice facade around the keezer with them eventually.

 

[ctenidae]

Nice bump, Beano. Wort chiller is on my agenda eventually. Seems so simple to build, and if you do it right, could work as a condenser, too (nudge nudge wink wink).

Got a Better Bottles PET Carboy and a 5 gallon wooden barrel for Christmas. Ingredients for a Clonebrew of Okocim Porter came in today. Plan to brew it and rack to the barrel. Bottling one bottle a week, them doing a taste test to see how the barrel changes the flavor over time. Figure the 5 gallons sitting on the counter ought to last, oh, almost four days...

 

[BeanoNYC]

Nice bump, Beano. Wort chiller is on my agenda eventually. Seems so simple to build, and if you do it right, could work as a condenser, too (nudge nudge wink wink).

Got a Better Bottles PET Carboy and a 5 gallon wooden barrel for Christmas. Ingredients for a Clonebrew of Okocim Porter came in today. Plan to brew it and rack to the barrel. Bottling one bottle a week, them doing a taste test to see how the barrel changes the flavor over time. Figure the 5 gallons sitting on the counter ought to last, oh, almost four days...

Nice on the Better Bottles. I have two. They are much easier to work with than my glass carboy. Would love to find a five gallon sherry oak barrel. So I can really age the beer for a few months and see how that changes the flavors too.

As far as the wort chiller goes...I was toying with the idea of making one myself but I was concerned with making the coils right. Coiling 30' of copper tubing just didn't sound fun to me, especially when I got the chiller for a little over $60, fittings and all. I should be brewing this weekend. I'll take pictures.

 

[jaywbigred]

You guys have any suggestions before I buy my first kit? I've read the first part of the Papizan book, and poked around for a few days online. I've read this entire thread, and some of it was certainly over my head.

Apparently, the homebrew store options in my part of NJ are scant. Brooklyn is far, same for south Jersey. There is a place in Clifton (prob 35 minutes away) but the reviews say that they are almost completely devoted to home winemaking and beer is an afterthought.

So I've been looking for a kit online with reasonable shipping costs that will include everything I need to start. My thinking was to skip the entry level plastic fermenting buckets, mostly because I know how I am, and I will scratch the thing and then have bacteria problems. Therefore I was going to go with a kit that included a 5 gal kettle, 5 gal glass carboy, and 7.8 gallon plastic bucket for bottling. It is the third option ($159) at this link . The shipping costs are only $20 or so. I was thinking I could probably hunt around for a second glass carboy when the time comes that I want to dabble in secondary fermentation. I also imagine at some point I'll make/buy a wort cooler/chiller, but not right away.

Some questions:
1) Someone told me the smell involved with homebrewing is awful. Have you guys found that to be the case?
2) I am going to be doing everything inside. Anything I need to know?
3) If I go w a 5 gallon kettle and a 5 gallon carboy, do I need an overflow/krausen set-up?
4) What do you guys use to sanitize? I'd love to hear a quick description of how one physically sanitizes (do you use gloves? do you dry? where do you place equipment you have just sanitized?)
5) Since this kit comes with a bottling bucket, is it worth transferring from the carboy to the bucket before bottling? Or should I try direct siphon bottling from the carboy first? My thought was that if things were going well, having the bucket around could be versatile. In addition or instead of using it as a bottler, I could use it as a secondary fermenter or as a second primary fermenter if I wanted to have 2 batches going at once. Obviously, this would require me to bottle from the carboy for 1 of the batches, or to time it so I bottled the plastic batch first, then sanitize, then use it as a bottler for the carboy batch.
6) I know using an ingredient kit is cheating, but I thought maybe for the first 2 or 3 batches this would be a good way to go, learning how to use my equipment and perhaps adding a part here or there to make things run smooth.
7) How heavy is a full carboy? In my head, I boil and fill the carboy in the kitchen but then age and bottle in the basement.
8) Any advice on what temps in the basement should be? I gather it varies from style to style, I was thinking of starting with a pale ale kit.

Thanks guys, I didn't know this thread existed but, as I was thinking about it over the weekend, I figured some of y'all would be homebrewers, and this thread certainly did not disappoint.

 

[ctenidae]

1) Only if you're doing it wrong
2) Watch the wort carefully as it comes to a boil, or it will boil over. And it's hot and sticky. You will make at least 1 mess per session.
3) More than likely- some recipes will foam over every time, some will only do it sometimes, sometimes it happens for no apparent reason. I made an overflow setup by cutting off a lock, attaching tubing to the stem and running it into a malt can with bleach water in it. Works great.
4) Bleach in water. Let it sit for a little while, rinse with water (or let air dry and don't rinse). If you sanitize just prior to using, doesn't matter where you stash it for a short time (other than in a diaper bucket or trash can). I use C-Brite for after-action clean up if things got ugly. If you do, use gloves.
5) Usually, as it gets the beer off the sediment layer,and you can let it settle again before bottling. Not at all a requirement, but if your bucket has a spigot, it does make life a little easier. Every time you transfer, though, you reduce your yield slightly, provide another contamination point, and introduce more oxygen to the mix. All totally controllable, but factors nonetheless
6) Absolutely- good idea.
7) A bit over 40 pounds. Water weighs 8 pounds/gallon. I carry mine up and down the basement stairs, too.
Eight) 65 to 75 degrees is all-purpose fine, I think. On the warmer end you have faster fermentation, which has its issues, on the lower end you have slower fermentation, which also has its issues. I would err on the side of cooler, generally.

All-in-one equipment undles are quick and easy. You can save some money by buying a kettle at WalMart or Home Goods or something, but it may not be worth the hassle factor. Your mileage may vary. I tend to order from www.beer-wine.com- very very quick shipping, great service, and since it's in MA no sales tax for deliveries to CT.

If you take nothing else from Papazian, relax- have a homebrew.

 

[BeanoNYC]

1) Sometimes you will get a slight sulfer smell during the first few days of active fermation. This will go away.

2) What C10 said.

3) Yes, unless you use fermcap.

4) I use starsan everything that touches the wort post boil gets hit with starsan first

5) I would transfer to a botteling bucket as you can control the on and off of the flow easier. I usually primary for a month and rarely secondary. The only times I will secondary is if I were to fruit or oak a batch. That being said, I wouldn't secondary a 5 gallon batch in a 6 gallon bottling bucket as you may oxidize the beer with all the extra "head space." I've primaried in a bottling bucket and it made kegging very easy, however.

6) Kits are awesome....use away. It will take away the guessing game for you. Clone kits are always very fun. You can see how close you can get it to the real thing.

7) Put the carboy in a milk crate prior to filling. It makes carrying it easier. You should be fermenting ale between 60-70. There are a few ways to keep temperature. Will your basement be colder than this? Let me know and I'll give you some tips.

I would look at northernbrewer.com and austinhomebrew.com for kits and receipies. I buy equipment and ingredients from them often and they outshine the competition.

Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Home Brew!