Homebrewing

a group of us brewed this morning.

the supplies

pliny the elder clone getting its grain bag on

2 oz of Cascade hops headed toward the grain bag

getting all the wort out of the grain / hop bag

Craig's homemade Wort chiller

Me watching for the boil on the Belgium Double

straining the hops off the wort

15 gallons of beer next to the wall…. (repeat)….

Belgian double in glass

5 hours, 20 gallons of beer made
Pliny the elder clone (double IPA)
Belgian double
Kolsch
Hefeweizen

looks like a great way to spend a day with friends--used to brew almost every week but with so many good brewerys in our area haven't brewed in a long time!
what did the chive flowers get used for?????

buzzd wrote:looks like a great way to spend a day with friends--used to brew almost every week but with so many good brewerys in our area haven't brewed in a long time!
what did the chive flowers get used for?????

Hah... we thought about it... And no, we did not add any of the bubble juice either...
We did have to ask the 3.5 year-old to stop riding his play car around the brewing kettles

A bit late to the post, but what was the recipe for the Pliny? I ask because it doesn't look like it has enough hops!

As far as brewing, I've been working on my European styles of late. I brewed an Irish Red this past weekend in preparation of fall competitions season and a brown Porter the weekend before. Presently have a delightful Best Bitter for which I used Optic malt and homemade Invert Syrup, as well as 100% Challenger hops and WY1968 yeast. A lovely 4% tipple. Presently lagering, I have a Bohemian Pilsner. We'll see how that one turns out...

I've got a Flanders Red going ... mostly a mix of melanoidin and Golden Promise Malts, with a touch of German Tradition hops, and Wyeast 3739. Dumped in some brett from an old bottle last night, and I'll add a bit of lactic and acetic acid at the secondary. (Don't want to infect my brew stuff with pedio or acetobacter.)

NobleSquirrel wrote:A bit late to the post, but what was the recipe for the Pliny? I ask because it doesn't look like it has enough hops!

IIRC, there are four additions of hops to that brew, #1 in the grain bag, #2 during the boil, #3 at the end of the boil #4 (at some point after but maybe during fermentation)
The beers are at a friend's house and he's handling the pre-bottling stuff...

Now that the weekend is far enough removed for me to resume thinking about beer, I thought I'd share info on the homebrews we tapped. 4th of July is a good time for us to try out beers, because it's hot and crowded, so even the more beer/craft-averse are willing to try stuff.

Simplest of all was a regular American Pale Ale--ten pounds of American 2-row, and a pound of CaraPils, I think. The hopping was interesting--I'd hoped to do some combo of Cascade/Citra/Simcoe, but homebrew shop was out of all three, so I improvised with Centennial for bittering (half ounce at 60 and 40 worked out alright) and then half an ounce each of Falconer's Flight (a new one to me, apparently a blend of other hops) and Saaz at 20 and 5. Fermented with East Coast Ale for 8 days, then force-carbed just in time for the 4th. Turned out pretty well--an easy beer for non-craft folks to take to, which was my intention.

Second was a Scottish 70/-. This was a low-hopped, lower-alcohol 4% session beer, somewhat darker and noticeably sweeter than the Pale, another easy drinker. Mostly Maris Otter, plus some Crystal malts for color, and honey and chocolate malt. I think the hopping was only one ounce of EKG at 60, and the yeast I have forgotten. Somehow we'd had this sitting around for two months, largely untouched.

Third was a Strawberry Blonde. This was pretty simple, with mostly American 2-row and some low-AA hops right at the beginning of the boil. We also added some lactose for body. The kicker was a couple weeks on strawberries in secondary fermentation. It came out with a pretty grassy nose, but tasted good, and once you got past that vegetal scent, was quite a popular drink.

Fourth was our first experience with oaking a beer, and our first rye beer as well. Thankfully, despite a large portion of rye, nothing stuck. We also used noble hops for a nice lemony character in the end, which worked wonderfully with the rye-soaked toasted oak chips added later during secondary. Just a few days of soaking the chips in rye and then a few more days in the beer imparted a really wonderful, smoky vanilla character. Eagerly awaiting the next opportunity to toss some wood into a beer.

Anybody else display their homebrew adventures on the 4th?

We tried to get some people to come out for a homebrew tasting on the 2nd but apparently most everybody we invited is too good for the south suburbs and no amount of homebrew and BBQ can drag them south of Roosevelt Rd . So we just drank our own beer. Which is A-OK with us too. I had an oatmeal stout, a Rye IPA that I brewed after the style of Cane & Ebel, a big English-style barleywine, and a cyser. My neighbor brewed a big Belgian-style dark wheat beer for the day that turned out nicely, and he also had a Belgian IPA and a Westvleteren 12 clone that's about a year old now and really good. There were probably other beers too but I don't recall.

I noticed that event, but given the holiday weekend and the fact that we haven't bottled any homebrew in almost a year made my participation difficult/impossible. I'll see if my non-LTH-ing brew crew would be up for such an event, though. Growlers work pretty well in lieu of bottles, I suppose.

Sweet line-up, though. I tried to moderate the alcohol this year, given last year's overconsumption on the part of nearly everyone at our party--I think your spread would've knocked me out, in the best way.

How'd your cyser turn out? I've been thinking of doing some mead soon for a couple of weddings next summer, but this might be a good first/alternative choice.

I still bottle half or more of my batches, just 'cause there's plenty of things I brew that can stand to have some age on them before drinking. Of course, impatient as I am, I get into them way before I should anyway. But we keg the stuff we just want to have around for drinking. The oatmeal stout was from a keg & I just brought a growler over.

The cyser is quite good; tart and dry, could stand a slightly higher level of carbonation though. Not quite as good as the last batch, we sourced both the cider and honey from a different place but both were very good quality so it's hard to say how much is just natural variation year-to-year, batch-to-batch. I brought a bottle of the previous batch to the LTH Christmas party at Sun Wah a couple years ago and it was quite well received.

I brewed a batch of sparkling raspberry melomel (mead) as a wedding gift for my brother years ago. He and his wife loved it. I did brew it 18 or 20 months ahead of time but I think you could probably get away with a year.

Next time we decide to try a homebrew meetup I'll probably post it here as well, just 'cause you don't get quite as high a rate of people flaking out and bailing last minute

I'd be down for that!

Have any of you other homebrewers followed the Iron Brewer thing at all? It's a contest for homebrewers that's in its second iteration currently, wherein 3 required ingredients are announced and 6-8 brewers sign up to each design and brew a batch of beer using those ingredients. The beer gets turned around in 8 weeks and at the end there is a live podcast of the tasting.

I signed up for this most recent round and I'm feeling pretty good about the thing. I wrote up some thoughts about it on one of my blogs, which you can read here if you want: http://www.igrokgrog.com/2011/07/weeken ... on-brewer/ I know that just linking to a blog is frowned upon: the basic gist of the post is to introduce the reader to the Iron Brewer competition, to discuss how my required ingredients (melanoidin malt, galena hops, and rose hips) inspired me to brew a beer version of Turkish Delight candy (Big, malty, candylike, with the nut & rose flavors common to that candy), and how excited I am about the contest.

The only problem is how many bottles need to be shipped off But I should still have plenty left over for my own enjoyment

Cool idea! Definitely forwarded to brewing buddies. I'll be paying attention for the next round that intrigues me.

picked up the beer today!
I think I'm going to drink all the pliny clone myself!
best of the ones I've tried so far.

The first bottle of kolsch was really bad and I only had a sip... rest went down the drain
the Pliny clone is pretty good beer (a bit darker than what I had expected, as were all the beers)

Brewing from extract tends to give you a slightly darker product--it's already been boiled/carmelized/Maillard'd/dried out once, so another boil will contribute more. Still, if it tastes good, no reason to complain.

And what was up with the Kolsch? Any identifiable flaws? Anyhow, keep it up. Great hobby...

With the streak of 100 degree days last week, I decided it would be a perfect time to delve into my first spontaneously soured beer. Yes, ambitious for the 2nd beer I've ever brewed, but that's just how I roll. I did a lot of reading on brewing and on this style for months prior to beginning to brew, so i have confidence. I used a loosely adapted a "classic style" berliner weisse as a base recipe, though I won't go so far as to claim the final product will be what most people will recognize as a berliner weisse, but i wanted to be experimental on this one. I read about this method in the book "brewing classic styles"

The mash was all grain and no boil. Brought the mash with about 3 gallons of water to a temp of 165, then let it rest 90 minutes. Transfered it to a 6.5 gallon bucket, wrapped this in a "space blanket" that my friend had in his trunk, and then wrapped it again with a moving blanket. Then I poured near boiling water in to bring the temp of the mash back up to about 165 and let it cool slowly all night. The next morning it was still at 150! and that evening, almost 24 hours later, it was still near 130. At this point I threw in a handful of unprocessed grains (naturally full of lacto-bacillus). I really wanted to seal the deal with the natural occurring bugs so I also threw in a couple bunches of squashed unripe grapes that were growing in my back yard. In addition to the bacteria and yeast living on the grapes, I like idea of the tartaric acid in the unripe grapes adding a unique and different level of tartness than to compliment the lactic acid. (I find some lesser quality berliner weisse has too much lacto flavor and as many say leaves a "pukey" flavor in the back of your throat. As true to style as that may be, I wanted to avoid this, and i want a complexity) I left it on the back porch for 5 days! I heard that at that point it'll be smelling foul and if you want to taste it for tartness, it's advised that you plug your nose. I tasted it on day 2, 3, and on the 4th day it was tasting and smelling REALLY GOOD! In all fairness, i also love the smell of natto, Limburger, and just about any stinky cheese, but I think just about anyone would have agreed that has a pleasent and slightly funky smell, my wife even liked it! I left it for one more day to let it sour just a touch more. I'm VERY happy with the final smell and flavors that the natural process added to this brew and I'm very anxious to see the final result.

After souring was over, I did a 10 minute boil which kills anything living in it and stops the souring right where i want it, then transferred the wort to the primary carboy, let it cool, pitched us05 yeast and (as if I haven't gone experimental enough) I also pitched the dregs of a bruery hottenroth berliner, and a RR supplication just to ensure another level of funky and sours bugs. Once i transfer to secondary, and I see how it's tasting, I may or may not throw a lot more of the unripe grapes into secondary. I like beers pretty sour and funky, but I'm also prepared for the final product to be TOO sour, in which case I'll blend it with an unsoured batch to get the flavor i want.

Here's a picture of the mash collecting bugs in the 103 degree day.

laikom wrote:With the streak of 100 degree days last week, I decided it would be a perfect time to delve into my first spontaneously soured beer. Yes, ambitious for the 2nd beer I've ever brewed, but that's just how I roll. I did a lot of reading on brewing and on this style for months prior to beginning to brew, so i have confidence. I used a loosely adapted a "classic style" berliner weisse as a base recipe, though I won't go so far as to claim the final product will be what most people will recognize as a berliner weisse, but i wanted to be experimental on this one. I read about this method in the book "brewing classic styles"

The mash was all grain and no boil. Brought the mash with about 3 gallons of water to a temp of 165, then let it rest 90 minutes. Transfered it to a 6.5 gallon bucket, wrapped this in a "space blanket" that my friend had in his trunk, and then wrapped it again with a moving blanket. Then I poured near boiling water in to bring the temp of the mash back up to about 165 and let it cool slowly all night. The next morning it was still at 150! and that evening, almost 24 hours later, it was still near 130. At this point I threw in a handful of unprocessed grains (naturally full of lacto-bacillus). I really wanted to seal the deal with the natural occurring bugs so I also threw in a couple bunches of squashed unripe grapes that were growing in my back yard. In addition to the bacteria and yeast living on the grapes, I like idea of the tartaric acid in the unripe grapes adding a unique and different level of tartness than to compliment the lactic acid. (I find some lesser quality berliner weisse has too much lacto flavor and as many say leaves a "pukey" flavor in the back of your throat. As true to style as that may be, I wanted to avoid this, and i want a complexity) I left it on the back porch for 5 days! I heard that at that point it'll be smelling foul and if you want to taste it for tartness, it's advised that you plug your nose. I tasted it on day 2, 3, and on the 4th day it was tasting and smelling REALLY GOOD! In all fairness, i also love the smell of natto, Limburger, and just about any stinky cheese, but I think just about anyone would have agreed that has a pleasent and slightly funky smell, my wife even liked it! I left it for one more day to let it sour just a touch more. I'm VERY happy with the final smell and flavors that the natural process added to this brew and I'm very anxious to see the final result.

After souring was over, I did a 10 minute boil which kills anything living in it and stops the souring right where i want it, then transferred the wort to the primary carboy, let it cool, pitched us05 yeast and (as if I haven't gone experimental enough) I also pitched the dregs of a bruery hottenroth berliner, and a RR supplication just to ensure another level of funky and sours bugs. Once i transfer to secondary, and I see how it's tasting, I may or may not throw a lot more of the unripe grapes into secondary. I like beers pretty sour and funky, but I'm also prepared for the final product to be TOO sour, in which case I'll blend it with an unsoured batch to get the flavor i want.

Here's a picture of the mash collecting bugs in the 103 degree day.

Very cool. I will say a couple of things. First, with regards to the grapes, you're probably going to get more of a mallic acid character and a fair amount of astringency from Tannic acid, so I'd be light handed if you add additional grapes. Another caveat is that if the pH has dropped too far, you're yeast is going to struggle with fermentation, so don't be surprised to not see a kräusen form atop the wort. And regarding the "pukey" notes that you referenced, that's not from lactic acid, that's more an effect of of other organic acids coupled with entero-bacteria by-products. Be curious to see the flavor profile on this one!

thanks for the notes!
Perhaps I'll hold off on the whole grapes, I'd hate for it to become tannic. I got excited reading about verjuice, so I was perhaps prematurely optimistic about it. I also may just extract some juice from some of the grapes, if, do the skins have more tannins than the juice?

I dunked a ph test strip and i it came out somewhere around 4 if I'm reading the damn thing right (being mildly color blind i was going mostly on the shade of it rather than color) I am not sure, but I don't think it's too low to get the yeast going. Additionally, I threw in the dregs, so hopefully the brett and wild guys in those will help along where the US-05 may fall short. We're on day 2 of primary and there is a nice, nasty looking krausen and the airlock is bubbling along every 30-40 seconds.

Also, I'm keeping it upstairs around 74 degrees F rather than in the basement, which is usually around 69 degrees F. The US-05 operating temperature is rated at 59 to 75. I'm going warmer to get the spicy character out of it, and hopefully keep the yeasts going.

Let me know if i'm doing anything terribly wrong! I appreciate the feedback and hope to get to share it with you guys for feedback one day, if you dare try it...

laikom wrote:thanks for the notes!
Perhaps I'll hold off on the whole grapes, I'd hate for it to become tannic. I got excited reading about verjuice, so I was perhaps prematurely optimistic about it. I also may just extract some juice from some of the grapes, if, do the skins have more tannins than the juice?

I dunked a ph test strip and i it came out somewhere around 4 if I'm reading the damn thing right (being mildly color blind i was going mostly on the shade of it rather than color) I am not sure, but I don't think it's too low to get the yeast going. Additionally, I threw in the dregs, so hopefully the brett and wild guys in those will help along where the US-05 may fall short. We're on day 2 of primary and there is a nice, nasty looking krausen and the airlock is bubbling along every 30-40 seconds.

Also, I'm keeping it upstairs around 74 degrees F rather than in the basement, which is usually around 69 degrees F. The US-05 operating temperature is rated at 59 to 75. I'm going warmer to get the spicy character out of it, and hopefully keep the yeasts going.

Let me know if i'm doing anything terribly wrong! I appreciate the feedback and hope to get to share it with you guys for feedback one day, if you dare try it...

The only way to know if you did something wrong is to actually do it! FWIW, I'm actually a beer judge and am always looking for stuff to try. Also, regarding the grapes, the skins do have most of the tannin, but I'd have to read up some more on how easily it woud be extracted during pressing of the grapes. Basically, you're makeing a Druivenbier rather than a Berliner Weisse, which is absolutely fine. At any rate, let us know how it goes, I'm super curious now...

NobleSquirrel wrote:The only way to know if you did something wrong is to actually do it! FWIW, I'm actually a beer judge and am always looking for stuff to try. Also, regarding the grapes, the skins do have most of the tannin, but I'd have to read up some more on how easily it woud be extracted during pressing of the grapes. Basically, you're makeing a Druivenbier rather than a Berliner Weisse, which is absolutely fine. At any rate, let us know how it goes, I'm super curious now...

thanks again. I'd love for you, and anyone who is willing to taste the beer, assuming it's not repulsive! I've been thinking of organizing a dinner soon, perhaps i'll incorporate this beer into that idea. I'll let you know, once it's ready to share!

laikom wrote:

NobleSquirrel wrote:The only way to know if you did something wrong is to actually do it! FWIW, I'm actually a beer judge and am always looking for stuff to try. Also, regarding the grapes, the skins do have most of the tannin, but I'd have to read up some more on how easily it woud be extracted during pressing of the grapes. Basically, you're makeing a Druivenbier rather than a Berliner Weisse, which is absolutely fine. At any rate, let us know how it goes, I'm super curious now...

thanks again. I'd love for you, and anyone who is willing to taste the beer, assuming it's not repulsive! I've been thinking of organizing a dinner soon, perhaps i'll incorporate this beer into that idea. I'll let you know, once it's ready to share!

Cool! My Berliner should be packaged by this weekend, I think. Smells nice, lots of yogurt and graininess and pretty clean. Looking forward to getting it carbonated.


As an aside, I'm planning to brew my first lambic this weekend. I plan to go with a turbid mash and then will be pitching a small lambic starter that I have going from bottle dregs as well as a smack pack of Roeselare Blend to get the bugs going and then will probably feed it with whatever other sour bugs I end up growing from bottles. Pretty excited on this one.

NobleSquirrel wrote: Cool! My Berliner should be packaged by this weekend, I think. Smells nice, lots of yogurt and graininess and pretty clean. Looking forward to getting it carbonated.

Care to share more of your methods? I'm itching to brew a sour, and a Berliner Weisse seems like a good way to get my feet wet.

I started out to make a Berliner Weiss, but at the last minute decided to go with a Gose instead. Sure, the styles are similar, but the combination of coriander and salt just sounded a bit more refreshing for a sessionable hot weather beer. I used acidulated malt ... I don't want acetobacter to get into my equipment, and I don't want to have a separate setup for sour beers. I have experimented with adding lactic and/or acetic acid directly to a beer in secondary for souring, that seems to work okay, too, I think for my next batch, I'll go back to the acidulated malt.

The Gose label:

mtgl wrote:

NobleSquirrel wrote: Cool! My Berliner should be packaged by this weekend, I think. Smells nice, lots of yogurt and graininess and pretty clean. Looking forward to getting it carbonated.

Care to share more of your methods? I'm itching to brew a sour, and a Berliner Weisse seems like a good way to get my feet wet.

Sure. I used Kris England's approach from Brewing with Wheat (by Stan Hieronymous). Basically, it's a stepped mash, 50% wheat, 50% pils, with a single decoction for mashout. You then sparge as you normally would and then rack it into the fermenter, no boil. I then let it cool to 115F-120F and pitched my vial of lacto in. no aeration as Lacto is anaerobic and aeration could facilitate acetobacter activity. I then put my heat wrap with temp controller around the carboy and held the temp at 95F for four days then let the temperature drop to ambient (mid 70s, iirc) and pitched a sachet of Nottingham to finish up fermentation. That's about all I can remember off the top of my head, but I'm going to be kegging it this weekend most likely for further conditioning as I want to brew another Berliner on the cake that has formed and end up adding fruit as well.

I'm going to be experimenting some with this as well. Out of curiosity, why not use a lacto strain for the souring? I just don't think you can get sour enough using acidulated malt. A guy in our homebrew club (HOPS) did try a Gose with 2lbs of acidulated malt in the mash and there is noticable acidity, but it's more of a light tartness and not what you'd actually expect in a Berliner or Gose. Just curious...

nr706 wrote:I started out to make a Berliner Weiss, but at the last minute decided to go with a Gose instead. Sure, the styles are similar, but the combination of coriander and salt just sounded a bit more refreshing for a sessionable hot weather beer. I used acidulated malt ... I don't want acetobacter to get into my equipment, and I don't want to have a separate setup for sour beers. I have experimented with adding lactic and/or acetic acid directly to a beer in secondary for souring, that seems to work okay, too, I think for my next batch, I'll go back to the acidulated malt.

The Gose label:

NobleSquirrel wrote:I'm going to be experimenting some with this as well. Out of curiosity, why not use a lacto strain for the souring? I just don't think you can get sour enough using acidulated malt. A guy in our homebrew club (HOPS) did try a Gose with 2lbs of acidulated malt in the mash and there is noticable acidity, but it's more of a light tartness and not what you'd actually expect in a Berliner or Gose. Just curious...

[

As it turned out, do to other circumstances I didn't end up going forward with the lambic, but I did end up adding papaya and guava to my Berliner weisse to see how that works out. Should end up being pretty interesting, I think...

We're finally getting around to drinking our Berliner Weisse's. We decided to go with a peach addition instead of the grapes. We used 10Lbs. This added a bit more fermentables and also a new level of tartness. The peach is starting to mellow out after a few weeks in the bottle, and it's actually quite subtle, as I'd anticipated. 10Lbs probably sounds like a lot more than it comes off as in the finished product.

I am very happy with the finished product, just as sour as i'd hoped for, sharp and clean. It goes really great with spicy food. Of course it's my baby, so I'm going to love it.

If anyone is interested in tasting some, I'm planning a dinner in the near future to showcase this and some other home-brew. It would be cool if other home-brewers (or beer lovers) from LTH would like to get together to share beers and a meal! Don't want to hijack this thread as an event, so PM me if you're interested in that.