is there a home-brew / zymurgy thread around here?

Unfortunately our planned brew dates got canceled. We have 7 weddings this summer and D-girl just got invited to her 2nd Bachelorette party this weekend so she'll be out of town. We did however plan a "Brew Party" in the fall with some friends, where we'll brew a batch, then in 5 weeks we'll head to those friends' house to enjoy the fermented fruits of our efforts while watching some Football. So that should be fun.

Looks like you guys have been keeping at it. :thu: I'm not a fan of most saisons that I've tried. But it seems that homebrewers love them. I'm always seeing people brewing them. Is there some other reason I'm missing other than those people think they are tasty?

I'm hoping to get at least 2-3 more batches in this year. We'll see. In the meantime I'll keep reading up and listening to podcasts here and there hoping to pick up some info.
 
I like the idea of a beer making party. I may have to try that sometime. :)

I did a belgian style ale about three weeks ago, and I just bottled it Sunday. Should be ready for consumption in a few weeks. Here is the just of it.

SPECIALTY GRAIN

0.5 lbs Belgian Cara 8
0.5 lbs Belgian Cara 20
0.25 lbs Belgian Aromatic
0.25 lbs Belgian Biscuit Malt

FERMENTABLES

6 lbs Pilsen malt syrup
1 lb Brun Fonce Soft Candi Sugar late addition (0 min)

HOPS & FLAVORINGS

1 oz Styrian Goldings (Celeia) (60 min)
1.0 oz ground coriander
1.0 oz sweet orange peel.

YEAST

Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey Ale. Apparent attenuation: 72-76%. Flocculation: Medium. Optimum temp: 68-78° F.

It tasted good at bottling. I'm getting ready to run a tripel soon in a small batch and a large batch of an English brown ale.
 
eloydrummerboy said:
I'm not a fan of most saisons that I've tried. But it seems that homebrewers love them. I'm always seeing people brewing them. Is there some other reason I'm missing other than those people think they are tasty?
Click to expand...

There are a bunch of underattenuated/overly sweet boring domestic craft saisons on the market that seem to rely on their yeast strain for the entire flavor proile. Saison Dupont, Fantome, The Bruery, Jolly Pumpkin kick out some great siasons. Even Goose Island's Sofie and Peppe Nero are really nice, IMO.
 
Lerxst said:
There are a bunch of underattenuated/overly sweet boring domestic craft saisons on the market that seem to rely on their yeast strain for the entire flavor proile. Saison Dupont, Fantome, The Bruery, Jolly Pumpkin kick out some great siasons. Even Goose Island's Sofie and Peppe Nero are really nice, IMO.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not ready to write them off quite yet. There are plenty of styles that I love with representatives that I don't care for. I'll try to check those suggestions out next time I'm at a good beer store and see what I think.
 
Oatmeal stout today

2RDu0zx.jpeg
 
eloydrummerboy said:
Yummm.

Sent from my EloydrummerPhone
Click to expand...

Yeah, I love Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout and I'm smoking a pork loin for dinner so I'm stuck hovering around the grill/smoker....why not kill two birds with one stone and multi-task? Single 60 min hop addition so it's a perfect low attention span brew.
 
Northern Brewer has a father's day special. Buy a 100 dollar gift card, get a 20 dollar gift card free. I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, but I buy a lot of kits from them, so this is a good deal for me. Might be good for others, so that is why I am posting it. I ordered it, as it is essentially a free 5 gallon kit for me, or at least part of a kit.

http://e.northernbrewer.com/public/...UnuA..AY2jKw.b..s.AcFg.b.U5wdIA.U5w3dg.Atnwfg
 
Tiltsta said:
Northern Brewer has a father's day special. Buy a 100 dollar gift card, get a 20 dollar gift card free. I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, but I buy a lot of kits from them, so this is a good deal for me. Might be good for others, so that is why I am posting it. I ordered it, as it is essentially a free 5 gallon kit for me, or at least part of a kit.

http://e.northernbrewer.com/public/...UnuA..AY2jKw.b..s.AcFg.b.U5wdIA.U5w3dg.Atnwfg
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'll have to check that out.

Sent from my EloydrummerPhone
 
They seem to have a lot of stuff for the all grain brews, but I can't comment on their prices or quality as I am an extract/added grain brewer. On the kit front, they seem to sell a lot of product, so stuff arrives so fast that it is within a month of spec (like Wyeast cultures) and grain typically is ground within a week of my orders. Fresh enough for me. My brother, who brews a ton of whole grain stuff, told me they were a great starting point, as their turnover is so fast that everything is fresh when you order. YMMV, but it works out to 20% off.
 
Anyone here ever explore the idea of an oxygen aeration system for high gravity beer? I just shake my fermenter really well, and that seems to work fine, but some people suggest that bubbling pure O2 into the wort pre-pitch gets fermentation going faster and reduces yeast stress off flavors. It makes sense to me, as we use oxygen injection in all of our fermenters at work (but the cell densities are way higher than in a home brew fermenter).
 
Having pure O2 on hand would also come in handy on those mornings after overindulging in the high-gravity homebrew. :grin:
 
I think I'm going to buy a stainless sintered stone/wand thing and some O2 mini tanks and give this a try. It doesn't cost much, and it seems a lot faster and easier than shaking.
 
I rarely do high strength beers so don't have an o2 setup yet. When I drain my cooled wort from the kettle it runs through a couple of sieves and collanders, then I use a whisk to aerate it further. Seems to be fine

When I do a big stout or DIPA I invariably use notty or s05 which are supposed to not need aerating, or at least beyond what the wort gets from me - I've never had a problem with any sort of under attenuation or off flavours when using them on big beers

If I was doing more bigger beers I'd certainly get an o2 setup I think
 
We've got a huge stout fermenting. No o2. We'll see how it turns out. We did a good bit to aerate it "manually". But I read that you can only reach a certain threshold with that. Looking to be drinkable by August.
 
I ordered the thing yesterday. I'm not sure if it is necessary, but the ease and increased consistency seemed like strong points.
 
Cool PDF document on beer prepared by the American Society for Microbiology. I am a member of this professional non-profit organization, and a lifetime member of the sub-organization, the American Society for Virology. The group is a collection of academic and industry scientists who focus their research on various microbes.They often spin out little documents like this on ways microbes impact society.

The doc is pretty 'light' in technical terms, but it has some interesting facts and I figured some of you would like the read. The PDF is free and the link below will auto-download it onto your computer from the ASM webpage.

http://academy.asm.org/images/stories/documents/ColloquiaDoc/faq_beer.pdf
 
Cheers for that :thu:

I ordered my next batch of ingredients, I tend to base my order round a sack of base malt, so I roughly plan the next six or so brews and order the hops/specialty malt at the same time

Nothing too exciting although I always ten to alter what I brew come brewday

2 golden/pale ales
1 AIPA
1 ESB
1 dry type stout
1 english type porter/stout

I should have enough for another one or two depending on my brewlengths, probably a frankenbrew thing using up what I have left. I hate waste!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top