Red IPA of my own invention. Picture taken immediately after I pitched the yeast. This beer, my friends, is why you don't follow the stupid "1-2-3" rule that so many brewing kits recommend, and why you should never rack to secondary unless A) you have a hydrometer and know the beer is finished by measuring, or B) you have let inordinate amounts of time go by. After a week, this guy was only down to 1.023, and it's not stalled, because I just measured it again last night and it's down to 1.020. It's just moving slowly. Yeast are alive and like anything living, they don't always act the same in all cases. Had a nice, big head of krausen for most of the fermenting time, too.
Time to start brewing again. Made a 5 gal batch of vanilla porter and a second batch of honey hibiscus wit. Next on the docket is a berliner weisse which I've been dying to make for a long time, I hope it mellows in time for the hot weather.
Kegged a triple hopped dark ale 3 days ago, had my first sample last night, it's going to be a monster killer. 1.5kg LME 500g Dextrose 1kg DME 500g Crystal Malt SA5 Yeast Hops: Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin and home grown Cascade. 20l of pure Tassie H²0 Brewed for 8 days at approx 17 deg c. No racking or cold conditioning. Love my keg system, from raw ingredients to beer in around 10 days. Better after 20. Q: Any of you keg monsters use a filter? Like/Dislike?
I've been derelict in my brewing this summer and I'm ashamed. All that is gonna change. My best friend bought me this: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/...ment/brew-kettles/boilermaker-autosparge.html 15 gallon pot no autosparge. I'm gonna learn the process and try it out before I go nuts on the equipment. I've been brewing for 3 years but only extract and partial mash thus far. I also need to get a burner to brew outside since this behemoth doesn't fit on my stove. This is gonna get expensive methinks.....
brew day doing a couple quick partial mash beers to be done in a hurry. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/wheaten-beatdown-extract-kit.html http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/petite-saison-d-ete-extract-kit.html
Reviving this thread from the dead. Just ordered @1800 worth of brewing equipment from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.austinhomebrew.com/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.austinhomebrew.com/index.php</a>] Making the plunge to all grain brewing in one big expensive swoop. Got this <a class="postlink" href="http://www.blichmannengineering.com/brew_stand/brewstand_modular.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.blichmannengineering.com/bre ... dular.html</a> and I have this <a class="postlink" href="http://hopdawgs.ca/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=369" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://hopdawgs.ca/index.php?route=prod ... uct_id=369</a>. My dream is to someday do my own nanobrewery so with this setup I can start to formulate recipes to scale up in the future. I will update this when I get the stuff and set it up.
Uh, wow. I feel kind of silly now posting my rave about the Mr. Beer home brewing kit. I'm going to be doing a lot of reading. I have to admit I didn't like the idea of the pre made "syrup" they give you. I would have liked to have done more of what is described in this thread. I can definitely say it's easier to grow weed though, unfortunately, I won't be able to do that again for a while. Now I know why that kit was on clearance for ten bucks.
"Syrup" can still make really tremendous beers. The thing is that the pre-hopped, canned syrup from a Mr. Beer kit is usually not very fresh, and is pretty limiting in terms of the types you can get. If you find a local homebrew store, for less than $100 you can have a kit that will make really decent beers. A brewing bucket, an inexpensive stock pot, a racking cane, a little tubing, a thermometer and a hydrometer... There's really not all that much to it. You can upgrade as you go along. Brewing can be as complicated or as simple as you make it, just like cooking. In my opinion, the key to success is being clean, consistent, and careful - measure and document what you do so you know what works and what doesn't, don't be impatient, and sanitize the crap out of everything. Syrup is actually just sugar extract from the grains. You can extract the syrup yourself, but that requires more equipment and is something you can add later as you get comfortable with brewing. In a good homebrew store (if you don't have one near you, <a class="postlink" href="http://www.austinhomebrew.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.austinhomebrew.com</a> is good), you can get very fresh extracts in a variety of flavors. It gets you 90% of the freshness for a lot less work than actually mashing the grains yourself. You can then take a few specialty grains, put them in a bag, and just dunk them in and out of the wort to add special tastes. I haven't brewed since Christmas... really have to get something back in the fermenter. The IPA I made at Christmas came out awesome, though!
I was pre-gaming with a buddy before going to a FOP smoker this weekend and we found Beer Fest on TV. He had never seen it before so we watched it. When they found the recipe for their family beer I got to thinking I'd love to try out home brewing. As we talked about it I decided to just go with it. I read through some of the posts here about what to get as far as cleaners, thermometers, and such so I feel like the kit is a good start. I'm going to try a couple brew packages but would eventually like to play around with it a little more. I also got some of that Star San cleaner. So this is the kit I got http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0063UC1PI/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I actually just brewed a Heady Topper clone yesterday that I picked up from my local homebrew warehouse last week. I'm still doing extract brewing, but this is the first kit I've done that didn't have a can of the malt extract--just a shit ton of DME with some corn sugar. And a bunch of hops. At least twice the amount I've put in any beer I've done to date. She's sitting in the closet right now, bubbling away nicely. Really looking forward to this one. When my mom went to the homebrew place to get me the gift certificate that paid for the kit, she was intrigued by the fact that they also sold wine kits. So intrigued, that she ended up buying a full wine making kit, as well as a smaller 3 gal. carboy so she can do port--which is the first kit we're making. Holy shit is making wine from a kit so much easier than making beer from a kit. Day 1 is just cleaning and sanitizing the bucket, lid, and airlock. Then you pour in the juice, pour in a packet of Benzonite (I think that's what it was) and stir, pour in the yeast, seal bucket, put the airlock on the lid, and wait 10-14 days. The whole process took us about 30 minutes, including the 20 minutes we let everything sit in the sanitizer. By comparison, my brew time yesterday was about 4 hours from start to finish. After 10-14 days, we'll rack into the secondary with any finishing/clarifying/stablizing ingredients included with the kit and let it sit for 42 days in secondary. Then bottle and age for two months. That's it, and that's basically the same process for a lot of the other kits that she was looking into. She's never going to do the full-on grape presses or anything, so for her purposes, it's perfect. The kits actually make some pretty good wine, too. They had some there for us to taste and I was impressed. Each kit will make two cases of 750mL bottles. With the smaller port kit, we're going to bottle it in 350mL bottles so she can still yield 24 and give some of them out as Christmas presents.
Hoosier, that looks like a good kit. Just remember to work clean - it's fine to be a little sloppy pre-boil, but anything that touches the beer after it has been boiled is a source for contamination. The Star San will make it easier, since it's no-rinse - fill up a spray bottle with the recommended mixture, and hose everything down before it touches the beer. Careful with that pot - I use a thin-walled, cheap pot like that but just remember that it's easy to scorch the beer if you get heavy-handed with the heat. I usually pull mine off the burner to dump in the extract. Enjoy it! With open buckets, you won't need a wine thief but if you ever switch to glass carboys (the buckets will eventually scratch and you'll have to replace them) you can use something like this to take samples out so you can measure the gravity: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Home-Brew-Ohio-Wine-Thief/dp/B00186ADYS/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.amazon.com/Home-Brew-Ohio-Wi ... 00186ADYS/</a>
Good deal. From reading through this thread it appears that the first time or two might be a bit difficult but it sounded like most people picked it up pretty quickly. I feel like, if this becomes the schnitzandgiggles hobby I think it will, I'll probably do some upgrading as I get better at doing it and more comfortable. This thread was a lot of help and part of the reason I jumped at it. Cheers everyone.
New batch is in primary fermentation. It's another IPA, but I've never worked with Citra or Mosaic hops before. Both are very fruity, and I've had some really awesome beers with them, so I thought I'd experiment. Pretty standard/simple malt base - 7.5 lbs DME, 1 lb Crystal 40L. I used Columbus to bitter, then 1/2 oz each of Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe, at 15 minutes and again at flame out. I've got another ounce of each for dry hopping. Went with Simcoe as well as the other fruity ones because I didn't want to make it too sweet.
Citra is my current favourite, dig that stuff! Also been experimenting with a fairly new variety called Ella, its fruity like Citra but also as a nice spicy flavour on the back palate, very nice. Check out the attached linky, might be useful. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.hops.com.au/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.hops.com.au/</a>