Posted on 09/07/2012 4:35:46 PM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good afternoon/evening FReepers. Yep, it is Beer Thirty Time Once Again!
Happiness is a bubbling airlock! And a Cold Home Brew
BEER
Good evening/afternoon brewers and winemakers. My wife and I are heading back to Mississippi from our new digs in Texas mid week next week to check on the house and property we own there. There will not be a beer/wine thread next week and possibly the next week. I do have another Honey Ale kit to brew up when I get back to Texas. I have decided not to brew it yet because I want to be here to watch over it.
I hope all of you and your Brews and Wines are doing well. Stop by and share what you are brewing or let us know what your favorite brew, wine or spirit is.
I'm creative, but I draw the line at Jalapenos. I remember once drinking a bottle of Cave Creek chili beer. For the next day or so I felt as if I were running a low-grade fever all over my body!
I understand, it is hard to keep the AC running all day just to keep the inside temp in the mid 80’s - older house with inferior insulation.
You could conceivably get one of those evaporating portable A/C units and set it up in a small room, if you could bear the extra expense (they cost around $250 per unit). I bought a couple of those units this year to cool down my upstairs guest rooms, which get absolutely no cooling from my central a/c. They evaporate the condensation, and require only a window vent to exhaust the hot air.
What do you use in the way of fermentables to get the ABV so high?
Around here, it just pisses off the black mold and makes it grow faster.
Next year I'll have bigger ACs, and maybe keep it down into the 80s inside. ;)
/johnny
Anyone know the limit of brew life of kit grains if they are uncracked?
I’ve used them over five years old with no reduction in yield. If you are talking base grains, they are usually malted. As long as they are kept dry and relatively cool, no problem. Taste them, you can tell. They should taste like grape nuts. Just make sure you do a hard boil for the entire time to get rid of the off flavors if any occur. Dark beers, such as porters and stouts also tend to hide any off flavors.
Adjunct grains usually roasted hard and keep fairly well. It varies by type but since the quantity is relatively small, if in doubt, replace them. It’s not worth it to ruin a big batch for a small quantity of adjunct grains.
If you are using liquid malt extract, the color of the beer gets darker as the malt extract ages. Again, I’ve used cans 5+ years with no problems. Throw away any old yeast and buy new and make sure the hops are fresh as old hops will ruin a beer.
I brew quite a bit. Not as much now as I like to, due to lack of time. My brew kettle is 150 gallons with a pump circulator to keep the sugars from burning. My specialty is bourbon barrel imperial stout. Problem is, it takes a lot of bottling to store 52 gallons of beer! If I put it in kegs, I tend to drink it too fast!
I’m ready for the economic crash. Purchased a ton of barley malt and planning on growing a few acres of barley this next year on my farm just to learn the malting process. Need to plant a few more hop vines including a few more varieties and I’ll be self sustaining.
Wheat or wit beers are the easiest, but watch the explosive fermentation. Use hoses for vents, not airlocks.
“I’ve been making Belgian Trappist-style ales for the past few months”......
My favorites of all... The top of my favorite beer list is a Westmalle Triple. Been to the Brussels beer festival in Belgium many times to imbibe. Three hundred plus beers for three days! If you like lambics, the Bruxellensus Festival is every other year, the week after the big festival in the Grand Plus.
Rock on! Nothing like starting from dirt and making bread (or beer).
Are your hops doing ok? I remember the shortage we had a while back.
/johnny
“the krausen was coming right out of the airlock. I confess I love to see a really good fermentation! “
Use plastic hoses with the other end in a bucket of Star-San. If they still clog, use a bigger hose.
Please, add me to the ping list
“For mead: any suggestions on keeping yeast alive and happy as long as possible”
I like to use two different yeasts for a dry mead. One to hold the flavor while the alcohol is low and one that is alcohol tolerant to finish it. If you like a sweet mead, use White Labs WLP720 yeast.
“Are your hops doing ok? I remember the shortage we had a while back.”
I don’t have many hops growing. Only a few dozen vines, mostly cascade. I purchased 40 lbs of assortment, nitrogen packed , pelletized and put them in my freezer. They keep fairly well that way. I’m getting low now.
Beer Ping?.... Me Too!!!!!!
http://makinghardcider.com/fruit-yeast.html
“...Bottom line: Look for cloudy cider/juice. Avoid any cider that has a listed ingredient (other than ascorbic acid) that says “in order to preserve freshness.” Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, etc... Those bad boys are yeast killers.
Vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, is a perfectly harmless additive, for both you and your cider yeast...
The two commercially available ciders that I have used with great success are:
1. Musselman’s Apple Cider- A nice sweet cider with lots of solids. Sold in a plastic one gallon jug. It was $3.48/gal at the WalMart here in Rogers, AR, Nov -2010.
2.Whole Foods 365 Organic Apple Juice - Labeled as apple juice, not cider, but this is still a wonderful base for cider. It has many more suspended solids, so it does not yield quite as clear an end product. If you would like to go organic, this is an excellent choice. $6.49 at Whole Foods Denver Summer 2009. This juice will yield a cloudy cider, no matter what you do, because of the pectin haze that is formed when they pasteurize it. Oh well, it still tastes just fine.”
Gonna be doing my first brewing, cider, when it gets cooler.
Yes, you can add a yeast nutrient to the honey water mixture for a mead. The sugars in honey don’t feed yeast like the sugars in malts that are used in beer do. A yeast nutrient is a natural food for the yeast and gives nourishment to the yeast so that it stays healthy throughout the fermentation process. Use it in beer, wine, mead, etc. to produce healthy yeast for a complete fermentation.
My summer brew yeast scoffs at yeast nutrients and eats and (asexually) procreates at a rapid rate, outgassing CO2, and excreting H2C6O.
Alien civiliations will wonder why we are concerned with the excretions of budding single celled organisms, and the facination they hold for us mere human mortals. ;)
/johnny
Actually, that's what I did! It wasn't a conventional airlock; not for that beast of a brew!
6 lb. of liquid Dark malt extract, 3.3 lb. Dry Light malt extract, 4 oz. Black Patent malt, 4 oz. Chocolate malt, 8 oz. Caramel 120L. specialty grains, 1.5 oz. Tettnang hops, 1 oz. Willamette hops.
I added an extra 3.3 lb. Dry Light malt to the boil and then 1 lb. brown sugar to the boil at about 20 min. left in a 60 min. boil. Turned out to be very sweet and almost to sweet for me. I bottled it on May 20 and it has now mellowed quite nicely. It is why I am having trouble posting this evening.
I did a steep of the following grains:
8 oz Golden Naked Oats
8 oz Carapils
8 oz Smoked Malt
8 oz Special B
I started the brew on May 2 with a 1.104 OG
I racked to a secondary on May 16 and kept it in an Ice bath and then bottled on May 30 at a FG of 1.040.
It is a high gravity beer to me and one or two is all I can handle. I am dropping down to lower gravity beers because I like the taste of a cold beer and I can have more than two!:)
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