Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

Hello

I recently restarted beer brewing after a pause of some years. I like to drink and brew bitter, so I restarted from there. This in the picture is the second brew in my "second era", an e+g beer brewed in a 10 l fermenter (I don't want to manage bigger volumes).

Recipe is: 1 kg dry light malt extract; 50 g crystal dark (ebc about 270); 20 g Challenger for 40 min; 15 g Challenger for 2 min; 10 g Challenger in dry hopping; Mangrove Jack's M36 yeast. ABV 4.2%, IBU about 34.

I should change the 50 g crystal dark for, let's say, 60 g crystal medium. I'll think about it. In order to spend less I used a dual purpose hop. Maybe in the future I'll use some Target for the bittering, but for now I'm quite happy. I use a single fermenter, so the result is a bit opaque. I don't care so much about that, other than try to cool down the beer for a night before bottling.

Also I would like to resume my production of porter and maybe try some barley wine. Since a friend beekeeper gave me some honey, I would like to try mead making, but I know precisely nothing about that.

Came out not bad. But the starting temperature was a little high and it has a slight tangy flavour.

I'm trying to find a way to better control the fermentation temperature on the cheap. Any tips appreciated!

One question I do have... After leaving in the bottles for a couple of weeks I've noticed a white residue is settling on the bottom of the bottle. Is this normal? (Pic of sediment in comments)

Lemmitor @A_[email protected] in this community tipped that if the process serves and luck is on one's side, fermented birch sap can be better than champagne. Right now is the time when sap can be collected, so I'm giving it a shot!

The tree isn't terribly bothered, the tap hole is only a few millimeters deep. I only do one tap per tree.

Plan is to empty these tap bottles off several trees once a day into an intermediate container, use a Campden tablet per container and keep the intermediates in the fridge until I have enough, five liters maybe? Then one liter yeast starter, possibly with some cane sugar to lend a little extra aroma and colour (the sap is clear). Ferment fingers crossed. Serve force carbonated. Wish mi luck :D

... great time to get a brew going :D Yes, Big Brew is getting struck by a week-long strike starting today. Sure enough I hope the workers will get what they are going for. I know what I'll be getting, this is the fourth run of the lemon + ginger recipe and it's guud:D

I'm sharing this mostly to show my malt grind station ideas: making it operable by power drill (hand crank replaced with just a regular bolt) and having a vacuum cleaner positioned where the output falls so that it picks our the lightest dust. Helps with keeping the room clean as well as hopefully makes the beer a bit clearer. The hoover collects a fair bit of dust every run: I weighed it once and now adjust the amount of malt going into the grind up by 2 % to account for the lost dust: 1000 g -> 1020 g.

The Simpsons Maris Otter Pale Ale & caramel malts and the Viking Munich Light will be joined by a small amount of smoked wheat. Viking Malt says that this stuff can be used just like regular pilsner malt, being active and all, but it's going to add a very gentle smoke aroma. I'll be using more of it in my next dark Sahti x Stout batch, but I'll try a little bit on this one to get a feel for it.

I brewed two rough versions of this sahti recipe over the winter, the only difference each time being the yeast that I used (and any mistakes that I made). The first batch used Mangrove Jacks M42 ale yeast, the second used a sourdough starter made over the course of two weeks with Bioreal fresh organic yeast and some basic bread flour. Each one was clarified with fungal chitosan, although I can't say I was particularly impressed with the results - it seems to have killed the ability to form a head without really clarifiying it much. Each also got a small amount of priming sugar in the bottle and at least a couple of weeks before drinking (save for a pint for me during the bottling process).

Appearance: Basically identical.

Process: The brewer's version fermented for two weeks, the baker's for one. I would have left it for the full two weeks, but it had clearly stopped any significant activity by that point.

Alcohol content: The brewer's yeast went to about 5%, the baker's to about 2%

Scent: The juniper is predominant in both, but significantly more present in the baker's version.

Flavour: The situation with the scent is reversed here, surprisingly, and the brewer's version has a much bigger presence of that fresh and resinous juniper. tasankovasara on this community described their own experience with baker's yeast as being banana-like, which I think is a reasonable description. It's not a powerful presence, but it's definitely there.

Mouthfeel: I was surprised by how different this was. The baker's one is far more astringent. Not unpleasantly so, by any means, but significantly more. Additionally, it has done far less with the priming sugar, having only the faintest hint of carbonation. I assume that was simply a case of the yeast not tolerating the level of alcohol and having virtually nothing left to work with on the sugar.

Overall it was a worthwhile experiment, but I think I will keep doing it the non-traditional way with brewer's yeast. Sorry Finland. I promise not to do it in your country. I would be interested in trying out kveik yeast as a halfway point, though. I used an ale yeast simply because I wouldn't have been able to keep the demijohns as the higher temperature that kveik wants, so that may have to be a summer project.

I've just brewed my first batch ever. For my first time I went with the Cooper's European Lager kit.

FG was stable for 3 days (due to some personal stuff I couldn't bottle it on day 2) and the FG matched the expected end ABV as advertised.

The beer tasted pretty good on sampling before bottling.

So far so good.

One thing I am surprised by, however, is how dark this lager looks. Not sure if this will get lighter during the 2 weeks that it's suggested to leave it in the bottle, it's something that can happen to this different batches, or it's just how this beer looks?

Thanks for any tips/advice anyone can offer :)

Hey folks, time for the monthly post again. What's everyone been up to?

I've not been that active in my cleaning with a side effect of beer-making hobby lately, I am sad to report. But planning perhaps a California lager.

Does anybody have experience with using regular barley used as animal feed for making malt on their own? i have an endless supply of the stuff from a friend that uses it as animal feed.

I was wondering if i really need specialized malt or would regular barley make an OK beer. I'm mostly curious and I don't want to waste time on a malt that would definitely result in a bad beer, I'm new at homebrewing and it would take up my only fermenting pot until it finishes.

any thoughts or suggestions? thanks!

What's everyone brewing?

I've just bottled something. Went for the parameters in beersmith of a wee heavy. Came out pretty nice, pre-carbonation.

Hey all, I have brewed a few meads in the past. I have used capped beer bottles, I have used wine bottles & corks for still mead, and I have most recently used swingtop (flip top, Grolsch-style bottles). All of those seemed to work fine. Do you all have preferences or experiences where one type of bottling works better for you?

How is this done and what tools are needed? I'm going to be following a friend's recipe and instructions for a low abv beer, and borrowing the anton eastdens and smartref from work to measure sg and abv. Will I need anything else?

https://norden.social/@feinschmeckergarten/113895524164193517

It's pretty good even raw. Pils and golden malts,honey, some bitter and some sweet orange peel, cascade hops and coriander.

Just trying to get rid of these trash bottles ;D

Orange on the left, lemon on the right. Lemon looks darker since I did an oopsie with the water level and had to boil for a while. Orange wine is at an fg of 1.006 and tastes very sweet, don’t even have to back sweeten it. It tastes different but I like it! 18% abv. Lemon wine has a very bitter back end. I’ll be screwing around with back sweetening it to see how it is. The lemon wine ended at 1.032 or 10% abv. Girlfriend likes both so I’m not sure which I’ll be turning into brandy but either way, citrus test was a success!

I made some ginger bug fermented pineapple juice into soda. It was my first ceiling painter! No other juice has foamed this much. The pressure was roughly the same, but the foam! So much!

I've recently developed a taste for Blanc 1664, a lemon lager that's produced in bulk by one of my country's big industrial brewers. I'm also a fan of ginger beers. Here goes an attempt to combine the two on a more robust malty foundation than what the store options offer.

I've brewed successful ginger beers before, but my first attempt with lemon in the mix didn't have nearly enough lemon, and the ginger was too strong. Triple the lemon and half the ginger this time around. Didn't check the pH (I only have a full-scale kit that would leave me none the wiser), remains to be seen how it ferments.

Malts are three parts Simpson's Maris Otter Pale Ale, two parts Viking Munich Light and one part Simpson's Premium English Caramalt. I'm trying fancy Saaz hops for the first time – had to look up a few forum discussions on how it's supposed to be used, and as per popular opinion I put a good dollop of the pellets in at the beginning of the boil alongside a little bit of Challenger. I'm hoping my trampling on traditions and not making a po-faced lager with the stuff isn't going to trigger a flame war :D

Lemons, ginger and a fair bit of Saaz and Amarillo hops went into the smaller kettle in a filter bag. I've done this before – not boiling the 'late addition' hops but instead infusing them like tea, and it seems to work great. The smaller kettle is filled with boiled water and let to sit with the lid on for more than the duration of the boil. When there's 10 minutes of boiling left, I add the infusion into the big kettle and burn vigorously to bring back the boil for the last few minutes.

In the picture with the big kettle on the stove, there's a bit of an innovation handed down to me by the previous owner of my brewing gear: a steel bucket with holes drilled in the bottom. I put my own spin on the idea by sitting the bucket on a smaller steel container. The mashing bag can be left to drip there, and I can also heat some water to my mashing temperature and pour it onto the mash bag to get a little bit more goodness out.

One more thing that I've come to appreciate is a pair of reusable coffee filters. Great for filtering while running the kettle into the Kegmenter. Also great for putting a tea filter bag with hops in and adding yet more hops at the last moment before the wort is laid to rest in the fermentation vessel :)

This beer was fermenting normally for about 16 hours then foamed heavily. I guess its infected but I don't know how, usual strict precautions were taken. Outgassing like crazy.

This month photo for this regular discussion thread is from my summer trip, I visited few craft brewerys and tasted local beers.

As usual share whatever brewing related - questions, recipes, successes, bad batches...

I will be away for some time (~6 months) but should be reachable. I will travel through Europe (Spain, France, Portugal, Germany,...) when I post about this in relevant community I will link it here. Keep it chill here so I don't have to worry on road.

My last few brews turned out amazing and I am glad that I will be away and they will have time to age. Otherwise I would have drink them in few months, someone told me that ciders are best after 1-2 years of aging so finally it may get the chance to survive that long.

Edit: If you want to ask me something about my plans I posted about it on [email protected]

https://sopuli.xyz/post/21139450

Appreciate the mandolin recommendation. Made this go so much quicker and easier. This one is going to be made into orange brandy. In retrospect I should have saved some of the oranges to candy them and toss them into the end product but depending on how lazy I get the next few weeks, I might end up doing just that.

Someone said that orange doesn’t ferment well so naturally, I’m going full send. I bought a mandolin and chain mail glove as recommended by someone on a comment from the lemon wine post. That’ll be in tomorrow so today I’m making a yeast starter for the orange brandy.

Really neat idea and method to isolate wild yeast from his backyard.

Girlfriend wanted wine so I brought up a spare fermenter from my other house, giving lemon wine a shot. This will be my first proper wine (that I won’t be immediately turning into brandy) Glad to be back at it after the hectic holidays. I want to make an orange brandy next, but after slicing 50 lemons by hand (I don’t own a mandolin) I think I need a short break from slicing citrus.

Today I and my dad opened his Christmas beer with rosemary. It is great, lighter for special beer and with notes of rosemary.

This photo is from few weeks ago when I connected with few guys for homemade cider tasting. Mine ciders will be for tomorrow, and all are great.

It's been clearing out at 2,5 °C for over 24 hours already, so I couldn't wait any longer and took a little sampling. And it's a-lovely :D

This is pretty much a classic stout, but with Viking Malt's Sahti malt for the majority of the grist. The void-ness comes from Viking Malt's Black malt (1300 - 1500 EBC). Some leftovers of Tuoppi caramel rye malt and a calculated dose of Simpson's Premium English caramalt also went in. The rye in particular is keen to hijack the taste profile, bringing in the taste of Finnish classic 'kotikalja', a non-fermented malt beverage. That one is kept in it's place, but I do regret not using a bit more of the English caramalt.

The yeast used was the fresh yeast that's a hallmark of the sahti style. It gives a banana-like flavour, and I've found it can be controlled to a great extent by adjusting fermentation temperature. This one was set to 16,5 °C. Around 14 °C the banana aroma tends to get overpowered by fruity hops. Pressurised fermentation at 0,8 bar as always.

I made this batch to use up some leftovers, so I went with a pretty daring dosing of Moutere hop pellets for the first hop addition, followed up towards the end of the boil with Challenger. On this first tasting the Moutere is surprisingly subdued.

Plenty of time to run some xmas bottles for friends and family :) Cheers!

This time of year one thing happens that has absolutely no relation to holidays: late berries (cranberries, lingonberries, rowan) spent enough time in frozen state to develop flavor worth of melomels. A gift for self in several years, something to be safely forgotten until bottling and then again.

Of course, I've kept those in freezer, as I don't want to fight all the birds for rowans (note: they still had plenty, I'm not greedy) and I'm not that good at digging frozen forest floor for the rest.