... 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.
Hops are on the menu too, of course :D Challenger goes in the boil, Saaz and Amarillo go into a separate infusion kettle with the lemon and ginger. The infusion kettle gets to just sit and infuse like tea for an extended period of time, and at the tail end of boiling the wort I dunk the infusion in so that it gets a moment of boiling for sanitising.
The prices for the ingredients are the cool part of this hobby! Buy a beer at the shop, and the value-added tax is 25,5 %. However, buy malt and hops and the tax is 14 %. So already in taxation there's a saving. VAT included, the price of 25 kg of malt is around 50 €, so 2 € per kilogram. The little 1 kg bags have a bit of premium over that, for example the specialty smoked wheat one was 3,90 € / kg.
Pelleted, vacuum packed hops are in the range of 7 - 10 € / 100 grams. Challenger is 6,90 € / 100 g and Saaz 8,40 € / 100 g.
And to get a grand total for this 23 liter run in ingredients: Hops 14,80 €, malts 15,74 €, yeast 0,12 €, lemons and ginger 3,30 € = 34 €. That's not a bad price considering a single choice 'pint' of 0,5 l can often cost over 10 € at the bar :)
Thanks a lot for the breakdown, esp. the total cost per liter.
Maybe one of these days I'll get into it.
A friend of mine ferments mahla and it's amazing (not always, but succesfully it's better than champagne).
And last summer I worked a little at Fiskarsin Panimo. They experiment a lot with non-standard ingredients and sometimes they hit jackpot, tastewise. They're also into wild yeasts which I find super interesting (one of their beers was called green meadow because they collected the yeast from a green meadow).
If you get the chance go on one of their guided tours!
Wow, super tip right at the top of the mahla season. I'm in the countryside and have got a lot of birch trees to tap. Gotta try that!
I'll tip back: if you venture into beer making, I recommend brew-in-a-bag (BIAB) for mashing. Low-tech and super handy in terms of clean-ups and the process in general. And never hesitate to contact me if in need of onboarding :)
Brew-in-a-bag, got it.
I'll try to remember to interview him about the process next time we meet.