Homebrew thread

[elpollodiablo]

I keep peeking in the closet to watch it bubble!

I'm hoping it'll be tasty and we can drink it as part of the wedding festivities.

[Bernard]

So after you cook it up, do you leave it fermenting in a tub, or does it go in some kind of special temperature-controlled device? How long after cooking does it ferment before you can bottle it, and can you drink it right away once it's bottled? Or does it keep changing in the bottle, like wine?

[YojimboMonkey]

It goes into a sealed vessel (a bucket or a carboy) with a one-way airlock to keep bad beasties out but to let CO2 out so that the thing doesn't explode.  Once it's fermented out, a bit more sugar is added and then it's bottled.  The additional sugar is to allow the yeast that is still active to create a bit more CO2 and carbonate the beer in the bottle.  It's generally ready 10-14 days after bottling.  Depending on the style, you might want to let some age more, particularly stronger styles like a barleywine or imperial stout.

[elpollodiablo]

Jim, how do you feel about secondary fermentation? I'm dry hopping this batch, and I'd like it to be relatively free of solids and debris.

[YojimboMonkey]

Depends on the style, I'm going to do a rye ESB for my birthday that I hope to turn around relatively quickly (since that's coming up in a month) so I'm going to skip secondary and just rack from primary to the keg, trying to leave as much sludge behind as I can.  Quicker, younger ales can go without a secondary but I'd recommend it for anything you're going to ferment longer than 2-3 weeks.

[elpollodiablo]

Hmm... I was thinking about letting this batch go about 3 weeks. Is there anything to be lost/risked (other than contamination, obviously) by doing a secondary fermentation, just for the sake of clarity of the final product?

[YojimboMonkey]

Mostly risk of contamination, secondarily introducing oxygen to fermented beer is bad so careful there, I'm sure you're aware that you need to siphon into the secondary fermentation vessel and not just dump the beer in, also possibility of killing an active fermentation, so just make sure that most of the fermentation is done before you transfer it, check the gravity and make sure it's within a few degrees of your target gravity.

[elpollodiablo]

Thanks, man. I'm sure I'm going to have hell of more questions in the days to come.

[YojimboMonkey]

re: oxygenating fermented beer, oxygen+alcohol=wet cardboard flavors in your beer, so be sure to minimize splashing when transferring the wort, I know I covered this in the last post but not sure if I gave it its due. 

WARNING: INCOMING SCIENCE BITCHES So basically the yeast need oxygen at the beginning of the fermentation in order to reproduce, because yeast reproduction is an aerobic process, but fermentation is an anaerobic process so oxygen is not required once fermentation has commenced and in fact is bad because of the off flavors it produces.  I didn't quite get this when I first started.  So when you first put your wort into the fermentation vessel, shake hell out of it, use an oxygen stone, whatever, at that point you do want to get oxygen into it.  But shortly thereafter, the yeast has built up a pretty good colony and you want them to turn their energy to eating sugar and pissing sweet sweet alcohol so you don't want any more oxygen. 

And of course sanitation, clean & sanitize hell out of anything that is going to come into contact with your beer, this is like rule #1 of brewing.

[diesel_powered]

Any advice for dealing with roommates that can't seem to stop throwing out the bottles you're saving?

[elpollodiablo]

Apropos of that: anyone have any advice for tracking down champagne bottles, or any type of larger bottle suitable for the project? I know, "just drink more," ha ha, but seriously.

[donblood]

Grolsch bottles with the rubber nipples are awesome for homebrew.  >12oz, and you don't need to fuck around with caps/cappers/an extra sanitation stage.

[Greg Nog]

Apropos of that: anyone have any advice for tracking down champagne bottles, or any type of larger bottle suitable for the project? I know, "just drink more," ha ha, but seriously.

It seems like I always see them in the garbage after Sunday brunch, due to mimosas and such -- maybe you could ask a nearby brunch place if you could pick 'em up on Monday morning?  Do you have the champagne-sized adaptor for your capper?

[YojimboMonkey]

champagne bottles are mostly green and you know how I feel about green bottles dude.  don't make me drop more science in this bitch

[Greg Nog]

One of the nice things about living in a heavily-Polish neighborhood is all the great big brown bottles of Zywiec that line the sidewalks.

[elpollodiablo]

What about like Sammy Smith's bottles or the like? Something like a Zywiec bottle would be perfect, I think. I'd like to have fewer bottles to wash and I prefer drinking liter/22oz bottles anyhow.

Gonna transfer to the glass carboy today, I think. Bubbles are coming about every 30 seconds or so. Should I wait until it's once a minute, or does it really matter? Once again, different advice from different sources.

[YojimboMonkey]

Have you taken a gravity reading? 

[Bernard]

pollo, as an experienced food experimenter I would suggest taking photos and notes along the way so you can reproduce your results if you love them. You can post 'pollo's most excellent reading and beering notes'.

[elpollodiablo]

Have you taken a gravity reading? 

I haven't. I took one right before I pitched the yeast, but I haven't opened the fermenter since I sealed it. Should I take a reading now and another in a few days?

[YojimboMonkey]

Take a reading, see how far your gravity has come.  Like I said previously, a good sign of when you should transfer to secondary is if you are within a few degrees of your target gravity.  I'm sure the kit had some kind of projected final gravity in the instructions.

[elpollodiablo]

Actually, weirdly enough the kit only lists the OG.

 Can you recommend some good practices for taking SG readings once fermentation's started?

[YojimboMonkey]

Get yourself a wine thief



Here's a link at yer local

sanitize hell out of it, like you should be getting used to by now.  Use it to take a sample and then you can either release the sample into a test tube and take the gravity reading there (advantage: greater stability as you can put the tube in a holder & put it on a level stable surface) or you can take the reading right in the thief, a hydrometer will fit into it nicely. (advantage: no fucking around with a test tube)  Then you can either dump the sample you pulled or you can taste it.  I don't recommend putting it back into the fermentation vessel but if your sanitation was pristine I suppose you could.  If you do decide to taste it just keep in mind that this is not what the final product is going to taste like, you can get a good idea what it will taste like from a taste now but the final product will be different.

[Thermofusion]

Jim, per our earlier discussion, here's the kit I was looking at picking up

Contains: * 6.5 Gallon "Ale Pail" Primary Fermenter with Drilled and Grommeted Lid * 6.5 Gallon "Ale Pail" Bottling Bucket with Bottling Spigot * 5 Gallon Glass Carboy * "Home Beermaking" Book * Easy Clean No-Rinse Cleanser * Twin Lever Capper * Triple Scale Hydrometer * Airlock * Drilled Universal Carboy Bung * Liquid Crystal Thermometer * Siphon Hose and Shut-Off Clamp * Fermtech Auto Siphon * Bottle Filler * Bottle Brush * Equipment Instructions

is that adequate-ish?

[YojimboMonkey]

That looks like about what I started with more or less.  Of course to get started you'll need to pick up a few extra things, item #1 and of huge and obvious importance is a boil pot, you are not likely to have something you can boil 5 gallons in, and to start off with you may not really need it.  I ended up picking up a couple of big 20 quart pans from K-Mart (I believe they were the enameled Martha Stewart brand pans, they were lovely) and splitting the boil but really you could get by with one, do a 3 gallon boil and then add 2 gallons of water at the end to bring your volume up to 5 gallons and also help rapidly chill your wort (this is the method recommended by Charlie Papazian for beginners).  These days I boil in a 7.5 gallon stainless steel turkey fryer.  The other thing you'll want is bottles to put the beer in.  This is the fun part.  Drink beer, specifically beer that comes in 12 oz amber non-twistoff longnecks (or whatever bottle you want to use but no twistoffs), enough that you'll have 2 cases and change when you're ready to bottle in a few weeks.  (This should be no challenge).  You can also buy empty bottles but I have serious moral issues with this practice. 

Oh also you'll want to buy ingredients but I assume the place you're looking at either sells ingredient kits in addition to that equipment kit or that equipment kit also comes with enough for 1 batch.

[milly balgeary]

I dropped some RPG gold about what you spec'ed out last night Jim. Got all the stuff. I got some nut brown ale mix. Dude recommended How To Brew so I grabbed that cause I couldn't remember the book you were talkin about. That store is awesome and that dude was awesome too. Helped me carry the shit out to my car even! I probably ain't gonna get it goin till 'morrow.