Homebrew thread

[elpollodiablo]

The distinction between brewing with grain & mashing* is that with the former you're using speciality grains that don't have to be mashed--you use them for flavor and color, but the fermentables come from extract/honey/whatever. When mashing, you're actually converting starches into fermentable sugars.

*As I'm sure you may already know; if any of this sounds condescending, it isn't meant to.

[elpollodiablo]

Also Greg what did you brew with your dad's hops? I'm super curious as to how that turns out.

[Greg Nog]

I... think I mashed it?  It was at that temperature, for some time.... it became sugars?  If you're brewing with grain merely for flavor and color, would you be boiling it at the same temp as the extract?

Also Greg what did you brew with your dad's hops? I'm super curious as to how that turns out.

I used a Saison yeast blend, but the original gravity was pretty high and it's been going for a while, so I wonder if it's going to end up tasting stronger than a Saison would.  It's also been fermenting at like 70 degrees rather than something warm.  The CO2 bubbles smell nice, so I'm curious as to how it'll all turn out.

I have the full recipe written down at home; I'll have to check on that and see exactly what I used for ingredients.

[coldforge]

The distinction between brewing with grain & mashing* is that with the former you're using speciality grains that don't have to be mashed--you use them for flavor and color, but the fermentables come from extract/honey/whatever. When mashing, you're actually converting starches into fermentable sugars.

*As I'm sure you may already know; if any of this sounds condescending, it isn't meant to.

I did not know. I had assumed you guys were always starting from the raw grain—mashing, I guess. Not that I've ever brewed myself; I think it's just that I coincidentally have only helped friends when they were mashing.

[elpollodiablo]

Essentially mashing is the process by which you activate the diastatic enzymes in the malt that will convert those starches, which are unfermentable, into sugars, which are. Specialty grains, which are kilned at higher temperatures, do not need to be mashed, simply steeped, to release their sugars. They have no diastatic power, and their sugars are already present after the kilning process. Speciality grains add unfermentables which add flavor characteristics (like caramel), as well as body.

Something I learned recently is that "muscle malt," like 2-row, Maris Otter, etc.--the malts that make up the largest part of a grain bill and are there almost exclusively to provide fermentable sugars and therefore alcohol--are not kilned at all, but simply dried.

[Greg Nog]

Caramel!  I think that's the grain I used! 

[elpollodiablo]

Right now I'm looking at 2-3lb of honey, which is indeed a lot, but I'm looking for a very boozy beer. A Honey Tripel, I've decided. Here's the recipe.

This is an experiment more than anything; I wanted to take a recipe I'd made successfully before (the Stone C-B) and tweak it and add some crazy adjuncts. Which is exactly what I'm doing. I just hope it turns out reasonably well, since it's a moderately expensive experiment. Grain + honey + hops + 2 smack packs for a big 1L starter.

Bottled this today. It's going to condition really well, I think, but honestly I'd drink the hell out of it right now if it had a little gas in it. Packs a hell of a wallop (it's at least 8.5%), and you get the honey all the way through, form the deep boozy sweetness at the front to a dry, remarkably mead-like finish. It's still really hot, though. This is one that'll definitely get better with age, and I hope I can keep my hands off of it. I love tripels.

[elpollodiablo]

Experimenting with batch sparging tonight. My friend has a notion that with my setup (round 5 gallon Igloo cooler with bazooka braid in place of false bottom) we're not doing our efficiency any favors by fly sparging by hand with a pitcher--we're not actually rinsing the grains on the side of the tun since the flow is channeling down to a single point in the middle of the cooler. Sounds reasonable. Anyway, batch sparging sounds a lot less labor intensive. Here's the plan:
---
Strike with 18 quarts, mash.
Stir at 15 min and 30 min into mash.
Mash for 60 min.
Vorlauf.
Drain tun completely into kettle.
 Add 9 quarts sparge water.
Stir.
 Let rest ten minutes.

Vorlauf.
 Drain tun completely into kettle.
 Add 9 quarts sparge water.
Stir.
Let rest ten minutes.

 Vorlauf.
Drain tun completely into kettle.
---

Stirring midway into the mash is evidently a decent way to get a couple of efficiency points when batch sparging.

[elpollodiablo]

Greg I wondered what was going on with your saison. I bottled mine today and it was pretty wild--dry, sweet and tart, with a really nice sort of pear-like aroma. I like that Wyeast saison strain.

[Greg Nog]

It was good when I last tried it, about a week ago (which was a week after bottling).  I'm bringing some up to NH with me this weekend, so my dad can taste the fruit of his hop-growing.  It's pretty strong, sorta barleywine-ish.  I'll give another update after tasting it again soon!

[elpollodiablo]

Man, this rye IPA I whipped up is goooooooooood. Big, chewy, beautiful malt character with a short bitter finish. The rye and wheat really came through nicely! This is one of the only beers I've ever had where the "biscuity" descriptor really made sense.

[elpollodiablo]

Shouldn't be dipping into the saison yet but there was one in the fridge for some reason and I'm having it now. It's a little green and not quite as dry as I'd hoped because it under attenuated, but the flavor's all as it should be, otherwise. Smells great, too, really subtle fruity-Belgian kinda aroma.

[Greg Nog]

Just came across George Washington's recipe for small beer:

To Make Small Beer

Take a large Sifter full of Bran Hops to your Taste. Boil these 3 hours then strain out 30 Gallons into a cooler put in 3 Gallons Molasses while the Beer is Scalding hot or rather draw the Melasses into the cooler & Strain the Beer on it while boiling Hot. let this stand till it is little more than Blood warm then put in a quart of Yeast if the Weather is very Cold cover it over with a Blanket & let it Work in the Cooler 24 hours then put it into the Cask. leave the bung open till it is almost done Working. Bottle it that day Week it was Brewed

[elpollodiablo]

George was either cold-blooded or pitching his yeast too hot.

[justinh]

Maybe this has been discussed before, but have you dudes ever been to that bar in Philly where they use Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson's beer recipes for their beers?  GW's porter and TJ's ale were really good, but Franklin's pine needle brew was kind of nasty.   

[Greg Nog]

I've not been there!  Which bar is that?

[justinh]

http://www.citytavern.com/

Although touristy, this place was awesome--the bar portion of the establishment is really small and set up to facilitate conversations with random strangers.  Also, it's really expensive.  But for the beer recipes of the founding fathers it's totally worth it.

[Greg Nog]

Oh, yeah.  I've been meaning to go there for a while now, but my ladyfriend's a vegetarian, so we usually opt for places with less-meat-centric menus.  I should check it out at some point, though.

[elpollodiablo]

A homebrew riddle:

Twice now, I've brewed 5 gallon all grain batches using a two-step batch sparge method--dough in, stir once halfway through the mash, collect first runnings, add half the sparge water, stir, settle, collect second runnings, repeat for third runnings--and it's worked pretty beautifully. 70% efficiency twice, which is better than I was doing fly sparging by hand (round coolers don't seem to work all that well with fly sparging; not enough surface area, etc.). Hit my 6.5gal pre-boil volumes perfectly both times, had starting gravities for both beers that were within 3 points of target. Boiled for an hour, chilled, racked into fermenter. 5gal on the nose. Take a gravity reading, and the gravity hasn't changed but like 3 points during the boil. With this IPA last night, I went from a 1.051 pre-boil gravity to a 1.053 OG.

What gives? My buddy and I sat around speculating for a while last night, and I'm still pretty much clueless. My best guess is that it has something to do with water volumes, but as I said above I'm fairly certain all the volumes were right (18q mash water, 9q+9q sparge =  9gal - absorption and brewhouse loss = ~6.5gal, and my kettle is calibrated so I know it was damn close to that). The most logical conclusion to draw would be that I fucked up the gravity readings, but I took two on each end after stirring the wort to make sure it wasn't stratified *and* had my buddy re-check the pre- and postboil readings because when this happened last time I just chalked it up to my own incompetence. This time I also used a brand-new hydrometer.

How is it that I could only gain 3 gravity points in a 60 minute boil? That doesn't seem possible.

[YojimboMonkey]

First thing I can really think of is that you didn't correct for temperature properly, either on the gravity or on the volume?

2nd possibility: gremlins.

The other thing I think is that you are worrying way too much about the minutiae and not enough about brewing beers that you enjoy drinking.

I just picked a buttload of spruce tips and I am freezing them and I will brew a spruce ale later this year! Beer! Woo!

Took my barleywine to my homebrew club meeting Tuesday night. That is maybe the 3rd beer I've brought since I started going that they told me ought to be in a competition. The only problem with entering beers in competitions is that I have to give up some of my beer.

[YojimboMonkey]

You know, it's like that at the homebrew club too, with dudes going "Well I was off by 1 point on my target gravity so I adjusted by reducing my first hop addition by a tenth of an ounce, and of course by then the ph of my water was totally wack, so this beer didn't turn out quite like I wanted it" and then you taste it and it doesn't even taste like beer, it's totally fucked, and then you go "um, here is a beer that I brewed to be yummy" and everybody says "Best beer of the night! woo!" but mostly because it's like 10.8% alcohol. but also because it's delicious.

[Greg Nog]

I just picked a buttload of spruce tips and I am freezing them and I will brew a spruce ale later this year! Beer! Woo!

Oh man, can't wait to hear how that turns out!

Drinking some of my wheatbeer now; it's become amazingly good since it was bottled!

[elpollodiablo]

You know, it's like that at the homebrew club too, with dudes going "Well I was off by 1 point on my target gravity so I adjusted by reducing my first hop addition by a tenth of an ounce, and of course by then the ph of my water was totally wack, so this beer didn't turn out quite like I wanted it" and then you taste it and it doesn't even taste like beer, it's totally fucked, and then you go "um, here is a beer that I brewed to be yummy" and everybody says "Best beer of the night! woo!" but mostly because it's like 10.8% alcohol. but also because it's delicious.

While I hear what you're saying, I kind of hate this fallacy that you can't make delicious beer while "worrying" about things like OG, hop additions, etc. The idea that sweating the small stuff will somehow make your beer less tasty is just asinine--I blame Papazian.

Anyway, the fact is that a difference of 10-15 gravity points is kind of major, and I'd ultimately like to know how much bang I'm getting for my buck when it comes to grain. I'd also like to know how much I might have to add in additional fermentables to get my OG up to where I want it. After some reading and posting on Homebrew Talk I've come to the conclusion that the pre-boil gravity was taken at too high a temperature--yes it was corrected, but those corrections get less and less accurate the further away you get from your hydrometer calibration temp. Which means that my pre-boil gravity was likely in the 1.040 range, which means my current efficiency is something like 60-65%. So I'd like to address that in my process or equipment and try to get it up to around 70-75%, so I can actually do 1.060 all grain beers with my current setup.

[YojimboMonkey]

nobody said you can't. there are other dudes in the club who are all up in that stuff and making kickass beers. i'm not there yet. maybe you aren't either. but if you enjoy fretting over that stuff go for it. and yes, you are supposed to enjoy this.

[YojimboMonkey]

No, it's a good question though, and the temperature correction is the only answer I have. Personally I've never taken a pre-boil gravity reading and compared it with post-boil.  I probably could stand to pay a lot more attention to such things but I make pretty fucking good beer