Category: homebrewing

Beers, ciders, meads

stoutmakerLeave a comment

Been busy brewing and stuff the last few weeks. Brewed twice at the local Homebrew shop for club demos and to replenish the sample stocks there. I even took the Mash and boil on a road trip brew.

Oh road trip brewing with this Mash and boil is soooo much less hassle. This is gonna make for some summer traveling. I will have to make a little checklist post for this. 

Also I have really been exploring the cider and mead side of things. I just kegged up a lower gravity (7%) Saison mead. And bottled a higher gravity (9%) Blueberry cider! Oh,, almost forgot the Farmers Market cider. Each week at the local market I bought “something” and froze them for the end of season cider. This year it was apple/red currant/strawberry/sour cherry/raspberry/beet ciderIMG_20181114_143905_687.jpg

As good as these new forays turned out, I may have to split time being a brewery and a cider mill. I think its fun for a lot of reasons. First being,, there is more involvement it feels like. With beer you do your 4 hour thing and you dont look at it for a month.  With these quick ciders, I can piddle around with the whole fruit/veg prepping, staggered nutrients, degassing, bottling… things like that. Might be a turn off for some,, but its puts me back in touch with my products, like the old days!

Take a look at this Blueberry cider!

  • 3 gallons apple juice, fresh pressed or cheap stuff. They both work 
  • 2- containers frozen concentrate blueberry/pomegranate mix
  • 2 lbs sugar
  • 3 tsp nutrient (split)
  • US-04 or any English strain yeast
  • Mix everything and 2 tsp of the nutrient. shake it up hard to oxygenate. A day after fermenting add the other 1 tsp of nutrient.
  • After 3 weeks bottle or keg @ 3 volumes

 

Hot day lager brew

stoutmakerLeave a comment

Took a road trip to John’s house for a 10 gallon split batch of Mexican Lager. Started in the morning before the heat got up there.

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Rice hulls are needed for this one36758498_1774458879334231_1803360474423623680_n

Look how compact this bed got,, but those rice hulls saved it!36701132_1774458929334226_1117230940557410304_n

That corn was trying to boil over!36713568_1774458972667555_2323666384757719040_n

Starting the chill 36729303_1774459036000882_6286606947563077632_n

wouldnt be a brew at Johns without an strafing run36654608_1774459012667551_2075224980773142528_n

we made it!36735803_1774459086000877_7210144853164818432_n

UPS drops off 3 more beer kits!
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Almost forgot the recipe

10 gallons yet unnamed Mexican Lager

  • 11 lbs Vienna
  • 3 lbs pilsner
  • .75 lb 60L crystal
  • 4 lbs flaked corn
  • 2oz Tettnang @60 (see below)
  • .5 oz saaaaaz @30 (see below)
  • 34/70 lager yeast

(the recipe called for only the 2oz of 6% Tettnang hops, but the ones we had were only 3.7% so we threw in the extra 7% Saaaz to make up a few of the IBU, plus will add some flavor at the 30 mark)

Oh,, this was also going to be a taste experiment. John is fermenting as a usual lager would call for.  And I’m going to use the same 34/70 yeast in my half, but just gonna let it roll at my basement temp of 63 degrees and keg it up at my usual 4 weeks.

Bad Yeast

stoutmakerLeave a comment

Last month I brewed up what I was calling the “work beer”

Just a simple little beer with 2 row, flaked oats and crystal with a pack of Montueka hops.

Normally a simple little beer like this gets brewed and drank with out much attention. But this one had a few issues.

The first thing funny with it was something that had already mentioned in it’s original post. The hops were full of junk. Yea I’ve had hop packs with the occasional leaf in it before, but this was beyond that. But I didnt get a picture of it, and didn’t really have anything to do with the second problem.

I had gotten some outdated liquid yeast from the shop to use. Done this several times before and no problems.

Now when I say out of date, I’m not talking a year or anything.. this was just a couple of weeks past date.

Because it’s just a low grav 3 gallon I did not do a starter, I just pitched the whole vial as usual.

After 2 days of not a bubble or that normal yeast krausen layer I removed the airlock to get a quick sample to see what was going on.

I was immediately met with the stench of something between wet siliage and dead nightcrawlers. Obviously something is not right there. The sample shows no drop in grav so I give it a slight stir and let it go till the next day.

Next day still nadda. So I pitch a packet of 05. The 3 day lag kinda worries me.. but still think it’s gonna be ok.

After about 2 days it should be up and rolling fairly well,, but it’s not.

Yes there is some fermenting action happening.. but very slow. And a inch thick layer of what looks like vasaline. Not your normal krausen. I again open the top and get the same dead nightcrawlers smell.

These pics don’t really show what it truely looks like. The pics look fairly normal, or close to normal.. but no way. It was a gross gloopy clump.

But it was doing “something”. So I let it go. After about 2 days the thing started to grow “legs” or something. Long stringy things hanging down from top to bottom.


This pic was when it just started, and this makes it look almost fine,, but got worse pretty damn fast. No real fermenting action, just growing stringy legs and was starting ooze an oil slick on top.

I did wait for about 3 weeks. But it smelled so bad and just kept lookin like it was ready to crawl out of the carboy.. I just dumped it.

I dont think it was a sanitation thing. It didnt act like a good ol infection.. I think the yeast was just dead, spoiled and decomposing. And I don’t think making a starter would have “helped”. Sure it would have saved this batch because I would have seen the yeast was junk, but it wouldn’t have saved that yeast.

What ever died in that vial must really been bad, if it almost killed of the 05 yeast as well.

Welp can’t win them all. The next batch in the same carboy is already under way. No problems.

Its a Soriachi Ace hopped so hoping to get some pickle action out of it.