Topics

136

All Things Food / Beer soup.......

« on: December 03, 2010, 06:56:46 PM »

The clone recipe book "Beer Captured" has some beer food recipes in the back. There's a Belgian beer soup....... The usual aromatics, thyme, parsley, a little flour..... Then a little milk and beer. A bottle of Leffe in my case... .. Two cans of white kidney beans, a can of corn, a can of chopped tomatoes and, for that little extra, 6 chorizo sausages sliced....... VERY slowly simmering for a while, then in the garage 'till Sunday which is BREW DAY and the FIRST DRAFT of my first batch (APA) It will all be served with a couple of loaves of home made bread, Brie, Manchego and a some grated sharp cheddar from raw milk on the soup....

Oh man, I can't wait..........life is GOOD!

137

Kegging and Bottling / regulator questions

« on: December 01, 2010, 12:09:23 PM »

OK, initial setup was "basic" so I got a regulator from LHBS that is just that, a regulator and a low pressure gauge. I now need to add a bottle pressure gauge to that. They're cheap, no problem. Looking at all the regulators (mine is a Corney) it appears that they are all the same in that the 3 o'clock position is the bottle, 12 and 6 are low pressure, be it nipple/tube or gauge, and that 9 is bottle pressure and that's where the bottle gauge goes.

Looking at double regulators it appears that all they do is put a nipple in the 9, then the next regulator and it all repeats as above.

Doesn't it therefore follow that one can add more? One could have 4 regulators with gauges daisy chained, with a bottle pressure gauges at the end.......? This eliminates the need for a manifold and would allow fine tuning of the carbonation for different styles....

Are all my assumptions correct?

138

General Homebrew Discussion / Beer and copper.....

« on: December 01, 2010, 08:19:56 AM »

In another thread Tom Schmidlin mentions that beer coming in contact with copper can produce off-flavors quickly.
But, many, including myself, brew in copper. Can someone elaborate? Tom?

139

The Pub / So I said to my buddy.....

« on: December 01, 2010, 06:37:38 AM »

as we're walking through the store with 500 different single beers for sale and I'm collecting quite a few $$ worth of Munich Helles and related styles:

"I'm trying to get the wife to start liking real beers and get off the Yuengling lager monotony."

And he says:

"Why would you do something stupid like that?"

140

All Things Food / Bread/Yeast question.

« on: November 30, 2010, 05:53:43 AM »

I've been making bread for a while. Nothing exotic, just my one or two loaves of whole wheat, a recipe I've been tweaking for a few decades. It's down to minimal work for maximum result. If someone is interested:

O's bread.... Makes two loaves:

3 cups water 115º
2 TBSP yeast.

Mix.

add:

2 cups unbleached all purpouse flour
4 TBSP molasses
4 TBSP = 1/2 stick melted butter
2 TSP salt

mix until homogenous.

add:

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose unbleached flour
1+ cup rolled oats.

Knead and knead...... Put in 2 greased bread pans (I use PAM) and rise in 95º oven for 45 minutes AND doubled in size. Turn heat up to 350º and bake for 40 minutes.

Remove, let cool and eat.

Now, I have always wanted to get just a hair more fluff, but if I add more yeast it gets, well, too yeasty. Getting involved in this beer thing I am suddenly immersed in a whole world of the care and feeding of yeast. In fact, an Erlenmeyer and stir plate are in the mail..... But, that got me to thinking. Would it make sense to wake up my bread yeast in the Erlenmeyer and aerate it for 10 or 15 minutes? Would I get the yeasties more "pumped"? Anyone played with stir plates and bread yeast?

141

General Homebrew Discussion / Coincidence?

« on: November 29, 2010, 11:08:15 AM »

Brew Network pod casts are 1.10 ish long, call it a little over an hour if you FF through the comercials. (Sorry sponsors, I DO like your stuff). My drive to work, a little over an hour........ coincidence?

142

General Homebrew Discussion / Is it done?

« on: November 29, 2010, 10:45:06 AM »

First batch, partial extract APA..... per recipe og 1054 fg 1014 - 5g batch fermenting in 6g bucket.

OK, it's day 8 and although there is still some activity, I can get a bubble or so/half hour, the sniff test on the air lock indicated that it was very much getting there, so I HAD to go in.

Properly sanitized the beer thief and quickly popped the lid to get my sample....... My og was 1053.....gravity now..... 1010 !!!!!!!

Conditions iside were interesting for the noob. The big green ring around the collar (see the noob does a stoopid thread) and a layer of white foam on the surface, appeared to be about 1/4" thick.

Now for the important part. Flavor OUTSTANDING. Even though not carbonated it had a slight fizzyness and was very, very much like my favorite household beer, (SNPA). Body was good, bitterness good, so for me, the proud father of his first batch it scores very high on the drinkability scale. OK, ANYTHING drinkable would have made me happy, but this exceeds my expectations by a mile. Can you tell I'm excited?

Now to the questions...... where do we go from here? I will be kegging this and speed carbonating, 2 days at 30 psi. I know, I need more patience and I will be more patient next batches, but I need SOMETHING coming out of that tap so I can stop buying cases of beer...... you know.

1 Although there is still some activity, gravity says it's done. Is it?
2 Popping the lid let air in..... is that bad?
3 I'll be autosiphoning this off (no tap on the bucket). Would the foam layer on top disappear if I waited longer?  On the other thread someone suggested swirling, then tilting the bucket, letting it settle and then putting the siphon in the shallow end. I like that.

Your (much appreciated) thoughts?

143

General Homebrew Discussion / OK, the noob did a stupid.....

« on: November 28, 2010, 09:53:29 PM »

The first batch is a partial extract kit from the local brew store. Two bags of grains, two bags of dried extract three little baggies of hop pellets and a yeast whack pack. After just re-reading the instructions I realized I failed to put the hop pellets in the supplied muslin baggies..... so THAT'S why I had three of them left..... DUH!

OK, what does this mean?......1: I'm hoping that whatever solid matter was left will be on the bottom, and since I'm not saving this yeast batch it'll "go away"...... or even better: 2: I would think that these pellets would disappear anyways. I mean, they were pretty powdery in the ziplock baggies, don't see how the muslin would have kept it inside anyways.....

So, I can take it.....give me the bad news and tell me how this will produce "off flavors" (beer speak for: Dude, go ahead and CHUCK IT.....) or shall I follow Charlie's advice and "don't worry, have a brew?"

144

Yeast and Fermentation / Yeast questions from the noob.....

« on: November 26, 2010, 12:19:10 PM »

OK, my first batch is fermenting, and on day 5 we still have bubbelage, albeit more sedate than before. So, I think the yeasties are doing their thing.

But, all I did was whack the pouch, let it sit at 75º for three or four hours as it inflated to near explosive pressure, and pitch it. (I read the instructions..... )

Now, all the pros are talking about starters. And stir tables and rinsing. I know some of that is propagation of strains, but some of it seems to be just prep for a brew batch of beer.

Would one of you learned gents (and oh by the way, where are the brew mistresses? ) take a second and whip out a primer paragraph on dry vs liquid vs pouches vs starters..... Help me figure out where in the spectrum I am, and where I could end up if this obsession continues on the exponential path it appears to be on?

Thanks.

145

Commercial Beer Reviews / Thirsty Bear

« on: November 26, 2010, 10:04:19 AM »

Going to be in San Fran Saturday, have reservations at the Thirsty Bear Brewing Co. Any recommendations?

146

General Homebrew Discussion / Small batches.....

« on: November 23, 2010, 08:14:40 AM »

For now I'm working off kits/recipes from allegedly reliable sources. BUT I have some ideas I want to try out. Now, trying something and finding it doesn't work and chucking it is one thing. Finding out it doesn't work and chucking FIVE GALLONS of it is another thing.

How do people do small batches? Does one simply divide the recipe by five and then ferment in a growler? What do you do with the rest of the yeast, hops that comes in quantities made for 5 gallon batches.....?

147

The Pub / Where are the experts?

« on: November 23, 2010, 06:09:17 AM »

OK, I linked my AHA membership to this forum...... now looking for "Ask the experts" Can anyone point me in the right direction?

148

General Homebrew Discussion / Brew Masters......up or down.....?

« on: November 22, 2010, 07:16:48 PM »

Well, it isn't every day that beer is the star of the show, and I don't watch a lot of ugly box, I mean, I have things to DO....

But, I did find the family room and kicked back on the mega couch with a couple of Leffe's (first batch still fermenting) and fired up the big screen......

I liked it. Learned some stuff (when was the last time you learnt something from the the TUBE....?) and found the people pretty entertaining.....


Anyone?

149

Kegging and Bottling / CO2 question.

« on: November 21, 2010, 05:16:08 PM »

New to all of this.....

Have a brand new setup in the keggerator. (See related threads). Bench tested the whole setup empty, held pressure 48+ hours. Now, they are installed in the fridge, filled with sanitizing solution. Set the pressure, leak tested, and shut off the CO2 bottle. The pressure is slowly going down, but there are no apparent leaks.

Am I correct to assume that the CO2 head is going into solution into the water? Fizzy sanitizer so to speak? If I were to leave the valve open (I'm not) the pressure would eventually equalize somewhere after needlessly using a lot of CO2?

150

General Homebrew Discussion / First Brew.....

« on: November 21, 2010, 02:32:10 PM »

Well, today was my first brew day..... Got all the gear, got it all set up and got a nice fire going out in "the barn". Partial mash kit for an APA. Some grain, some dry, lotsa hops and a yeast bag that zipped to life to the point where I thought it would blow....



Note the cornies and CO2 on the side bench testing..... holding pressure for 49+ hours now......

Your's truly checking on the wort cooler.....



What's better than a guy brewing? TWO guys brewing. My buddy Dave is a long time brewer who said it had been too long. Plus the wife doesn't like him messing up the kitchen..... Well, bring your bucket and come play at my house. I happened to have a second burner.......



Well, they said aeration is to introduce O2 into the wort for the yeast...... You want O2? I got O2....... This baby be aerated with pure O2 for about 40 seconds.......



Bucket is sitting in my office which is about 65-68ºF...... and now we wait......