I thought it might be interesting to have an occasional thread for us homebrewers and winemakers (professionals welcome, too, if we have any) to talk about what were doing, bounce ideas off each other, etc.
A few brews ago, I bought one of these, which lets me use my brew kettle as a mash and lauter tun, and I started brewing all-grain. So far, I’ve made a great IPA and a much less successful heather ale. I’m using batch sparging, and I’m still working on getting my technique down.
Last weekend, with some help from my roommate, I started our household Christmas ale. It’s a heavily spiced, dark beer with honey and molasses, so once it’s bottled, it’ll go in the basement to age until Yuletide. Yesterday, I made about 2 1/2 gallons of an experimental grapefruit hefeweizen. I used a can of Breiss wheat malt extract, cascade hops, a half-teaspoon of yeast nutrient, the peel of one grapefruit (15 min. boil) and the juice of 1/2 the grapefruit (at the end of the boil). I think after the primary fermentation is done, I’ll add the peel and juice of a second grapefruit to get a really strong, fresh grapefruit flavor and aroma.
What have you been working on?
P.S. I know I promised to do a t-shirt design way back here, I just couldn’t come up with anything good. Inspiration finally struck last night, though, so I will hopefully have something to show soon.
Well, the Colorado peach harvest distracted me so I’ve put my next project on hold until I’m sick of peaches (and I don’t have any desire to make a peach drink).
The plan is to make a honeydew and rosewater mead, but maybe I should start planning a yule beer as well…
You’re welcome! Last year’s spiced ale was a minor disaster - we wanted to serve a pumpkin ale for Thanksgiving, but because we had to wait for ripe pumpkins, we didn’t brew it until October, and it was far from ready to drink at Thanksgiving. The recipe we worked from also called for WAY too many cloves (1.5 tbsp for a 5-gallon batch), and even after many months of aging, the clove taste overwhelmed all the other flavors. This year, we’ll brew a pumpkin ale for next Thanksgiving. (And cut back on the cloves.)
Honeydew and rosewater mead sounds delicious! I love rosewater.
Cute, smart, cool, and you mash your own grain? How you doin’?
I haven’t brewed in nearly four years. May when the weather cools down I’ll do some sort of witbier. Or pale ale. Something in a color other than black.
See, I take a slightly different approach - I don’t learn how to taste the off-flavors produced by brewing at higher temperatures, and just keep going all summer long. Last summer, when temperatures were in the 90s for some weeks, our ales were fermenting in four or five days. I’m hoping for a good cold winter this year - I only managed one lager last winter.
Well I’ve got two brews on tap right now, and two kits waiting in the wings. I need to get busy.
They’re all ales. The two I have on tap are an IPA and an Arrogant Bastard clone. In the wings are an “American Red Ale” and another lighter pale ale.
Still doing extracts in a turkey frier for now, but I have a keg I plan to convert to a keggle. Money’s tight so I’m going DIY getting pieces here and there… Been looking for a really cheap 20 gallon cooler for mashing, then I’ll build the sparge arm and manifold from pvc.
Last night I bottled the hefty braggot I described in this fabulously succesful thread. The specific gravity never really came down from about 1.040 or so. The stuff is therefore sweeter than I would have liked, and still has that earthy character from the buckwheat honey. In retrospect one of the Belgian Ale styles might have been a really good match for this honey. I think the final product will go well with really spicy foods though.
My next task will probably be to make show mead with some type of varietal honey. Then I need to bottle my cyser so that it is ready for Thanksgiving. And I am overdue in making an honest to Og beer, too.
I started homebrewing this spring. So far I’ve made a Brown Ale (turned out pretty well for a first brew), a Fat Tire clone (a bit too bitter when I first started drinking it, but it’s mellowed nicely with age), and a hard cider (bottled about 3 weeks ago, should be ready to drink soon). I’ve got a Raspberrry Wheat going right now that should be ready to bottle in the next week or so.
My next batch will either be the Brown Ale again, or possibly an English Bitter.
I’m really enjoying the hobby so far. I’m hoping to get a couple of lagers made over the winter.
I’ve tried to clone a few (a wit and Smithwicks) and they’ve never come out tasting anything like I planned, but they were still darn good! So many beers… Someday, pumpkin spice.
My first mead was honeydew and rosewater, posted the recipe somewhere but I don’t know where, best mead I’ve ever made after it had a chance to age a bit. Gotta find it.
I’ll try to remember to point this thread out to him, but I think it’s worth noting that our own Demo made one of he best beers I’ve ever had, a honey hefeweisen.
I haven’t brewed in quite a while and have only done it with extracts(plus) but it’s great fun and there’s nothing like drinking and sharing your own beer. I really need to take The Weird One’s approach and brew even when it’s warm. We have no AC so when I do I normally just stick my carboys in huge buckets of water to moderate the temperature, I assume I must not be the only one doing that. It seems like the logical thing to do.
Maybe it’s time to clean out the garage and pull out the brewing equip so i can make something nice for this fall.
Unfortunately it’s been several months since we both bought identical kits, and my batch has taken almost this long to mature. Also the inventor (CJ) maintains that it’s drinkable after two weeks. I beg to differ.
It’s a fucking *great[/] IPA, I’ve brewed it at least 8 times, but sometimes it needs a bit longer to mellow. It is after all very highly hopped.
Now then, speaking of highly hopped… where did that recent thread go about 5 ounces of whole hops in a what now?
My boss has a couple of apple trees, and one crabapple, so once again we are making apple wine. Just Tuesday we squeezed the pulp that had been working, and drained it into the 5 gallon fermenting jug. The fermentation lock on top is now merrily perking away. We plan to rack it at least once, to lessen sediment, after the initial fermentation has stopped, and in about six months we’ll have drinkable wine.
My second and third to last batches of beer were ok…I had developed a thing about dropping a thin jalapeno in the bottle before capping them. The result was a nice spicy beer.
Sadly, for my very last batch of beer, my wife went shopping for the peppers instead, and the ones she bought were yellow and far too fat to fit down the bottle-neck.
Foolishly, I cut the peppers into quarter-sections and dropped them into the beer before capping. What happened to the batch next was almost cruel: the beer went from slightly-spicy, to very-spicy, to Dave’s Insanity-spicy… all inside of 2 months.
Worse, I had given many of the bottles away to friends and co-workers prior to noticing the beer’s true nature…
Here are two that I use, depending on who has what in stock and how much they’re charging for it. Alternative Beverage (Often slightly cheaper) The Grape and Granary (More extensive selection)
Northern Brewer is another big homebrew supplier, but I find it’s usually more expensive than the above two.
Whatever you do, don’t order from Make Wine Make Beer. I ordered some hard-to-find herbs from them once, and the order took more than a month to arrive and the customer service was bad.
I haven’t brewed anything in several years, but I keep saying I need to get back into it. Rhiannon8404 has promised me a new set of beermaking supplies for my birthday, so maybe I’ll finally get off my butt and brew something. I’ll let you know.
Quick Question… I got my stuff, so I’m hoping to start my first batch of Basic Cider this weekend.
My basement has an odd aroma, due to seepage and such. Is there any chance that the Cider will pick up this smell, despite my air/water lock and rubber bung?
As long as the stuff is fermenting and you’re not doing anything weird like using a canvas sack or something, the only thing to worry about is your basement picking up the smell of fermentation. Keep water in your airlock and you’ll be fine - those things are supposed to keep stuff out and as long as it doesn’t go dry they do a pretty good job (in my experience).
