Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

...:tu

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Bottled my Xmas Carrot Cake Ale this evening. Not a bad first attempt. Tasted the sample in the hygrometer flask. Needed more vanilla. Still pretty happy with it.

Next up to brew is a Fluffer Nutter Porter.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Started pouring my attempt at a two hearted clone, filled up a growler going out of town last weekend and it is a little hoppier than the original, I did use a little bit more hops than the recipe I was basing off of but that's just because I thought it was low from the start. gonna call his one a Two Hearted IPA :D

Also a week or two out from my vanilla oatmeal porter being ready to drink, bottled it last week. Very excited about this one, ABV only around 6.2% but I think it's going to be very tasty. If it does work out I'm going to try to use the same base recipe but make it some sort of coffee porter, since that's possibly my favorite style of beer. Anybody have any experience making a coffee porter or stout?

Next up on the chopping block is a Jade IPA redux, I made this as my first all-grain brew at the start of he year in a small batch and it was really good, I think now that I have 6-7 runs done and almost know what I'm doing, a full run of the Jade is necessary. Oddly it doesn't use a lot of Jade hops, but it is very tasty :tu

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Brewed my Fluffer Nutter Porter this evening. Did a double mill of my grains. Bumped my efficiency up just over 80%. :tu

OG into fermentor was 1.072. I hope my yeast (WLP013) can handle it. If need be, I'll pitch another pack. Or maybe the bit of dry Safale yeast I have in the freezer.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Sampling my first two batches, after about two weeks of bottle conditioning.

Mexi-chocolate milk stout - meh. Hoping more time might help. I went with low priming in the bottle, but there was no carbonation in this bottle. Got a bit of a "phfst" when I cracked the cap, but nothing in the glass. Very little of the cinnamon or chile flavor. Just a weird tasting milk stout.

Thanksgiving Cranberry Wheat - Wow! Better carbonation, but a citrus flavor bomb. Tart from the cranberries, sweet from the apple, big time orange flavor. I used more priming tabs in these bottles and it showed on the pour, but it' dissipates quickly. Hmm... Can't wait to try this in another week or two.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

those sound very interesting Bob, I still need to get a good understanding of carbonation. I've been trying out bottling vs. keg but not consistently, this next batch I'm doing half in bottles and half force carbonation through a keg, I'm excited to do a side-by-side. I've only had one brew that was too carbonated, it was an amber that would overflow when you open it and give mostly foam when it's poured, but it still tasted fine.

Brewed up a redux of the Jade IPA, the first all-grain brew I did, which was on a pretty small scale. This time went ended with about 5.5gal, around what I normally do. It will probably be right around 5gal when the fermenting and filtering is done. I screwed up the hops, only got half as much Jade as I really needed and used centennial instead of cascade, but it's still got 9oz total after dry hopping so I think I'll be ok. The centennial vs. cascade could be an interesting twist, but it's mostly citra and jade so I don't think it's going to be too noticeable

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

When I was brewing before, I had switched to egging. Now that I'm back in the game, but doing really small batches, it doesn't make sense to keg. I'm using priming tabs. Basically sugar tablets. Supposed to use between 3-5 for differing carb levels. I did 3 in this stout, 4 in the wheat.

Just cracked open bottles of each again, after a couple more weeks of conditioning. Wow, time does make a difference. The wheat is still right on point. Maybe tone down the orange in the secondary on the next batch. But the stout is shaping up nicely. Still no head retention, most likely due to the cocoa fat from my first cacao addition. Oh well, next time I'll fix that. But the hop flavor has subsided to let the chocolate and chili flavore to come thru. I'm liking it now.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Hmm.. I've never used priming tabs, I always just make some simple sugar using priming sugar and water then add the whole thing into the batch after fermentation right before bottling. I think the package we use is 5oz, and I always do the same amount. I guess that's the next thing I need to look into, and how it effects the ending carbonation. Is it a one tab per bottle type of thing?

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

I'm using the type that are 3-5 per bottle. They're about the size of a aspirin.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Ah I misread, thought you meant there were different "strength" tablets, not that you use a different amount of them :fp

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

No worries. My LHBS has the other types of tablets, where's it's one big honkin' tablet for each bottle. With that, you're stuck with one level of carbonation. These smaller tablets allow you to customize based on the style of beer.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Brewed my latest batch this morning, a maple pecan brown. Just aerated and pitched the yeast. If the taste from the hygrometer is any indication of how this one will taste, we have a winner. And I haven't even added the maple syrup yet. That's for the secondary.

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Intersting. An hour after pitching the yeast, I already had a bubble in the airlock. It's 3.5 hours later and it's picking up frequency. :D

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Did some beering yesterday. Bottled my Jade IPA (did half in bottles and half in a keg to force carbonate, I'll see how that holds up in a side by side). I also brewed up some White IPA, pretty similar to a basic IPA but with a lot more wheat in the grains. Everything looked fine, although it calls for lemon grass and sage with the dry hops. I don't know if I want to go down that road, I might keep it as-is, but I'll sleep on it a little and see how I feel.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

White IPA? Interesting. Can't wait to hear how it turns out.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

The recipe I used was similar to this. The main differences were that I didn't use any sugar in the brewing process (don't know what the purpose of that is unless you were trying to boost abv), and I used a heffeweizen yeast instead of the one listed there. Other than that it was mainly halving the recipe to make 5gal and some minor adjustments on the hops to make it fit better to what I had and needed. I have absolutely no idea how it's going to turn out, but it should be interesting.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

So planning my next brew. Was thinking either a porter or stout. Probably a stout since I just drank the last of my Mexi-chocolate stout. Just bottled my maple pecan brown on Sunday. Used maple syrup as the priming sugar. I hope the flavor carries through, although. I don't think it'll be a big flavor. Only used ~1.5 oz for the 1.5 gallons. Still a great pecan flavor.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Interesting, so no traditional priming sugar at all, just the maple syrup?

I just dry hopped the white IPA today, put in 50g of lemon grass and 1g of fresh sage. I'm not sure how the sage will infuse (it was only a few leaves) but the lemon grass should give it a light kick that I think will complement the heffeweisen/wheat style. Another few weeks and I'll report back with the results

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Correct. Based on everything I read, it's 70% fermentable, compared to table sugar at 100%. So a little more is used. Northern Brewer has a nice calculator to figure it all out. I just hope my redneck fermentation setup carbs the bottles better this time. Using a seedling mat inside a plastic tote. Bottles are then placed inside there, with the top put on the tote. Seems to be holding around 64-66°F.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Drank the last of my 12oz Xmas Carrot Cake Ales. Finally starting to get some carbonation. These I didn't put in the tote. Tastes great though. I have 4-5 more 22oz bottles left.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Brewed a milk stout today. I'm dialed in on efficiency with the brew in a bag setup. Hit 82% this batch (80% on the last two). Now I just need to get my volumes right. Had to boil it down to get to my batch size for the fermentor. Over shot the OG by 5 points. :D Pitched some extra S-04 to make sure there was enough yeast in the batch. Used Wyeast 1084 as the main yeast. Going to be interesting how the two ferment it out.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Bubbling away. :tu

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

I got a kit for Christmas. A one gallon sized oatmeal stout brew.
This ain't another one of those "slippery slopes" is it?
I want to brew a German bock or doppelbock since they have become scarce after the ale craze that's seem to taken hold.
I haven't found the time to start my brew yet. It's tough for me, I have to spend most of my time making a living, the rest of the time I have to fix things.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

It can be, if you decide you need all the big, fancy gadgets to brew. But you'd be amazed at what you can do with the 1 gallon kit.

A bock or dopplebock might be hard to do without specialized equipment. Being a lager, it needs to ferment at lower temps (50F). You might be able to get away with it in a cold basement this time of year.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

OK, I've got some learnin' to do. Must be why it's known as a winter beer.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

There's no end to the learning Roger, I'm a relative newbie as well but I've fallen into it pretty hard. Lagers are definitely tricky with the temp control, I haven't ventured down that path yet although I've been tempted.

I brewed up a batch of black IPA yesterday, or "Dark Side IPA" as I'm going to call it. While making my recipe I ran across he debate between black IPA and hoppy stout. it was an interesting topic, but it basically comes down to brewers choice for naming. This was a pretty basic IPA recipe (although I think I got overly complicated with the five types of hops), but with about 5-6% weyermann carafe III special in the grain bill. This stuff had a really interesting small, almost like a caramel popcorn, although after sparging I swear the whole thing smelled like sesame oil. The beer in the fermenter looks lie chocolate milk, but I'm trying to get the texture down to the thinner side. Really looking forward to this guy being ready :dr

Thinking about using this design for the cap:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/1..._dark_side.png

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Sweet mother of god! If you have not started yet do not do it. I just brewed my first batch and of course I just moved back from Germany so guess what I want to brew. So I've started looking at online brew forums and have seen all kinds of cool stuff. Primary fermentatiors, keezers, and other cool man stuff. So now my wife is mad I'm spending money on a new hobby. So when I look at all this stuff on my iPad I have to hide like I'm looking at ****. If this sounds like the life you want to live than brew up your first bag. Prost!!!

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I haven't even had the time to brew up the kit and I already had a few hundred dollers of equipment earmarked online. I am ready to get a swapmeet fridge for lagering. Checking out where to get the best deal on grist, etc. ...
My wife would be like "What are you doing? I thought you had to order some parts to fix the gear, are you through with the customer's project, the car isn't fixed yet, the garage is a mess, where you gonna put that,...,...,...,...?!"
OW! Make you want to drink beer.

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And thus we come full circle :D

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

The black IPA was ready to try this weekend, I think it's up there with the best I've made, but it was a little too hoppy. The color was as black as it can get, held it up to a light in a clear glass and could barely see through it. I will definitely be making this again with taking about an ounce of hops out (I think I had 5-6oz for a 5gal batch but I need to check what I ended at with the recipe).

I made an attempt at a tripel yesterday, a friend came by and did a brew alongside it as well so that was pretty cool with 2x 5gal batches going. Both of us ran into the same issue though, we started with 6-6.5 gal in the hop boil but both ended around 3-3.5gal of ending wort. He boiled some water and added it to it to get his up to 5gal, I kept mine at the level it ended at, somewhere just under 4gal. I figure I would rather end with less of what I intended rather than diluting it with water before adding yeast.

I also made a started for the yeast since it was going to be high ABV, I didn't have any DME so I used sparge runoff from the batch, let it cool down then added the liquid yeast to the cooled down runoff. it will get added to the fermenter tonight, I figured that starting the fermentation one day later was better than possibly not having enough active yeast to get up to the ABV I was targeting. I made three additional starters this way for future use, putting them in a mason jar and into the freezer to defrost the day before the next brew.

I really don't know how this is going to turn out, there are a lot of uncertainties around the brew process but I'll report back in about a month when it gets done bubbling :tu

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Brewed a dunkel today! Hope it comes out good.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Brewing up a SMaSH pale ale with Marris otter and HBC-438 hops tonight. First brew in quite a while. My poor keferator hasnt gotten much use lately.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

First brew in a while. A standard Wit (50% flaked wheat/50% pale 2 row), some EKG hops and orange peel/coriander near the end of the boil. Plan is to add a hibiscus tea at bottling. Per brewers friend, I hit 82%+ efficiency.

Drank the last of my cranberry wheat from last thanksgiving. Wow, the tartness of the cranberries comes right thru. Got better with some age. :tu I'll be making this one again soon.

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Bottled the hibiscus wit. Hope I didn't create bottle bombs. Underestimated the amount in the secondary by about 1/4 gallon for a 1.7 gallon batch. Was shooting for 2.7 vols of carbonation. Closer to 3.0. :D

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Hoping for no broken glass :tu

Dry hopped my two hearted clone last weekend, I used a recipe I had used before but swapped in a couple pounds of honey malt, I don't know if it will make much of a difference but I was curious what effect it might have. It didn't really look like it was fermenting, we still dry hopped but I'm hoping it ends up being more booze than iced tea

I also brewed up what I am going to refer to as an "Oat Brown APA," I was planning on it being a black IPA but we switched up the specialty grains when we were at the store and it ended up being more on the brown side, with what looks to be a pretty chewy body. I'm really curious about this one, the girlfriend wanted to do one to celebrate finishing grad school, and just told me to make it an IPA with oats and Jade/Mosaic hops. I finagled a recipe up and things looked good, I tried a makeshift starter that hopefully didn't screw anything up.

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Went by the local HBS to get a few things for my next brew. Was going to get a 3gal carboy, but that has this. It'll hold 2.5gal. Perfect for what I do.

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Brewed a Deschutes Black Butte Porter clone today. Hydrometer sample is tasty. :tu

Sampled my first bottle of my hibiscus wit. Needs more hibiscus. But still a good beer, more like a typical wit. Finally got a good carbonation level.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Question about using alcohol soaked oak cubes in a secondary. How long do you soak for, before adding?

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I haven't done it myself, but I did do some research on it when I was planning an oak brew a few months back and I believe it was something like 2-7 days, and add the cubes as well as the alcohol to the secondary (I was planning on using evan Williams for the alcohol, but that could just be because I'm cheap, other recipes called for Makers and other similar whiskeys)

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Brewed a White Russian Imperial Stout today. Calling it, "The Dude Abides". It's a blonde stout that'll be flavored with Kaluha soaked oak blocks and coffee beans. Missed my efficiency by about 5%, but still a big beer. OG was 1.092. Pitched two packs of Denny's 1450 and have airlock activity in about three hours. :D

Plan is to add the Kaluha, oak blocks and whole coffee beans into secondary and age for four weeks.

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Just bottled an American Pale Ale brewed with a bit of warrior hops for extra bittering.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Went to bottle the first of a 5 gallon batch of a Scottish ale my friend and I brewed. My half of a 10 gallon batch which he got half of. I split into thirds, flavoring one with Scotch soaked oak blocks, one with heather tips and the last plain. Today was the plan one. When I opened the bucket, there was a film across the top. Something infected it, most likely some type of lacto bacteria. Well crap. Still bottled anyway. I'll see what it tastes like after conditioning. Checked the others, looks like they have it too. Not sure where it came from, but likely I didn't do a good enough job sanitizing something during the transfer.

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That sucks Bob, nothing worst than waiting weeks/months to find out something went wrong. I unfortunately am done brewing for a while, my friend with the space and equipment moved to a new house without space, and with my move coming up to a place that also has no space (and no equipment) it'll probably be a while before I get back up with it. Gotta brew vicariously through you :al

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Ive got a bourbon vanilla Porter ready to bottle. I've made it before, it's excellent. I'll get it bottled in the next few days, and should be ready to drink for Thanksgiving.

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Brewed up v2.0 of my Thanksgiving Cranberry Wheat. It's more a NEIPA hybrid. Used Magnum hops for bittering, with Citra, Calypso and Galaxy for aroma. Plan to rack into secondary on top of the cranberries and dry hop with more of the aroma hops. Should be interesting.

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Finally cracked open a bottle of this a couple months ago. Coming along nicely. :tu

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Brewing a pecan porter today.

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

I’ll be right over. :dr

Re: Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?
 

Yup, sounds really good. :)