Beer Feeds

Our brewclub is having a “competition” where they provide the same ingredients to several teams (with minimal hops) and our job is to brew a good beer with whatever adjuncts/herbs/fruit/whatever. Here is what they provide for a 10 gallon batch:
22# Pale malt
2# caramunich 40
1# Special B
1# Crystal 120
2# Dark candi sugar
2 oz EKG
Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abbey II

OG=1.087

We would like to find a way to add wormwood into this. We have one ounce that we were thinking of doing a 60 minute boil with. We would FWH the EKG to cut it’s bittering potential while still getting flavor. We also were thinking of adding oak chips to the secondary.

I also have a bunch of honey I could add.

Anyways, any thoughts? We could add anything we want…it’s time to get creative with the hops shortage.

jeff

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I found that with my move coming up I was very short on the number of boxes I needed to transport my carboys. It seems that a few years ago I gave a number of my boxes to a certain brother (I think TerryC might know him) because he was moving and I no plans to. Well, times changed I found myself with a problem. So I formed myself a plan and got to work.

Here is the final result of my plan.

Here are my new boxes for my 5, 6 and 6.5 gallon carboys

Here is where I plan to store my 1 gallon carboys

and last but not least my 1/2 growlers

For the 1 gallon and 1/2 gallon jugs I plan to make cardboard dividers to keep them seperated, but I just don’t have the time now. I also plan to run my sander over them also to make them look a bit prettier.

I hope this will also allow me to stack all the carboys on there side so they will take up less room also.

Tim

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So I brewed a brown ale on Sunday and made a starter for the first time on Saturday. First off it took only 3 hours for the yeast to start kickin and it was fairly vigorous, lasted about 24 hours and that was about it. I took a hydrometer reading and I hit my FG at 1.009-all done. That was sweet! Was it all do to the starter I dont know but wish I had made starters sooner. I just racked it to the secondary and it tasted great! Cant wait to carb this one up! Cheers!

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Brewed on Sunday and bubbling stopped late Wed or Thur I think. It’s finally gotten colder outside so the temp in my fermentation chamber (read: closet) is down to about 62°. Is it ok there or should I up the temp a bit? It was in the mid to upper 60s during fermentation.

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For Immediate Release:
A new seasonal and 4th new Canis Major style to hit shelves in 2008
Denver, CO – Flying Dog Brewery has new show-stopping styles and packages for 2008. The brewery continues its tradition of offering award-winning beers in 2008 with the release of a Biere de Garde as their new spring seasonal […]

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so, i’m looking at my rather new blichman’s beer gun. and have done a couple of force carbings with mixed results. and i’m wondering if i could do the same with beergas on a stout.

anyone ever done this?

tia,

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Is it hard to make a good pilsner or really light lager? I love dark stuff but now im getting more into PA’s and would like to brew my own pilsner, any tips or recipes you guys would recommend

Carlos

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Trying to nail down my AG process, and I’m curious about water absorption. Do most use a factor somewhere between .1-.12? After reading the chapter on water in Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels suggests a higher ratio (.2). He also gives an quick reference table on pg 64 for gallons of water lost per # of grains mashed. I only have 3 AG batches under my belt and my measuring of water/wort wasn’t always the most accurate, so I’m having a hard time coming up with a consistent factor.

Bill

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If I just scoop some yeast of the bottom of the fermenter with the vials liquid yeast comes in, is that good enough to make a starter?

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Alpha Male and I brewed up a bunch of 1.094 Quad not long ago. Unforunately his took on a contamination and had to be disposed of
But my half is still fermting nicely. Half of my 10 gallons I racked onto 5lbs of tart cherries (thanks Snowman!). As if that isn’t devious enough, I’m considering going really nutso on this portion. I have been considering adding brett (Orval dregs) and some oak.
Would this be too much of a good thing?

The base beer is tasting somewhere between Rochefort 10 and St. Berie’s Abt 12.

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Posted: by JamesS (17 hours ago)

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I am a government employee attending a training class next week in Orlando. I have been to Florida 3 times and have never had good beer success…and I am afraid this will be the worst beer trip. I don’t have a car because I am on training.
So i am located on International drive without a car. Does anyone local have any advice for me for places I might want to walk to?

Thanks,
Travis

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I brewed an IPA and used yeast slurry from a batch of California Common. I brewed this beer back on 8 Sep 07. I totally forgot about the last 5 gallons.

I am thinking about dumping it. Should I carb it up and see what happens or should I toss it.

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Lets say I had a system that measured the temperature of about 5 different parts of my system, and I had a thermostat controller that allowed me to program the controller to switch a number of pumps on and off based on logic that included more than one sensor.

For example, if sensor A is above 100F and sensor B is a temperature less than sensor A, a relay turns on a pump until the sensor B temperature is higher than sensor A (there may be other heat sources for the area measured by sensor .

This is just an example. In most cases I would want to compare temperatures and use logic to decide when to switch the relays on. There are about 5 zones where temperature would be monitored, and at least 4 pumps.

What kind of controller would I use?

The simpler and less expensive the better. Should I use multiple thermostats or a single controller?

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Posted: by Beercub (23 hours ago)

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Posted: by sawyer776 (24 hours ago)

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I found a carboy amongst the wine carboys that was clearly beer that I had forgotten about. Turns out it’s a Hoegaarden clone I brewed on 5/09/07. Whoops!

Considering that it is a belgian wit, I had a second thought about what dry yeast to use to bottle carb/condition with. I’ve got Safale US56, S-04, and Nottingham in stock. I’m thinking Nottingham is out, too good an attenuation. So US56 or S-04. S-04 is supposedly particularly good for cask condition ales so I’m wondering what that would lend if anything, US56 is well.. US56, clean and medium attenuation.

Thoughts opinions? I’ve heard of breweries that ferment with 1 yeast and bottle conditioning with another but I bottle so infrequently anymore that I never persued that line to see if it makes a difference. ABV is 4.8% so anything should be able to thrive.

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Award-Winning Long Island Microbrewer, Blue Point Brewing Company, will host the 4th annual BLUE POINT CASK ALE FESTIVAL on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 where it will tap the world’s largest cask filled with their custom, featured brew, Rye Hop Knot. The event is open to the public and record numbers are expected.
Cask Ale, […]

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Between Christmas, New Years, and a friends wedding, not to mention the frigged cold weather in New England (until the last couple of days) it’s been some time since I’ve brewed anything.

I still have a little home brew in one keg but that’s going to kick any time now.

I’ve had the ingredients for my next batch for over a month now but haven’t managed to get brewing.

I’m hoping that will change this weekend.

Any one else have the ‘Haven’t Brewed Blues’ as well?

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Does anyone know this. Will a pound of table and pound of candi sugar both equate to the same level of fermentable?

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Find information here!

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Posted: by bboven (14 hours ago)

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So I decided to try reusing yeast for the first time yesterday. Seems like a useful skill. The beer is happily fermenting, so it must have worked well enough, but I’m curious about how to reuse the rest of the yeast. Here’s what I did…

Drained off beer from primary into keg.
Swirled around everything that was left to try and get all the yeast into suspension again
Poured the dregs through a strainer into a big bowl (This got rid of all the hops)

This gave me about 3 liters of slurry. I poured about 800ml or so (1 quart?) into a sterilized 1L coke bottle, stuck an airlock and a label on it, and stuck that in the fridge.

The remaining 2 liters or so sat quietly on the bench while the brew was finishing, and then got pitched into the fermenter. This seems to have worked well, the fermenter is bubbling nicely enough this morning, But next week or the week after, when I brew again, how do I use the saved slurry? I see today it’s separated out pretty nicely again.

I’m thinking I shake/swirl it up to get it back into suspension, pour half off into another 1L size bottle, and add 500ml of 1.040 sugar water or so, and let that sit for a morning, then it should be good to go by late afternoon? Close enough? Completely off base?

If I was trying to grow the culture, would I instead just put the existing 800ml or so into a bigger bottle, and add a bigger volume of sugar water?

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Ok, question for some of you more experienced brewers out there. I have wondered this for a while. I have a brown ale recipe that calls for 1 lb. of Crystal 40L. I need to go buy my pale malt. I have Crystal 20 and 60 on hand. Would substituting 1/2 lb. of 20L and 1/2 lb. of 60 give similar results. I will probably go ahead and buy the 40L that the recipe calls for. This is just a question in event I was ready to brew and had this situation.

I would think the color would be similar, but I am more interested in flavor. I know the 60 would give more distinct toffee or nutty flavors. Would the lesser of those flavors in the 20 offset what is in the 60? Maybe something other than a 50/50 replacement would give similar results.

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I’m fermenting a barleywine, it will probably tie up my fermenter for longer than I’d like. (I do both primary and secondary in the same fermenter.) The system I use is very sensitive to fermenter pressure, so if I see no change in fermenter pressure for a few days, can I assume that the post-fermentation phase where the yeast clean up after themselves is finished? Or do the little critters do their cleanup without farting CO2? Thanks in advance, OF

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The People’s Republic of Flying Dog is now in session. It’s happy hour at Flying Dog Brewery, so here is your latest dose of irreverence.New Canis Major Style on the WayWhat better way to kick off our big beer newsletter than announcing the release of our newest Canis Major brew, Kerberos Tripel? Kerberos is the […]

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I was at my local Applebees restaurant and thought I’d try a Red Trolley. Wow, what an excellent beer. I need to find a recipe for Red Trolley. Can anyone help?

Darin

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warm day in Ks. today. So, after watching the weather last nite, i pulled out a gallon jug of cultivated 1007 and added 1qt of starter wort for a session today. Woke up this am and my jug was spurting all over the place

Gonna do a Zoom Alt (a rendition anyways). Im plum out of Spalt so its Gr. Magnum, Hallertau Tradition, and possibly some Mittlefruh. Hope you desk jockey guys enjoy today as much as i will!!

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Well, with all the hop shortage madness going on, I thought it would be a good idea to start an official hop trading thread. I posted here and not the classifieds because I wanted something to be on-going and over in the classifieds the threads get whacked after a couple weeks. I thought maybe we could pin this if there is a lot of interest.

If you have hops, post what variety, form (pellet, leaf, whole, plug), what crop they are from (year), AA% if known and how they have been stored (vacuum packed, ziploc, fridge, freezer, etc).

If you need hops, either post your need or contact individuals that have hops with a direct PM to work out a trade.

Let me know what you think of this idea, and if you were successful in working out a trade then give credit here and also to the individual that you trade with.

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CBR hits 100 Episodes, We List our top beers of 2007. We try some beers that may be in the 2008 list. We reminisce on the last 100 episodes, and are ready to do 100 more. Thanks everybody for listening. We do the show for you.

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DeCap ‘n Catcher 15% Off

Beer:

• Coney Island Lager - Smaltz Brewing Company
• Pyramid Imperial Hefeweizen
• Port Brewing - Old Viscosity
• Southern Tier - Choklat

Rankings:

• Greg: 1. Choklat, 2. Old Viscosity, 3. Coney Island, 4. Pyramid
• Jeff: 1. Choklat, 2. Old Viscosity, 3. Coney Island, 4. Pyramid

Extras

• Preshow - Yards Philly Pale Ale
• Postshow- Cleanup

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