the homebrew blogtrain

khoomeizhi · March 24, 2013, 12:38:25 PM

i know there was a theoretically beer-themed homebrew thread awhile ago, figured i'd start a new all-home-booze-making one.

i don't make beer, but i make a bunch of mead, almost always fermented to dryness and with 'fun' ingredients or combinations thereof. i almost always use wild yeasts, too, which is contrarian to much modern homebrewing wisdom, but has never fucked up a batch yet. to date i've started 14 batches, almost all of them only 1 gallon, and bottled 8 of them. really got going starting regular projects with this in the spring of '11

finally got around to labeling this mead i made last year. in keeping with a frequently cryptic naming system (because it's fun to get people to try to guess what's in what they're tasting), i went with the cyrillic spelling of one of the main ingredients:

yeah, now it seems right

how are people's (competition?) home beer and cider brewing going? what else do people have going on? anyone straying over into distilling yet

?

Jor el · March 24, 2013, 01:07:19 PM

A friend's cousin makes Mead.
Goddamn, I love it.

The only concoction I bottle, and age, is eggnog.

Chovie D · March 24, 2013, 03:58:52 PM

Ive treid twice to make honey mead. both times i failed and ended up making some nasty white wine tasting shit. My buddy made a batch and it was ambrosia. Its expensive and takes along time to rest in the bottle...hats off to you sir if youre making good stuff.

khoomeizhi · March 24, 2013, 06:49:10 PM

granted, some of the experimental stuff might be more 'interesting' than 'delicious'...but some of it's really delicious/amazing. something, i'm guessing the wild yeasts, frequently give these crazy aromatic notes that are really striking and kinda addicting - it's like you keep taking drink after drink just for the smell, almost.

not too expensive if you know bee farmers, i guess, but yeah, it's a long wait for most stuff (and even moreso for me because of the wild yeasts, i'd bet)...got a batch still ticking over that i first got going christmas day 2011 that's still plugging right along, and since i like them dry, i'm on its schedule, whatever that might be. but then i start another while i'm waiting, and then another...so there's batches regularly needing racking or bottling just often enough for a relatively slack hobby.

khoomeizhi · October 11, 2013, 05:24:02 PM

the pace of my home-mead-brewing has picked up a bit since july, when i was at a festival with lots of mead-brewers and got re-energized. have since started a bunch of new stuff, some with teas, one made with a bunch of beets...just started one this week with a bunch of wild-collected fruit (muscadines, giant wild grapes, persimmons) plus a bunch of homegrown ground cherries. thinking about racking one that i started as just a plain honey mead onto some more of those wild grapes. biggest fuckin' wild grapes i ever saw, but they taste like they always do, more sour than sweet...i think they should go well on a honey background.

i need to be able to bottle more of the stuff that's been going for a while, to free up the carboys for new projects, but none of it seems to be quite there yet. hopefully soon the 3-gal batch of rooibos/mugwort mead will finish, and i'll bottle a couple gallons-worth and put the other gallon on some oak chips for a bit. tannic acid is an amazing thing.

footnote: that batch started 12/25/2011 is still going, though it shows signs of slowing down, if not clearing. i guess it might just be that it's a little cooler in that room, though.

anyone else?

James1214 · October 15, 2013, 05:56:10 PM

I bottled 5 gallons a month ago. Am starting a new round, thinking of adding some spices like cardamom and vanilla to this one, also pondering finishing it with some brown sugar to make it have a little different note of sweet. Although I do prefer my mead dry

RAGER · October 15, 2013, 07:03:29 PM

If all goes well I should be starting a 3 gallon batch of hard cider tonight. Was gonna do it yesterday but took a day trip to the Columbia Gorge instead. Just need to get motivated after work is all. Lots of sanitizing to do.

RAGER · October 16, 2013, 08:10:14 PM

Came home to company over after work so I got up early and started a 3 gal. batch. Kind of winging it to see what happens.

James1214 · October 17, 2013, 11:54:47 AM

Are you adding yeast to the cider or are you relying on the naturally occurring yeasts on the apple skins for your fermentation?

RAGER · October 17, 2013, 01:17:52 PM

I used champagne yeast but I didn't heat up the cider to kill off any natural occurring yeast. She's a bubbling already. I also added about a pound of brown sugar to get the abv up.

khoomeizhi · October 17, 2013, 06:12:22 PM

aside from the two one-gallon jugs that are reserved for racking others and for oak-aging, i'm at brewing capacity right now. it's too bad - two half-gallons of apple-pear cider went out of date and are spontaneously fermenting in the cooler at work...maybe i should get another gallon carboy...

khoomeizhi · October 18, 2013, 04:32:16 PM

fuck it. i'll get another one later. i brought home those ciders.

RAGER · November 07, 2013, 01:32:20 PM

Spent a good portion of the day yesterday racking, cleaning ,conditioning, and bottling 3 gallons of cider.

khoomeizhi · November 18, 2013, 08:45:31 PM

just bottled a batch of mead i started in february. had a bunch of dried wild blueberries that 'expired' at the store, so i used a fair amount of 'em in both primary and secondary. it's a bit sour since i took it dry, but with a bit of age it'll be real nice. nice color, too.

Beta Cloud · December 01, 2013, 01:22:24 AM

holiday homebrew cider.
amazing flavor. cheap. easy.
5 gallons apple juice, (no sorbates, vit-c and pasteurized ok)
5 lbs light brown sugar
1 packet 'cooper's ale yeast'
2 cinnamon sticks
a chunk of fresh ginger the size of your thumb, husk peeled and cut into 1/2in slices
1 five gallon carboy or brewing bucket and a second carboy/brewing bucket
1 airlock

add the brown sugar to 1/2 gallon of juice, warm and dissolve in a pan on the stove. add to carboy. gradually add the rest of the juice to the carboy, covering and shaking it up till it's about 4-5in from top. a pain in the ass and requires serious upper body strength. man up. add yeast packet. put airlock on top, fill it w/water or vodka, and ferment, covered w a hoodie, (light exposure will fuck w it) for 4 weeks. i use an old venom hoodie that don't fit my fat ass no more. it adds evilness.
after 4 weeks, syphon to secondary carboy/bucket. make sure to not put the syphon tube all the way down, (2-3 inches away from that nasty yeast film on bottom). add the cinnamon sticks and ginger. put airlock on and age another week.
transfer to third container and discard cinnamon and ginger, (again, no yeast). age another week. this is for 'still' cider. if you want more carbonation, add a can or two of concentrated apple juice, (no sorbates, vit-c and pastuerized is fine once again).
this isn't like that sweet woodchuck stuff, more like a nice dry brit-pub type. like blackthorn, but dryer with a kick.
bottle. drink.
call old girlfriends at 3am.
about 9% alcohol by volume.

khoomeizhi · January 26, 2014, 09:43:24 AM

actually started my first 5-gal batch this past week, i almost always do 1 at a time...

lapsang souchong and stinging nettles. the must smells pretty incredible.

khoomeizhi · February 22, 2014, 09:29:11 AM

finally got to bottle the three-gallon batch of rooibos-mugwort mead mentioned in my post of oct. 11th this month. bottled two gallons of it a couple weeks ago and put the other gallon on some medium toast oak cubes. bottled that last night. shit is damn tasty for being so young (though i guess it did bulk-age a while as i was waiting for it to clear and go dry)...will be awesome with a bit of age on it-both kinds-...feelin' it's time to start some new shit soon. down to only 8 active booze projects!

MadJohnShaft · February 28, 2014, 09:28:17 AM

A homebrew supply place finally opened up in Evanston, ever since the old one closed many years ago it's such a pain to get the stuff I don't brew anymore. Have to do this Sunday.

Went in The new Brew Camp store, it's awesome. I'm back in business baby. I'm going to do a simple partial mash just to check all my gear.

MadJohnShaft · March 23, 2014, 06:26:02 PM

I got a corny keg restored - so it should be carbonated once it's cold and I can try it tonight. (Turned out great)

I bought star san and PBW -if you never tried any of those industrial cleansers I would recommend - it's a tiny fraction of the work that is with bleach.

I made some mead too.

I bought a carboy harness to carry it around.

khoomeizhi · March 29, 2014, 04:29:23 PM

just bottled a gallon of mead made with high-grade pu-erh tea. pretty good, strangely beery in flavor at this point. as with all mead, will be better in a year...

MadJohnShaft · March 30, 2014, 08:07:25 AM

Brewing today

Done! I used my wort chiller with little fuss. I need a hose tap installed under the kitchen sink, I have to haul the heavy wet mess to the basement and back up.

I did one with way too many hops, because the beers of today are hop heavy. Star San is a game changer. I have been messing around with bleach all this time.

The mead is bubbling along moderately, I am tempted to drop in a bit of yeast nutrient to get it going. Then shake it around a bit? I didn't know mead needs to sit for 3-6 months. I will wait until October to bottle. I should transfer it to a clean carboy when today's beer is done in a few weeks.

Also, you know what? Today after I pitched the yeast I cut open the envelope and the second inner yeast packet was still intact. The brand my new shop carries has been performing poorly. I will let it sit for a whole day next time. I've never had any trouble with those yeast packs before.

khoomeizhi · March 31, 2014, 04:13:30 PM

wow, different strokes. i'm downright lackadaisical about sterility (i.e. if soap and water and scrubbin' doesn't clean it, it don't get clean) so no experience with using bleach or starsan. the thing with the packet-in-a-packet of yeast is a new thing to hear about for me too, since i almost always use wild yeasts.

but yeast nutrient i get - and yes, you should probably get extra oxygen in there when you add, whether by just swishing around or actually stir/whipping. it just never picked up?

khoomeizhi · April 12, 2014, 11:07:26 AM

new experiment.

so i've talked about yacon before. i grow a lot of it and sell it. juicy south american tuber crop that starts with a lot of 'pre-biotic' sugars (kinda goofy name for near-sugars that we don't metabolize, but that make good food for beneficial gut bacteria), which turn into more 'regular' sugars as they cure/age. there's a fairly hip-right-now product, yacon syrup, that is basically uncured yacon, peeled and juiced, then boiled down until thick. it's a low-glycemic sweetener, 'cause people don't metabolize those sugars, so not surprisingly rich natural-foods hippy chicks are all about it. was inspired during the process of making some syrup to sell to do this:

i'm not sure if/how alcohol-producing yeasts consume the pre-biotics (though i wouldn't be surprised if they just ate them up), so for this project i cleaned up a big pile of yacon (the last bit of this past year's harvest) and left them out curing at room temp in the house for a couple weeks. this should have converted a good amount of sugar. last night we peeled and juiced the yacon, then filtered and boiled it down 'til it hit 25% sugar (refractometers are a necessary tool of the serious scientist-farmer), and let it cool. that's now, with it still cooling. next step once it's down near body-temp will be to filter it again (cut down some on sediment) and add a yeast culture i've been working up for 5 days or so, and a bit of yeast nutrient. (after first saving out some un-yeasted must to store for topping off after racking). let it go and see what happens. my mostly-uninformed guess is that it'll take forever to ferment out, but we'll see. probably move it from the open-mouthed glass thing i start gallon batches in, into a carboy in a week or so.

now, we're thinking about going up to mount mitchell to see if it's time to collect frasier fir tips for tea yet - 'cause i've been wanting to make mead with those for a while. 'tis the season to start booze projects.

MadJohnShaft · April 14, 2014, 03:07:30 PM

Interesting - I imagine like Mead you need the yeast nutrient to get it going. My Mead is still bubbling away and the beer I made on 03/30 should be done by now I'd think. I need to finish off the last one first because my other two cornie kegs need new rubber gaskets.
.

I love using those instead of bottling.

MadJohnShaft · April 30, 2014, 11:13:51 AM

I made batch three and took a lot of care to get more sugar out of the partial mash grains - I got the temp held carefully at 154 and took more than an hour until everything tasted nice and sugary. I used a 1lb of carmel and 1lb of chocolate malt - I'm thinking maybe I should be doing more like 4lbs total

(Plus the two 3.3 pound cans of extract)

I'm also getting way more aggressive on the hops too.

I love those corny kegs instead of bottling - I found out a liquor store that refills CO2 so I need to make a run over there and see if it will work.