I’m sure this is heretical for you more serious homebrewing types, but about a year ago I bought my dad a Mr. Beer home brewing kit and some recipes to go along with it. The beer he makes from it is decent, but inevitably ends up tasting cidery, to varying degrees. I know he’s an absolute stickler about sanitizing everything, so I expect the sweetness is coming directly from the white sugar that Mr. Beer says to use during the bottling process (to provide the yeast with food).
My question: Is there any alternative to white sugar that can be used to avoid this sweetness or is this just an inevitable byproduct of using the Mr. Beer kit for home brewing?
Mr Papazian suggests replacing some of the corn sugar with more malt extract. Alternately, you can try using less corn sugar in general. For 5 gallons of beer, I only ever see recipes adding 3/4 cup of corn sugar during bottling. He also says that cane sugar is worse than corn sugar for this problem.
What Cat said.
So just to bring this home - my first batch (a basic pale ale) turned out quite well. The second batch (same recipe, with some process refinements) is in a secondary fermenter; I’ve been lazy about bottling. My third beer is a “Springtime Wit” recpie I got from the local brew shop; it’s a Hoegarden clone. Both are getting bottled this weekend. The latter had an OG of 1.043 (1…045-1.050 was the target).
I’m going to brew again in the next week or two; my current thinking is either a nice amber or an IPA to enjoy during the spring…
The Kolsch has had its minimum 3 weeks bottle conditioning, so I tried some today. It smells like banana bread and has a wonderful flavor. The aftertaste is a little bitter, so I’m going to let at least half of it sit for another week to see how it does. If anyone is in the Cincinnati area and wants to try one, I’m having a Drink My Leftover Booze and Have a Homebrew get together at my new place tomorrow evening. PM me for details.
I am so damn glad I picked up this hobby. Next month will be batch 3, but I have no idea what to try next. Maybe something with cherries?
Bump!
I’m brewing again tomorrow. This is the fifth brewing session. The first two were on my own, then I did two with a friend of mine - he’s setup to do ten gallon boils so we split the cost of ingredients and use his equipment.
Tomorrow’s project is a robust porter - pretty generic example of the style. I’m still doing extract brewing with partial boils; tomorrow is my last partial boil (I’ve got a new kettle on the way). It may also be my last extract brew - I’m really tired of the anemic selection of extract around here. The guy I brew with may be set up for a full on mash next weekend when we brew again; depending on how that goes I may end up following suit.
Oh, back to the beer - a robust porter. Pale malt extract for gravity, with some Crystal 40L, Chocolate 300L, and Black Patent 500L for flavor and color. I thought about throwing some Munich malt in there (the recipe calls for some Munich LME) but it seemed pointless; apparently munich malt doesn’t convert well on its all so I wouldn’t get any meaningful extraction out of it. I’m also using a California Ale yeast in this one, so it’ll have a nice clean fermentation - I was tempted to go with an English yeast strain to get more of the English character; but I ended up not. I’ll probably brew this thing a few more times over the next few years with some tweaks here and there.
Anyone else brewing anything cool lately?
I brewed what I call a Strawberry Double Chocolate Stout last wednesday. It’s basically a stout recipe with cocoa powder added with 15 minutes left of the boil. I will add thawed strawberries to the fermenter next wednesday.
This is a very experimental batch, and I have no idea how it will turn out. It remains to be seen if any strawberry flavor can be noticed over the general roasty, malty chocolateyness. :)
I was contemplating something along those lines - a cherry chocolate stout… That being said; I was also a little nervous that maybe all all those flavors would just end up muddled together. Definitely let me know how that turns out!
Yeah, I’ve been dreaming of a stout based on a good Black Forest cake for a while now.
I did my first all-grain brew today. I was originally going to go extract, but on Friday I stumbled upon a cooler for sale that was perfect for converting to a mash tun.
It didn’t go great - I screwed it up. As I was rinsing the grain I measured the gravity of the wort, and OMG it was way low! 1.030 when I was looking for 1.041 or something around there. I panicked, stop draining, and figured I’d do a 90 minute boil to get the gravity down.
Well, as it turns out - the wort that I was measuring was about 150 degrees, maybe twice the temperature you’re supposed to measure gravity at. As a result, my measurement was a teensy bit low. As in, my actual gravity was RIGHT ON THE MONEY. So I boiled off an extra fucking gallon of wort, ended up way low on my volume into the fermenter, and my gravity going into the fermenter was way high.
We’ll see how this guy turns out, but I’m not encouraged!
Just call it barleywine! :)
Yep, that’s what I might have to do. :D
Lesson learned though - my system works fine; trust my system.
Are you guys running into signs of the hop shortage? There is only one place within 30 minutes of me that has hops. I had to put off my Memorial Day beer until next weekend because I didn’t plan ahead. :(
Newp, we’ve got a fair amount of hops around here. There’s not quite the variety I’d like, but they’re readily available.
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Having done a bunch more homebrewing (with a worth chiller) since this post, I wanted to chip in with my counterpoints to Morkilus.
- Yeah it costs some. 40-50 bucks. Best 50 bucks you’ll spend on equipment, IMO. If you want to bend copper pipe yourself (or know someone who has the apparatus to do so) it will cost you about 10 bucks.
- You do not have to sanitize the wort chiller at all. Drop it into the boil kettle 10 minutes ahead of time, let the boiling wort sanitize it for you. Cleaning it is pretty easy too. I use a bucket full of PBW solution for cleaning; I just drop it in there after hosing it down.
- True, you cannot chill multiple batches. How many batches do you ususally make at once? :)
- Worrying about oxygenating the wort at this point is kinda pointless IMO - the amount of oxygenation you are going to get from the wort being exposed to the air while chilling is minimal. Furthermore, oxygenation of your wort at this point is actually desirable (you want lots of oxygen for those little yeasty guys!)
- A wort chiller destroys a bathtub immersion for timing. On partial boils, I could go from boiling to yeast pitching temperature in ~10 minutes. My first batch I did with bathtub chilling (ice, cold running water, the works) and it took nearly an hour. Needless to say that first batch had a fair bit of chill haze (cooling the wort quickly promotes a bunch of protein precipitation, colloquially referred to as the “cold break.” A poor cold break means lots of proteins remain in solution, causing your beer to get cloudy when you cool it in the fridge and possibly contributing off flavors).
That being said, don’t spend a TON on your wort chiller. Just get a fifty dollar immersion chiller that will fit your kettle. Counterflow chillers are WAY expensive (200 bucks) and aren’t going to give you appreciably more cooling. Plus you need a pump, etc etc. If you’re going to spend the big bucks and deal with the hassle of cleaning and sanitizing a pump, get a whirlpool chiller (morebeer.com sells them I think); they’re about the best cooling option out there from what I can tell.
Just IMO of course - I just wanted to make sure that we had a case for wort chillers to counterpoint Morkilus’s. :)
Yep. The yeast needs oxygen before pitching.
Needless to say that first batch had a fair bit of chill haze (cooling the wort quickly promotes a bunch of protein precipitation, colloquially referred to as the “cold break.” A poor cold break means lots of proteins remain in solution, causing your beer to get cloudy when you cool it in the fridge and possibly contributing off flavors).
Chill haze can be a problem. As far as I know, however, it is purely cosmetic.
I’m doing an easy blueberry wheat today since cherries aren’t in season yet. It’s a basic American Wheat, but I’m adding blueberry puree to the secondary fermenter. I haven’t figured out how much I’ll need, though. I’m also using Saaz as a finishing hop since they’re supposed to give fruit beers a bit more of a crisp flavor.
Sigh, every time I read about the mad scientist experiments that result in beer (ie; homebrewing) it makes me want to rush out and come home with a pile of crazy pipes, kettles and hoses and freak my wife out by going all Dexter’s Laboratory in my basement.
Damn you all!..It sounds fun as hell. :(
A general rule seems to be about 1 pound of fruit for every gallon of beer.
I don’t think you can go wrong with Saaz for any wheat beer. I bet the floral aroma of Saaz would blend really well with any fruity aromas.
Sigh, every time I read about the mad scientist experiments that result in beer (ie; homebrewing) it makes me want to rush out and come home with a pile of crazy pipes, kettles and hoses and freak my wife out by going all Dexter’s Laboratory in my basement.
Damn you all!..It sounds fun as hell. :(
All you really need equipment-wise to brew some extract beers is:
-A pot and the means to heat it
-A food grade plastic bucket for fermentation
-A hose for siphoning the beer into some empty bottles (you can even use plastic PET bottles, so there’s no need for a bottle capper)
-Some kind of detergent and sanitizer to clean/sanitize everything the wort/beer comes into contact with after the boil
Yep, homebrewing (like many hobbies) can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be.
One more thing to add to jean’s list: A copy of How to Brew by John Palmer.