But we’ll have beer to drink will mulling over the state of QT3 and what Armando really likes.
Or mead?
Ugh you guys are going to make me add to my Evernote of things to try at bars again, aren’t you?
But seriously, it’s appreciated. I’m fascinated by alcohol as I’m fascinated by food in general. So much history and culture and technique…surely there must be something to enjoy!
@Skipper, it’s been a decade or so since I’ve had Blue Moon, but I don’t recall enjoying it. I don’t think I’ve ever done more than sip a mass produced American ale/lager/pilsner (e.g. Budweiser, Milwaukee’s Best); I sorta figured my beerish salvation must lie in fancy microbrews of some sort, hah.
I have had a few Angry Orchard ciders which I do recall being fairly dry and unpleasantly crisp (surprise: he also dislikes wine). I also had some sort of alcoholic “peach iced tea” concoction (in a bottle, to be clear; it wasn’t a cocktail) at a party late last year that was probably the most drinkable thing I’ve had in years, with very low alcohol content and almost zero nose-twisting bitterness. I won’t say I loved it and recognize it’s barely more than sweet tea with some booze in it, but it’s probably the first drink I’ve not struggled to finish in ages.
Clearly you need to just move straight over to the Scotch thread.
Strange how someone who likes food so much seems to dislike flavorful beverages of all kinds.
You have a lot of nice choices on your todo list. Saison Dupont has a special place in my heart, especially when you pair it with charcuterie or steak frites.
My palate has been dulled by a lifelong addiction to Diet sodas, I suspect, which aren’t even so much sweet as just weirdly chemical tasting (according to my Proper Coke drinking friends).
It looks like Total Wine near me has Saison Dupont. I was probably gonna have to swing out there ahead of chili adventures in the medium-near future, so may try to grab it. . . but jeebus $24 for a 4-pack of 11ozers. I hope they sell singles >.>
Protip: Nothing good comes from trying orange-based juice when making cider.
We just had a Total Wine open here, with crappy parking and kind of out of my way so I have only been there once. But they have some kind of wine tasting and beer tasting in the store.
Sample some various styles.
I remember many years ago when we first got into drinking wine we would go to Napa to wine taste (yea, it was pretty easy to do in the 80’s) and most people started their wine drinking careers by drinking white zins and Reislings. Now I don’t know anyone who drinks those because most people evolve into drier styles.
Have any other tips? We’re planning a cider brew day in March.
Genuine question: do you cook with wines at all? I probably use wine in cooking as much as for drinking. A little merlot in a marinara, a dry chardonay for chicken cordon bleu or Napoli style pork chops. Pinot noirs are perfect in any kind of beef stew. It adds another dimension and depth to flavor of so many dishes.
Granted whenever I am cooking with wine, I inevitably wind up drinking some during the process. Add some, drink some. You could skip that step though ;)
Oh yeah. Much like beer, it’s much more palatable when buried under six other strong flavors. Virtually all my alcohol purchases are cooking oriented first, but decent enough that my partner will drink any leftovers.
Well the obvious solution if you can’t enjoy alcohol is marijuana. You should start a, “We have never talked about Marijuana,” thread.
I kid. I mentioned Blue Moon because for as much crap as craft drinkers tend to give it, it’s a gateway beer. It’s wheaty, a tad citrusy, and kind of sweet for a beer. All of that combines to make it fairly popular, and since Coors picked them up and distributes them it’s available in a ton of locations.
If you want a decent local beer that is somewhat equivalent: Catawba Brewing’s White Zombie. It’s a touch less sweet, but an easy drinker.
If you do have a Total Wine nearby, in the beer section they usually have a wall or run with singles you can purchase individually. Beer isn’t like water or soda. It’s acquired as a taste, somewhat. But stick with the attempts, man. There are a lot of styles and breweries out there.
I think I know what you’re talking about. Angry Orchard does have a bit of a bite in their main line. The Easy Apple much less so. I do think you might like Strongbow (the main one, Gold Apple), which is sweeter.
Some of my favorite cider drinks is from a Boston-based brewer called DownEast, that makes a Cranberry blend, as well as a seasonal pumpkin spice blend, both of which are basically candy, but are both good. I’m not sure what their distribution range looks like though.
My other recommendation for candy-like beer would be Schofferhoffer, who make a grapefruit-flavored beer (which if we’re being honest, is basically a shandy) that is extremely easy to drink, and has less bitterness than a lot of commercial shandies. It’s another one that I can drink basically all day in the summer.
If you want a sweet shandy, get yourself a Stiegl. It’s like 2%. It’s basically grapefruit soda.
In homebrewing news, our IPA is out of the fermenter and into bottles. As usual, we tasted the hydrometer sample. We were expecting bitterness, but what we got was a balanced profile with a bready finish. Great hop aroma, though, which makes sense given how fresh it is. In terms of tasting notes, it’s probably closer to an American pale ale than an IPA, but that’s fine by me. The touch of black patent darkened it up nicely; it’s a lovely honey color, but I don’t have a picture handy.
A question for the other brewers here—on both of our beers, we’ve missed our target final gravity by a few thousandths. This one was supposed to get down to 1.015 with White Labs California Ale but ended up at 1.020, and the last one should have been 1.018 with Danstar Nottingham, but ended up at 1.022. The homebrewing reddit suggests we’re maybe having trouble with yeast health, and based on what I’ve read (today) about oxygenation, we might not be doing enough on that front. Are there any other factors we should be watching out for?
I missed this way back. We might not be considered pros since we do not have our own orchard or fruit press. Making those two were the subject matters of the first two chapters off the cider maker’s handbook we bought.
We’ve made 4 or so batches of cider so far. The best results have been when we’ve used regular apple juice and added a can of pears (with the sugar syrup) per 7,5 liters. We’ve also made raspberry cider, where we use the same amount of apple juice but add 400 grams of frozen raspberries per 7,5 liters of juice (I think). We made a mistake in making puree from the berries, I’ve heard it is better to freeze/defrost them a couple of times before adding them. Avoids excessive bitterness from the seeds.
We let the yeast do it’s thing completely and then add some artificial sweetener before carbonation. We prefer to make rather dry ciders, and the yeast stopping techniques seem like a hassle. I think it was 3,6g artificial sweetener per liter.
You might just need to give it a bit more time. I don’t think a difference of 2 is that much, so if it tastes fine then it is no problem. Oxygenation is important, but you can also try adding a bit of yeast nutrient in the last 15 minutes of the boil.
It can be any number of things. Like Jorn mentioned, it can be just waiting a bit longer. But if you repeatedly get that, then it’s about time to step up your game (and your yeast) and pre-fermentation stuff. Some steps along that path:
- Try a different yeast vendor with the associated yeast style equivalent.
- Check that you get your wort all the way down to fermentation temp prior to pitching.
- Make sure you don’t have wide temp swings while fermenting.
- Make a yeast starter (by far this was the biggest step up for me.)
- Look into oxygenation of your wort prior to pitching yeast. There are a number of things out there for this, I have one that uses an O2 bottle, a tube and an oxygenation stone. Even just shaking the wort quite a bit before pitching helps.
I hope one of these works for you. It’s frustrating when you can’t plan on your results very well.
@Fishbreath did you guys dry hop?
For those of you on the milk stout train, we have an NC local that has an awesome one out right now. I had it the other evening, so damned good.
D9 Brewing’s Brown Sugar Brown Cow.
This Mocha Brown ale needed a fanatical bovine with a brown sugar sweet side and a kick of Colombian coffee. Brown Sugar Brown Cow is brewed with chocolate, vanilla, brown sugar and Colombian coffee. We added a hint of lactose, and this brew is a mocha coffee and cream concoction so good you’ll say its name.
Nope. Wanted to keep the number of variables low on this one—bittering hops (1oz Columbus) for the full boil, then half an ounce of Willamette at 15 minutes and another half-ounce at flame-out.
I expect we were closer to fermentation temperature this time than we were on the first batch, given our much improved cooling setup. I’ve seen people say shake for multiple minutes to oxygenate, and we’ve never done that, nor have we done much in the way of splashing on siphoning. I’m thinking of a few options on that front—maybe poking some holes in the side of a length of tubing for aeration while siphoning, and definitely giving it a better, longer shake. (We’re trying to do the next few batches without much in the way of gear buys—get that price per bottle down to a reasonable level.)
We’ll also do a starter next time. This time, we skipped it; neither of us were going to be available to tend to a starter, so we just pitched two packets of liquid yeast.
I used to do the same. When in doubt, double pitch. That should really eliminate it was your yeast.
Because I don’t BIAB, I ran your result through homebrewtalk. It looks like you aren’t the only person that happens to. It makes me wonder what more is going on there.