It sounds like several of you have just started your own first batch. Mazel tov! I hope that my last thread had something to do with it.
In lieu of a recipe thread, here is the one bit of advice that most improved my beers since I started with my current mixed grain/extract strategy. Instead of adding hops in two big doses, try adding it as close to constantly through the boil as you can manage. I normally split my hops pellets into 8-10 wells of an ice cube tray and toss each well into the pot at ten minute increments. Throughout a long boil hops gradually loses its flavor and leaves bitterness, so adding hops in many stages leaves you with a complex mix of hops that have boiled for various lengths of time.
As far as I have read Sam Caligione figured this out first when he created his iconic 60 minute IPA, which is named after the 60 minutes that fresh ground hops flowers shake onto the boil in a home-made sifter. Caligione’s “continuous hopping” is what gives his 60, 90 and celestial 120 minute IPAs their unique depth.
Are you brewing anything right now? Enjoying anything for the weekend? I’m off to wine and cheese country in an hour, so for now all you beer lovers are on your own.
Nostrovia!
stacie
I’ve been brewing some honey wines using wild fermentation techniques — mix honey and water in a 1:4 ratio into a wide mouthed container, cover with cheesecloth, and stir throughout the day. After three or four days of stirring, yeasts have colonized and the mixture is nicely frothy, when I transfer it to an airlocked gallon jug (sometimes this is as complicated as using a clean milk jug with a condom on the mouth as an airlock) and leave it to ferment for a week or two.
Wild yeasts result in a variety of flavors and alcohol contents. Sometimes I add fruits, berries, or spices to the mix (a handful of cinnamon sticks is nice, the sliced pears were a little weird).
I brewed a very nice beer from a kit not too long ago, my first batch of real beer, but I was a little freaked out by all the powders and pellets and stuff. When I get some time, I’m going to sprout and malt a few pounds of amaranth and try to adapt a basic beer recipe using that.
I also pickle veggies from the garden and make sauerkraut, yogurt, sourdough bread, and the like. I’ve really fallen in love with this whole approach to cuisine, letting natural fermentation processes and highly useful microorganisms join the fray, turning $3 worth of honey into mead or a sliced head of cabbage into tangy kraut. It seems that this isn’t just a wonderful way to explore food and the human tradition of it, but also a wholesale repudiation of our hypersanitary approach to living.
RSR
I’ve got a couple kits waiting for a good weekend.
And Brendan ( http://brendancalling.com/2009/06/02/hops-compare-and-contrast/ ) expects to have a huge hop crop up here in Philly, too.
malraux
I’ve got a Brass ale (clone of Bass ale by midwest supplies) in the secondary right now.
I’m also trying out a tap-a-draft mini keg system. So far, it seems to work pretty well. The largest two issues with the system I have are first, the incremental cost is a bit high. The disposable CO2 cartridges are not cheap. Second, having a beer on tap makes it much easier to refill a glass, leading to increased consumption.
Yuppers
I love that brewing gets discussed on this site!
Continuous hopping is a great idea, but as you implied, you get more bittering out of the earlier hops and less out of the later hops. So (IMO) you may want to consider your hop choices and overall quantities in a different manner than with a “typical” recipe. I did a batch like this using 100% simcoe and it came out great, but I ramped up the amount of hops added over time since it is a relatively high alpha acid hop.
Currently have a barleywine (American) aging for the winter months in a secondary; I have a Munich Helles and an Oktoberfest lagering for later this fall (hey, gotta have an Oktoberfest party at the end of September, after all — anyone got a good schnitzel recipe?). And I just started fermenting a Bohemian Pilsner.
Currently on tap (all homebrew): American Pale Ale, Amber Ale, Doppelbock, Hefeweizen, Belgian Blond, Steam Beer, and an Old Ale.
Obviously I brew too much for my own good…
jeffreyw
Second, having a beer on tap makes it much easier to refill a glass, leading to increased consumption.A feature, not a bug.
Yuppers
@malraux:
On the other hand, malraux, if you want just a half a glass of something, you can do that from a tap. You don’t have to open a whole 12 or 22 oz bottle.
Especially useful with high gravity beers like the doppelbock I currently have on tap — it’s about 8.5%, so my wife and I tend to just pour a few ounces as a sort of ‘nightcap’.
malraux
Amen to that.
Calming Influence
Blackberries are profuse right now in the Puget Sound area, although they seem a little on the small side this year probably because of our very dry spring and summer. I’m collecting enough to start a 15 gal. batch of blackberry wine, which I think is one of the best berry wines. It’s been almost 20 years since my last batch!
JGabriel
Obama May Abandon Effort to Reach Health Deal With Republicans — Edwin Chen / Bloomberg:
Huh?
Someone please explain this. Why would a strictly Democratic bill be more watered-down than an Democratic/Republican compromise bill?
Do these guys even think before writing such obvious drivel?
.
Calming Influence
@stacie:
Interesting idea – what kind of flavor does amaranth have?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JGabriel:
How do you know it was even written by a human being, rather than a political story generating AI program. Seems to me it is getting kinda iffy whether our current news media overlords could pass a Turing test.
Walker
I won’t start the hard cider until late October. To make good cider you need a mix of four types of apples (tarts, sweets, aromatics, and bitters). My tree of aromatics does not mature until mid-October.
Loneoak
Anyone out there ever brew using well water? I just moved into a new place up the mountains that is on well water. I think the water is fine, but my wife hates it. It does have a very faint sulfur element, especially when it is hot. It’s an hour roundtrip to get water from the water store, so it’s a pain in the ass, but I don’t want to waste the money and effort of my first brew up here if it’s just going to taste bad. Any ideas?
p.a.
anyone see the stuff about Bush, Gog and Magog? I tried to keep my dislike for him focused on policy disagreements, and not personal (especially difficult if you know anything about his ‘kill ’em all’ execution policy while Texas governor (Scalia is another one as a recent dissent shows)). But I guess he is waaaay more than just a right wing tool. He’s a fucking loon.
Yuppers
@Loneoak: The issue with well water is that you can’t be 100% sure what the mineral composition is. And it does matter, to some extent. However, it really only makes a “big” difference when you brew using grains only (no extract). Two rules of thumb for water when extract brewing: (1) if the water is very soft, the hops can taste soapy, if the water is extremely hard, the hops can be a little harshly bitter. (2) if your water tastes good, then it’s good for extract brewing. Beer is mostly water, so if your H2O tastes bad, so will your beer.
If you grain brew, the water chemistry matters much more. But that’s an advanced topic — and something you shouldn’t worry about when doing your first batches.
over here
@JGabriel:
Loneoak
@Yuppers:
I’m not doing my first batches—I have the whole full-grain getup and have been brewing for years. By ‘first brew’ I meant ‘the first brew I have conducted since moving last month.’ But when I lived in town I agreed with my wife that the city water tasted awful and so we lived on the 5-gallon containers of drinking water that I would refill at the water store. So I never much worried about the water when brewing. Judging by the shower heads, we have relatively hard water.
The prospect of getting a mineral analysis and doing some real chemistry to make my beer is bothersome—I care, but I’m not sure if I care that much. I guess I will revert to habit and be lazy about it for a few more months until I get a serious itch to brew.
Yuppers
@stacie:
Stacie, I assume you mean the powders and pellets freaked you because it all seemed so “processed”. I can understand that. But most breweries (including some of the best craft/microbreweries out there) use pelletized hops because the shredding of the hop cones and then compacting into pellet process increases the exposure of the essential oils and acids in the hops that brewers are trying to get out of them (also, the results are more consistent, which is important if you’re selling product). Whole hops also tend to absorb more of the wort, so the yield tends to go down when not using pellets.
Powdered extract is really just a matter of economy. The same companies that malt the barley grains which breweries buy also make their own worts — just as a grain brewer does — then they evaporate them down to syrup; or spray evaporate them down to powder to be sold to extract grain brewers. So the product is as “natural” as a 100% grain malt based wort… it has just been evaporated down to (1) reduce shipping weight and size; and (2) increase stability.
I use grains, not powder (or liquid) extracts in my brewing because it gives me more control over my beer. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with extracts. You can even buy organic extracts these days. But it is a little freaky at first.
Yuppers
@Loneoak: Ah! Well that’s different! I’m certainly no expert when it comes to water chemistry in brewing, but here’s one thing you can do if you don’t want to bother with getting analyses done, etc: just go ahead and brew a batch! Something simple — so you aren’t investing too much in ingredients. And see how it comes out. If it tastes good, then hey, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If not… well, at least you’ll know that you need to either get other water or go down the rabbit hole of water chemistry.
And since you think the water is on the hard side, I’d suggest a dark beer for the test batch if you decide to do one… like a porter or a stout. Those dark grains will help with the water pH (which is probably relatively high).
Cheers!
Yuppers
@Yuppers: I should have said that the dark grains will help with the MASH pH, not the water pH. Mea culpa.
ihop
slightly OT, but there is a bottle shop across the river where i stumbled upon a 10 dollar 25 oz bottle of unibroue’s ‘edition 2005’ last weekend that has aged very nicely in the past 4 years.
oh and, filtered well water (that’s what we do, with a faucet attachment) is the finest tasting water.
Ed Drone
I don’t drink beer — never developed a fondness for the taste — but I do drink hard cider. Is there a simple method for creating hard cider (that doesn’t take four kinds of apples, each ripening at different times. Can simple versions of cider be made from roadside cider stand apple cider (unpasteurized)? I know if you let it go long enough, you get vinegar, but what do you do to (a) make it stop at cider, and (b) not have too much junk in it (the cloudy stuff).
In other words, can I make a cheap kind of cider from McCutcheon’s or some local apple juice?
I’m nothing if not cheap.
Ed
Loneoak
Just a little plug for my local homebrew shop, Seven Bridges Cooperative:
http://www.breworganic.com/
As the URL suggests, it’s all organic. Their products have never failed me, even if the equipment is marked up as if stainless steel should have an organic premium price.
malraux
@Yuppers:
I dispute the premiss. The only thing I’d ever want less than a full glass would be a barleywine. But I wouldn’t trust the plastic on the tap-a-draft to hold out O2 for the time it would take.
Yuppers
@malraux: Ah, I don’t mean a single half glass — I mean, say, a glass-and-a-half (or 2.5… or 3.5…).
Dustin
@23 That could be because 304-L stainless steel (the most common alloy used in food-grade metalworks) does have a premium demand. Unfortunately, unlike hype-jacked organic products, it’s a scarcity issue.
Spot
@stacie:
“Honey wine,” a/k/a “mead,” can be made with a variety of berry flavorings, too. I don’t make it personally, but know somebody who does (and looks like a Viking, too) and has favored me with some mead that was several years old (from sealed bottles) and I loved it.
smiley
Tim,
How is low carb beer made? As a diabetic, it’s the only kind I can drink – unless I substitute a beer for a meal.
Walker
@Loneoak:
That sulfur element is actually a bacteria (I have it in my well as well). They love the warm water. I cook with filtered water, so it does not bother me (it only affects my showers).
I do, however, have a neighbor that claims to have fixed the problem. He replaced his elements in his hot water heater with zinc rods (supposedly they hate that). Then he flushed his whole plumbing line with bleach.
Walker
@Ed Drone:
Yes, you can make it from road-side cider provided that it has no preservatives (that will kill yeast). You have to add yeast then, of course, and my experience is that natural yeast in the apples is better than anything you can add. Search online for information about cider yeast.
Walker
@Ed Drone:
One more thing: it has to be cider, not apple juice. In NY, that term has a technical meaning. Cider is juice that has been pressed, but not clarified. It is dark and opaque apple juice. You will discover that it will completely clarify as part of fermentation.
Clear apple juice has been strained to remove all pulp. This is no good for fermentation.
Kirk Spencer
I used to say “I don’t like beer.” After much learning, the truth is “I don’t like hops.”
For what it’s worth, hops were a later addition to beer, being used in some places in Europe somewhere around 900 AD but not being common till somewhere in the 1500s-1600s. Hops were just another Gruit (aka grout) for most of that time, and didn’t become a distinctly different element till somewhere in the 1400s or 1500s (depending on which sources you’re interpreting what way.)
The purpose of the grout was to spice the fermented malt brew which is otherwise fairly sweet. While the usual method was with a bitter, some choices were made to complement. A few historical examples include: Ground Ivy (Alehoof, Creeping Jenny, …), Buckbean, Carduus, Centaury, Nettle, Wood Sage, Wormwood, Germander, Juniper berries, Sweet Gale, Sweet Woodruff, Lavender, Alecost, Dandelion, Eyebright, Hyssop, Mugwort, Sage, Coriander seed, Cloves, Seville orange (or any orange) peel, Cinnamon. Vanilla, Ginger, Cherries, Raspberries.
yeah.
One of the variations I prefer is 1 part coriander, 1 part germander, 2 parts orange peel (with the pith). If “parts” is ounces, you can use about 2 ounces for every ounce of hops you’d use in a “normal” brew.
One point to make — hops became the option of choice due to their preservative properties. Ales (or whatever you called your non-hops beer) tended to be good for a couple of weeks. Beer… Beer is what allowed the English Navy (among others) to spend fair amounts of time at sea. On the other hand, if you have PROPERLY sterilized your work before brewing and don’t keep your bottles stored in the sun, your non-hops ales will last a lot longer than their historical counterparts.
Crashman06
Opened a couple of bottles of my first brew this weekend. It was a Belgian style dubbel, and was pretty good! My brother is over to visit this weekend, and he was so impressed that he wanted to help me brew another batch. We just finished Belgian white, with coriander and orange peels. It smells great!
stacie
@Calming Influence: I’m not sure what it’ll taste like malted. It’s a tiny little grain that was apparently used in fermented beverages in pre-colonial Mexico. I’ve cooked with it and can’t say it’s very flavorful, but apparently amaranth was banned by Spanish conquerors of the new world during the colonial period. I’m a sucker for a good story, so I figure it’s worth using just for that.
Crashman06
@stacie: When I was a kid, my mom used to buy us a cereal made with Amaranth. Can’t remember what it was called though. It was pretty good, although a bit heavy.
Sentient Puddle
I’m sampling a bit of my second homebrew tonight, a Belgian pale ale. Good stuff, though it may need a bit more time in the bottle (currently at two weeks). Still, better than my first, which was a cherry stout that I sampled WAY too early, and couldn’t drink more than a few sips (better now, though it may well just not be my thing).
Next brew, I should try continuous hopping. If nothing else, better than hopping, just kind of sitting there for a while, then hopping again. Got a third brew fermenting though, so I’m going to have to wait to bottle that one first…
OriGuy
@Kirk Spencer: I just learned that India Pale Ale is so named because the additional hops were necessary to preserve the ale on the trip from Britain to India.
I don’t brew, but I picked up a variety case from Black Diamond Brewery in Concord, CA at Costco. I’ve only had the Belgian Blonde Ale so far. A little bit of rye hops are added to give it a spicy flavor.
Eric U.
sadly, I got rid of all my beer making supplies about 15 years ago. My wife hated the smell.
I used to strain the wort through the hops into the primary fermenter. You get an outlandish amount of hop flavor that way. I suspect that there are ways to limit that, but I really like hops. I was always disappointed when I boiled the hops.
malraux
@Eric U.: That’s the big plus of using a cajun ring of fire; you can do the brewing outdoors. You never have that smell hanging around the house.
tom.a
Apparently it has a nondescript taste, like lettuce or raw spinach, is slightly sweet with nutty undertones and prevents pre-mature greying.
Kirk Spencer
One minor thing that led me to my discovery that I dislike hops…
If you try to make a whiskey of hopped beer, the resulting beverage is undrinkable. It’s not quite skunked but it is very similar. You can make a whiskey of most non-hopped beers (though some of the gruist flavors are allegedly unsatisfactory at that intensity).