Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with homebrewing

Shortcuting the brewing process

brenton — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:19:03 -0800

I was going to make hard apple cider with champagne yeast for a party on Dec. 8th but wasn't able to start it in time. I know the brew process takes 14 days, but is there a way to speed it up? I have a bunch of packets of EC-1118 yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae). I have a friend with all the equipment. I haven't bought the apple juice yet. Is it important to let the process go through all 14 days? Is there a way to speed it up? Is there some other thing I could make in a mere 10 days?

How to kill that pickle smell?

Perthuz — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:25:15 -0800

Awesome: I'm a homebrewer with access to a steady stream of free food-grade buckets. Not so awesome: Pickle buckets. How do I get the smell out? I've googled and googled and I'm pretty sure I'm out of luck. I've tried baking soda and bleach, oxiclean and sunshine. Lemon and newspapers. Nothing seems to even put a dent in the smell. I've read all about the great success these methods but I haven't seen any results whatsoever. I don't mind consigning these buckets to other tasks, but my first choice would be to fill them with delicious beer, mead, and anything else I can imagine fermenting.

O (malt) barley, where art thou?

MonkeyToes — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:43:55 -0800

Where in Pennsylvania can I find malt barley seed? A friend and new brewer wants to grow his own barley, but prefers to source it locally and organically. My barley fu fails. Caveat: I have never grown grains and don't drink beer, so please bear with any errors of terminology, etc.

My friend in SE Pennsylvania is new to brewing and would like to plant malt barley (this differs from other barley?) in his yard for a future batch of homebrew. Ideally, he would obtain organic seed locally; he is waiting for a reply from Rodale, but is looking for other sources of information, seed, etc. He is strictly backyard gardening at this point, and is also relatively new to (but strongly interested in) growing his own ingredients. I think he likes the idea of brewing as-to-home-possible beer, so SE Pa. sources preferred, Pa. and surrounding states secondarily/online, and distant locations/online run a distant third.

What does he need to know to make this project possible? Leaving the actual malting out of it--a separate question--what are good sources, Pennsylvania/online, for organic malt barley seed? Are there any must-have reading materials about growing it? Can this even be done in SE Pa.? My skim through the joys of barley suggests that it grows best in colder climes; is this true? Any sources out there that you have liked and had good experiences with? Best practices for growing? Mills in Pa. that sell seed?

Again, there is an email in to Rodale (no answer yet). The PASA site doesn't turn up anything terribly helpful either, so I turn to you--friends, homebrewers, gardeners--for leads and information. Many thanks in advance.

Homebrew gone wrong?

elsietheeel — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:54:04 -0800

So yesterday I brewed a batch of beer and I think I've done a few things wrong. I know it's hard to completely screw up beer, but I wonder if what I've done (or not done) is a problem, and how I can correct if necessary. I can't actually consume large volumes of beer and my kitchen is small, so it's a ridiculously small amount of beer.

It’s kind of based on the Blood Orange Hefe in Extreme Brewing by Sam Calagione, but then I sort of went off on my own tangent.

1. Brew-in-a-bag technique - I struck the mash at 160 degrees in 2 gallons of water and then did a single temperature infusion at 152 for an hour. I did not sparge.

- 2 lbs of german pilsner malt
- 2 lbs of wheat malt
- 0.50 lbs of honey malt

2. 60 minute boil - 0.2 oz of Amarillo added at the start, at 45 minutes, at 59 minutes, and then I did a knockout hopping while I was chilling the wort. As I boiled I was getting pretty high evaporation rates and thus kept replenishing with boiling water from my tea kettle, attempting to keep the total volume at 1.5 gallons.

3. At the 59 minute mark I added an infusion of citrus peel, coriander, a few citrus leaves, and segmented citrus fruit (1 blood orange, 1 satsuma, 1 tangerine, 1 navel orange, 1 lemon - there was absolutely no pith anywhere in this mix).

4. I chilled the wort down to 80 degrees in about 20 minutes and got an excellent cold break. Poured the wort through a strainer into my fermenter (a 2 gallon bucket) where the nylon bag with the citrus bits that I had used to make the infusion was waiting.

5. The finished volume of wort was about 1.5 gallons. I pitched 2.5 grams of dry yeast in (Fermentis Safbrew WB-06), covered my bucket, and put on my airlock at 8pm last night. My house temps stay about 60-65.

Possible problems:

- I didn't aerate the wort before or after pitching (other than pouring from the kettle into the fermenter). The Internets says that you do not need to aerate dry yeast if you're just sprinkling on top.
- I didn't rehydrate the yeast. Fermentis says that sprinkling is fine, but the instructions mention stirring it in to aerate.
- I didn't measure the original gravity. Because I am an idiot.
- I seriously underpitched. Using the calculator at BeerTools the predicted OG is 1.077 and the suggested pitch rate for that gravity at Mr. Malty is 4 ounces.
- Since it's high gravity, I know the lag time might be pretty long. As of this morning I'm not seeing any bubbles in my airlock, but a krausen is forming so I know SOMETHING is happening.

So. Should I…?

- Take a gravity reading when I get home tonight?
- Pitch in another 2 grams of yeast? Hydrate it this time?
- Aerate the wort when I pitch in?
- Lower the temp? I've got a closet in my house that stays around 55.
- Do a secondary when primary fermentation is done?
- Relax and have a homebrew?

Tips on cooking or brewing with hot peppers.

nebulawindphone — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 10:26:45 -0800

Tell me about cooking (or better yet, brewing) with hot peppers. I'm looking to make a batch of ancho chili mead. I'd like it to have as much of the fruity ancho flavor as possible, and as little heat or bitterness — I know that some heat is inevitable, but I want this stuff to be drinkable for ordinary humans and not just rabid chili-heads, so I'm aiming for a nice warm tingle and not a vicious burn.

Cooks: How do you maximize the flavor, and minimize the heat, when cooking with hot peppers? Methods involving fat (steeping in oil, frying) aren't really an option here. Anything involving water, sugar, honey or alcohol is ideal.

Homebrewers: Have you ever brewed with hot peppers? Did you add them to the boil, in primary, in secondary, to the bottle, or what? How'd it turn out? What did you learn?

custom printed folding cardboard sixpack holders?

rmd1023 — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:47:06 -0800

Where can I find custom-printed cardboard six-pack holders either online or in the Boston, MA area? A friend of mine does a lot of home brewing and is looking to get some specially printed cardboard six-pack holders, but we've been unable to find anyplace that will print them. She is looking for a run of about a gross or two.

Thanks!

What to consider when opening a brewery?

Telf — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:20:06 -0800

I think my town could support a microbrewery. Where do I start? What are some considerations? I live in Gainesville FL, the home of the University of Florida. UF has somewhere in the neighborhood of 50k students. We have a fairly beer-savvy community. Between the students, the townies, the grads that never leave and the alumni that come every football season, this town loves beer. We have pubs that feature 200+ beers. We have multiple stores that carry rare american craft and microbrews, many people drink belgian ales, one pub has a belgian on tap. We have an active homebrewing club and a successful home brewing supply shop. There are 2 brew pubs (If you count Hops as one).

I have NOT dug into the legislation yet, obviously that should be my first priority. How do I even start that? Where do I go?

Ignoring laws for one second, what else do I need to consider? I'm on pretty good terms with a number of local restaurant owners, I think I could get some start up money. How do I create a business plan, where do I get the "numbers" from? Is there a resource for getting information on similar projects/businesses?

Though I'd eventually like to run a pub of some sort, I'm imagining a straight brewery that distributes to local stores and bars.

I haven't decided whether bottling or kegging is the way to go, I imagine that bottles would lead to easier distribution. I'd want to minimize initial costs and just focus on one method or another.

Help me flesh out my hazy ideas or point me in the direction of some good resources.

Finally, I don't think this will work unless I can put out a bottle that is at least as cheap as Sam Adams to the consumer. What scale would I have to reach to begin making beer rather cheap/profitable. I'd like to be able to compete with common premium beers sold at most restaurants.

Thanks.

How do I store Grolsch bottles?

bonecrusher — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:46:05 -0800

Homebrewers, how do you store your Grolsch bottles? It's easy to find cases for 12-oz bottles, of course, but has anyone found a good case for larger bottles? My local homebrew supply store gave me a really cheap box (I assume it's what their bottles came in), but it's not really strong enough to hold bottles full of beer.

Will I go Blind?

Wallzatcha — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 19:51:41 -0800

I am in the process of home brewing my first batch of beer (pale ale). In all the excitement I completely mis-read the instructions. I added a can of malt extract along with the corn sugar to 3 Liters of boiling water, stirred and then stopped boiling and added another 2.5 liters of water and cooled it to 75C where I added yeast and sealed the tub. Since then I've read that I should have boiled the malt/sugar mixture for an hour before cooling and sealing. Will this beer be crap, is it worth saving, is it dangerous?

BEER! Tips for beginning homebrewing?

spock — Tue, 31 May 2005 07:17:47 -0800

BEER! Looking for tips, resources (.ect) useful to a beginner in the art of homebrewing. Good online suppliers/sites/information? Things you would have done differently, knowing what you know now? Recommended books (or ones to stay away from)? I'm all ears!

Is my yeast unhappy?

nebulawindphone — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:50:16 -0800

Is my yeast unhappy? Beginner's homebrewing question inside. I'm making dandelion wine. It's been a pretty low-tech project — just a jug, an airlock, a recipe from the web and a packet of dry winemaking yeast.

The airlock is bubbling very slowly right now — only one tiny bubble every few minutes. This is my first homebrewing project, so I have no idea what's normal, but I'd have expected a lot more activity in there. The yeast is still alive, though. If I throw in a pinch of sugar, it foams right up all excitedly. And then after a minute, it slows back down again.

Is this normal? Or should the yeast be more active?

If it isn't normal, is the solution to add more sugar? Or is there something else that could be causing the problem?

Belgian Ale?

scarabic — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 10:56:31 -0800

HomeBrewFilter: I boiled this Belgian Ale Kit last night. Today, there's absolutely no carbonation coming out of the airlock. Nothing. I am concerned that the yeast might have been damaged. Should I worry about it now? Or wait and see a bit longer?

Home brewing

scarabic — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:05:19 -0800

HomeBrewFilter. 7 days after bottling, I tapped one of the minikegs, just to see what it would taste like (I also tasted after the boil, and again at bottling time). I know the beer needs to be in the bottles for at least 2 weeks, preferably 3 or 4. But have I endangered it at all by opening it, tapping it, and putting it under forced CO2? Secondarily, how much is the flavor going to improve over the next 7 days? It's heady as hell, sweet, and actually not very beer-like right now. oops - following on this thread:

http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/8167