Topic: Anyone else out there doing some home brewing?

[web]

Hasn't that face had enough of a beating lately?

Anyway. Interested to read about Gordon's hefeweizen. I tried one at some point and it turned out a bit watery, not as full of a taste as the real thing. Otoh my APA turned out very nice.

[Old Moe Toe]

Bottled up a couple of brews today. 46 litres of Coopers Australian Pale Ale. I like to use the old fashioned crown seal glass bottles as you can re-use them for years.
Interesting what you find yourself bottling them in. All made with rainwater. Feel lucky we can still use that here.

[Terry in Australia]

Nice! I had a problem with brew #3 yesterday. While the taste is good, they have next to no fizz, so I'm not sure what's going on there, I had to zap it with my soda stream. Alcohol isn't an issue, I was well and truly fly-blown after drinking a litre of this stuff, but without fizz, I consider it a fail. I hope brew #4 is better, (bottling it next weekend) or I'll be heading over to the pissed off thread............

[web]

Wasn't brew 3 the one that you left fermenting very long? For a fizz you need a little bit of surviving yeast and a small amount of surviving or added sugars at bottle time.

[Terry in Australia]

Yeah mate, I did ferment it and brew #2 for too long. Brew #4 will get bottled on Saturday, 2 weeks after I made it, and I might add some more sugar this week just to be on the safe side.

[Gordon]

Interested to read about Gordon's hefeweizen. I tried one at some point and it turned out a bit watery, not as full of a taste as the real thing. Otoh my APA turned out very nice.

It turned out great!  This is a recipe I've used many times before, and it's the only one I make with mainly malt extract instead of all-grain.  I've done all-grain hefe-weizens before, but I could never get a consistent result, because wheat is a lot more finicky in the mash stage than barley.  The extract version I make comes out tasting a lot like Paulaner hefe-weizen, but only if I use the good liquid yeast. 

[web]

@Terry  2 weeks should be totally fine, especially with a touch of "bottle sugar" (don't overdo it!)

@Gordon cool! Indeed I hear weizen are not the easiest. Mine was also an extract brew, from one of those kits except I left out the added sugar and used less water, like I usually do with those kits to make them a little tastier. Still came out almost identical to Grolsch Weizen, which is a bit of a watery knockoff IMO. Paulaner on the other hand, is definitely a prime example. Would you share the recipe?

[Gordon]

Would you share the recipe?

Of course! 

Being an extract batch this one's pretty straight-forward:

7 lb liquid wheat malt extract.
1/2 lb flaked wheat.
1.5 oz Hallertaur hops.

Steep the grains in 150F brew kettle for 20 minutes.  Add extract and 1.25 oz hops and boil for 60 minutes, adding the last 0.25 oz hops in the last 5 minutes.  I also add Irish moss or a whirlfloc tablet and yeast nutrients with the flavoring hops. 

Cool wort to 80F, pour liquid yeast into fermenting vessel and fill it with the wort using an aerating attachment on the siphon tube. 

Aerating the wort well is more important with this style ale than any other I've made.  Without good aeration the hefeweizen yeast takes a lot longer to get fully going, and it doesn't develop its full flavor potential.  This yeast works slower than most, so I leave it in the primary fermenter for 10-14 days instead of the usual 5-7.  Then in the secondary for at least another 2 weeks.  Upper 60s fermenting temperature gives the bests results, IMO.  Any higher than that and you start getting too much of the banana esters from the yeast. 

[web]

Txs, I'll give it a go once I've finished my wort cooler.
I never had any issues getting dried yeast started though, or had to aerate or use nutrients, but that might just be the trick to a good hefeweizen. What liquid yeast did you use?

[Gordon]

I use White Labs hefeweizen yeast.

[Terry in Australia]

Well with Web's advice ringing in my ears, I bottled my #4 Ginger Beer brew on Monday. It was really important to me that I was making ginger beer and not ginger wine, so I first tested it to make sure that the yeast was still alive and well. That was easy, I just removed the lid from the fermenter, and tipped a little sugar in, and it immediately started to foam up. Excellent.....

I ended up with a shade under 29 litres of brew. I ran out of carbonation drops with 5 bottles to go, so used a teaspoon of sugar in each bottle, and quickly capped them before the brew could foam all the way up out of the bottle.

Terry's ginger mistle toe bottled 23-12-2019 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Now I know it's only been 3 days but I opened one today, and am happy with the result. A bit yeasty still, but not a bad flavour, and plenty of fizz. I'll leave it for a couple of weeks now, and look forward to a delightful, mature brew. Time to fire up the BBQ and eat some meat. I bought a few of these "Crabbies" Scottish ginger beers as they were getting rid of them cheap at my local Woolworths, and I can understand why, it's not all that good, Stones "Ginger Joe" pisses all over it.

Terry's ginger mistle toe bottled 23-12-2019 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

 

[flatlander]

holiday season... seems like a good time to get a brew going.



it's a red ale. i used to like these in ireland but they're hard to get here in the netherlands so i resorted to making my own.

[bear]

I'm a bit of a fan of Irish Red Ales myself.

Cheers,
Brian

[Gordon]

Just emptied a keg of brown ale yesterday, brewed a batch of British pale ale today, and will be kegging the dunkel-weizen in a couple of days.  Today is the first time in a while I've had to actually buy beer.  I guess I need to brew more often.   

[Terry in Australia]

Yep, I had a "Sneak Preview" of my latest batch after only 3 days since I bottled them, and while still very yeasty and immature, the flavour was good. Both my fermenters are empty now, and I'm thinking about making another brew, I've only got 29 litres left, and it's pretty hot outside.....

[Don R]

 I sampled some local brews last Saturday evening. There's a brew pub using locally sourced ingredients but not a lot in the way of local food to go with it. So, beer it was. I found it tasty and potent but have no idea what any of it was. Friends and relatives kept bringing me more.  My wife drove home. I did spend some time admiring the equipment.

[spotty]

Just knocked up a 'toucan' yesterday, combined a can of Cooper's classic bitter ( much more like a lager than an English bitter) and a can of muntons ruby red ale, couple of kilos of maltose and dextrose.
It's started at 1070 so if I can get it down around 1005 it should emerge from the bottle at about 9.5%
I'll ferment it at under the house temp without the heat blanket so it takes it slow but steady , should be quite nice I hope

I haven't made any prison hooch cider for a while, with it just living in a keg in the space room it was all too easy to get through 4 or more pints a night , it was prob about 8% and some mornings you'd wake up with no recollection of the night before, going to bed, nothing.....bit much on a school night

And yes I realise the contradiction of not wanting to drink a cider that's probably weaker than the beer I've just made but the cider isn't particularly rich or thick ( unlike the royal family) and is really easy to drink, but the beer will be quite heavy and much harder to drink more than a couple of pints in a night
That's the theory anyway

[Terry in Australia]

Hey Spotty, when you come over to collect your jet kit, I'm wondering if you've got room for 30 litres of Ginger wine? I'd call it Ginger Beer, but it doesn't have much fizz, but like wine, one bottle will put me on my arse. (it'd probably take 3 or 4 for a big unit like you) I don't really want to tip it out, but I need my industrial oven back so I can try my hand at powder coating? It tastes OK, but just not as "OK" as I'd like?

[spotty]

I should be able to find a home for it

[Terry in Australia]

Woohoo! It's not horrible, just not my favourite flavour, but I can't bring myself to throw it out. Thanks mate!

[flatlander]

bottling day.
now a few weeks waiting, then let's see how it turns out... i sampled some of the young beer at it tastes promising 

[web]

How long is that red plastic bottle cap tool lasting for you?
Mine wore out within the first two batches... thankfully I had just enough fliptops left to not have to drink the rest of the batch immediately 

[flatlander]

it's been lasting maybe 5 batches or so? about 50 bottles each? and doesn't show signs of fatigue.
you don't need to lean on it with all your weight, just snap the handles down.
but i do try to create as many empty flip tops as possible as i find them easier and quicker to handle (another excuse to buy and drink beer, ha!).

[spotty]

 Mine is the old single lever action, cast steel, was second hand when I got it it'll outlast my liver I reckon
It's been a bit bodged up and you need a block of wood to get the med/sml bottles in the right place but it's fine by me

[web]

@flatlander
Nice, maybe yours isn't the same then. I didn't lean on it or anything,  it just started making more and more loose and crooked caps as the little steel sleeve slowly stretched. It simply seemed not up to the job.

I got a single lever press now, with a thicker cast "business end" similar to spotty's.

I wish metal can sealers were affordable for home brewers though - while glass bottles are fine everywhere else, I don't like having glass on the boat. Nothing like cleaning up broken glass on sudden choppy seas... Maybe I should just install a beer tap on board