Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

It has a refreshingly crisp finish to the palate. All sugars were fermented out (added quite a bit), perfectly dry and acidic with a very low note of sweetness. Total ferm time was 2 weeks using less than 1g of cider yeast, so ABV was on the low end around 10.

8/10 overall.

Next month, cranberry.

Was running out of Kveik yeast (my last brewing yeast), and too impatient to wait for more to arrive so decided to co-pitch the one gram I had left with some sourdough starter.

What does anybody think will happen?

The starter has worked well at fermenting strawberry wine in the past, but it was looking a lot less healthy this time.

Honestly this was an impulse decision to do this but I will be interested to see what happens. Maybe it will sour? That would be exciting.

Website: https://dointhemost.org/mold/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DointheMost

1. always rack to a 2ndary. It'll avoid solids in later steps.
2. solids will clog a bottling wand. This may or may not be related to #1.
3. be careful when cleaning bottling wands, because garbage disposals will eat the spring. This may or may not be related to #2.

I think I can tell a difference in my brews. I think that hop character is more pronounced without the spider and I've stopped using it. Caveats: I've not done a huge sample size and I've known the difference.

I have some questions and concerns

I have a batch contaminated with some VWP sanitizer. How dangerous is this? It's a sanitizer you normally have to rinse and I fucked up and got some in a brew. I don't know exactly how much and one bottle in particular has more than the others.

I am begging to question if it's safer for me to not use sanitizer at all and instead just use dish soap. Maybe I should switch to a different sanitizer? I am not completely convinced of the safety of no rinse sanitizer either and want to find some sources or more information about these things. There is a high chance I will end up making a mistake using these and I don't know what the risk profile is of different sanitizers. How dangerous is not using sanitizer at all?

Star san and chem san are somewhat expensive though I hear they last a while.

Tried to make a Pina colada mead following city steading brewing's recipe, accidentally bought coconut milk instead of coconut water and found out only when everything was sanitized and pineapple juice already in the fermenter, and thought "what the hell, what the worst that could happen? If it goes rancid I'll just dump it out", we'll, I woke up to a lovely Pina colada smell and my kitchen absolutely covered with goop and air lock in the other side of the kitchen. Learn from my dumbassery.

I'm thinking of harvesting a local bush of Japanese quince (Chaenomeles Japonica) and make a small batch of fruit wine. Since they have a very strong citrus flavor, I'm thinking to lean in on it and make something like a very sour apertif.

I've made wines before but it was ages ago with good results, some fruit wines and kit wines, but nothing similar to this.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Should it be combined with some sweet fruits or raisin maybe? Any particular yeast better suited than others? Or some recipe idea as a starting point?

Cheers!

So it is finally almost time! The event I'll be pouring my Oat-wine at is this Saturday, October 14th at Brooklyn Navy Yard and tickets are still available if anyone is going to be around NYC and wants to try it (as well as 29 other beers!).

As an added bonus, here is an image of a lovely pellicle starting to develop on my 1st attempt at making this beer which got way too hot and so I decided to pitch some Brett blends in as well as an oak spiral in the hopes of somewhat salvaging the batch. It's starting to develop some funk which I'm very excited about but I think it will be another few months before I'll really be able to tell if it will be drinkable or will end up getting distilled into some dubious liquor...

I’ve been brewing indoors on a gas stove and it takes forever to get 10 gallons to a boil. I bought an outdoor propane burner and haven’t taken it for a spin yet. How long does a propane tank usually last you?

So my friend has some vineyards and this is the part of the year.

We picked about 600 l of white grapes, 100l of red and about 50l of some sweeter white variety. He will have another group to pick the rest of it (about the same amount).

If you think that this is too much for homebrewing, it isn't. There is legal to make up to 2000l of it per year and lots of people make it to that limit.

If someone have good pick sharing site I can link few images I managed to take.

Opened my first bottle of hibiscus mead. I think it needs longer to carbonate, or I might have not added enough carbonation sugar. Probably both.

It is pretty drinkable. This is reassuring given it was made using the cheapest available honey and is well under a month old. Voss Kveik yeast and good nutrients do wonders!

Definitely needs some refinement when it comes to sweeteners and acids. This was my first time using acids to balance a mead and I think I should have chosen citric acid or malic acid instead of tartaric acid.

Front Left - Orange & Mango cordial Front Right - Ginger beer from cordial Left Rear - Stawberry Jam Wine Right Rear - Cyser Bochet

Using the Bray Denard methodology for the bochet minus GoFerm (didn't have any at the time). Using Voss Kveik yeast from LalBrew for the bochet and the jam wine.

The two from cordial are using EC-1118 primarily because I had it lying around not being used. They also have added sugar - brown for ginger beer, white for orange & mango.

I will be interested to see how the orange and mango goes for two reasons: It had preservatives that normally prevent fermentation, and you don't normally use orange juice to ferment.

TLDW: Their mandarin orange wine was a bit too bitter. Testing, unscientifically, if they can tell a difference. They can. They think it lowers the bitterness.

Interesting. I'm mainly a beer brewer (only my first cider recently) so I've not had a brew that's "too bitter", as with beer you WANT them to be bitter, usually. I've heard to add a pinch of salt to a pot of coffee.

Has anyone made any This is the time of year for it

Hello fellow brewers. Here I go, once again, with my favorite show: Rate My Beer Recipe. BS apart, I'd love to here your insights in the following. It's supposed to be a realy simple, straight forward American IPA. No shenanigans, no fancy practices, no need to reinvent the wheel.

64.5% Pale Malt. 24% Pilsen Malt. 8% Wheat Malt (protein to help foam). 3% Special B Malt (color correction).

43 IBU Cascade First Worth 11 IBU Willamatte boiling for 10 minutes 1g/L Cascade in the flame out 3g/L Willamatte and 3g/L Cascade DH for 5 days.

60 minute mash, 30 minutes boiling. PH correction for mash in (~5.5) PH correction sparge water (~5.5) Neutral Water profile.

Fermenting with US-05, starting 15°c and letting it go up until 18°c. Once done, gonna diacetil rest it around 22°c for 5 days (DH time), cold crash for more 5 days and throw to postmix.

What you guys think about it?

We semi-recently got a corker which has let us move a bunch of our meads out of carboys and into bottles (and then boxes). It's extremely fun to be able to pull out a corked, labled bottle of mead at a gathering, just an extra bit of pizazz.

Details of the labels.

Burnt Honey: A bochet that's absolutely delicious, but a bit too sweet to drink a lot of. The yeast simply gave up partway through the fermentation (I assume due to the hilariously high SG) and rather than restart it we decided to lave it as is.

The Hard Way: Elderberry + Blueberry mead, nicely aged, lightly backsweetened, balanced with a bit of acid. Tastes shockingly similar to cranberry juice. Hence the name, a bunch of effort and a year of time to create something that you could get a similar end point to with cranberry juice and vodka. Still super nice to drink.

Summer Lovin': Fast turnaround mead made with fermenting juiced strawberries with the honey, then filtering immediately after primary, and backsweetening/flavoring with "oleo saccharum" and some citric acid. Extremely tasty, excellent summer drink, we liked it so much we've made two batches of it. Best part is that total time from start to bottle is under a month.

All of these were filtered using plate filters down to the "semi-filtration" level, which appears to be enough to stabilize them for back sweetening! My theory is that although the "semi-filtration" of about half a micron can't promise it removes all bacteria, yeast tends to be significantly larger and is removed without issue. At the very least we've had no bottle bombs yet.

To explain why there's a bee in a garbage can, "Garbo" was a combined last name me and my wife were throwing around as a possibility when we were getting married. The name was veto'ed, but we kept it as our "meadery" name, and since it brought to mind a little Garbage Bee that's what I doodled as our logo. It stuck as a theme after that.

Hey, folks.

So, we're up to 1.6k subscribers now (yay!). Thank you to everyone for making this possible!

So, it's probably time to add a couple more moderators.

We seem to be a pretty chill bunch so far, so do reach out if this is something that you're interested in.

What liquid do people use for their airlocks?

I have been using water for a while but have recently seen people who think this isn't best practice and is likely to get infected.

I have also found out that the sanitizer I use breaks down over time so likely wouldn't be suitable. I have taken to using dish soap for now but don't know if there is a problem with this practice.

I am currently avoiding vodka because of the alcohol duty in my country.

About the event:

Explore over 30 delicious beers brewed by some of NYC's best homebrewers inspired by nature's bountiful harvest! Beers will be separated into 8 categories: oats, wheat, corn, rye, fruit, vegetables/herb/spice, sugars, and miscellaneous grain. Your entry fee gets you a souvenir glass and unlimited samples of homebrew for the duration of the event! The event will take place on Saturday, October 14th from 1-5PM at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Building 77.

I normally don't drink beer or ale because I find it too bitter. I have no problems with malt though (I actually think it's pretty interesting). Would I be correct in thinking that unhopped beer is less bitter?

Also does anyone have any advice for brewing my first ale? I have made fruit wine, mead, and cider before but never beer. I have some kveik yeast and spray malt from other brews that I can use so I am thinking of using that. The closest I have gotten to brewing ale or beer is making bochet braggot so any help is appreciated.

Ok, so I was interested in trying my hand at a sour beer and have also been trying to reduce my alcohol intake. I have been drinking a lot of brewdog's AF beers when at home.

I decided to do a kettle sour with hibiscus flowers as the flavoring instead of fruit. I'm doing a minimal berlinerweisse for the malt.

I aimed for 5gal (20l) in the fermenter. I used a 110v brewzilla.

Here is my bill:

• 3lb 2row
• 2lbs wheat malt
• 16oz good belly mango-flavor probiotic drink
• 7ml lactic acid
• 3oz dry hibiscus flower in boil (5min)
• Safale 05 dry yeast
• No hops

Steps:

• Heat 5gal water to 168°F
• Mash in, hold at 168 x 1hr
• Drain the grains
• cool to 90°F
• Add lactic acid to get pH to 4.5
• Add good belly, cover with plastic
• Set temp to 85°F and wait
• When pH reaches 3.2 - 3.4, bring to boil for 10min
• Add hibiscus, boil for 5min
• Cool to 80°F, rack to sterilized fermenter, pitch yeast.

SG 1.026

Lessons learned: Boiling soured wort in the house makes the house stink. The wife was not impressed.

Pitching yeast at higher temps than 100°F kills the yeast.

Morebeer takes 4 days to ship a simple packet of yeast from one state to the next.

Beer is currently happily fermenting at 65°F. I'm going to float another couple of oz of hibiscus as a "dry hop" in a couple days. I'll attempt to update this post with FG and tasting notes when complete. I hope to end at 1.010. That'll put it around 2%.

I thought I would ask some questions.

Who uses nutrients? What do you use them in and which ones do you use?

There seems to be lots of ways to use nutrients in things like mead, wine, and even cider. Many people even debate whether and when they are actually needed especially in the mead space.

I've even been blocked before for suggesting SNA (Staggered Nutrient Addition) is unnecessary or elitist even though it's a recent invention.

I bottle all my beer, and I get them by de-labeling stuff I buy. However, I tend to forget what state they’re in so I designed and 3d printed my own label holder with slide in labels. Cardboard boxes hold bottles well, but they’re not see thru. Now I know! STL: https://www.printables.com/model/562504-hanging-sign-clips

So this morning at 5 am when I was leaving to work I had this conversation with my dad:

D:"So when will you drink the KEG? I need it empty."

Me:"But it is your beer"

D: " ... "

Me: " Nevermind, bye "