Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

Left to right; Blueberry Lavender, Red Currant, Pomegranate, Peach, Plain.

I did this to determine what I wanted to make 5 gallons of, and the blueberry lavender was the winner.

Loosely based off https://aussiehomebrewer.com/threads/ginger-beer-recipe-scratch-brew-no-kit.30492/

This is my third shot at it, and this go is pretty damn good

I was a bit rough with my measurements, but it has

• Around 1kg of peeled ginger
• 1kg honey
• A couple of cinnamon sticks
• 2 habanero chillis
• 1kg brown sugar
• 0.5kg ldme
• Juice from 5 limes
• Zest from a couple of those limes

I brewed this with 1 gal water, 1/2 gal pineapple juice, 10 fl oz lime juice and 1lb of sugar. I used a package of Omega lutra kviek yeast and it finished fermenting in 30 hours!

Dry cider I and my friend made last year, about 10 months in bottles. It is just apples and yeasts.

(Quick ego post while I write my "wiki" entry)

So you’ve never made mead before, or you’re curious what it is.

Mead is an ancient drink, with three basic components: water, yeast, and honey. In the grand scheme of things, mead is more closely related to wine than things like beer, cider, or hard alcohol.

Some fancier names for some fancier things. All variations below take the three simple ingredients and twists them(some slightly, others more so).

Traditional - water, honey, yeast. The bog standard, it’s a classic. It’s also delicious.

Metheglin - water, honey, yeast, herbs. This might be a weird Welsh word bastardization from which the word medicine derives. I haven’t bothered to dig deeper, but I like the story.

Melomel - water, honey, yeast, fruit. This is another very popular variety of mead. Fruit additions bring with them their own fun things, and can possibly contaminate a brew. Some like to add them in primary, some in secondary.

Pyment - water, honey, yeast, grape juice. Or maybe no water at all. This is what happens when wine and mead have a baby.

Braggot - water, honey, yeast, wort (the fermentable sugars made in beer making). I have not made this variation personally, so I will defer to others’ knowledge.

Acerglyn - water, honey, yeast, maple syrup. Some of the honey is removed, and replaced with maple syrup.

Bochet - water, caramelized honey, yeast. This is accomplished by heating the honey and boiling it. This does change some of the sugars into unfermentable ones.

Capsicumel - water, honey, yeast, chili(s). I really like this one because it’s just kind of a weird flavor to me. Spicy drink!

Cyser - water, honey, yeast, apple juice. This replaces some or all of the water for apple juice. Like if a cider and a mead had a baby.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, just getting a party started. In fact, you can mix and match and make a crazy sounding thing like a cyser bochet. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what you want to brew. Speaking of.

Honey Varietals

There’s so many varietals of honey it’s truly bananas.

There’s clover, wildflower, orange blossom, mesquite, blueberry, raspberry. The list is truly spectacular. For the bulk of my recipes I use orange blossom honey. It’s a very pleasant flavor, and the only traditional mead I’ve really enjoyed.

Making Mead

A comfy list of things with which to brew mead: 1-2 fermenting carboy (or one carboy and a pitcher, whatever will hold a gallon (4L)of water, and can be sanitized). A bung An airlock Honey Water Yeast(I use Lalvin 71b for most things). Yeast nutrient (GoFerm, Fermaid O, Fermaid K) Sanitizer Racking wand Hydrometer - if possible have a second, they are fragile. Graduated cylinder for the hydrometer. Some kind of pipette / wine thief. Corks Hand held cork press Bottles - five one liter bottles for a one gallon recipe, just in case.

The process: Always sanitize everything, as per your sanitizer’s rules.

Honey in fermenter.

Water in fermenter, shake it all up. This accomplishes a few things. It puts the honey in suspension so the yeast can eat it, and puts some oxygen into the mix so the yeast can do their part.

Take a measurement. Nearly fill your cylinder using your wine thief, and (CAREFULLY) set in your hydrometer. It should read around 1.100 if you’re going along with the recipe at the bottom.

Pitch the yeast in (there’s a cool thing called GoFerm, follow those packet instructions if you went that route).

Bung in carboy, sanitizer in airlock, airlock in bung, carboy in a dark space. This is called primary fermentation.

Wait, measure every 5-7 days. Sanitize your thief and cylinder and hydrometer, steal, fill, measure.

If you’re using yeast nutrient, add it at each 1/3 of sugar consumption.

Fermentation is complete when your hydrometer reads 1.000 or lower. This means that the fermentable sugars have all been consumed by the yeast. It takes roughly two weeks to reach this stage, but there’s a buttload of variables in your environment.

You should see a pile of blech at the bottom of the carboy. The fancy name for this is lees (pronounced like lease).

This is the step that got me in trouble. You need to sanitize a second vessel (can be a carboy, bucket, or jug, depending on the size you’re brewing). Use the racking wand to transfer the mead (called racking) to the second vessel to get it off the lees.

Repeat step 5. This is secondary fermentation.

Now the long haul. Wait. The longer you wait, the better it gets. The flavors all kind of melt together. I find that after about 6 months things stop tasting “hot,” then you move on to bottling.

There’s a thing about clear mead being best. I don’t particularly care, or use any fining agents to make it clear. Most meads clear with time unless they’re super fruit laden.

Most racking wands come with a bottling attachment. Sanitize bottles, use the bottling wand to put the mead in the bottles, and cork away.

Note: this will be an unsweet mead if you bottle it at this point.

Backsweetening:

This is a slightly unfun area. You have a problem. You’ve racked your mead, you’ve taken it off the lees. It’s clear, it’s ready for bottling. But it needs to be sweeter.

There’s still some yeast in there, and adding more sugar might just make them wake back up and kick us back to primary fermentation.

In a sealed vessel, this can be a pressure bomb.

So, we need to make sure that: the yeast are truly dead and gone, or they cannot eat the sugars we’re back sweetening with.

Ways to stop the yeast: Potassium Sorbate. This stops the yeast from dividing.

Campden Tablets. These are sulfites that prevent acetic acid (vinegar) or wild yeast that can spoil the wine.

I use both in conjunction because, well, bottle bombs are scary. I can add links but the two from brewer supply company have instructions on them.

A filter. There’s a fancy weird micron filter thing that I haven’t personally messed with, but I’ve heard that it may be able to filter out the yeast? I’m not entirely sure, I’ll leave it for someone else’s knowledge.

Figuring out how much honey to add requires some math. There’s dry mead from 0.099 to 1.006 Medium goes from 1.006 to 1.015 Sweet goes from 1.0015 to 1.020 And dessert is anything higher than that.

Now for the math! Honey is 35 pts/lb/gal. So if your mead is 1.000 and you would like it to be 1.011, you need to get how many points you need. So 1.011 - 1.000 You need 11 gravity points. Divide 11 by 35 That gets you 0.31 pounds per gallon of water. So, if it’s a five gallon batch, you’d need to add 1.5 pounds of honey after stabilizing.

So, stabilize as per directions (most also want a 24 hour delay for efficacy). Add the requisite amount of honey. Gently mix, and bottle / leave to age some more.

The bare minimum setup:

1 gallon of spring water in its own container 3 pounds of honey Bread yeast A glove

The container that the water comes in should be sanitized from its own manufacturing, just make sure it’s a new container with the seal intact.

Pour out some of the spring water (enough to fit all the honey in). Shake the crap out of it. Poke a hole in the glove’s tip to let the CO2 escape and pray nothing creeps in. There are other ideas for home made airlocks, I’d trust a blow off tube more than this. This is just the absolute minimum to get a brew going. Wait for awhile, carefully pour it off the lees after about a month (you’re not measuring to see when fermentation is complete). Cap the container instead of glove it. Wait some more time (still about six months). Pour it into a glass, and enjoy.

First Mead:

~1 gallon of water. 3 pounds of orange blossom honey Yeast of choice

Other bits, bobs, and explainers:

1. Why yeast nutrient? Honey is kinda naturally anti-microbial growth, and we want to have microbial growth. The yeast nutrient helps our little bugs eat all the sugar. I’ve heard from various people that they can tell when the yeast had a hard time.

2. What’s with adding the nutrient in bits, can’t you just do it all at once?

You can add it all in at once, I’ve done it, the problem with that is they’ll use it all up, blow up their population, and then go back to struggle bus to ferment the rest of it.

3. How do you keep track of all this stuff?

To be honest, I have a Google sheet of brews going currently and brews that are completed. I can add an image of it in future.

I’ll add more answers as people have questions. This is a general guide, and I’m just a hobbyist.

Edit: some bits are janky, I’ll fix it in a bit when I’m at my actual computer.

A 7.5% ABV malt-forward beer, fermented with a kveik blend. Notes of bread crust, sugar plum, pear, nutmeg shine through on a malty base.

Malt:

Maris Otter 1 kg

Light Munich 4 kg

Chocolate Rye 0.2 kg

Cara Rye 0.3 kg

Crystal 150 0.3 kg

Oak smoked wheat 0.2 kg

extra: Table sugar 0.4 kg

Mash:

in @ 42 C

60' @ 63 C

20' @ 72 C

out @ 78 C

Hops:

Northern Brewer 30g @ 60'

Saaz 15g @ 10'

H. Mittelfrüh 15g @ 10'

Yeast: Eitrheim Kveik

OG: 1.075 FG: 1.019

Boil volume - 23L. Bottled & kegged - 17.5L ( 1L trub loss). Kegged and bottled half and half. Bottled beer is rounder somehow (probably residual yeast activity?).

Edit: Light Munich, not dark. Notes just said 'Munich' - d'oh.

I recently acquired a stainless steel conical fermenter as a long-desired upgrade to my brewing setup - I've been using 5gal plastic carboys until now, but I wanted to move away from them as I'm a bit leery of plastics leaching out while stuff sits in there for months at a time.

Does anyone here have experience with stainless fermenters? I'm especially interested in any cleaning tips and changes to flavor I should expect. Thanks in advance :)

A moment of silence for my favorite Christmas beer. Their flagship has always been good to me too.

Does anyone have a favorite holiday recipe? I've only made one and it came out a little too sweet for me:

http://www.greatfermentations.com/downloads/instructions/beerkits/StGambrinusSpicedHolidayAle-AllGrain.pdf

How many of you make mead? I made my last small batch for Thanksgiving and I've just gotten caught up with life and other hobbies and forgot it existed until I saw this community.

I like beer! - IPA's and similar atm, but i drink most beer. Looking in to start brewing myself (having a kit at home) I'm also looking in to growing my own hops.

Do you have any recommendations on what verity? Something that could be used for many different brews but have a distinct taste.

For instance, I just finished making a Belgian-style golden strong ale that I call "Pullotettu Saatana" (Bottled Satan in English)

Day one of a new community always looks bleak, but if you're a distiller or just distilling-curious, join the firewater community and watch us grow!

[email protected]

As someone who lives in a hot climate where droughts occur regularly and where the groundwater is 80+ degrees in the summer, I've been doing mostly no-chill brewing (letting the hot wort passively chill in an HDPE cube overnight then pitching the next day) to reduce my brewing water usage.

I've been really happy with the results, and I'm finally beginning to nail hoppy styles. Anyone else have no-chill experience who'd like to compare notes?

Just brewed this on Memorial Day and it is quite delicious. Really tropical fruit forward with a bit of dank.

5.5 gal batch

12 lb Maris Otter

1.5 lb White Wheat

1.5 lb Oats

Mash at 152 for 60 min

60 minute boil

2 oz Idaho Gem @ 180 whirlpool

2 oz Strata @ 180 whirlpool

4 oz Idaho Gem @ dry hop day 2

4 oz Strata @ dry hop day 2

yeast: White Labs WPL007

2.4g baking soda

10.1g calcium chloride

0.9g epsom salt

3.4g gypsum

Edit: I don't think my direct image upload worked: https://postimg.cc/tZS8wf04

I've given the name "hybrid IPAs" to IPAs that were sort of the pioneers of neipas. Think Heady Topper, Focal Banger, Julius, or Pliny the Elder. The Alchemist is my main inspiration. These beers are much more bitter than a NEIPA, are loaded up with sulfates, may or may not have oats/wheat (I'm choosing not to add any), and aggressively dry hopped. I love me a good NEIPA, but I have decided I want to brew a more west coast style NEIPA. This is my first iteration and was brewed with the leftover hops and Kveik I had on hand.

After a few days in the keg, this beer came out nicely but still isn't quite where I want it. I was a little under on my efficiency and ended up at 7.5% abv. I think it is a little too bitter for the fruity hops used. It needs something a little more dank to hold up to the bitterness. It could use to be a bit punchier as well as far as the hop bill is concerned. It's hoppy, but not quite the same hop saturation I am looking for. Over time I've come to believe that chlorides are overrated. Load up on sulfates in all IPAs if you ask me. The nose is mangos, pears, and orange, and the finish is like bitter tang in a good way. Even though it's bitter, it's remarkably easy to drink. This keg won't last long.

Next time, I will be using verdant ale yeast and a different mix of hops. Likely Simcoe, ctz, and Amarillo, maybe some citra. I also got some cryo Amarillo which should add some real kick to the dry hop.

Recipe for this beer:

Double IPA

8.2% / 17.7 °P Recipe by

All Grain

BrewZilla / RoboBrew 35L 68% efficiency

Batch Volume: 5.47 gal (Kettle) Fermenter Volume: 5 gal

Boil Time: 60 min

Mash Water: 6.45 gal

Sparge Water: 1.08 gal Total Water: 7.53 gal Boil Volume: 6.22 gal

Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.056

Vitals Original Gravity: 1.073

Final Gravity: 1.014

IBU (Tinseth): 153

BU/GU: 2.10

Color: 6 SRM

Mash Temperature — 149 °F — 60 min

Malts (13 lb) 13 lb (92.9%) — Thomas Fawcett Pale Malt, Maris Otter — Grain — 2.8 °L Other (1 lb 8 oz) 1 lb (7.1%) — Sugar, Table (Sucrose) — Sugar — 1.3 °L 8 oz — Briess Rice Hulls — Adjunct — 0 °L Hops (12.13 oz) 1.83 oz (71 IBU) — Magnum 11.2% — Boil — 60 min

1.5 oz (43 IBU) — Idaho #7 12.5% — Boil — 20 min

1.5 oz (25 IBU) — Mandarina Bavaria 7.2% — Boil — 20 min

1.5 oz (9 IBU) — Idaho #7 12.5% — Aroma — 20 min hopstand

1.5 oz (6 IBU) — Mandarina Bavaria 8.5% — Aroma — 20 min hopstand

4.3 oz — BRU-1 14.9% — Dry Hop — 2 days

Hopstand at 176 °F

Miscs 2 g — Calcium Chloride (CaCl2) — Mash

12 g — Gypsum (CaSO4) — Mash

0.43 g — Calcium Chloride (CaCl2) — Sparge

2.6 g — Gypsum (CaSO4) — Sparge

Yeast Kveik Blend 75% Fermentation Primary — 68 °F — 14 days

Carbonation: 2.4 CO2-vol Water Profile Ca2+ 140 Mg2+ 0 Na+ 9 Cl- 48 SO42- 277 HCO3- 9

Greetings! Here's my attempt at creating an introduction to beer brewing. Please feel free to point out errors, inaccuracies, missing info, or anything you feel should be different.

Disclaimer: written under the influence of homebrew

Ingredients

• Yeast

In its most basic form, alcoholic fermentation is just yeasts chomping away at sugars to generate alcohol and carbon dioxide, giving our favourite beverage the buzz and fizz we enjoy. Depending on yeast strain and conditions (temperature, OG - that is initial or original gravity of the wort, nutrient availability), it may be more or less potent (in terms of alcohol tolerance) or yield more or less flavour compounds. Yeast suppliers usually give datasheets with temperature ranges and alcohol tolerances for yeasts.

• Malt

Malt is just grain that has been coerced into sprouting then dried. This unlocks enzymes within the grain that cut up complex sugars (starch) stored inside the grain into simpler sugars that the seedling would use as its initial energy stores. The drying conditions of the malt are what give us the large selection we have today. Do note, however, that the darker the malt, the less enzymatic activity it has.

• Hops

The main preservative in beer - hops inhibit lactobacilli that turn beer sour and give it the aroma we all know and love. Hops are defined by their alpha-acid content, which turn into beta-acids (that give beer its hop bitter taste) during boiling. The time of addition for hops is key for this, as longer boiling yields more beta-acids but loses flavour from the hops - hence, bittering hops are boiled for longer, aroma hops are boiled for less or not at all - added at whirlpool or used to dry-hop. Hops are also sensitive to oxidation, so they're stored in the freezer and sold in vacuum-sealed bags. There is a plethora of hops available from any self-respecting homebrew store and hop pellets (ground up and compressed hop flowers) are by far the most common form.

• Water

Without going into much detail, brewing water should not be overlooked. The ionic content of water does influence your beer quite a lot (for instance due to pH or presence / absence of magnesium ions that may bring out hop bitterness). Historically, brewing water has been tied to specific styles (like dry irish stout in Dublin, IPAs in Burton-on-trent or pilsners in Pilsen). Water used for brewing must, however, be chlorine-free, in order to avoid unpleasant flavours. This can be accomplished by using 1-2 campden tablets to 20L (~5 gal) water or filtering your water throught activated charcoal before use.

Process

0. Sanitizing

The most important step in brewing - sanitizing stuff. Everything that does not get heated to at least pasteurization temperatures (~71 C or 161 F) needs to be sanitized. Everything that touches the wort after it's cooled or fermented beer needs to be sanitized. This cannot be stressed enough. Using StarSan diluted to its specification for about 30 seconds usually does the job. If something was sanitized and it touches something that was not, it needs to be sanitized again. Seriously, don't take this step lightly.

1. Mashing

Involves keeping your mash (the mixture of crushed, malted grains and water) at a specific temperature for a specific amount of time in order to transform the starch in the grains into simpler sugars that yeasts can digest. Some usual conditions would be 63-66 C (145-150 F) for one hour - these give a good balance of body and fermentability. More advanced brewers (or those posessing more advanced equipment) may do step mashes. The temperatures are selected in order to favour different enzymes present in the malt. A mash-out step is usually just heating the mash to 78 C (172 F) - this preserves just a bit of enzymatic activity - alpha-amylase (the one responsible for body) stops working around this temperature.

Regarding water:grain ratio, I personally use around 6 kg (12 lbs) to 23 L water (6 gal).

At the end of mashing, the liquid has to be separated from the solids by either transferring through a sieve (mash tun to boil kettle) or removing the solids (like the case for brew-in-a-bag or all-in-one systems - Braumeister, Grainfather).

2. Sparging

Sparging involves pouring water heated to the mash-out temperature over the spent grain in order to extract any lingering bit of sweetness that did not make it to the boil kettle. (I have no idea how you would do this when using brew-in-a-bag, though - edit: apparently you don't, problem solved :) ).

(Extract brewers will usually skip the steps above and just dissolve the extract in water then proceed to the boil)

3. Boiling

The purpose of boiling is two-fold. First, to remove dimethylsulfide, or DMS, a compound obtained during mashing that has a vegetable-like flavour usually undesireable in beer. The other purpose is to extract compounds from hops and convert them from alpha- (aromatic) to beta-acids (bitter) to provide bitterness, aroma, and preservative qualities to the beer. (It also concentrates the wort.)

Boiling usually takes 1 hour (as that is the amount of time that usually removes all the DMS). The boil can be longer if one wishes to concentrate the wort further.

Timing and quantities of hop additions are very important to the final hop flavour profile of the beer. The more hops are boiled, the more aroma they lose and the more they impart bitterness to your beer.

4. Chilling, transfer to fermenter and pitching yeast

Once the wort is done boiling, it is cooled (usually by applying cold water through a cooling implement - jacket or wort chiller), transferred to the fermenter and the yeast is added (or pitched). The simplest way of doing this is to add the dry yeast directly over the wort. Everything that touches wort after chilling must be sanitized (refer to step 0) - this includes the outside of the yeast packet before opening it.

Gravity readings (OG, original gravity) are taken of the cooled wort using a densimeter or refractometer.

5. Fermentation

The fermenter is placed in conditions adequate for the beer style being prepared and the yeast being used (lagers in cold conditions, ales a bit warmer, saisons or kveik yeasts in even warmer conditions) - check the yeast for information on temperatures, fitted with an airlock. When the airlock no longer significantly bubbles (or better yet, the gravity of the wort is where one would expect it to be based on recipe), fermentation is done. I just eyeball it and when I get 1-2 air bubbles / minute in the airlock, I declare it done. YMMV.

6. Bottling or kegging

Refer to step 0. Yes, sanitize all bottles. Sanitize that keg. Sanitize your hands and the racking cane. Then sanitize your hands again. Are your hands sanitary? Better do it again, just to make sure.

In order to get carbonation in the finished product, table sugar can be added based on style and carbonation preferences to the finished beer before bottling. The yeast left over in the solution will take care of the rest. A good starting point would be 4-5 g/L of table sugar (or 0.5 to 0.66 oz/gal). I usually add it as syrup made by dissolving the sugar in water, boiling, cooling (covered - refer to step 0) and mixing the whole sugar with the whole batch of beer. Then transfer to bottles or keg, and wait 1-2 weeks. Chill, and serve.

If kegging, you can also force carbonate by adding beer and pressurizing with carbon dioxide for about a week or so.

7. Cleaning

Cleaning and sanitizing are the most important steps in brewing. Clean equipment is easier to sanitize. Sanitized equipment is less likely to give you any contamination. While contamination can just sour your beer, it may also cause exploding bottles.

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Some great advice from the comments:

On sanitation and RDWHAHB

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Feedback is welcome, and will edit this post as required. Cheers!

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/677846

My wife and I both have problems with gluten so we've been brewing our own GF beer for the last ~7 years. It was difficult to get started but the output is well worth the effort!

Most of them are darker brews (stouts, tripels, etc). This is one of our lighter holiday ales that came in ~8% ABV.

Can we create some community wiki. Ideally something less overwhelming than what is on Reddit wikies.

I imagine that some quick and dirty guide to brewing, not too many specific information and is easy to follow.

Hey guys, new to brewing and this site. I made a gallon of mead that was... okay, and figured I'd try my hand at something that wouldn't take quite so long

So basically I just threw a gallon of apple juice and some yeast into a carboy and let it sit for a few weeks. I'm going to transfer it to bottles and try it out this weekend

I'm thinking about adding some sugar to the next one to get a higher abv. Any clue around how much I can add without having to wait a stupid amount of time for fermentation to finish?

Also does anyone have other recommendation to make it taste a little more interesting next time?

...was not today. Nor was it homebrewed, but when I turned 21 (I'm in the US), my first drink was a beer that my dad and I brewed together. I thought y'all might enjoy the pic.

From September 1. I may start working in smaller/mid size brewery so I would like to know if there are only homebrewers.

Do you have some insights or tips from working in commercial brewerys?

And don't get me wrong I will still make some homebrew but probably not beer - for few years I am making cider and want to try mead.

It's a beer recipe planning / brewday helper software.

Personally I've been using it for years and been really happy with it.

I am out of ideas what should I try to brew. I decided on some kind of ale with friends (they want to learn how to brew) but don't know what exactly should I try. Do you have some interesting recipies or some interesting ingredients what should I try. Thanks

So a while ago I stumbled upon some red yeast rice at my local asian store and fell down a rabbit hole started by the linked post (there is another - 159 page - post on those forums dedicated to rice wine - enter at your own peril).

I've managed to create about 2 very small batches of rice wine.

For the first batch I used red yeast rice for saccharification and some brewer's yeast for fermentation - results were good, out of about 3.5 kg cooked rice I got maybe 1 L of wine, slightly cloudy.

Second time I got the same quantities roughly but used red yeast rice for saccharification plus chinese yeast balls for saccharification plus fermentation. Wine was a bit tastier this time and I think the aspect was a bit better - clearer.

For both batches I filled a Kilner jar (3L) fitted with an airlock on a silicone cap and topped up with rice as it liquified (couldn't get the whole amount in there to start with). Mostly eyeballed the quantities. Straining out the solids proved to be very difficult as it turns into a slurry - think stuck mash, but worse.

Finished them off by pasteurizing - I stored them in roughly 300 mL jars - in a pot of water and heating to 70 C. I did notice that the liquid becomes a bit clearer after pasteurization (possibly residual enzymatic activity?).

Overall the drink was very pleasant, slightly fruity but also bread-crust-y. The process however, especially the straining, is very labor intensive and I would love to hear some ideas on improvement.

Hey, everyone! Figured I'd fire up a homebrewing community and see if there's any takers.

I know you're out there, just as I was out there lurking on other similar sites. :D

Come here and brag with your latest creation. I'll start, just brewed an unexpected wee heavy using Eitrhem kveik.

Cheers!

edit: typo