beer The FineExampl Homebrew Project

It will be!

The net result will not be a savings of money though, in the end you will drink world class beer for roughly the price of Budweiser.
 
cheezydemon said:
It will be!

The net result will not be a savings of money though, in the end you will drink world class beer for roughly the price of Budweiser.
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Give yerself a bell!

That's the goal for me.

Good news! Car insurance isn't due until the 25th. I may visit the homebrew shop early and get a few things. I want to make a batch of mead i think. maybe with buckwheat honey or something good like that.

i'm still having a bitch of a time finding bottles for free. i need at least 3 cases and cant find non-twistoff. poop!
 
Buying bottles isn't a sin, it is just better to buy them with beer in them.

You don't have to remove labels if you buy them from the HB store.
 
Mead takes a really long time to clear. Even when it is done fermenting, the clearing process can take many months. I'm not sure how one would go about this with plastic fermentors that can't be seen through.
I've used several different teas to make metheglins which all turned out fantastic. I added a concentrated tea (16 oz water, boiled, then add 7+ tea bags of your choosing and steep until cooled) after fermentation had pretty much subsided and noticed, with immediate effect, that the particles in the tea helped clear the mead. It is pretty amazing to witness this process unfold by the day.

Note: chamomile mead will really make you sleepy! Save a taste of this for the end of the night.
 
fineexampl said:
the recipe calls for 3/4cup of priming sugar (dextrose/corn sugar), but i'm debating switching that to DME instead. The two i bottled, i primed in the bottle (like with the ol Mr Beer kit) with the dextrose so we'll see how those are next sunday and the following week.

input anyone?
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More DME is needed than sugar. Sugar is more fermentable, so more DME is needed than sugar.

DME will also cause a small mini krausen in the bottle and a tiny ring. No big deal to me, but some people are downright anal about clarity, appearance etc.
 
SumOfMyBits said:
Mead takes a really long time to clear. Even when it is done fermenting, the clearing process can take many months. I'm not sure how one would go about this with plastic fermentors that can't be seen through.
I've used several different teas to make metheglins which all turned out fantastic. I added a concentrated tea (16 oz water, boiled, then add 7+ tea bags of your choosing and steep until cooled) after fermentation had pretty much subsided and noticed, with immediate effect, that the particles in the tea helped clear the mead. It is pretty amazing to witness this process unfold by the day.

Note: chamomile mead will really make you sleepy! Save a taste of this for the end of the night.
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How long is long? If long you mean a month or two, i'm okay with that. I was hoping to have it for the fall.

As far as plastic, i would be doing the mead in glass. I thought i would use 1-2 gallon glass apple juice bottles or old growlers and make 2-3 variations from the initial batch. Than with that i would just need to get about that many airlocks and line them up in the closet.



cheezydemon said:
More DME is needed than sugar. Sugar is more fermentable, so more DME is needed than sugar.

DME will also cause a small mini krausen in the bottle and a tiny ring. No big deal to me, but some people are downright anal about clarity, appearance etc.
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I'm by no means into clarity. in my experience, the best beers i've had were murky as hell. That said, if the sugar is more fermentable, i may skip the DME this go-round and hope for the higher alcohol content with the aging. Besides, wtf else am i going to use this priming sugar for? tea? as an adjunct i suppose it would be alright, but i'd have to adjust whatever recipe i used.

I did some math and i need about $85 in order to ditch my plastic and get an all glass setup. Brewer's Apprentice is closed on Tuesdays, plus it's raining, so i can't go today. This would just leave me needing a proper kettle. I can get a stainless for $37 from BA easily, but does anyone have opinions on a 5gal enamel canning pot from Walmart? They have them for $20. Isn't baked enamel the same as glass anyway?

Does anyone take samples from their secondary for tasting purposes? I want to do this next week and wondered if it's okay to do so. I can't think how it would hurt, but you all would know better than i.
 
Fine, I use old growlers all the time, you can keep them going. Great for experimental purposes. If you have a wine decanter, a growler makes the perfect serving for a nights worth of fun.

In a growler, I have done orange blossom mead and fermented agave nectar (dont know what thats called...tequilamel?)

Mead can take as little as a few weeks, and as long as 6 months to a year. All depends on the honey, clarifiers that you add, environmental factors, economic conditions...

Just do it. It doesnt hurt to have a few growlers going. Cover them up so that they are not exposed to light. Put a bubbler, and youre good to go.

You can even do no-heat method very easily, just shake it up.

good luck.
 
Glass is not all it's cracked up to be.

Check out www.homebrewtalk.com.

You will find threads on hospital visits due to glass, lost batches due to glass, therapeutic threads where a guy smashes all of his glass and switches to better bottles...(which are clear for the fermentation watchers)

There are defenders of glass, but they are a minority as people see how well the food safe better bottles work.

They are lighter, non breakable, non-oxygen permeable (as far as I can see from 33 or so batches in them).

This isn't a partisan debate.

People tend to defend whichever they have.

I can't have those big glass bombs around my kids. End of story.
 
frydad, than that is what i'll do. Gather up a half dozen growlers and see what we like. I think i'll have to make some fermented agave nectar. We always have that at home for coffee and tea. I like it on cheerios.

Bought a recipe book tonight from some people up in NY and ordered the companion to The Complete Joy as well as grabbed my first issue of Zymurgy at B&N tonight. Such awesome cool stuff and i wish i'd gotten into this sooner.
 
cheezydemon said:
Glass is not all it's cracked up to be.

Check out www.homebrewtalk.com.

You will find threads on hospital visits due to glass, lost batches due to glass, therapeutic threads where a guy smashes all of his glass and switches to better bottles...(which are clear for the fermentation watchers)

There are defenders of glass, but they are a minority as people see how well the food safe better bottles work.

They are lighter, non breakable, non-oxygen permeable (as far as I can see from 33 or so batches in them).

This isn't a partisan debate.

People tend to defend whichever they have.

I can't have those big glass bombs around my kids. End of story.
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If i can find either i'd be happy. I have to drive for miles just to get to a homebrew store. There's a winemaking joint 10min from me, but they don't cater to beer guys.

I read up on oxygen permeable plastic and food grade plastic a bit. The plastic buckets at Home Depot are indeed non-permeable and are the same (read: identical) plastic used in stuff labeled "food grade". Just in case anyone was curious.
 
The winemaking shop may have what you are looking for. I'd give them a call to see what they have for fermentation purposes. Making wine is close to making mead. You'll probably end up at the store to buy yeast packages anyway. Batches of mead made now should be consumable by Fall.
 
SumOfMyBits said:
The winemaking shop may have what you are looking for. I'd give them a call to see what they have for fermentation purposes. Making wine is close to making mead. You'll probably end up at the store to buy yeast packages anyway. Batches of mead made now should be consumable by Fall.
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i'm not even going to bother. they weren't very nice on the phone and just kind of irked me. i'm considering driving out to one of the bigger shops this weekend, but no rush right now.
 
Liquor barn here is killing the mom and pop brew shop.

If you have a liquor barn CHECK THERE.

I hate to let the mom and pop place lose me, but for roughly 1/2 the price? Sorry, guess I can be bought.
 
i can be bought too, but the mom&pop always has a place if they can find their niche. rare yeast cultures, hard to find specialty ingredients, etc. Same with any other subculture. I just wish more stores carried homebrew...anything. I'm minimum 45min to an hour from the closest places. I don't think NJ has any Liquor Barn though. I'm surprised more specialty beer stores dont have the option of ordering the stuff.
 
I know the wine-making shops can be a bit snobish... even some of the homebrewing spots to noobs... I've seen it happen first hand. I imagine they run into countless people who know next to nothing about brewing asking them questions and they get sick of it. Anyway, the wine-brewers probably have a lot of hardware you can use in brewing beer, unless all they do is sell wine recipe ingredients. Just a thought... if they are WAY closer than a homebrew shop they are worth a look (just in case).
 
They will definitely have ALE Pails. Critical for fermentation. (or the Lowe's buckets although I haven't checked that)

They will have air locks, etc.
 
Just want to weigh in on fermentation vessel material...

Glass does have the danger of breaking, and, yes, a carboy is a LOT of glass. In my 15 years of brewing, though, I have never shattered one. That being said, I'll probably kill myself by dropping one the very next time I brew or transfer beer into a secondary. To me, though, it is the best combination of cheap and sanitary.

Food-grade plastic is fine, but it will scratch, and that is where bacteria could live. Plenty of people have great results with plastic buckets, so I'm sure it's mostly fine. The distinct advantage that I have seen with plastic buckets is with dry hopping. It is a real pain to try stuffing a hop sack into the mouth of a carboy, and it is ridiculously hard to get that back out again. It's so much easier to pop a lid and drop it in. Plastic gets my vote for secondary fermentation when you are dry hopping.

If money is no object, the clear winner is a stainless steel conical fermenter. It's not going to break, and it will be very hard to scratch. It is really easy to dry hop because you can drop it in the top of it. If your beer is going to sit a while, you can drain the trub directly off the bottom. And there is no chance of your beer being light-struck and becoming skunky. But, damn, when compared to glass or plastic, the price can seem prohibitive. Maybe I'll get one of these someday.
 
I will agree with all said Steve.
I will add, however, that with the advent of no rinse sanitizer and the spray nozzle on my sink, I see no chance of scratching my plastic.

The dry hopping comment is one to heed.

Getting a hop bag out of the mouth of a carboy is a lesson in futility.
 
i've decided that once i move and have a garage or the very least a rumpus room, i'm going to drive down and pick up one of these.
http://minibrew.com/
The prices range from $200-$2000 and are plastic. "but that can scratch!" yes, but apparently they say you can carve the scratch out and polish it smooth again. Works for me! Until then, i'm going with whatever is easiest for noww.
 
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