Homebrew thread

[sirhenry]

I put the mince pies and water in the blender and poured the resulting mush into a demijohn, topped it up with boiled (but now only warm) water and yeast. I added half the usual amount of honey as well, just so that it would actually be mead. But other than that nothing.

I'm now regretting not putting in a vanilla pod as they somehow seem to make all meads smoother and creamier, as if they were made of lactose. Very odd. But having picked up a load going really cheap in a wholesale Chinese supermarket I've added one or two to several of the meads and they are all loads better for it. And best of all, you can reuse them.

[Blue Jam]

Thanks for the vanilla pod tip, pretty sure you can't do that with tonka beans.

Just sneaked a little taste of the Voël Voël- there's a subtle hint of fruit flavour but strangely no extra sweetness, and right now the main difference between this and my unadulterated Belgian-style dubbel is a warming hit of port and brandy. Yesssss, get in. Think I might wait another week before bottling but it's tasting very promising indeed.

Also just opened a bottle of the dubbel to sample a bit, to make sure I have no gushers or bottle bombs and just for quality control, like. Just a gentle bit of fizz which is a big relief, and the flavour is coming on very nicely. Think I may even start on those properly at the weekend.

I can definitely recommend the Festival Belgian-style dubbel kit then. At least if you've got the patience to wait five weeks.

[Ferris]

It is really nice to see you and Seb pick up an enjoyment of brewing. Fuckin fun innit?! Not that I'm saying it's all down to me (or anything even close). Just nice to see people picking up a new hobby.

Sorry. I'm glad it's going well.

[Blue Jam]

Cheers Ferris, and thanks again for answering all my questions! It is fun innit? I had been wanting to try homebrewing for years and finally got to use lockdown as an excuse and I'm glad. About having a new hobby, I mean. Not about lockdown.

Anyway, anyone ever ordered kits from these guys?

https://www.worcesterhopshop.co.uk/

They put together ingredient packs which supposedly replicate the flavours of various commercially available beers, like Titanic Plum Porter and Tim Taylor's Landlord. Would be seriously impressive if you really could get close to the flavour of the real thing. I bet the people who put these kits together also have an enormous amount of fun seeing how close they can get.

[holyzombiejesus]

The little drop I licked off the hydrometer

Sorry to be inappropriate but that's the most erotic thing I've read on here in years.

[Ferris]

Brewing gear is out of storage!

Doing all the boring shit an unemployed man who's just moved into a house should do (arguing with plumbers, rapidly forming opinions about the forced air heating systems available, done all the locks and refinished the banister today, etc).

This productive activity is all a cover for when I get my brewing gear out from the basement next week and say "oh actually love I might take a day off admin" when secretly this has been the only reason I've been stripping wallpaper and painting skirting boards like a wally.

Will knock up a winter stout (nice and roasty, nothing too strong) and a pale ale just to get my eye in. Gonna be fuckin mega lads, can't wait. Will ask the brewing store round the corner if they have kegging equipment and see if I can sneak the expense past Mrs Ferris along with the eye-watering cost of rewiring the living room or whatever[nb]this is a joke, obviously I'll tell her, I'm not mad or Legend Gary[/nb]. If not, I'll be back on the bottles for now which is actually not a bad way to meet the neighbours ("hiya, here's 2 ales and all the best but please stop asking me about shovelling snow because I'll get to it when I can be arsed").

@SirHenry - what yeast do you use for mead? Do you have a favourite, or does it vary on fermentables etc? I might get a cheap carboy and airlock and set something going in the basement. I've a ton a of maple syrup[nb]insert Canadian joke here[/nb] and I fancy having a go at a maple wine to kick off my mead exploration.

[sirhenry]

The standard recipes for mead tell you to use champagne yeast for mead, but I'm beginning to seriously question this as it doesn't give me meads that I like much. They end up having a dry white wine taste which is all well and good but not what I'm after in a mead. The yeast seems to be happy to keep turning all the honey into alcohol, so they're definitely strong but it's too serious and sensible. And adding fruit to them makes them a weird wine/pop combination (for instance, the blackberry tastes of fake cherry).

So recently I've been trying some Belgian beer yeasts and they are much more to my taste - they die before the standard amount of honey is all used up so there is still the taste of the organic honey I'm using. There is a little bit of fizz and a strong beer level of alcohol and the fruit flavours seem to sit nicely on top, though the ginger one ended up with no ginger flavour at all, oddly.

Maple Syrup mead is famous for being very dry and needing a year or two in bottles to fully develop all its flavours, but I suspect if you use a strong beer yeast you may get something a bit fuller-flavoured and faster. If you really have a ton of the stuff I'd suggest adding some when you rack it, to really bring out the maple flavour. The cost of maple syrup here is ridiculous, so I can't afford to try again.

Best of luck (with the house, sweet-talking Mrs Ferris and the mead).

[sirhenry]

Anyway, anyone ever ordered kits from these guys?

https://www.worcesterhopshop.co.uk/

They put together ingredient packs which supposedly replicate the flavours of various commercially available beers, like Titanic Plum Porter and Tim Taylor's Landlord.

Oh god, that's a dangerous link. If I could brew my own Landlord... Anyone got a spare liver they don't need?

[Ferris]

The standard recipes for mead tell you to use champagne yeast for mead, but I'm beginning to seriously question this as it doesn't give me meads that I like much. They end up having a dry white wine taste which is all well and good but not what I'm after in a mead. The yeast seems to be happy to keep turning all the honey into alcohol, so they're definitely strong but it's too serious and sensible. And adding fruit to them makes them a weird wine/pop combination (for instance, the blackberry tastes of fake cherry).

So recently I've been trying some Belgian beer yeasts and they are much more to my taste - they die before the standard amount of honey is all used up so there is still the taste of the organic honey I'm using. There is a little bit of fizz and a strong beer level of alcohol and the fruit flavours seem to sit nicely on top, though the ginger one ended up with no ginger flavour at all, oddly.

Maple Syrup mead is famous for being very dry and needing a year or two in bottles to fully develop all its flavours, but I suspect if you use a strong beer yeast you may get something a bit fuller-flavoured and faster. If you really have a ton of the stuff I'd suggest adding some when you rack it, to really bring out the maple flavour. The cost of maple syrup here is ridiculous, so I can't afford to try again.

Best of luck (with the house, sweet-talking Mrs Ferris and the mead).

I knew it took a while, but over 12 months is longer than I expected! I had 6-9 months in mind, maybe it's worth me doing both yeasts (Belgian ale and a champagne yeast) in two different carboys as they're only a few quid to set up and seeing what works out best. I guess I'll set and forget until then, but I've been jealous of your meads for a few months and now I have a bit more space I'd love to set some going and see what happens.

Re: champagne yeasts, I use them on my ciders (EC1111 if memory serves) and it's always been a very quick ferment so fuck knows why it takes so long with a honey/syrup combo. I wondered if you were using something that left certain sugar frequencies intact (I think certain red wine yeasts do that) but I have absolutely no idea about wine other than it comes in two colours and I like Malbecs so was interested in what you used as I'm starting from scratch basically.

The house is lovely as much as I complain about it, and my wife is far lovelier than myself (or the house) so I'm sure it'll be alright. Thanks for the advice!

[sirhenry]

The time isn't for the ferment, that should take about 6 weeks, give or take. However the development of more complex flavours (especially in maple meads, for some reason) requires time in the bottle. You'll get a close approximation of the final product after a couple of months but not the full glory till it's aged. Same as wine, they say, but I've never been much of a fan of wine.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nice to see some of you getting adventurous, it's certainly making me want to up my game!

That boosted IPA I made is lethal! I sort of went on a several-day session over an extended weekend and it resulted in a really gnarly hangover that was like the end of Requiem for a Dream followed by a week of shit sleep. I've probably got about a third of it left and will be treading more carefully in future!

As it's a Sunday* I've took the Saison I bottled last weekend for a spin, seems decent and clear but will benefit from another week of finishing I reckon.

*I made a hot buttered rum earlier and in autopilot unscrewed the top from the maple syrup rather than flipping it up and dumped about a quarter of the bottle into the mug, forcing me to counter it with a lot of rum.

[Blue Jam]

That boosted IPA I made is lethal!

The Belgian-style doppelbock I made is lethal! Been on it this weekend and while I couldn't get a proper starting gravity reading as the extract all sank to the bottom and didn't dissolve fully at first, it sure as fuck seems to have reached the 8.5% ABV target.

The Xmas pud-adulterated half of the brew is still troubling the airlock, I can't imagine how strong that will be. Ahhh fuckit it's Christmas wurrrgghh get in

[Ferris]

BEERS BEERS BEERS LADS LADS LADS

[Sebastian Cobb]

The Belgian-style doppelbock I made is lethal! Been on it this weekend and while I couldn't get a proper starting gravity reading as the extract all sank to the bottom and didn't dissolve fully at first, it sure as fuck seems to have reached the 8.5% ABV target.

The Xmas pud-adulterated half of the brew is still troubling the airlock, I can't imagine how strong that will be. Ahhh fuckit it's Christmas wurrrgghh get in

I'm really intrigued as to how your pud thing turns out! I don't have a sweet tooth and don't like puddings much, but love hot buttered rum at this time of year, which is like a boozy pureed christmas pudding.

After the fallout from my grim bender, I intentionally haven't re-pitched the 2 kits I have this side of christmas, just so I can have a quietish january/bit between christmas and new year. Fuck a dry January though.

Neither of my bins give airlock activity, one because I did a bad job of widening the hole in the lid with a tank-cutter to allow a immersion heater (which I've never needed since moving out of a place with shitty storage heaters) and the other I split the side of the lid slightly by being a fat-handed twat, it still bulges during the busy days though so it must be a tiny leak. I don't think it matters really as long as creatures can't get in it though.

[Calistan]

I'm very late to add the hops to my grapefruit IPA. Hoping I haven't fucked things.

[Ferris]

I'm very late to add the hops to my grapefruit IPA. Hoping I haven't fucked things.

FerrisThought^TM the later you add hops in pretty much all instances (dry hopping/boiling/whirlpooling) the better the beer is.

[Blue Jam]

Voël Voël, thirteen bottles of- DONE:



I was wondering if I should have given the voles antlers but nah, the stumpy fuckers seem happy enough as they are.

Some sciencey bits:

I was wondering if beer-soaked xmas pud could actually be any use for anything, if I could put it in some dough to make a fruity ale bread or if it could even make a nice desert on its own if I took it out of the hop bag, reheated it and served it with some brandy cream. Short answer: No. The pudding remnants were pale and oily, like the yeast had very efficiently stripped out all the carbs. Nothing in there that was recognisably a nut or a vine fruit either, they picked that carcass clean. What remained looked like Xmas pud that had been through the digestive tract of someone who is unable to fully digest Xmas pud, which I suppose is what you'd get if you took a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics and then replaced all your gut flora with S. cerevisiae, or if you were this lucky sod. Fascinating... but also pretty revolting. Nah. The pud got binned sharpish.

There was a layer of oil on top of the ale but it was a very thin layer and as I was siphoning from below it this wasn't a problem at all. I had more oil with the coconut porter, and that was solid, think I must have hardened the oil when I toasted the coconut. The muslin bag kept the fat contained, the yeast were able to just pick and choose whatever tasty treats they wanted from that little buffet.

I decanted the yeast into a Kilner jar. There was about 500g (!) of it, and it was very very liquid. Much runnier than any yeast I've used before. It tastes a bit fruity so I plan to use that to make some fruity walnut and rye bread for the Christmas cheeseboard.

Oh yes, and the ale: The results are softly fruity without being sweet, the fruit flavour is distinct without being overpowering, and when you swallow a mouthful you get a big warming hit of port and brandy. I think 100g of pud was just right for 10 litres of ale. Think I've ended up with a good dessert beer here, will have to serve it with some fresh Xmas pud or some minced pies and the Tesco Finest brandy cream I picked up because with a brandy content of 7% that was the booziest one I could find.

Did the bottling a couple of days ago and it should be fizzy enough by Christmas Day. Will try and keep a couple back to see how the flavours develop with age. After the failed experiment that was Prairie Vole I'm chuffed to fuck with this one!

[Sebastian Cobb]

Glad it turned out well! Brandy flavoured beer sounds like it has potential.

I also like your labels! I don't have a printer so when keeping bottles aside together (I keep some back for safekeeping sometimes or to give to people) I've been using the cap colour and those coloured circular dots you get for marking pages. I sent some to my dad and a mate for their birthdays and had to include a little paper legend, which seems a bit quaint and amateur. Not helped by the fact I'd lost my notepad so one of them got a scrap of paper with my meter readings on the back of it.

[Blue Jam]

Glad it turned out well! Brandy flavoured beer sounds like it has potential.

I did wonder how other people had made their Xmas pud ales and found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlAd7GbfOf4&ab_channel=BrewbitzHomebrewShop

From the comments:

If you are really up for it, pour off a pint, then in a small shot glass put in a small shot of brandy, then drop this into the stout, so the glass of brandy sits at the bottom of the pint of stout. As you are drinking the Xmas Pudding beer, every now and then you get this extra hit of brandy.

Belfast Car Bomb stylee. You could also just save yourself a lot of time and effort by pouring yourself a pint of some fruity ale (like Titanic Plum Porter or The Orkney Brewery's Clootie Dumpling) and drop a shot glass of brandy into that.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I wonder if it's possible to lob a loaf of banana bread in there and get results? I like the Banana Bread Beer Wells do (you can get it in Morrisons), I found and posted a recipe to make one from scratch early on in this thread but I think I'd want to brew some simpler beers from scratch before trying something that ambitious.

lol at the belfast car bombs. There was a manky pub my casino-working mate went to at 8am after a shift, that he took me to once or twice after an all-nighter that did 'buckie bombs'.

[Blue Jam]

Belfast Car Bomb is such an amazingly offensive name for a cocktail isn't it? I first heard the term when a member of my family mentioned ordering a few while on a trip to Dublin. I thought "Nah, that's the locals having a laugh with you, trying to get the eejit English tourists to spend loads of money on Jameson's and Baileys and Guinness and get them blind drunk, that can't be a real thing" but apprently it is.

Banana bread beer should go like the clappers, loads of sugar and fruit and fermentable carbs in there. As long as you get the bread sterile somehow (mash it up and add it to boiling water? Microwave it? Put it in fresh from the oven?) you should be grand. If you added an entire loaf it could end up strong as fuck as well.

[Calistan]

Tried one of my Coopers Irish stouts last night and it was absolutely lovely, by far the best kit I've brewed. I think I'll be making it again, perhaps with some additions if anyone's got any suggestions? Also bottled my grapefruit IPA last night so that and the stout should keep me going for a few weeks.

[Ferris]

Tried one of my Coopers Irish stouts last night and it was absolutely lovely, by far the best kit I've brewed. I think I'll be making it again, perhaps with some additions if anyone's got any suggestions? Also bottled my grapefruit IPA last night so that and the stout should keep me going for a few weeks.

Couple of vanilla pods, sliced in half lengthwise and added a week before bottling. Really nice addition for stouts.

[sirhenry]

Couple of vanilla pods, sliced in half lengthwise and added a week before bottling. Really nice addition for any homebrewed drink, it turns out.

[sirhenry]

Some sciencey bits:

I was wondering if beer-soaked xmas pud could actually be any use for anything, if I could put it in some dough to make a fruity ale bread or if it could even make a nice desert on its own if I took it out of the hop bag, reheated it and served it with some brandy cream. Short answer: No. The pudding remnants were pale and oily, like the yeast had very efficiently stripped out all the carbs. Nothing in there that was recognisably a nut or a vine fruit either, they picked that carcass clean. What remained looked like Xmas pud that had been through the digestive tract of someone who is unable to fully digest Xmas pud, which I suppose is what you'd get if you took a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics and then replaced all your gut flora with S. cerevisiae, or if you were this lucky sod. Fascinating... but also pretty revolting. Nah. The pud got binned sharpish.

I tried making an apple and blackberry crumble with a Tupperware box of blackberries I found in the freezer last week. They had come out of the blackberry gin I made about 3 years ago. Despite having squeezed all the liquid out of them that I could at the time they still weren't totally frozen so I simmered them for 15 minutes before giving them another sniff. Then, slightly tipsy, I added the sliced apple and simmered them all for another 5 minutes, dumped them in the bowl, covered them with crumble and put them in the oven. When it was done and I took it out of the oven I thanked a variety of deities that we don't have a gas oven. Even so, it must have been touch and go whether I blew up the kitchen or not. We tried eating it, but it was still too strong. And the usual 'We'll have the other half for breakfast' wasn't going to happen either. But at least I now know why baked gin isn't a thing.
On Boxing Day I'll make a trifle with the other Tupperware box. See you in the new year.

Oh, and the mince pie mead is still bubbling occasionally. It really wants to go to the line. So Xmas day will find me lying on the kitchen floor with a syphon tube in my mouth...

[popcorn]

Look it's not beer but I started fermenting my own hot sauce last week.

I'm a bit concerned because I used scotch bonnets and I didn't deseed them, and now when I watch videos of people making hot sauce the scotch bonnet recipes are always the "you're gonna fucken die!!!" sauces. I hope it doesn't don't kill my dad at Christmas.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Fuck it - leave 'em in.

I've done sauces with scotch bonnets seeded but they were all wet blends, no fermentation. But still I'd leave them in.

[Blue Jam]

Couple of vanilla pods, sliced in half lengthwise and added a week before bottling. Really nice addition for stouts.

I have just taken delivery of some tonka beans which I shall be grating up and using to adulterate my Mangrove Jack's roasted stout in the new year. Like bison grass they're banned in the US and that's how you know they must be good.

Just put all of my kit into the cupboard, got a stupid quantity of beer to get through here now so I'll lay off for a bit. That said the Belgian-style dubbel is almost all gone already, it would probably taste better if I aged it but that's not going to happen. Will have to try more of the Festival kits, I was seriously impressed at how the Dubbel tasted authentically Belgian.

[Ferris]

Look it's not beer but I started fermenting my own hot sauce last week.

I'm a bit concerned because I used scotch bonnets and I didn't deseed them, and now when I watch videos of people making hot sauce the scotch bonnet recipes are always the "you're gonna fucken die!!!" sauces. I hope it doesn't don't kill my dad at Christmas.

Forget if it was in this thread, but I did a fermented hot sauce with scotch bonnets, jalapeños and smoked guajillos and smoked serranos.

It blew my head off to be honest, but I had the ratios all made up because I didn't check any recipes. I think if you assume the smoked chillies and jalapeños (and regular bell peppers) are "mild" and scotch bonnet is spicy, I seem to remember you are supposed to aim for 4:1 ratio of mild to hot, then you add your onions/garlic/honey based on pure feel, man.

How did you ferment yours? Just in a kilner/mason jar? I want to do it again in the near future, the local grocery store near me has a special on some weirder varieties (thanks Mexico/NAFTA!) and i reckon it could be good.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I know we've discussed this before, because we discussed how to let things ferment in a kilner. And when dickhead here was tidying up the other day they realised they had two kilner jars with missing seals they couldn't find.