Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 01:53:58 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Homebrew thread

Started by Blue Jam, March 24, 2020, 06:20:38 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

MojoJojo

Those turbo yeasts are only really worthwhile if your planning to distill the result. For that they're pretty good.

NattyDread 2

Talking of stronger beers, I got this kit for Christmas a few years ago.
Took me ages to be arsed brewing it as it needed long maturation and only makes 9 litres. It was well worth it in the end though. Lovely stuff but you need to put it on at the start of the year for it to be nice by Christmas. Comes out at about 8%. Worth getting (or making) the Belgian candi sugar for it too.

Ferris

Quote from: MojoJojo on March 28, 2020, 05:19:02 PM
Those turbo yeasts are only really worthwhile if your planning to distill the result. For that they're pretty good.

I use a high tolerance yeast for ciders - the yeast cells clean up all the sugars very quickly then die pronto so my cider is dry and done quickly. Result!

Blue Jam

#63
Day 5: Airlock still bubbling, but only about once every 10 minutes now. Fermentation evidently still has some way to go and St. Peter's brewery were clearly having a bubble with that recommendation of 4-6 days.

The gas coming out of the airlock still has a whiff of sweetness but now it definitely smells much more like beer than wort. Really nice beer too, and no funky aromas indicating contamination, which was a big concern of mine as I take great pride in my aseptic technique.

Dead dead excited about this now!

Already planning the second batch- I was concerned about 40 pints being too much to make and store and drink quickly, so I only brewed half the kit (weighed out the yeast and hops and everything) but it seems to have worked out fine.

I'm going to attempt a coconut porter with the second half- just bought some dessicated coconut and will try toasting it and then simmering it before adding the coconutty water to the brew. I have seen a recipe that recommends putting it in a grain bag and putting that directly into the fermenting bin too. Can't wait to try this.

Sebastian Cobb

Woo.



I've got an immersion heater in there, but mainly because it's on the bung and the alternative would've been to chop the plug off it, remove it and plug the hole its wire sits in. So I left it in and can use it if it needs a bit of help to get going, although the box says it's set for 24C which might be a bit hot for the yeast.


Ferris


Blue Jam

Got another question for you Ferris: is it possible to do gelatin fining with beer at room temperature? The Vole Porter is on Day 9 now and early indications are that primary fermentation is finally done, or close to done. There is no more gurgling from the airlock, not even if I press on the lid, and while it was still bubbling a tiny bit yesterday there was no residual sweet smell of wort, just beer. I'll have a peek at the krausen and check with my hydrometer once I open the lid.

I'm planning to do the kegging and bottling in a couple of days, so would now be the right time to add the gelatin solution, or would I be better off not bothering if I can't cold-crash the primary fermentation vessel? Not got anywhere big enough or cold enough to keep the fermentation bin for a couple of days. Would I be better off adding the gelatin with the priming sugar and then just pouring very carefully to avoid sediment?

Big thanks for all your advice once again!

Ferris

Quote from: Blue Jam on April 01, 2020, 07:41:27 PM
Got another question for you Ferris: is it possible to do gelatin fining with beer at room temperature? The Vole Porter is on Day 9 now and early indications are that primary fermentation is finally done, or close to done. There is no more gurgling from the airlock, not even if I press on the lid, and while it was still bubbling a tiny bit yesterday there was no residual sweet smell of wort, just beer. I'll check with my hydrometer once I open the lid and I'll have a peek at the krausen while I'm at it.

I'm planning to do the kegging and bottling in a couple of days, so would now be the right time to add the gelatin solution, or would I be better off not bothering if I can't cold-crash the primary fermentation vessel? Not got anywhere big enough or cold enough to keep the fermentation bin for a couple of days. Would I be better off adding the gelatin with the priming sugar and then just pouring very carefully to avoid sediment?

Big thanks for all your advice once again!

I'm trying not to post too much in here because it looks a bit like I'm policing the thread and I'm just a longtime backroom hooch maker rather than an expert. Though I'll respond to direct questions of course!

Yes, sounds like you are approaching done. Alcohol production is a logarithmic curve, so it'll still keep going and yeast will clean up residual sugar but it definitely sounds like 6 days was optimistic! Krausen is fascinating stuff, but don't be put off by it if it looks a bit grim. I've done kettle sours that have some "interesting" pellicles in the Krausen and the beer is still completely fine. There aren't any organisms that grow in beer that are harmful to humans, and once the alcohol level is over a few percent (a day or less depending on yeast) it's hard for anything untoward to take route in your wort anyway. You've made a nice environment for yeast to grow, other microbes don't usually stand a chance.

Don't bother gelatin fining for a stout/porter, you won't notice the difference. Cold crashing is also not required for a dark beer (and secretly I think it is gubbins anyway). They're both methods of clarifying your beer, and if you have to pick a fining method, gelatin every time. Way easier, way less equipment, way more effective. You could add gelatin in now that most of the fermentation is done if you like, it doesn't matter really and I've never found a cold crash to be effective vs just adding gelatin and leaving a day but YMMV.

Also, don't push on the lid if you can help it. It's super tempting (ooh, bubbles!) but it causes the air pressure to flow back down the airlock and you can get starsan and oxygen in your brew (assuming you have starsan sanitized water in your airlock?). It's not a huge deal, but is best avoided. Star san is safe to drink once diluted, but a bit acidic. Oxygenated beer ages differently and less nicely, and entirely oxygenated fermentation creates methyl alcohol which you don't really want (though obviously all beer has it in trace amounts because it's not really possible to remove). You don't need to worry about that though, we're taking trace amounts here.

You mentioned kegging - assuming that's just a turn of phrase as you'll likely be bottling? Kegging is awesome but I've never had the space to do it. You put the flat beer in a keg, connect a CO2 tank set to 30PSI and leave it for 2 days. Done! Carbonated beer. Bottling is more of a faff as you need to convince the yeast to create CO2 for you to get yer fizz. You're right to try and leave the yeasty residue behind as much as possible. I add the amount of priming sugar I want to a pint of water, tip that into a second brewing vessel/bucket thing with a spigot on it, then use a bottling wand to transfer as much liquid as possible into that (while leaving the yeast behind*) and give it a decent stir. The aim is to leave as much sediment behind as possible, distribute the priming sugar as evenly as possible (or just add it directly to the bottle if you like) and reduce the amount of oxygen getting into the beer. Once done, I fill bottles one by one from the spigot as the beer is now primed and ready to go. Do it on your kitchen counter with the spigot over the open door of your dishwasher and you won't have any mess to clean up after.

Apologies for the wall of text. You'll always refine your process and kick yourself for something you did/didn't do, but to be honest the malt, hops, yeast and temperature/fermentation time determine like 95%+ of what you are making in my experience. You can make small changes via your production process, but nothing major really.

Much too long fuck it post

*You'll be amazed how much yeast as been created - I have a recipe to make it into marmite if you are interested. You can also save some in a jar in the fridge and use it again. It'll keep for a week or so I think? Maybe longer if you give it some sugar at room temperature the day you want to brew again. Eventually it'll mutate/evolve and you'll have your own house strain more suited to whatever you brew (like the Belgians did, previously mentioned), though I've never gone that far.

Blue Jam

Thanks Ferris! And yes, I have a little plastic keg pressure vessel thing but it's not for pumping CO2 into, I'll just put half the beer into it. tbh I got it because the guy in the store said I'd need a small pressure vessel as well as bottles, and I remember my dad using those 3 litre pop bottles so it made sense at the time...

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on April 01, 2020, 08:19:13 PM
You'll be amazed how much yeast as been created - I have a recipe to make it into marmite if you are interested. You can also save some in a jar in the fridge and use it again. It'll keep for a week or so I think?

Oooh yes please, I like Marmite- and I don't suppose you can bake bread with it, can you? I was planning to make some ale bread anyway but using ale yeast as well would be fun and would probably add a nice bit of flavour. Also it's impossible to find bread yeast in the shops right now. I bought a nice airtight Milner jar the other day and was going to put a sourdough starter in in, but you've just given me another use for it, cheers!

I'm not planning on making any bretted beer soon though, it sounds like it would be beyond me at this stage.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I have read from a lot of the brewers I follow on my European Bar Guide twitter account that bretting can easily contaminate everything, to the point where even small breweries have found when they've moved on to other batches their beers have that distinct Brett quality despite not intending to.

I surmise that it requires a very stringent and probably ott for a home brewer level of care to keep isolated.

Ferris

Ahh cheeky bollocks, you need no such thing. Maybe it's good though? I've no experience.

You can probably bake bread with it, it is the same species as bread yeast (sacch) but they're specialized for different things so don't be surprised if it doesn't work as you'd expect. My guess, it is used to higher sugar content environment so you'd need to use a lot of it in the dough and the rise/proof would take longer but don't quote me on that. Probably no surprise I'm also an obsessive bread baker and managed a run of about 6 (?) years without buying a single bread product (naan, tortilla, English muffins etc until Ferris Jr came along and scuppered all that) so that's my semi qualified opinion.

Bret is a pain in the arse, I've never used it and it has a reputation for infecting your equipment so if you use bret yeast once, you're using it every time going forward whether you want to or not. People buy 2 sets of equipment so they can keep one un-bretted. I went to a hole in the wall brewery in Toulouse a few years ago and had a 10oz lager. Tasted of bret. Had a 10oz of stout. Tasted of bret. Then I saw the offending "nouveau!" bret ale and realized they must be using the same equipment and not be aware that it's a no-no.

Good luck with it all.

Ferris

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on April 01, 2020, 08:50:24 PM
I have read from a lot of the brewers I follow on my European Bar Guide twitter account that bretting can easily contaminate everything, to the point where even small breweries have found when they've moved on to other batches their beers have that distinct Brett quality despite not intending to.

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on April 01, 2020, 08:52:04 PM
Bret is a pain in the arse, I've never used it and it has a reputation for infecting your equipment so if you use bret yeast once, you're using it every time going forward whether you want to or not. People buy 2 sets of equipment so they can keep one un-bretted. I went to a hole in the wall brewery in Toulouse a few years ago and had a 10oz lager. Tasted of bret. Had a 10oz of stout. Tasted of bret. Then I saw the offending "nouveau!" bret ale and realized they must be using the same equipment and not be aware that it's a no-no.

Yin and yang posts.

I'll dig around for the marmite recipe - as far as I remember, roughly chopped onions, celery, salt and carrot in a saucepan with a load of yeast slurry, simmer for ages.

Blue Jam

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on April 01, 2020, 08:52:04 PM
Ahh cheeky bollocks, you need no such thing. Maybe it's good though? I've no experience.

You can probably bake bread with it, it is the same species as bread yeast (sacch) but they're specialized for different things so don't be surprised if it doesn't work as you'd expect. My guess, it is used to higher sugar content environment so you'd need to use a lot of it in the dough and the rise/proof would take longer but don't quote me on that. Probably no surprise I'm also an obsessive bread baker...

The guy at the Homebrew shop recommended a small pressure vessel to avoid having tonnes of bottles everywhere and said they were just handy to have. It wasn't expensive anyway, and they were very helpful and put together all the cheap bits and bobs rather than try and flog me an overpriced kit in a box.

I've actually been looking at a few bread recipes which call for osmotolerant/high sugar tolerant yeast and now you mention it I think this beer yeast could be the answer. I bet I could make some lovely cheese scones with it. Big thanks again, I shall give it a go!

Ferris

Good luck! To be fair I suspect I got my first brewing equipment from the same store you went to when I lived in Edinburgh, and I remember they were very nice to a young skinny Ferris who had no money or idea what he was doing (brewing or in general).

touchingcloth

QuoteYou'll be amazed how much yeast as been created - I have a recipe to make it into marmite if you are interested. You can also save some in a jar in the fridge and use it again. It'll keep for a week or so I think? Maybe longer if you give it some sugar at room temperature the day you want to brew again. Eventually it'll mutate/evolve and you'll have your own house strain more suited to whatever you brew (like the Belgians did, previously mentioned), though I've never gone that far.

When we brewed at university I would sometimes dip a cracker in the sediment for the Marmitey goodness, so I'll definitely be after that recipe if I ever brew again.

If you're a keen bread baker as well, do you find beer and bread yeast to be that different? I have a sourdough culture which regularly goes two weeks to a month without feeding in the fridge and always manages to revive itself when warm...

Ferris

Quote from: touchingcloth on April 01, 2020, 11:08:49 PM
When we brewed at university I would sometimes dip a cracker in the sediment for the Marmitey goodness, so I'll definitely be after that recipe if I ever brew again.

If you're a keen bread baker as well, do you find beer and bread yeast to be that different? I have a sourdough culture which regularly goes two weeks to a month without feeding in the fridge and always manages to revive itself when warm...

I know they're the same species of yeast (sacch) but that's all I know unfortunately. I've never tried baking yeast in beer or vice versa so can't advise. I also sacked off my sourdough culture after a few months because it was a pain in the arse to look after, but I'd love to try it again. Each strain is different, so you might have got lucky with a very hardy one.

I'm finished work/parenting and am fucking knackered so won't be getting up from my sofa for a bit, but I'll have a look for the recipe tomorrow. I have a feeling it was genuinely "celery, onion, carrot, yeast slurry, roughly chop veg, simmer all for 3+ hours on low heat" but will post a copy when I find it tomorrow.

touchingcloth

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on April 02, 2020, 01:19:08 AM
I know they're the same species of yeast (sacch) but that's all I know unfortunately. I've never tried baking yeast in beer or vice versa so can't advise. I also sacked off my sourdough culture after a few months because it was a pain in the arse to look after, but I'd love to try it again. Each strain is different, so you might have got lucky with a very hardy one.

I'm finished work/parenting and am fucking knackered so won't be getting up from my sofa for a bit, but I'll have a look for the recipe tomorrow. I have a feeling it was genuinely "celery, onion, carrot, yeast slurry, roughly chop veg, simmer all for 3+ hours on low heat" but will post a copy when I find it tomorrow.

Making this now. Is it before or after simmering that I add the 10kg of salt? I imagine it's after, and the instructions are "add salt to fuck".

Ferris

Quote from: touchingcloth on April 03, 2020, 01:39:15 AM
Making this now. Is it before or after simmering that I add the 10kg of salt? I imagine it's after, and the instructions are "add salt to fuck".

Found recipe written down, "salt the absolute bollocks out of it" so there you go.

it doesn't really say this, I haven't looked and am knackered on sofa again so will be a weekend job at this point

Blue Jam

Quote from: Puce Moment on March 26, 2020, 07:21:07 PM
Would be good to see a picture diary of its progress.

Picture time! Today I are mostly been making:

Vole Porter: 11.5 litres:





The rest is in my little pressure vessel- the man in the shop was right, it was bloody handy to have, glad I bought it now. I siphoned the whole batch into the pressure vessel, added the priming sugar dissolved in boiled water (having let it cool first) and then used the tap to fill the bottles.

Beer is flat now obviously but it tastes pretty good- bitter but not too hoppy, and the honey is mostly on the nose so it adds a pleasant whiff of sweetness rather than making the beer taste overly sweet. Just got to design the labels now.

Yeast: 163g:



Started with just 3g. As a lab rat who has grown yeast and E. coli many times before I am not surprised by the amount of yeast I ended up with, but I am very pleased. Which leads me to...

Portrer bread starter: about 1.5kg:



I used Richard Bertinet's Guinness and aniseed bread recipe from his book Dough (cheers again mook) but used 700 ml of flat Vole Porter instead of nasty Guinness, and left out the pastis. Also added 40g of yeast slurry rather than 25g of fresh baker's yeast, and 5g of sugar to give it a feed. Yeast seems happy so far- CHECK OUT THOSE BUBBLES, and that was just at the five minute mark. Should get three loaves' worth out of this, fingers crossed. I'll post more pics later if they're not a complete disaster, or maybe even if they are.

Ferris

That's amazing! Nice work.

I'd be interested to know how the bread turns out as well - bet it's great.

Blue Jam

It had better be, resting and proving these fuckers took about a hundred billion* hours:





Dough has properly doubled in size for the final prove though, that's better than the rapid-action dried yeast which shoots its load during the first prove and then does fuck-all.

Going in now, stay tuned...

*three and a half

Blue Jam

#81




Rolls are bloody lovely. Dense enough to feel substantial, but the crumb is nice and light and open. Taste is dark and rich and malty (a tiny bit Marmitey) and bloody lovely with a bit of goats' cheese and honey and a Belgian beer on the side:



The big loaves weren't quite as successful- they spread out a bit and I probably should have put the dough in a loaf tin, but what the hell, I'm dead chuffed at the results at the time of a baking yeast shortage:





Still got 223g of lovely yeast slurry to use up, think I'll make lavender bread next.

Dex Sawash


touchingcloth

Quote

Dimly lit rolls for one.

Ferris

Very cool. I regret throwing all my yeast away now

NattyDread 2

Great stuff with the bread Blue Jam. I must try that. Interested in these pressure vessel things as I find bottling a bit of a chore. Is there a reason for the half full bottles?

I decided to try and use some out of date bits I had that were haunting me. A Coopers real ale tin and a bag each of medium and light spraymalt. Also there's a vacuum packed bag of green bullet hops in the fridge I'll put in towards the end. Should end up about 5.5%
It's bubbling away now. Hopefully it will turn out at least half decent as I couldn't bear to chuck the ingredients out.

Ferris

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on March 25, 2020, 09:51:07 PM
Never brewed with kveik though it is all the rage these days. There's an excellent blog of a Norwegian chap who goes from remote farmhouse to remote farmhouse collecting and propagating the unique strains. I used to be an avid reader of his blog before I had a child and spare time went out the window.

Here ya go

http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/409.html

Blue Jam

Quote from: NattyDread 2 on April 05, 2020, 12:35:57 PM
Is there a reason for the half full bottles?

I'm a wuss who was worried about them exploding... I know they won't, but they might still be a bit lively..

I hope your brew turns out well, and I can recommend getting a little plastic keg with a tap, which is what my pressure vessel is- I siphoned 10l of beer into my keg and then put most of it into bottles via the tap. The remaining beer I used for making the bread.

Just made some labels, please excuse my laser printer and the crap light in here and look upon my maturity and weep:



Next time: Glory Vole.

touchingcloth

So excited for the Glory Vole label.

Can you make a Northern Vole basics one called Voletariat?

Blue Jam

Quote from: touchingcloth on April 05, 2020, 02:52:52 PM
So excited for the Glory Vole label.

Can you make a Northern Vole basics one called Voletariat?

I had thought up Hope Lies With The Voles but Voletariat is even better, cheers.

Going to put some toasted coconut in the next batch. Trying to think of something vaguely tropical or Caribbean that rhymes with "vole" but drawing a blank.