Homebrew thread

[Blue Jam]

...and that one didn't get infected, yay! Just bottled/kegged 18 litres of minced pie Belgian dubbel. Minced pies don't seem to have imparted as much flavour as the Xmas pud did last year but there is a definite and promising whiff of brandy. Beer is a bit cloudy but it seems to be down to the pastry rather than the yeast. Hop bag was once again full of a smooth, fatty, cookie dough-like substance which looked like the yeast had done an efficient job of eating all the carbs. Could call it Who Ate All The Minced Pies I guess.

Got a ton of slightly spiced yeast slurry and have chucked some into a dough mix, used the Cinnabon recipe again but gonna replace the cinnamon/sugar mix with zaatar and honey and top with sesame seeds in a tear-and-share formation. Will report back if it actually werks.

[Blue Jam]

Update: FUCK YEAH

[TommyTurnips]

Glad it worked out and the trub ended up being great bread. I would be too scared to use whole mince pies in a beer in case the pastry had a bad reaction during fermentation. I can't get the idea of a chocolate stout with hershey chocolate syrup out of my head, they sell huge bottles of it in costco, but I read other similar threads on homebrew talk and the general consensus was not to do it. Something about how many other additives that are in it will spoil the brew. It's a shame because it makes such nice chocolate milk.

The Christmas beers are in the fermenters, one in a conical and one in a keg with a spunding valve (under pressure). Both of them Verdant recipe kits, I got light bulb and even sharks need water, so hoppy Christmas to me!

[Ferris]

My downstairs shower is in use (ooh, pardon!) so I'm holding off on xmas brew for now.

Collected about 12oz of hops and have freeze dried them, so once I get going again that's the dry hop addition sorted, and hopefully the 3 plants next year will go gangbusters.

[TommyTurnips]

My hops didn't produce any cones this year, I had a lot of bines which all got attacked by bugs and shrivelled up and turned brown. I thought the plant was done for the season but then new bines grew like a phoenix from the ashes but alas, no hops. I have the garden in a much better state now so I'll start again in March with a new cascade rhizome in the earth this time not a planter and with lots of blood and bone fertiliser as that is what worked for me before.

GET IN T'GROUND!!!!

[Blue Jam]

Sampled the minced pie Belgian Dubbel. Looks like minced pies ferment much more cleanly than Xmas pud as there isn't much additional flavour, but it's a decent Belgian-style brown ale. Strong as well. Meh, just happy to have a supply of decent Xmas ale even if it isn't as amazing as the last batch.

[Ferris]

I usually brew in the downstairs shower (as in, that's where I set up my brew vessels vs me tipping it into a quasi-used bathtub) but we've had friends and family staying with us on and off since august and the layout of our house means that's their bathroom so no chance for me to get in there and do some alchemy.

The last of them left last week (the freeloading bastards) so probably too late to do anything for Xmas but might sneak something just in time for Dry January...

[Ferris]

Brewed a pale ale and used kveik, the trendy new yeast that everyone's talking about!

Bottled on the weekend so when I'm safely past dry January I can get back on the lash in style. I put 6oz of the hops I grew and harvested last year so that's exciting. Harvested and washed the yeast which I've never bothered with before but I thought fuck it why not.

[TommyTurnips]

Ever had a pack of yeast that won't ferment? I just had this happen to me. The day before brewing a New England IPA I got my pack of Wyeast London Ale III out of the fridge, let it warm to room temperature and smacked the pack to break the bag of yeast nutrient inside the pack. What's supposed to happen then is the pack will swell and inflate to show that the yeast is active. The pack did not swell. Uh oh. I think I have dead yeast. Usually I make a starter but I decided to forgo the starter as I didn't have any malt extract and was making two brews in consecutive days and really could not be bothered. So I threw caution to the wind and pitched the yeast anyway and hoped for the best. The next day there was no airlock activity so luckily I had a fermenter of best bitter that had been pitched the previous day and was bubbling away so I poured a sample from the bottom of the fermenter and pitched it into the New England IPA and now it's fermenting away happily.

So I guess I'm going to have a batch of NEIPA that's been fermented with West Yorkshire ale yeast. Hopefully it isn't infected  by the dead yeast and become one of those trendy sours.

[Ferris]

I washed some of my kveik and it's in a bottle in the fridge - I'm going to use it in a starter next time I brew (whenever I find time).

I've had yeast no-shows before, it seems to be random. I wonder if you tried a starter there'd be enough live cells to propagate? It's hard to kill every single yeast cell in there.

[TommyTurnips]

I really should have made a starter and I usually do. So lesson learned there. I bought the yeast and the rest of the ingredients back in December and the yeast went straight in the fridge. The pack of yeast shows a best before (not use by) of the 30th of April so it's still within it's date. It's one of those weird things. I think I got away with it though and hopefully I'll have something drinkable in a few weeks.