Homebrewers

[ArmyOfNone]

Yesterday 3 of my buddies and I ventured to the Brewers Apprentice to make our ever first batch of brew.

We are making an Pale Ale style called the Libertine Ale.

Desription: Libertine
Style: Pale Ale
This Anchor Liberty style ale boasts loads of
hoppy, fruity, and citrusy aromas and flavors
due to liberal use of Columbus and Cascade
hops. A good brew for people who like hops
but don’t necessarily want to be inundated
with them every sip they take. High Alcohol.

Some pics:
Barley

Hops

Making some beer!

I will say that this was quite fun. And for the price you really cannot beat it. We come back in three weeks to bottle. Stay tuned!

 

[Glenlivet12]

Yesterday 3 of my buddies and I ventured to the Brewers Apprentice to make our ever first batch of brew.

We are making an Pale Ale style called the Libertine Ale.

Desription: Libertine
Style: Pale Ale
This Anchor Liberty style ale boasts loads of
hoppy, fruity, and citrusy aromas and flavors
due to liberal use of Columbus and Cascade
hops. A good brew for people who like hops
but don’t necessarily want to be inundated
with them every sip they take. High Alcohol.

Some pics:
Barley

Hops

Making some beer!

I will say that this was quite fun. And for the price you really cannot beat it. We come back in three weeks to bottle. Stay tuned!

Cool! I've made their dead president ale a few times at home. Libertine has been on my list to try. I almost stopped by on my way home to pick up some supplies too.

 

[ArmyOfNone]

Can someone snap a pic of their set ups? After last night and looking online at all the cool stuff... I dont know what I really need. Like a wort chiller? seems cool but what do i know. HELP!

 

[Wobbegong]

Can someone snap a pic of their set ups? After last night and looking online at all the cool stuff... I dont know what I really need. Like a wort chiller? seems cool but what do i know. HELP!

Fred,

I suggest you do a few batches of "Extract with specialty grain" recipes to get started. Brewing "All Grain" recipes requires extra equipment.

You have a brew pot, glass carboy (great for secondary dry hoping) and burner already, which is good! You need the other required goodies - (Plastic fermenter and air lock, Hydrometer, Racking cane and tubing(Get the autosiphon!), bottle capper, caps, thermometer (Instant read digital!), sanitizer (Star-san!!)

Buy a tub of powder oxy-clean free. Its cheap and makes an awesome cleaner for everything brewing. It also removes labels from bottles. Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head labels come off really easy. Just soak them in the sink with hot oxyclean for a half hour and they fall off. Starsan is the best IMO for sanatizing.

If you want to get a wort chiller, thats a good thing. Doing partial boil extract recipes doesnt require a chiller. You can chill the pot in an ice bath, but the chiller is much easier. Full boil extract brewing makes some real good beer, so if your pot is big enough, get the chiller and go for it. I suggest a 10 gallon pot to do full boil 5 gallon batches. You need about 7 gallons in the pot to start the boil, and some room for boil over prevention.

How many gallons can the pot you have hold? Also, if its made of aluminum, fill it with water to about 3 inches from the top and boil the water for 15 or 20minutes before using it. This will create an oxidized layer on the aluminum (dark in color). Dont scrub this layer off and your good to use the pot for beer.

The Homebrewtalk Beer wiki:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Beer


You asked for photos..... 🙂

A strainer like this is really useful to filter out hops when transfering from the brew pot to the fermenter after cooling the wort.

Primary Fermenter with Fermometer strip to monitor temperature:

My pot and burner. Blichmann, the Chris King of brewing equipment..... 🙂

Secondary fermentation with dry hops. 5 Gallons of IPA!! 😀

Yeast starter on my stir plate. Pitching the right amount of yeast is important to making good beer. This starter was exploding with activity, so I rigged a blow off tube to a sanitized collection jar to collect the escaping yeast.

 

[Wobbegong]

So Wobbegong-
How did the Halloween Black IPA turn out?
It looked just fantastic.

It came out great!! I added extra hops to the dry hop phase to punch up the aroma, (3/4 oz. centennial and 1/2 oz. chinook). The aroma on the nose is a hop parade. The grain flavor is nicely balanced with a hint of roasted flavors, but hops are still the dominator of the flavor. The roasted flavor is coming out more as it ages. The body of the beer is medium and dead on what I was shooting for. The head is thick and stays with the beer until the finish.

When you see this beer, you think porter or stout, but when you smell it you're blasted with hops.

 

[jmanic]

It came out great!! I added extra hops to the dry hop phase to punch up the aroma, (3/4 oz. centennial and 1/2 oz. chinook). The aroma on the nose is a hop parade. The grain flavor is nicely balanced with a hint of roasted flavors, but hops are still the dominator of the flavor. The roasted flavor is coming out more as it ages. The body of the beer is medium and dead on what I was shooting for. The head is thick and stays with the beer until the finish.

When you see this beer, you think porter or stout, but when you smell it you're blasted with hops.

Nice work. I love me some black IPA.
I was considering full mash after reading your write-up, then I priced out the Blichman....
I'll run a few more partial mash batches and see where I'm at.
Did you piece together the innards for your mash tun?
I think that's the only piece of equipment I'd need to add to get started with full mash.

Any problems cleaning out the carboy after dryhopping with whole hops?
And I see that you were specific with your fermentation temps- do you use anything to regulate that?

Keep up the good work and keep us posted.

 

[jmanic]

Yesterday 3 of my buddies and I ventured to the Brewers Apprentice to make our ever first batch of brew.

I will say that this was quite fun. And for the price you really cannot beat it. We come back in three weeks to bottle. Stay tuned!

This looks like a great way to get started with the brewing-
Just curious- what are those vitamin pills in the middle bowl of hop pellets?
Flavor or clarifying agents?

 

[Wobbegong]

Nice work. I love me some black IPA.
I was considering full mash after reading your write-up, then I priced out the Blichman....
I'll run a few more partial mash batches and see where I'm at.
Did you piece together the innards for your mash tun?
I think that's the only piece of equipment I'd need to add to get started with full mash.

Any problems cleaning out the carboy after dryhopping with whole hops?
And I see that you were specific with your fermentation temps- do you use anything to regulate that?

Keep up the good work and keep us posted.

You dont need to spend the $$ on Blichmann to do the full mash. Convert a cooler and go for it! Partial mash is just as much work as doing a full mash, its just bigger.

You dont need to spend big bucks on a bigger brew pot either. http://www.farmhousebrewingsupply.com/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=141

I bought the valve and fittings (ss conversion kit) for the cooler from Northern Brewer, along with the ss screen tube. I got the cooler half price at the Depot. I found the only 10 gallon coller in the store, sitting with the stack of 5 gallon coolers. It was a bit dirty and missing the cup holder. I brought it to the customer service desk and offered half price and they said yes.

Oxyclean and a carboy brush takes care of the hops. That stuff works.

I use a combo of moving from unfinished basement/ finished basement/garage/heated room/ to regulate fermentation temp during primary. Im going to convert a chest freezer into a fermentation chamber soon.

 

[jmanic]

You dont need to spend the $$ on Blichmann to do the full mash. Convert a cooler and go for it! Partial mash is just as much work as doing a full mash, its just bigger.

You dont need to spend big bucks on a bigger brew pot either. http://www.farmhousebrewingsupply.com/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=141

I bought the valve and fittings (ss conversion kit) for the cooler from Northern Brewer, along with the ss screen tube. I got the cooler half price at the Depot. I found the only 10 gallon coller in the store, sitting with the stack of 5 gallon coolers. It was a bit dirty and missing the cup holder. I brought it to the customer service desk and offered half price and they said yes.

Oxyclean and a carboy brush takes care of the hops. That stuff works.

I use a combo of moving from unfinished basement/ finished basement/garage/heated room/ to regulate fermentation temp during primary. Im going to convert a chest freezer into a fermentation chamber soon.

Thanks- maybe the next batch will be a full mash.
I want to take another crack at a cascade dry-hopped ale.
I'll post up when I have it going.

 

[ArmyOfNone]

Thanks for such a detailed look into your master craft J! I am starting to feel that this is not so much of a mad science as I originally thought. However there is still a lot to learn. More questions will follow! Thanks!!

This looks like a great way to get started with the brewing-
Just curious- what are those vitamin pills in the middle bowl of hop pellets?
Flavor or clarifying agents?

The pill looking things are Irish Moss hops. They are a finishing hop.

The hops in our batch were:
Bittering Hops
Columbus

Finishing Hops
Challenger or Amarillo
Irish Moss

Dry Hops
Cascade

 

[Glenlivet12]

Irish moss is a finning agent I believe not a hop. It helps the yeast drop out of suspension and clump together when they're done doing their thing, makes the beer clear.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Wobbegong]

Irish moss is a finning agent I believe not a hop. It helps the yeast drop out of suspension and clump together when they're done doing their thing, makes the beer clear.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Irish moss is finning agent and is actually algae. Whirlfoc tablets (In Freds photos)are basically crushed Irish moss and a baking soda. The algae has a negitive charge. It attracts protiens and causes them to clump during wort chilling. It basically hepls clear the beer by causing some protiens to gather together and sink to the bottom of the brew pot during cooling.

 

[Glenlivet12]

Protein makes more sense...

 

[Glenlivet12]

This pumpkin brew I made in August has rounded out nicely. Not looking forward to when this keg taps out.

 

[Robin]

This pumpkin brew I made in August has rounded out nicely. Not looking forward to when this keg taps out.

how long does your beer "stay" in the keg? pros vs bottling?!

 

[ArmyOfNone]

how long does your beer "stay" in the keg? pros vs bottling?!

Good question Robin! I think I know the answer but Ill let the guys with actual experience answer that. In the little bit of reading I have done it kegging is a VERY attractive option.

 

[Glenlivet12]

how long does your beer "stay" in the keg? pros vs bottling?!

At the rate we're drinking it, not long... Kegging is way easier than bottling but takes about the same amount of time to carbonate( there are ways of making it go faster but you could over carbonate the beer). I actually got rid of all of my small bottles i've collected since I got the keg and i'm giving Jay my 22oz bottles. I'lll have a few flip top bottles left but i don't anticipate doing to much bottling anymore.

I'd bet the beer stays a long time in a keg if, for some reason, you're not drinking it. I have some stuff in bottles from two years ago that seemed fine last time I tried it. Keeping the keg in the fridge slows down the yeast and i'm guessing autolysis too so I imagine its fine for a while.

This batch has been kegged in the fridge since early September. It took a while for the flavors to come together so we really just started drinking it late Oct. This is my first time kegging so i have no real benchmark.

 

[Glenlivet12]

This looks like an easy set up if you want to try kegging on the cheap.
http://morebeer.com/view_product/18291/102300/Tap-A-Draft_Homebrew_Setup

I have no experience with it but am considering getting it for going to parties or something. I've read nothing but good reviews about it. Somehow I missed it when I was researching keg set ups, I probably would have gone this route before getting a full 5 gallon keg set up.

a 3 gallon keg is another cool option but still expensive and won't fit a whole batch.
http://morebeer.com/view_product/12073//25_Gallon_Keg_-_Draft_Beer_System

Apparently it fits perfectly in a 10 gallon cooler...

 

[Wobbegong]

Kegging is the best thing ever! :getsome:

Bottling a 5 gallon batch requires cleaning, sanitizing, filling and capping about 60 12 oz. bottles. Filling a keg requires cleaning sanitizing and filling one big can. 😀

Carbonation adjustments are possible with kegged beer. Want more or less bubble? Just turn the regulator up or down and wait a day or two.

Not having a trash can of empty bottles after a pool party is another benefit.
Beer keeps in the keg longer than it takes to drink it. 😀

 

[jmanic]

Kegging is the best thing ever! :getsome:

Bottling a 5 gallon batch requires cleaning, sanitizing, filling and capping about 60 12 oz. bottles.

And capping is a drag.

This looks like an easy set up if you want to try kegging on the cheap.
http://morebeer.com/view_product/18291/102300/Tap-A-Draft_Homebrew_Setup

This looks like a great option.
I wonder how long you can store it in those bottles before tapping.
I'd imagine it would have the same shelf-life as regular bottles?