Yes, I always go with measurements. I just think it aint worth measuring it again until the bubbling stops.
I have never staggered by dry hops. Might try that too. Here's an interesting article (that links to other interesting articles...) about dry hopping experiments. http://www.metabrewing.com/2013/02/r...ract-more.html
I definitely want to start kegging some beer. Its an elegant solution. Right now, i dont have a way to chill a keg other than to buy some ice and i cant to that every day.
This is what I would like to buy over the next six months.
Beer fridge - my initial plan was to keep the fridge that sits in the kitchen full with home brew. The idea was that this would annoy the wife enough for her to suggest me keeping it elsewhere... "beer fridge in the basement". However, this plan failed as all it resulted in was me drinking said home brew at a much higher rate than normal. Plan failed. Need new strategy to gain buy in from the wide for a beer fridge.
4x kegs and CO2 canisters - My wife will tell me that CO2 is given off for free by the beer. hahaha
High pressure cast iron ring burner - I asked for it for Father's Day. Hopefully I am not denied.
SS boil pot - I think I can buy this one without setting off the budget alarms. $150. I have a bit of money saved up.
New Mash Tun - I am currently using a 40L cooler, in which I am doing a brew in a bag type set up. bag in the cooler. No false bottom or anything like that. I just pull the bag, pick up the cooler and pour into the boil kettle. Simple, easy setup. Thing is... The cooler was already old before mashing in it. It is warper all to hell and the outside has cracks in it. I think it leaks a lot of heat.
Wort Chiller - now that I will be boiling 30+ litres, I will need a way to cool it down. The top up water was cooling down the wort pretty good on its own. With no top up water and with a much larger volume, the wort is going to take ages to cool.
Well..... Dump and Chase IIPA has finally stopped fermenting 4 weeks in. Crazy stuff. I measured it tonight and it only dropped 0.005 from my last reading 5 days ago. Pretty sure its done. I added the isinglass tonight and will take a final (hopefully) reading in 48 hours time.
OG - 1.080 (estimated)
FG - 1.015
Gives me about 8.7% which is the biggest brew I've done to date. I also ended up adding a second dry hop. Cause you all know that I am a massive hop head. I dry hopped way too early. I am not accustomed to such a large beer and it fermented longer than I expected. To compensate, I put another 50g of Simcoe in there for 3 days.
I'm not sure why, but I have really, really high hopes for this beer. Maybe its from the cost I have added up in my head! hahahha But seriously, I have high hopes as everything went to plan and as a result, I am expecting a good beer to come from it. My quality has been going up as I go and this beer should be no exception.
For anyone who is interested in my cider experiment, I bottled 12 750ml bottles a couple weeks ago. They were still fermenting so I did the ole bottle pasteurization technique. Worked.... averagely. The swing top bottles that I used dont have such a good seal (see my previous posts on bad carbing) and as a result of heating and creating more pressure, one out of the three bottles I opened to "sample" was complete flat.
Good experiment but not a total success. I'll do another cider straight away and get my gravity right before pitching this time. I'm pretty sure that cider is an easy one to nail compared to beer. If anyone is thinking about doing one. DO IT!
Plain apple juice from the grocery store (no preservatives), add yeast nutrient and yeast. Boom! Cider. Not much simpler than that. Clearly, if you want better cider it takes more effort and maybe better ingredients, but I believe this stuff that I made will be just fine. Estimate bottle condition for 2-3 months. I'll report back on the final product.
The "as is" product after less than two weeks in the bottle:
YEASTY!
YEASTY!
YEASTY!
I can smell it when pouring. I dont know if the pasteurization and killing the yeast means that I didn't give it a chance to clean up after itself as it normally does, but you can definitely smell and taste the yeast. The bottle has cleared considerably in two weeks. I think that it will be even more clear in another month. I added no fining agents or pectic enzymes, but it is already pretty clear naturally. I wont use EC-1118 again. Too aggressive and I dont think it flocculates as well as US-05. I am way more familiar with that yeast and many cider brewers just use ale yeast in their cider, so that is what I will do next time.
I held back half of my cider and left it ferment out. It is thin and sharp. no idea if it will mellow out, but I suspect it will. I have 10 litres of it still in the fermenter. I'll bottle this week, using the standard process. It is 7.9%. The pasteurized stuff is about 6.7%. I'm keen to see the differences in the final product. I will report back on that as well.
Where did you get enough juice to make it cheaply? That was my issue against making cider is that decent starting juice is about $8 per gallon here in Vancouver, which make it disgustingly expensive. I made one that had cardamom, ginger, and lemongrass in it -- loved the final product.
A word of warning on your Dump and Chase: it's going to take forever to carb up at that alcohol level. Seriously, you're looking at 6-8 weeks before it no longer is "flat", and probably another 4-8 weeks past that to get ideal. That's the nature of the high-alcohol beast!
I'm looking at a Red Ale for my next brew, but not sure I've come across a recipe I love just yet.
Well..... Left Wing Lock IIPA is awaiting fermentation. I haven't sorted out my burner yet, so its still a huge top up with water to get to volume. The guy ony charged me for one can of LME. They are $17. I dont know if it was an accident or if the guy was being nice. Prolly an accident. I wont complain about it either way.
I hit my temperatures bang on this time. I'm getting really used to my equipment now and it makes for a pretty stress free brew day. Only thing is I forgot my bag again! hahahaha Two times in a row. From now on, I think I will just keep my bag in the cooler so I dont do it again.
I finished bottling it up on Monday and I've brewed on the first weekend after that. I'm hoping to build a bit of a cellar for summer. The cellar has stiff competition from my beer glass tho. Both are vying for attention and it has been my beer glass that has been winning out.
I'm going to do another cider and apply the things I have learned. I'm hoping for a much better result this time. I'll be using Nottingham instead of EC-1118. Notty wont be as aggressive and I think it'll give me the result I am looking for. I wont be trying that crazy pasteurization technique again. Just gonna let it ferment out and bottle as normal.
I have brewed a cider. Didn't turn out that shit hot. I think my mistake was doing the bottle pasteurizing thing. Yeast play an important role in cleaning up the brew. If you kill it, the yeast cannot clean up. The cider tastes great, but the smell is terrible. I think its dead yeast. I wont repeat that technique again.
So, if I were to give you advice, it would be make sure you hit your original gravity knowing that your final gravity will end up at about 1.000 or even less. Understand what this means for your alcohol/sweetness content. Bottle when your FG doesnt change for three days. Once you have stable cider, add in your bottling sugar (google it for how much to add per volume). ** Make sure you understand this or you will get exploding bottles. No one needs that....
From what I have learned from my first batch of cider, I can tell you that it is very easy. Everyone who reads this should find a recipe that suits them on HBT and try it out immediately. No prior knowledge required and it is easier than you think. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f81/
If you would like more specific advice, feel free to PM me.
Happy brewing.
PS.... Check my last few posts. I have been talking about my experience brewing my first cider.
Last edited by Atomic Wedgy; October 4, 2013 at 6:59 AM.
I've got November 7th circled on my calendar. That day 3 friends and I are going to brew two batches totalling roughly 100 L of beer. I think the plan is to make one IPA and a wet-hopped red ale... hop harvest just happened so there are some tasty things available.
What darker malts did you use to bring in the colour and sweetness of your red ale?
November 7th brewday getting closer. Not 100 L of beer... two 65 L (triple) batches, so 130 L.
I bought a new mash tun. It includes a hot liquor tank. And a pump. And a temperature controller. And a heating element. Set it and forget it, mash efficiency pushing 90%. Woohoo!
IPA is gonna be all citrus - citra, amarillo, summit, and sorachi ace hops.
Wet hopped red ale is going to be much more subtle: bittered with centennial and then generously hop bursted with Mt Hood.
Holy crap FHG, you really have the gear. It pays for itself tho with that kind of efficiency. At least that's what you can tell yourself. hahhaaha
130L is absolutely massive. If you brewed that 4 times a year, you would be too big to call yourself a nano-brewery. You would be in micro brewery territory.
I checked the gravity in Left Wing Lock with my brand new refractometer. It read 1.035. I was like 1.035!!! WTF!!! Its been two weeks and its only gone from 1.075 to 1.035? I was expecting it to stop somewhere around 1.018. Crap. So, I pitched some EC-1118, stirred it around gently and hoped for the best.
The next morning I started to question my refractometer reading. Mostly b/c I had a good brew day and I had no reason to question my technique or my ingredients. So I did some research on refractometers and realized that I was reading it wrong. Alcohol skews the light, so the reading you get has to go into a formula that uses the OG as well.
Turns out that if the refractometer was reading 1.035, down from 1.075, it meant that I was fully attenuated. ~8.4% which is pretty much what I was expecting.... hahaha oh well. Lesson learned. I'm interested to find out if the champagne yeast fermented anything else about the US-05. I suspect it could have.
Well, I finally got around to bottling the rest of the cider. It finished up at 0.991, but that was expected. Its 9% abv. Its gonna kill folks. It still smelled really yeasty. I figured the pasteurized bottles smelled like that as the yeast died before it could clean up. I was mistaken. Really yeasty still. I'm definitely going to use a different yeast strain next time.
Left Wing Lock IIPA had an interesting development. My wife bought me 150g of Amarillo for my birthday. So I used it all 150g of Amarillo for a dry hop. I'm very keen to see what happens. I just bottled it last night. Smelled great.
I will also do another one of those simple cider batches. I'm hoping both are ready to drink by Dec 13. A friend is travelling in from England, so it would be good if I had a few batches to choose from.
1.75L pasteurized apple juice, no preservatives
1L pasteurized pear juice, no preservatives
about two handfuls of frozen berries (strawberries, blackberries, blueberries)
Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
Fermented @ 22C
OG = 1.059
I plan on cold crashing when it gets to about 1.015ish and then bottle racking and bottle pasteurizing in a boil, warm-cool bath.
It's been fermenting for about a day now, but it's fermenting into my air lock every 6 hours or so.
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