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Home brew! Who's brewing up what?
The home brew community is one of those groups I just love. Everyone's enthusiastic, helpful, and excited. So... what are you working on? Got something in the fermentor? Something planned for the weekend?
I had went through a "no brew" spell; due to various life situations. And after that I brewed beer three weekends in a row. So I presently have...
A strawberry rhubarb wheat ale made with back yard harvested yeast, front yard rhubarb, and various plants for bittering.
A cherry quad bock made with cherries from my mom's cherry tree.
An Amber kolsch with raspberries and mulberries harvested from my yard and the neighbors yard.
It's fruit beer season, it seems!
Wow those all sound awesome! Especially that strawberry rhubarb wheat ale!
I'm very excited by how well it turned out. I read up on yeast harvesting on https://bootlegbiology.com/ and it seemed easy, so I did it. I think I just got lucky and my first "harvest" produced a "beer" that tasted vaguely like Hefeweizen. When it comes to harvesting yeast, if it doesn't taste foul it's a success.
To do this you basically just mix up dry malt extract and water, then leave it out, covered in cheese cloth. 24 hours later you bring it in and wait.
For the beer, I also "discovered" that the creeping Charlie investing my lawn (I don't put down weed killer) is also called ground ivy which used to be called "ale hoof"... which is Middle English for "ale herb". They used it to bitter beer before hops were widely used. So I picked my weeds and ended up with a blend of hops and creeping Charlie.
It all felt very authentic and sustainable. Most importantly the beer turned out rather drinkable! It's not great? But when I tell folks what went into it, they're very pleased.
I'm really impressed with that homemade yeast thing. Not sure I'd be ready to do it myself yet but the fact you can make a decent beer from that is quite something.
I picked it up to have something "else" to do with my brewing. As is, I'll spend a few hours thinking up my next brew and finding a recipe, a few hours going to the brew shop, then brew day is usually a 5 hour long ordeal... and then I'm done for weeks. Just sitting around, waiting. So I wanted something to fill the gaps.
What I read once about harvesting wild yeast, maybe by Sandor Katz, was, to paraphrase, "It's like inviting a homeless guy to live on your couch. He might be tons of fun and have great stories, but he might never get off the couch and stink up the place." I'm an avid wild fermenter, though. I enjoy the gamble.
I don't see it as a huge gamble. Assuming you don't get an obvious infection or mold, you can just taste the "beer" coming off the sample. If it's not awful, it's going to be ok! ... probably!
On my case, the yeast produced very similar flavors in a big batch as it did the collection and starter.
I’ve got a 5L “continuous” kombucha brew going for a few months. It’s a mix of Irish breakfast and pu-erh, more towards the latter at this point. Results have been decent, but the local climate is very hot and humid, so I struggle with the yeast outpacing the bacteria and it getting overly sour before the flavor fully develops. I finally got my hands on a swing-top bottle with a solid seal, so a second ferment and carbonation is next on my list.
I know a lot of brewers that switch to kombucha... mostly so you can keep up the hobby when you don't need more beer, or to try to keep busy and not get fat. I'm definitely interested!
I understand it's bacteria and yeast, and there's tea, but what is it fermenting? What's the sugar?
When starting, sugar is added to the brewed tea. There’s some debate over how much the tea is directly involved, but at the very least it provides base flavor and some acidity. Usually some “starter” is added from a previous batch to further reduce pH and kickstart the cultures. The bacteria species are acidophiles. Additional sugar may be introduced before the second ferment via flavor additives (e.g fruits)
Yeast ferments the sugar into ethanol, which Acetobacter converts into acetic acid aerobically. As oxygen levels drop during the first ferment, and more during the sealed second ferment, Lactobacillus converts sugars to lactic acid.
Not a beer, but I'm currently brewing 막걸리, a Korean rice wine. Our latest batch is a three stage fermentation, in which we introduce rice to the yeast in batches over the course of a few days. Really excited to see how it comes out!
Doesn't fit the "brewing" 100%, but we currently have mead in a fermenter, should be ready during the next couple weeks!
Totally counts!
I wish I enjoyed mead 😕
I've found that I enjoy most mead, but there ware vast differences. I prefer less sweat ones (most store-bought mead is too sweat for my taste), and I also like it if it has a slightly yeasty taste. Some prefer adding cherry juice to their mead, or to mix beer and mead. Both are great too!
Yeah mixing beer and mead is a great way to cut the heaviness if you're not keen on it straight. If anyone hasn't tried, take a dry lager or a golden ale, something uncomplicated. Mix it with a quarter or a third of mead. Makes for a much more summery or maybe autumn type drink.
Just finished up some Bergamais, which is my wife and my favourite red. We made a few stinkers this summer so far, like Black Cherry Hard Lemonade wine which tastes like cough syrup, and Cucumber Melon (gross!)
No beer though. Doesn't keep as long, and I can't drink it fast enough :p
I have a cherry quad on tap in my home keezer right now... there's that note of cough syrup that's hard to ignore. But the cherries were harvested from my moms cherry tree, so it is what it is!
I've been fairly afraid of wine. Seems expensive to "do it right"... ie, proper grape must... and easy to get it wrong.
Mmm, I've never done it the "right way", I just buy the packs from the store. My buddy and I that do the kits together are planning on trying to do real cherry wine this summer with cherries from his tree, so that should be fun!
Off topic, but how'd you get into homebrewing? What resources did you learn from?
I'd been idly interested for years, but my little brother asked me to take a class. One of the local breweries did a home brew + DIY session... which was basically a normal brew day for the average home brewer with equipment that was cheap and easy. Things like "make your own mash tun with a cooler" and "just buy a turkey fryer".
The absolute best way to get started is to find a home brewer and just stay for a whole session. Once you get the basic idea, all the stuff you read online becomes relevant. And, as I said above, the home brew community is very helpful and encouraging.
Once you realize how cheap it is to make good beer, it's hard to let any other beer drinker not know about it.
For wine, there are wine kits that include all the ingredients to make it, along with instructions. Once you've read through the instructions and done it once, it's not hard at all.
For the equipment for wine making, there are starter kits will which include almost everything you need to get started.
Really, any u-brew place will give you a good idea of what you need. I couldn't tell you about the beer. Haven't done that at home, only in-store.
I've got 2 demi-johns of ipa ready to bottle next week. I'm looking forward to this autumn though with the aquisition of a tiny orchard I should be able to make a lot of cider.
My attempts at cider were always such a let down. I will be trying again, but it will all be store bought.
How do you go about prepping/juicing your apples?
I was going to brew a gose yesterday, but the current midwestern US heatwave kept me from wanting to sit outside by a propane burner for a few hours. We're going to try tomorrow. This will be the third incarnation of this beer: Gose to 11 and I think I've decided to name it "Gose to 12" in that honor. I've always done a plain gose in the past, but I'm still deciding on if I'll add some fruit juice to it in secondary and what that juice might be.
I've yet to look at anything sour at all... do you pitch the lacto, wait a day, then pitch more yeast? Or something different? Never quite understood the process.
There are a lot of methods with various merits. It's worth noting that lactobacillus souring is very different from other forms, which tend to take quite a bit of time. For lacto, it's popular to inoculate the wort after taking runnings from the mash tun and then boil 48-72 hours later to lock in the sour pH, but not infect any post-boil equipment. I tend to prefer getting a beer done all in one day so I don't mind introducing fermenters to the cultures. The various sour cultures are sold in packs just as normal yeast is sold. Handling is usually similar but at different temperatures. For this recipe, I follow up a lacto inoculation with normal beer yeast after a few days.
I highly recommend American Sour Beer by Michael Tonsmeire (https://www.themadfermentationist.com) if you want to get into making the styles.
I have a few drums of rose and also spiced mead aging at the moment. Still a couple of months before they're ready to bottle.
I've got ingredients in queue for macc ipa by the Ray Found of brulosophy. I've brewed it once before and it was superb. I've brewed and fermented about everything under the sun over the years from elderberry port to turnip wine. I mostly stick to Ipas these days because I'm hooked on the hops.
So many hops! That's crazy.
My beers lately have been 1 oz, no dry hopping. So simple!
I had bought some hops in bulk on clearance and they (in hindsight) past their time. After a few bad pale ales/IPAs I kind of gave up on the style.
Does it count if I'm fermenting peppers? Just finished making a more sriracha style hot sauce, which didn't turn out quite how I wanted it. I think I put too much ginger and sugar in it, so it kind of overpowers the spiciness which you only really get on the back-end of the taste.
Also fermenting a habenero/frenso chile mix which should be ready to go tomorrow. Can't wait to turn it into a sauce!
I've started brewing micro-batches of essentially anything that sounds interesting this spring/summer!
I just bottled my gallon of rhubarb wine last week (which since I've been reading more recipies seems to have been kind of a short amount of time in second ferment based on what some people do, but I don't really know if things ferment faster in smaller batches?) it tasted kinda "yeasty" and a little sharp when I bottled it to me, but it's drinkable already and hopefully it mellows nicely in the bottles.
and I have a half-gallon of Cherry-and-star-anise mead (melomel?) that I racked the other day because the bottom looked scummy, I've literally never tasted mead or a melomel before, so this is kind of an experiment on a couple fronts.
and I made lilac wine this year, just a half-gallon to see what it's like, as I've never had a floral wine before. I tasted just a snip of it the other day and it seemed super gross (like asparagus wine if you can imagine that flavour) but I had heard before than lilac wine can be kind of disgusting until it's actually ready. So I'll give it the 6 months in second and the 6 months of bottle aging the recipe asks for before I throw it down the drain!
Since I bottled my rhubarb wine I might use that carboy for a blueberry wine, and then I might have to stop for a bit or I'll have too many bottles of stuff. Either that or buy a real wine bottling situation, as I'm currently just using beer bottles or swing tops!