Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

On Friday I brewed up some tree beer using Leyland Cypress boughs in the strike and sparge water as well as in the mash vessel. OG was ~1.050 and I split the boil to brew up a saison and a pale ale with galaxy and sultana (denali) hops. The saison is fermenting with a wild yeast culture I captured from my neighbor's raw honey and the pale ale has Framgarden kveik. They're both fermenting at 87°F/30.5°C

The Leyland Cypress gives the beer a pleasant evergreen/christmas tree flavor that's a bit citrusy and not too overwhelming. I've brewed with this tree a number of times and thoroughly researched it so I'm fully confident that it is not toxic. I don't measure the amount of tree I put in the beer, basically just put branches into the kettle until it's annoying to try to add another one.

Had some leftovers from a sahti x stout run I recently made for a birthday bash. Not enough of the crucial Viking Malt Chocolate Light to replay the well-received recipe, though, and the hops box was on its last crumbs of whathaveyou. I decided this is the time to be brave...

Bought a bag of frozen blueberries (200 g). Mashed a dark brew with a colourful ensemble of malts (Simpsons Maris Otter pale, Simpsons Premium English caramalt, Viking Black malt and Chocolate Light, and Tuoppi rye caramel malt). Infused the blueberries in 1,5 L of water (no boiling) with 20 g of Amarillo pellets. Realised my only option for first hops was Citra – well at least it's high in alphas, in we go at T minus 45 minutes. Brought the infusion to boil and added to the wort at 20 minutes. Scraped the last of a Kent Goldings bag for a 15 min addition.

I've never been a fan of beer with seasonings, so this is quite the experiment. We'll see what kind of animal comes out the tap in due time.

I'm an experienced mead maker with a couple of Micro-Matic Sanke D kegs I bought online over the pandemic. I finally got around to using one, and I'm stuck on the last part of the teardown: removing the CO2 valve from the down tube. I've watched a few YouTube videos and they don't really go into huge detail on this part. I even broke down and called Micro-Matic who basically said that this stuff wasn't designed to be regularly disassembled but instead pressure-cleaned with an expensive keg washer. I'm hoping someone out there has a clever tool or approach they use to handle this situation, even if it's something silly like "I hold it down over this widget with a bump which pushes up the ball and then I spray cleaner down the tube and follow it up with rinse water and I'm not dead yet".

Help?

so my partner is a harry potter fan, from back when What's Her Face wasn't obviously a trashy person. i would just like to preface this by stating that i don't condone the ideas that What's Her Face espouses, we don't buy the merch, we pirated the movies and any of her books in my library had been bought from a used book store which resells donated books.

So in the books, there's a reference to a "butter beer" the kids drink. I'm thinking that this is non-alcoholic as in a ginger beer, or at least not super strong. I wanted to try to make a batch for my partner as a special surprise.

I'm planning on making a batch of this next in the style of an american cream ale with vienna malt as the base, 10% oat and 10% corn flakes, to give it a heavy mouth feel, and adding some vanilla extract and nutmeg for the flavor.

Has anyone here made this before, and if so, how did it go? Any pitfalls to watch out for?

A winter warmer. Almost a porter but still just about in IPA territory. I'm aiming for lots of body with maltiness balanced out with English hops. My supervisor in the photo is Stinky.

I've never tried my own home brew before and I've been sitting on two kits for years now (got them sitting the pandemic but never found the time) and I wanted to try to start something

The original juice and hops are probably toast by now so I'll have to purchase some new, but I've got two of those jugs and the other bits that come with them.

I also have a small orchard in my back yard and wanted to try to use the thousands of plums in get every year to make some kind of lambic ale.

Any advice is appreciated!

After like 3 years I was again brewing beer just for fun and not 2000l batch as my job or trying something on this small scale for my job (because I had a time and got the ingredients for free).

It is really experimental brew. I put 3,5l of grape juice (I think it is Veltlín variety) and will add some cherries there too. So let's see how it will end up.

#homebrewing @homebrewing

My test batch setup is nearly complete (please also appreciate the "beautiful" tiles) and I tested it with a wet hop beer. As you can see, those were clearly at the upper end of their ripeness scale, but it was the only time I could manage to pick some at all due family & kids.
In they went in for a ~20 minutes 80 ˚C hop stand, during which my kitchen smelled a troubling lot of garlic and onions. By removing the bag with the hops, I stirred up the already settled trub, so I had to pour all hop debris & hot break into the minikeg along with the wort. Let's see what that does to the beer. I've overshot my OG quite a bit with the setup in the pictures, with a lot higher efficiency than predicted, only by stirring every now and then, so we're looking at an OG of 1.051 instead of 1.046.

Yesterday, after a week of fermentation under rising pressure, it was time for a gravity sample. It's fully attenuated already, and except a hint of some sharpness, I'm happy to report that we're apparently free of off-flavours. :) It came down do 1.008 (vs 1.010 predicted) , which leaves me with a 5.6 % ABV beer instead of 4.2 % with a lot less residual sweetness (US-05, you monster). Next time, I'll certainly mash hotter, and check the temperature with an external thermometer as well. I also wonder what a Kveik yeast would do to the result.

Here is the base recipe I intend to use for ongoing experiments with malts, yeasts & hops.

For context, I've dabbled in home brewing. I've made ~4 successful batches based on online recipes. I wouldn't call myself an expert, but also not a complete amateur.

So what happens if you don't rack your mead/wine? I suppose the notion I have is to let it set in primary (assuming there's no fruit/spices to remove after initial fermentation) until its fully clarified before going straight to bottling?

I guess I've assumed there is some problem in the clarification step if you don't "get rid of" the dead yeast that precipitates, but I've never seen anything exploring that as a method.

Can anyone offer their experience?

Kernza® is the trademark name for the grain produced from the plant intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium). The plant is native to western Asia, and this perennial “cousin” of wheat has historically been grown in the US and across the globe to feed livestock. The Land Institute is developing it to serve as a perennial grain source for people and working toward a future that includes multiple varieties of Kernza® that are economical for farmers around the world to produce at a large scale.

-The Land Institute

Kernza grains are really tiny compared to standard barley/wheat, so instead of pointlessly pouring them through my malt mill, I sent them through my flour mill on a coarser setting to get a little crush on them without completely turning them into flour. Talking to a local brewery that has brewed a few kernza beers, they told me they don't mill the kernza at all. They just dump it straight into the mash and don't really expect to get much sugar extraction from the kernza addition. They're just adding it for flavor, which is often described as similar to rye. The grain also contains a lot of beta-glucan (also similar to rye).

Recipe for 5 gallons:

• 85% Best Pils
• 15% raw Kernza

Single Infusion Mash at 150°F/65°C

• 1oz Summer hops 8.3% @60 min (31.4 IBU)
• 1oz Summer hops 8.3% hopstand for 10 min (6.6 IBU)

I got these for free, apparently Summer is no longer being grown anywhere which is a shame :(

Fermented at 75-80°F/24-27°C for about 3-4 weeks with a wild yeast culture I captured from a bunch of juniper berries foraged on the side of a hiking trail on Granddad's Bluff outside of LaCrosse, WI.

OG: 1.050/12°P FG: 1.004/1°P

Bottled a week ago with enough priming sugar for 4 volumes. Could use a little more time to fully prime, but patience is difficult.

Tastes really good, I'm not sure if I can pick out the kernza or not, but the beer is really nicely fruity with some earthy/pastoral undertones.

Regular infusion mash, light belgian style witbier bill. Perle, IBU about 15. Wild forest raspberries in secondary, 200g/L. Yeast BLG201, our own.

OG 1057, final does not make much sense because with berries, but it's 1008.

Very pronounced spices, hops, and raspberries, balanced! Apparently, berries accentuated the hops. Slightly tart, dangerously drinkable. Well carbonated naturally under a month.

Anyone else tried Incognito? I have tried it before but didn't mix it properly, so I think most of it dropped to the bottom of the FV in a lump. This time giving it a proper stir with hot wort seems to have dissolved it better. I haven't tried the beer yet.

Brewed a year ago and lagered. Time is coming to brew it again!

I am thinking about brewing some Belgian #beer for Christmas and have frozen cherries and cherries in rum.

Do anyone here from the #homebrewing fedi bubble have any good recipe or suggestions how to use it?

@homebrewing

Made Salvadorian Chicha, although not quite like how mother made to avoid the chance of getting vinegar haha. It's made with a brown cane sugar processed in an old fashioned way - a company sells the cones of sugar called mi costeñita - and pineapple.

Usually you use fresh pineapple and ferment it using the skins and hopefully you get the right yeasts. However, the pineapple sold in Finland is probably not as fresh as one harvested on the spot in El Salvador.

Thanks to Alzymologist@sopuli.xyz here on Lemmy tho (rip Alzymologist Oy), I got an excellent yeast that gave me the smoothest Chicha I've ever had. Perfectly sweet, with no sourness. It came out to around 12% alcohol in only 4 days too, even though a traditional Chicha takes at least 8.

I saved some of the raw Chicha with yeast in it and am now in the process of making an apple-hibscus drink with it next.

I already don't know what's in it, few varieties of currants, apricots, now I added red and white grapes and some other things added during last two months I don't remember.

It got this overpowering red colour (probably from the currants) that stains everything so that's the colour it will have at the end, the smell is mostly fruity, little bit too much of a mix of everything.

So half of the jar is done another half is waiting for the fall season fruits.

Just a heavy mash with some chocolate malt and crystal, brittish yeast BRT101 (RIP Alzymologist Oy, but I still have the Library). Takes time to mature, couple weeks after bottling it still asks for more bottle aging (hopefully few years) but already nice and mellow. Dangerously drinkable, for its ABV.

I feel like I haven’t posted here in a while… basically I decided to take a break from drinking and thus home brewing for a bit. I want to get back into meme spirits, and I also want to make a 0 oxygen beer from ferment to filter to serving, but for now I made a berry wine for the girlfriend from some Aldi frozen fruit. This has been sitting in the fermenter on the fruit for a good 3 months (started it just before my break from alcohol) and then I moved it into a keg, no cold crashing or anything. I then ran it through a 5 micron filter and then a 1 micron filter just to see how it went, I gotta say, it turned out great. I was expecting the filter to clog but it went through like a champ. I also then wanted to try pasteurizing it in the keg using my mash and boil to see if I get some delicious glue and rubber in my mashing vessel but I didn’t! I back sweetened the wine and haven’t had any re-fermentation happen after a few weeks, so project fuck around and find out was a success. I might end up retrying a milk wine again (last one had a few tiny cheese curds floating in it that turned off most people from it) and I definitely want to try making a spicy imperial stout, but for now, I’ve gotta buy wine bottles or give out samples of this wine until my keg is empty.

Happy days! My new beer is done. This is a battle-tested recipe with lemons and ginger. This time I also had 10 g of fresh lemon balm in the seasoning infusion. This guy:

Works really great as a beer component, sharing to spotlight this herb with you all! There's a Wikipedia page that describes the many aromatic compounds it imparts. It's perennial (pic is from my garden), grows in a slightly invasive manner so you only need to plant very little to get enough for many brews. This was a warning :)

Another new twist was a helping of Weyermann spelt wheat malt. I expected the nutty spelt flavour from it, but the taste profile ended up so multi-faceted that I'll need more tastings to pinpoint it :D All in all, a distinctive flavour to this beer. Fermented to bone dry very smoothly.

It’s been 4 or 5 years since I’ve actively been brewing, but recently I caught the bug again. So I started up a batch and omg it’s alive! I’d forgotten how much fun this hobby can be!

So I managed to find 80% food grade alcohol (it was harder than you might thought) and started the all season maceration.

Basically every fruit that I will get or pick I just put few pieces there and let it sit, the tasting will be at Christmas or sometime in December. First layer is red currant, I already used it for some maceration so I know it starts good.

An other mead aberration, for science!

I've been planning to brew a beer with spruce tips and did some research to decide how to go about doing it. The gold standard in spruce tip syrup making is half a glass jar of tightly packed fresh spruce tips with the top half of the jar full of white sugar. This goes on a south-facing window and the sun supposedly melts the sugar and as it runs down, it captures the taste and healthiness from the spruce tips better than any other method.

Looked up the melting temperature of pure white sugar: 160 °C. Got a bit doubtful of the aforementioned method (wife has also tried and failed). So my plan would be to pack the tips and sugar on top in a tall kettle and melt the sugar in the oven. Tips go in a mesh insert, so after the sugar has melted, I could pour hot water into the kettle, dissolve the sugar in the water and lift out the mesh insert with the tips.

Today was the time to act it out. Spruce tips from the back yard, 1 kg of sugar. In the oven set at 160 °C, and yes indeed, sugar melts and the aroma from the spruce tips is amazing and appetising!

The beer has 4,75 kg of Viking Sahti malt mix, 1 kg Viking wheat malt, 1 kg Viking Munich Light and 250 g Simpsons Premium English Caramalt in a 19 liter mash. For hops I used Challenger from the start of the boil and some Simcoe for the last 20 minutes. It all came together to make a lovely pale brew.

The spruce component ended up as 2 litres of surprisingly dark green-brown liquid. I made sure all sugar was dissolved and dunked it into the fermenter first, followed by the wort. Both were filtered with reusable coffee filters.

My last doubt was that the spruce tips might contain stuff that would kill the yeast, so I made a starter with some of the spruce-sugar liquid. Sure enough, it got on bubbling like a champ!