Recent content by ohiochris

Distilled water has the minerals etc. removed from it and isnt really the best choice for brewing. I would add yeast nutrients if using distilled water but I have found thats not really necessary if using spring or drinking water. As long as water is not distilled it usually has most of what it...

I brewed an IPA kit last year with el dorado hops and I added chinook hops to get a pine flavor like pinedrops beer. It came out pretty good and close to pinedrops. I liked it a lot. Its a good combination. Pine is the flavor out front with a fruity flavor in the background. Really nice in my...

I carbonate in the bottle using apple juice concentrate and then stovetop pasteurize in the bottle ( I sacrifice a few bottles for testing ....trying a bottle every day or two. Once its just right I pasteurize ) .....pretty simple and it comes out great , perfect for a bubbling alcoholic cider...

Ive noticed similar differences. Besides alcohol content you should consider unfermented sugar content as well , your body metabolizes alcohol like sugar....since it is.... but probably at a different rate. Unfermented sugars are bound to have an effect ( slower or faster ) on alcohol...

The batch I made with jasmine rice turned out so good that I see no need to experiment with other types of rice. The guy at the chinese grocery told me jasmine rice wont work ,....boy was he wrong. But I see that its crucial to drink or bottle/pasteurize/cold crash at just the right time if...

I wonder.....if you tried making rice wine in a pumpkin , would the yeast and mold consume the pumpkin ? Or just a little of it and add some pumpkin flavor to the end product. That could be an interesting experiment. My rice wine came out just about perfect , sweet and quite potent. The neutral...

Ive read that natural yeast can make some really good cider , slightly different flavors and such , but every batch will turn out different. There is also a lot more risk of infection or the whole thing turning quickly into vinegar. I never have the time to do it but Ive always wanted to try...

Ok , thanks. I just got some yeast balls today and I will be getting rice soon , I just dont have a good way of steaming it.

Will boiling it ruin it ?

Does it make any difference whether the rice is steamed or boiled ? Anybody know ?

Ive been adding extra DME and it seems to work pretty well without altering the flavor much. But this last time I dumped a bunch of honey in and even though I was a little worried about it making the beer taste dry it actually turned out pretty good and didnt notice a flavor change. But I just...

Interesting. I didnt know that about pear juice. Thanks

Maybe its just me , but every time I add sugar I dont care for the outcome. It usually winds up very dry or acidic. So then after reading on here about using canned apple juice concentrate instead I gave it a try , turns out great. Turns out that the dry or acid...possibly almost "chemical"...

You may not actually see signs of activity in secondary. Sometimes you do and sometimes you dont , unless you stand there staring at it for 12 hours or so. You have to remember the bubbling stopped already in primary , which means the activity has slowed considerably and it "may" not pick back...

Im not an alcoholic , not by a long stretch , but my problem is I never met an alcohol I didnt like :D That being said I do homebrewing for the fun of it , not necessarily just because I like to sample the final results. Cider for me just tastes good and its a nice change now and then...