Alternative Brewing

CornyKegs 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
supe_kitchen said:
Where I have to agree with OP is that you have to do some things out of the box, but mostly to be able to understand the result. I personally have no opinion on not chilling my wort, because it is a practice I don't use. I think you have to do it and see what happens to be able to comment on it, which OP has done and enjoys the result of.

My main problem is the whole idea of cutting out control points for the sake of time. No-chill doesn't sound very time efficient, but you know what is? A plate chiller! Also bottling with no wand just to prove you aren't scared of oxidation. Wouldn't using a wand and doing things faster be better, or even kegging to cut more time out? If time is a problem, why go all-grain?

For me homebrewing is cooking. When I am in the kitchen I am trying to make awesome food, even on weeknights with little time. It would be easier to just heat up a hot pocket and be happy with it, but I would rather put in time and make something nice. This same concept goes into my homebrewing. It is why my system has constantly evolved and grown, for the betterment of my brews. Honestly, I think it is alternative brewing to homebrew at all since everyone everywhere is surrounded by wildly popular ****ty beer.
Click to expand...
Good point about no-chill. I'm having a tough time seeing sitting around for a couple of hours waiting for wort to cool as revolutionary, even if some Australians do it. A lot of times, my brews go fairly late into the evening. Forget cold-break or other cited reasons for chilling - how about getting to frakkin' bed?
 
I have never made an extract beer.
I no chill sometimes and run right out of the kettle into sanitized kegs.
I always boil for 90 minutes since I can drink.
My kettle is not covered.
I don't bottle except for competitions, then its out of the keg.
Without any solids, boiling hops in water is just for the fragrance. Its pretty much like your wife's potpourri.
I wouldn't mind trying one of your beers then giving you one of mine. Its possible that you are missing out on something you don't even know about.
Oh Well, each to his own and that.

Many of your shortcuts aren't really shortcuts, but another way to skin a cat.
 
I am not gutsy enough to not chill 20 gallons of beer or come back to it and pitch in the morning when that beer is expected to taste the same each time it's served. Or that beer is expected to place. Investors don't think that's very entertaining.

After hearing arguments on both sides, however; I am willing to spend a few minutes in the brewery on a Saturday morning to knock out a 5 gallon batch simply to split for experimental benefits.

You say I've already made up my mind without trying it, and that is pretty accurate. Every brewer should know sulfides are a naturally occurring chemical in malt, and when heated a chemical reaction takes place to create DMS, DMSO, DDMS, and varying other sulfur compounds. You only need read a few biochem articles and brewing chem books to realize that the science of formation and dissipation of sulfides depends greatly upon rapid cooling and a sufficient cold break. I am willing to listen to and keep an open mind toward just about any argument, but one that has been proven time and time again through practical application such as the cooling of wort or temp control for fermentation, it's hard to convince me otherwise.

Like I said, for the sake of argument I will conduct an experiment. I have already contacted three BJCP judges (one of which is a national judge) from one of my clubs coming by in a couple weeks to do a blind test and figure out which practice yields the best results. Ie no detectable sulfides, zero infection due to an insane lag time, low flocculation and high attenuation due to proper pitching temp. I'll keep you posted.
 
squirrelly said:
I am not gutsy enough to not chill 20 gallons of beer or come back to it and pitch in the morning when that beer is expected to taste the same each time it's served. Or that beer is expected to place. Investors don't think that's very entertaining.

After hearing arguments on both sides, however; I am willing to spend a few minutes in the brewery on a Saturday morning to knock out a 5 gallon batch simply to split for experimental benefits.
Click to expand...

I'm not gusty enough to try it on 20 gallon batches either and I don't know anyone else who is. Far as I know this is a home brewing forum not a pro-brewing or commercial brewing forum. I think when people talk about doing no chill batches here they are referring to smaller 5 to 10 gallon batches and they aren't brewing them for profit. If that were the case I almost certainly would do everything by the book since there would be a lot more at stake.

That's precisely why I love being a home brewer; I get to experiment and I don't have to answer to anyone else.
 
Open fermentation can be really neat depending on your particular area and which strains of wild yeast happen to be floating about. I don't practice this simply because I want total control over any bug in my brew house, and don't want cross contamination issues, but I've tasted some really nice complex wild fermented beers. Wild brews is a really good book if you are interested.

Most who I've seen use open fermentation usually ferment open until just before the krausin drops. The beer is normally then moved to a closed vessel to either cask condition or finish out in a brite tank. It is a more common practice in Europe than in the US, but it's gaining in popularity.

I've seen both techniques used where the brewer won't pitch yeast and just let nature take its course, and those who pitch a house strain in an open fermenter. Some of my favorite beers come from Belgium, and due to some of the wild open ferments that take place I have yet to find a Belgian beer with the same flavor profile that was brewed in the US.
 
Now this is what I want from this thread! I love some Belgian brews and have always been interested in open fermentation. I have also been interested in fermenter geometry and looser temp controls for different ester production. I have read plenty on this but experimented very little with it. If we are talking about who is doing different things how about who is going really radical and doing open fermentation or dry hopping with watermelon, or whatever weird thing you can imagine. My best brew has 2 lbs of roasted butternut squash in the mash and 24 oz of maple syrup in the fermenter (thanks for the idea mosher). So how about people toss out some of the wilder things they do to inspire others.
 
I think this is what I read about it, I don't think I'd go all out with slate but if I could find some space it would be cool. I'm still worried about big bugs though, I feel like they'd smell all that sugar and couldn't help themselves. An apartment in the city already has too many bugs and other pests I worry about even with a closed fermentor.

http://byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/31-fermentation/1972-brewery-investments-mr-wizard

http://byo.com/stories/projects-and...yourself/390-build-an-open-fermenter-projects
 
If the OP never tried brewing, bottling, chilling, with more "traditional" methods, how can he be sure that his methods make no difference?
Brew a beer with a 60 min boil and hops in the boil, brew the same beer with the hop tea, and a twenty minute boil. Let some other people try them side by side and then tell me that it makes no difference.
 
Eh. To each his own, I guess, but make no mistake...the OP is not "myth busting", he is simply taking shortcuts (some half baked) for the sake of time/easiness as the expense of the quality of the finished product. I'm sure the beer is drinkable, but I'd love to see some objective scoring of these brews.

Brewing and its standard practices have been around for hundreds of years. Brew science is extensive and has been studied exhaustively. There are principles behind brewing, not just arbitrary dogma. These shortcuts just skip over steps that are required to produce top notch beer.

Take a TV dinner approach to brewing, and that's about the quality you're going to end up with. Good enough for some, I guess.
 
I had wild yeast take a batch a while back. I'd pay a Belgian, or anybody else, to watch em' try and gag a pint of that puke-cider. I think in some cases at least, like Samuel Smith with their Yorkshire squares, open fermentation isn't intended to be an opening for wild yeast.
 
I wild open fermented a cider last fall and it turned out good but a little too sweet, so I let it go longer and it was too dry and pretty much vinegar. Was still great for cooking and salads after that. A brewery in Chile I just toured had a batch go bad and they accidentally bottled it, when they first tried it it was awful but for some reason they left it sitting around to age and when I tried it it was great. It even performed well in competition, probably due to all the wild yeast off of grapes grown in the area. But I have yet to see any actual open fermentation first hand.
 
Just for clarification:
Open fermentation and Spontaneous fermentation are not the same thing.

There are numerous breweries that ferment in open topped fermenters that are fermented with traditional brewers yeast only. Anchor Steam comes to mind. They harvest and pitch their own yeast each time.

Here's a link to a Brewing TV episode where they do an open fermentation: [ame=http://vimeo.com/12055691]Brewing TV - Episode 4: Open Fermentation on Vimeo[/ame]

Spontaneous fermentation as practiced by brewers of traditional lambic beers involves exposing the wort to the air and then letting fermentation begin on its own. This seems to be what most people are referring to in this thread.

Here's a link from Brewing TV about coolships and spontaneous fermentation: [ame=http://vimeo.com/27542991]Brewing TV - Episode 42: King's Coolship on Vimeo[/ame]

Of course, many of the organisms that inoculate lambic come from within the brewery (on the walls, rafters, etc) rather than coming in from the air floating in from outside.
 
nberk said:
Just for clarification:
Open fermentation and Spontaneous fermentation are not the same thing.
Click to expand...

nberk said:
Here's a link to a Brewing TV episode where they do an open fermentation: Brewing TV - Episode 4: Open Fermentation on Vimeo
Click to expand...

Right on. "Wild" and "Open" are not the same thing.

I brewed an "open" Belgian pale ale per the method shown in the Brewing TV video above. Leaving it totally uncovered made me a bit nervous, but in the end there were no infections, no "wild" flavors, no real ill effects to speak of. I did find a bug in the bucket after racking off. He looked totally wasted, but he must have been a lightweight because he didn't seem to have drank that much.

The "open" version of this beer had a much more rustic phenol profile compared to its smoother "closed" counterpart. Depending on what you're going for, this can be a really good way to play with flavor.
 
Boerderij_Kabouter said:
How is this abortion still in progress? Good lord there is a lot of bad information and ideas in here. This thread is where good beer goes to die.
Click to expand...

I was wondering the same thing. The OP's long gone from it.

I guess folks don't get the idea that in forums, if you want a thread to die, don't keep posting in it.
 
Those of you who have engaged in on topic debate, thank you.

To others, trying to derail (troll) any thread because you simply disagree with the concept of the thread, will not be tolerated.
 
Sorry mods for the bs, just having fun....to make my post relevant, I guess what the op is doing is different, but to all the rest reading the thread, take it with a grain of salt, and research it all on your own....you might find some methods work and some don't, but you won't know for sure until you try it
 
I skipped up here from page 10, and didn't bother reading back a bit to see why everyone got their posts deleted. I'm sure this thread has devolved in to some fresh internet hell.

I know this has been said already, maybe a hundred times, but the OP is a different type of homebrewer. Hell, we're all different types of homebrewers. He calls it "minimalist." I agree with most of you and tend to call it "stupid." But that's because I'm only interested in making the best beer I possibly can.

I'm proposing an experiment. And I hope I'm not the only one who tries this, but I am definitely going through with it.

I'm going to make a self-designed Simcoe Imperial IPA recipe two different ways on my next brew day. (Probably the last week of this month)

The first method: my standard All-grain set-up. 10gal round mash tun with a false bottom, single infusion with mash-out, fly sparge, 90 minute boil with scheduled hop additions, quick cool with my wort chiller, etc etc etc.

The second method: I'll follow the OP's OP to the letter. BIAB, no temp control, no pH measurements, with hop tea and 25 min boil, no chill method, etc etc etc.

I'll bottle the "traditional" using Revvy's method from his famous Bottling post (Thanks a ton for that btw, totally REVVolutionized my bottling days), and I'll bottle the OP's way using a funnel and a sanitized measuring cup.

We'll see what happens. I'm fairly certain the OP's method will reign victorious, and his paradigm shifting views on brewing will forever ALTER my brew days.
 
I read this thread and love it.

I just wonder sometimes about brewing in the very early days and how beer tasted. Because, I could be wrong, but I bet they were very minimal in their approach.

Sometimes the art gets lost in the technology.

But then again i'm a fan of technology. So who knows.......
 
eeverwine said:
I skipped up here from page 10, and didn't bother reading back a bit to see why everyone got their posts deleted. I'm sure this thread has devolved in to some fresh internet hell.

I know this has been said already, maybe a hundred times, but the OP is a different type of homebrewer. Hell, we're all different types of homebrewers. He calls it "minimalist." I agree with most of you and tend to call it "stupid." But that's because I'm only interested in making the best beer I possibly can.

I'm proposing an experiment. And I hope I'm not the only one who tries this, but I am definitely going through with it.

I'm going to make a self-designed Simcoe Imperial IPA recipe two different ways on my next brew day. (Probably the last week of this month)

The first method: my standard All-grain set-up. 10gal round mash tun with a false bottom, single infusion with mash-out, fly sparge, 90 minute boil with scheduled hop additions, quick cool with my wort chiller, etc etc etc.

The second method: I'll follow the OP's OP to the letter. BIAB, no temp control, no pH measurements, with hop tea and 25 min boil, no chill method, etc etc etc.

I'll bottle the "traditional" using Revvy's method from his famous Bottling post (Thanks a ton for that btw, totally REVVolutionized my bottling days), and I'll bottle the OP's way using a funnel and a sanitized measuring cup.

We'll see what happens. I'm fairly certain the OP's method will reign victorious, and his paradigm shifting views on brewing will forever ALTER my brew days.
Click to expand...

THIS is why I love HBT. Empirical evidence > anecdote > theory.
 
udt89 said:
I read this thread and love it.

I just wonder sometimes about brewing in the very early days and how beer tasted. Because, I could be wrong, but I bet they were very minimal in their approach.

Sometimes the art gets lost in the technology.

But then again i'm a fan of technology. So who knows.......
Click to expand...

I bet the old beers tasted like a**...a few members have brewed up historical beers before hops were used for bittering....bob is one of them who's highly educated in the matter
 
heferly said:
I bet the old beers tasted like a**...a few members have brewed up historical beers before hops were used for bittering....bob is one of them who's highly educated in the matter
Click to expand...

Ok so start when hops was being used......just saying, in regards to a lot of things, overthinking happens a lot
 
eeverwine said:
I skipped up here from page 10, and didn't bother reading back a bit to see why everyone got their posts deleted. I'm sure this thread has devolved in to some fresh internet hell.

I know this has been said already, maybe a hundred times, but the OP is a different type of homebrewer. Hell, we're all different types of homebrewers. He calls it "minimalist." I agree with most of you and tend to call it "stupid." But that's because I'm only interested in making the best beer I possibly can.

I'm proposing an experiment. And I hope I'm not the only one who tries this, but I am definitely going through with it.

I'm going to make a self-designed Simcoe Imperial IPA recipe two different ways on my next brew day. (Probably the last week of this month)

The first method: my standard All-grain set-up. 10gal round mash tun with a false bottom, single infusion with mash-out, fly sparge, 90 minute boil with scheduled hop additions, quick cool with my wort chiller, etc etc etc.

The second method: I'll follow the OP's OP to the letter. BIAB, no temp control, no pH measurements, with hop tea and 25 min boil, no chill method, etc etc etc.

I'll bottle the "traditional" using Revvy's method from his famous Bottling post (Thanks a ton for that btw, totally REVVolutionized my bottling days), and I'll bottle the OP's way using a funnel and a sanitized measuring cup.

We'll see what happens. I'm fairly certain the OP's method will reign victorious, and his paradigm shifting views on brewing will forever ALTER my brew days.
Click to expand...

I'm intrigued by your post and I look forward to seeing the results from your completely un-biased and highly scientific experiment.
 
eeverwine said:
The first method: my standard All-grain set-up. 10gal round mash tun with a false bottom, single infusion with mash-out, fly sparge, 90 minute boil with scheduled hop additions, quick cool with my wort chiller, etc etc etc.

The second method: I'll follow the OP's OP to the letter. BIAB, no temp control, no pH measurements, with hop tea and 25 min boil, no chill method, etc etc etc.
Click to expand...

lol...now this is what I'm talkin about. Godspeed. Can't wait to see results.
 
Yep, saw it. Someone actually pm'ed me the post before it was edited. I love when people attack Revvy. Poor bastard tries to help people, and gets dumped on for coming off as a d bag. People take this forum way too seriously sometimes
 

Similar threads

corncob
Bucket heater cut 30 minutes off my brew day
Replies
0
Views
220
corncob
corncob
refect
Measuring Kettle PH
Replies
25
Views
1K
Indian_villager
I
Gabriel Sayegh
How do folks calculate ABV after a step feed with volume change?
Replies
12
Views
480
MaxStout
MaxStout
S
Dense foam in mash and boil
Replies
13
Views
376
szap
S
Gunshowgreg
  • Poll
Do you consider electric/automated brewing equipment to be cheating?
2
Replies
69
Views
3K
JAReeves
JAReeves

Latest posts

Back
Top