burnthesheep
Member
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2015
- Messages
- 17
- Reaction score
- 4
I'm from central NC and live within a mile of three local breweries and within 20 minutes of about a dozen.
I got into this being an engineer that likes to garden and tinker. I can program and do electrical design. I can weld, a little bit, more like hot glue gun with a mig.
My favorites from the store are:
-local White Street Kolsch
-Ayinger Celebrator
-Estrella
Favorite budget/big corp beer:
-Yeungling
The goal at some point is to scale up after learning enough to be able to only buy an occasional beer from a store and be self sufficient.
I started off slow last fall. I bought some buckets and sanitary lids from Lowes and some fittings and tubing and made a bucket fermenter for about $15. I use a mason jar with water for the airlock. I like this idea better than a carboy for some reason. Glass is transparent, your only available opening would be in the top, etc....... I'll replace the plastic buckets someday with stainless.
I started off as simple as possible and made hard cider. The first batch was drinkable, barely. I was not patient enough to let it finish and settle. Lesson learned. The second batch was drinkable enough that the wife even drank some of it, and she's really picky. No carbonation either time, it was still.
For the second batch I bought swing top bottles.
My third batch goes into a keezer tonight. I found a "Kolsch" recipe online for about 5 gallons and gave it a shot. I put it in quotes because I live in NC, therefore it's just a style since I don't live in Koln. The third batch smelled awesome while cooking on the stove. It appears a little darker than I thought it would going into the fermenter. Almost more like an Altbier or something. I used paint strainers for the grains in the pot. Had very strong airlock activity for about a week. It's tapered off but still going. It's now time to go into the keezer at 50 F or so for a while.
For the fourth batch I'm going to buy a large electric burner plate and use the same controller for the keezer for that. Or repurpose my Arduino setup. I have some thermocouples and signal conditioners hooked up to a program that has a webpage. The webpage allows temp setpoint modification and some digital input/output interaction and shows the current thermocouple readings. The arduino would just require a larger relay to interact with the burner plate.
I really want the the next batch to be much more automated in the temp control department while being heated. I had to babysit the Kolsch for about 3 hours to follow the recipe properly. This was a little adventurous for a beginner.
I'm thinking about sacrificing one of the bottle tops to drill/tap a pressure gauge on one of them. I heard stories of the bottle bombs and can prevent this with quality glass and the right priming sugar, but this would give me a little advanced warning.
No pictures yet, plastic buckets aren't exciting. I'll post results once this batch is done.
I got into this being an engineer that likes to garden and tinker. I can program and do electrical design. I can weld, a little bit, more like hot glue gun with a mig.
My favorites from the store are:
-local White Street Kolsch
-Ayinger Celebrator
-Estrella
Favorite budget/big corp beer:
-Yeungling
The goal at some point is to scale up after learning enough to be able to only buy an occasional beer from a store and be self sufficient.
I started off slow last fall. I bought some buckets and sanitary lids from Lowes and some fittings and tubing and made a bucket fermenter for about $15. I use a mason jar with water for the airlock. I like this idea better than a carboy for some reason. Glass is transparent, your only available opening would be in the top, etc....... I'll replace the plastic buckets someday with stainless.
I started off as simple as possible and made hard cider. The first batch was drinkable, barely. I was not patient enough to let it finish and settle. Lesson learned. The second batch was drinkable enough that the wife even drank some of it, and she's really picky. No carbonation either time, it was still.
For the second batch I bought swing top bottles.
My third batch goes into a keezer tonight. I found a "Kolsch" recipe online for about 5 gallons and gave it a shot. I put it in quotes because I live in NC, therefore it's just a style since I don't live in Koln. The third batch smelled awesome while cooking on the stove. It appears a little darker than I thought it would going into the fermenter. Almost more like an Altbier or something. I used paint strainers for the grains in the pot. Had very strong airlock activity for about a week. It's tapered off but still going. It's now time to go into the keezer at 50 F or so for a while.
For the fourth batch I'm going to buy a large electric burner plate and use the same controller for the keezer for that. Or repurpose my Arduino setup. I have some thermocouples and signal conditioners hooked up to a program that has a webpage. The webpage allows temp setpoint modification and some digital input/output interaction and shows the current thermocouple readings. The arduino would just require a larger relay to interact with the burner plate.
I really want the the next batch to be much more automated in the temp control department while being heated. I had to babysit the Kolsch for about 3 hours to follow the recipe properly. This was a little adventurous for a beginner.
I'm thinking about sacrificing one of the bottle tops to drill/tap a pressure gauge on one of them. I heard stories of the bottle bombs and can prevent this with quality glass and the right priming sugar, but this would give me a little advanced warning.
No pictures yet, plastic buckets aren't exciting. I'll post results once this batch is done.
