Brewing mid ocean

[Sailingeric]

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover and Brew Beer".

 

[JohnSand]

I think you edited that.

 

[Owly055]

I haven't read the entire thread so please give me some leeway if this is a repeat.

Have you looked at Kveik yeast to brew without temperature control? Temperature range of 70° to 100°F.

I hadn't even heard of this........... It's unfortunate that it's a liquid yeast. I just ordered a packet to try. Cropping, and brewing regularly would make a yeast like this go a long way. It would be especially suited to my continuous brew system I'm just starting to use. I use a Fast Ferment, and brew small batches, just pouring them in with what's already there. The idea is to pull off a few gallons for secondary, and add a few gallons of wort, altering the malt and hops as the fancy takes me for a gradual transition. This along with no-boil / no-chill would make a pretty ideal process on a boat.

H.W.

 

[KeyWestBrewing]

I'm not sure I'd use a Belgian type yeast. I don't care for the strong clove flavors they throw when fermentation temp gets out of control. Of course pitching on top of the previous yeast cake so as to have a massive pitch would reduce the reproductive phase of the yeast enough that this probably would be minimized. On the other hand, I've let Belle Saison run wild, with fermentation temps exceeding 100F at times, and I like the flavors it throws under these circumstances.
It's been nearly 50 years since I've brewed an extract brew!! For me extract brewing takes the joy out of brewing. It also requires boiling. I'm currently about to make another foray into no boil / no chill, which is ideal for brewing aboard. It means that you can sterilize your wort in the pressure cooker in batches at about 170F for short periods of time, saving fuel, and increasing safety. A pint or so could be boiled with hops for a brief period of time, as in my most recent brew where I put all my hops in at 7 minutes (IBU about 48).

I plan to do a series of small brews next summer when temps are in the 90's indoors during the day, without any fermentation temp control using various yeasts and the same recipe. I already know that -05 doesn't handle high temps without leaving unpleasant flavors, and that Belle Saison does. Dry yeasts are the only options worth considering for a sea voyage, and that represents a fairly small selection.

H.W.

Weihenstephaner yeast is a German yeast for wheat beers. Great for top cropping. I tend to get more bubblegum and banana at higher temps but there is still a touch of clove. I was just throwing it out there because it handles the heat pretty well and has a lot of character.
On the extract front I get that it kills a lot of the fun. But it also makes "brewing" as simple as using a battery powered tea kettle to heat up a bit water to dissolve the DME in, then using regular temp water to top up the fermenter while simultaneously chilling the wort. You sound like you've got things figured out though.

 

[Owly055]

Weihenstephaner yeast is a German yeast for wheat beers. Great for top cropping. I tend to get more bubblegum and banana at higher temps but there is still a touch of clove. I was just throwing it out there because it handles the heat pretty well and has a lot of character.
On the extract front I get that it kills a lot of the fun. But it also makes "brewing" as simple as using a battery powered tea kettle to heat up a bit water to dissolve the DME in, then using regular temp water to top up the fermenter while simultaneously chilling the wort. You sound like you've got things figured out though.

I wouldn't say I've got things "figured out", but I'm pretty happy with the way things are progressing on my no boil / no chill project, as well as continuous brew. But I'm early in both projects. This summer, I plan to build a fabric sleeve for my Fast Ferment and experiment with evaporative cooling. I don't run air conditioning and indoor temps can reach as high as 100F during the day when I'm not home running fans. A perfect environment to develop an evaporative cooling system for a fermenter. I use the pump house for a fermentation chamber in the summer as the temp stays around 65, hitting 70 occasionally, and that's good enough for me. I refuse to go to the extreme of setting up a fermentation chamber. But I'm not trying to win contests and achieve an absolute result that's identical each time. As a result, I'm familiar with the full range of flavors the yeasts I use produce. Belle Saison for example ranges from tangy with minimal funk and some spiciness at low temps to extreme funk when allowed to run wild up into the 90's. US 05 produces some unpleasant flavors around 80, but remains fairly neutral to my taste at the lower temps. I rarely play with liquid yeasts, though I've played with some Belgians, and a few Bretts. I'd like to mess with Brett some more, in particular I plan to make a stout with Brett L in it........ I haven't worked out the recipe yet, but it will be fairly "conventional" except for the yeast and an infusion of cocoa nibs in bourbon. My last stout was a lager with sour cherry concentrate and cocoa using Nelson Sauvin........ All sort of "unconventional", but it was an excellent stout. My plan is to make a very lite stout, not in terms of alcohol, but in terms of body. Dark color, light body, very dry, and aged for at least 6 months.

H.W.

 

[b-boy]

This trip sounds awesome. I'd probably just skip the brewing and spend most of the time sailing around looking for beach bars. I'd get my beer there. There's nothing better than run down beach bar. (queue the Jimmy Buffet music.)

 

[Sailingeric]

This trip sounds awesome. I'd probably just skip the brewing and spend most of the time sailing around looking for beach bars. I'd get my beer there. There's nothing better than run down beach bar. (queue the Jimmy Buffet music.)

I have been to few in the Caribbean that the dark rum was so watered down it was almost clear

 

[Sailingeric]

This trip sounds awesome. I'd probably just skip the brewing and spend most of the time sailing around looking for beach bars. I'd get my beer there. There's nothing better than run down beach bar. (queue the Jimmy Buffet music.)

I have seen few in the Caribbean that the dark rum was so watered down it was almost clear

 

[Sailingeric]

This trip sounds awesome. I'd probably just skip the brewing and spend most of the time sailing around looking for beach bars. I'd get my beer there. There's nothing better than run down beach bar. (queue the Jimmy Buffet music.)

I have seen few in the Caribbean that the dark rum was so watered down it was almost clear

 

[Sailingeric]

This trip sounds awesome. I'd probably just skip the brewing and spend most of the time sailing around looking for beach bars. I'd get my beer there. There's nothing better than run down beach bar. (queue the Jimmy Buffet music.)

I have seen few in the Caribbean that the dark rum was so watered down it was almost clear

 

[Sailingeric]

This trip sounds awesome. I'd probably just skip the brewing and spend most of the time sailing around looking for beach bars. I'd get my beer there. There's nothing better than run down beach bar. (queue the Jimmy Buffet music.)

I have been to a few in the Caribbean that the dark was so watered down it was nearly clear

 

[Owly055]

This trip sounds awesome. I'd probably just skip the brewing and spend most of the time sailing around looking for beach bars. I'd get my beer there. There's nothing better than run down beach bar. (queue the Jimmy Buffet music.)

I'll be starting from the West Coast, and once you leave Central America for the islands.... or leave Hawaii, it's a pretty dry area except for a few of the more popular tourist destinations. In Polynesia beer in the grocery store can run as high as $5 a can for the equivalent of BMC, and it's easy to spend a pile of money on meals in a place like Papeete.
Fortunately I'm not inclined to frequent the popular destinations, and many of the places I would like to visit may have a single market with little inventory, and no restaurants or bars. The very last thing I want to do is hop from marina to marina, or busy anchorage to busy anchorage. A forest of masts does not draw me like a magnet, quite the opposite. The quiet bay with perhaps a couple of proas drawn up on the beach, and a shallow pass through the reef is more likely to draw me in. With 3' of draft one can go into places few sailboats can venture into.
One could run through one's resources rather rapidly doing what you describe... I'm not "made of money" unfortunately, but being on a limited budget can lead to adventures the high rollers never enjoy.

H.W.

 

[jfolks]

Brett and kveik yeast are great options - both make beautiful beers at high temps, and have storage advantages as well. Brett is best stored at room temp in between batches (according to Brett researcher Chad yakobson). Kveik was historically harvested and dried - either on wood, bones, or mixed with flour into a cake. I would focus on those two families of yeast

 

[AkTom]

I have to say... You owe me lots of money. I thought I was over the sailing bug. Now I need to go to therapy or start drinking lots more. If I could go, my dream boat would be a 42' catamaran. Anchored near you, drinking your beer.

 

[Singletrack]

The fermenter would be a "steep conical" like the Fast Ferement (just bought one yesterday), to encourage trump to settle fairly tightly.

I saw what you did there.

 

[milldoggy]

Did you see this brew they made for brew dogs? Single hull boat

https://www.google.com/amp/boston.e...m-koch-on-brew-dogs?client=ms-android-verizon

 

[Owly055]

I have to say... You owe me lots of money. I thought I was over the sailing bug. Now I need to go to therapy or start drinking lots more. If I could go, my dream boat would be a 42' catamaran. Anchored near you, drinking your beer.

I think we'll brew on YOUR boat. It's larger and more stable. Now about ingredients.... Kelp has been used in beer....... sugar kelp. Biologists have succeeded in genetically engineering yeasts that produce cellulosome, which is a suite of enzymes that break down cellulose and lignin into glucose, with the idea of feeding cellulosic biomass to yeast to produce alcohol. I'm personally 100% opposed to ethanol as a fuel. They need to focus on producing hydrocarbons rather than alcohols. I can see it now......Wyeast 33942 cellulosic saison style brewers yeast. Kelp is largely lignin and cellulose.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/2/799699/-

H.W.