Swimming in beer

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.
A

Awnry Abe

Member
Joined
Feb 3, 2022
Messages
11
Reaction score
20
I am a novice home brewer. I started at the beginning of the pandemic when a friend of mine from Pennsylvania told me the state shut down his booze supply. In a panic, I ran into the garage to count days of supply on hand from the grocery store. My wife was already into wine making, so she encouraged me to give brewing a shot. I'm up to batch 42. I just switched to all grain. I think my addiction is in the perfection of the process--not in the brewing--or even the consumption. I sit around and daydream of dumb things like ways to make clean up easier. Of the 42 batches, only 1 was undrinkable. Several others have something off, some I just don't enjoy, and some are exceptional. I can't pull the trigger and just unload the ones that I skip past when filling the fridge. Is anyone else in the same boat? Where the fun comes from making a better beer, but getting enough at-bats to do so results in too much beer? Do you dump? I'm thinking of maybe distilling them to have some alcohol for medicinal purposes.
 
Absolutely. I like drinking, but I like brewing more. And with the pandemic, friend gatherings have been rare, so I have fewer opportunities to empty my kegs. Since I keg, I can't just leave beers in my fridge indefinitely. I generally need to empty a keg before I can make a new one. So I dump beer quite often.

I'm thinking of brewing smaller batches--maybe 3 gallons--so I can brew more frequently.
 
Last edited:
42 5-gallon batches in 2 years! Holy Mo!
You definitely belong here on HBT, welcome to the club! ;)

It takes about as much work and time to brew 5-10 gallons as it takes 2-3 gallons. That's why 5 gallons seems such a good medium ground for the time vs. beer tradeoff.
On the flipside, most beer doesn't improve after 6-12 months, many can reach their optimum in much shorter time. So stockpiling is not to your advantage. If you brew more than you consume, share with friends and family, have safe parties, and beer that's just not good enough will be left. Yup, you can distill that, it cures most ailments.

I'd say look into brewing smaller batches. 2-3 gallons or whatever works for you. The more often you brew, the better you get at it. Keep reading up, and improving your processes.

As to improving quality of beer:
  1. Good, proven recipes
  2. Good, fresh ingredients
  3. Learn about water chemistry
  4. Proper size, healthy yeast pitches
  5. Oxygenation/aeration at pitching time
  6. Control fermentation temps
  7. Avoid oxidation at all stages
I probably forgot a few...
 
IslandLizard said:
Due to the extra alcohol or from distilling hopped beer? Have you distilled hopped beer?
Click to expand...


distilling hopped beer....it concentrates the hops flavor, but in a unique mellower tone....but really strong flavor, no sharp bite....it's been a really long time since i did it though.. that's the way i remember it.....


edit: imagine cooked hops added back to raw hops in beer? if that makes any sense?

edit 2: you know like twice baked, baked potatoes? 🤣 it was good, and strong! :mug:
 
Hey @Awnry Abe. Welcome to the forum and the hobby! With 42 batches under your belt, you're likely past the novice stage, but the leap to expert can take a lot longer. I have over 200 batches and 15+ years and still consider myself an intermediate brewer. You'll run into many true experts in this forum that are willing to share their experiences, but I encourage you to stay curious and continue your own experiments. Many great ideas came from novice and intermediate brewers like yourself, so share your processes and successes as well as your failures. We are a continuous learning community.

In my opinion the biggest leap for me was switching from extract kits to all grain. The kits all had the same underlying taste profile to me. They were drinkable for sure, but moving to all grain really allowed much greater profiling of beers I enjoyed. Secondly is moving to kegging. Some may disagree, but the additional sugar you add to prime bottles also changed the taste. To test that, simply prime some bottles with corn sugar, prime others with table sugar, and others with honey or sugar in the raw. End result will likely taste different. Kegging eliminated one less variable. I still bottle a few for family and friends if there is beer in the fermenter after the keg is filled, but I enjoy opening a tap instead of a cap. I would also strongly suggest keeping good notes of your brew day and beyond. @IslandLizard provided a great list to start with. Everything from recipe, to process, to conditions, to events leading to cracking open a bottle or flowing a tap. While there is still a lot of dogma out there, you will often find little things can make a big difference in the final product. Good notes will help in your quest for the perfect beer. Lastly, don't be afraid to dump (or repurpose) if what's in the bottle or keg is not enjoyable to you or others. If you don't dump, you'll wind up with way too many bottles or way too many kegs. Ask me how I know. Life is too short to drink crappy beer.

I leave you with a fitting homebrewers quote, "Give a man a beer and he'll waste an afternoon. Teach a man how to brew and he'll waste a lifetime.". Of course the same is true for women brewers too but I did not want to mess up the quote. :)

~HopSing.
 
I know exactly what you mean. My situation is virtually the same. My opinion is that i am not going to drink a beer just because i made it. And i am not going to give it away if i think there is something off with it either. So if it's bad, it gets dumped and i try again.

I have had a recipe problem for a while now. I have been using acidulated malt for ph correction. All the numbers were right and the measurements in line, but the beers were all tart. Even after months of aging. I dumped them unceremoniously. I started using lactic acid and now my beers are great.

Life is too short to drink bad beer.

Also, i have a e-BIAB machine that i make 5g batches with, but also a cooler mash tun, pot and induction cooker on which i make 2.5g batches, so i can experiment.
 
Last edited:
Bill Tong said:
I know exactly what you mean. My situation is virtually the same. My opinion is that i am not going to drink a beer just because i made it. And i am not going to give it away if i think there is something off with it either. So if it's bad, it gets dumped and i try again.

I have had a recipe problem for a while now. I have been using acidulated malt for ph correction. All the numbers were right and the measurements in line, but the beers were all tart. Even after months of aging. I dumped them unceremoniously. I started using lactic acid and now my beers are great.

Life is too short to drink bad beer.

Also, i have a e-BIAB machine that i make 5g batches with, but also a cooler mash tun, pot and induction cooker on which i make 2.5g batches, so i can experiment.
Click to expand...
Same for me. Bad beer goes down the drain, lucky day because this gets the next brew day even closer. :)
 
HopSing said:
Glad to know I'm doing my part by passing it through my kidney's first. :p

~HopSing.
Click to expand...
One of my professors (subject wastewater treatment) said to us students at that time that "we have to fulfill our duties by treating beer through the human body to lower the impact it has on the wastewaterplant." That one was my favourite professor, no kidding :D


... I even wrote my diploma thesis (oldschool German Master Thesis) under his guidance.
 
Miraculix said:
One of my professors (subject wastewater treatment) said to us students at that time that "we have to fulfill our duties by treating beer through the human body to lower the impact it has on the wastewaterplant." That one was my favourite professor, no kidding :D
Click to expand...


so that guy that urinated into his fermenter as sanitizer was onto something? 🤣
 
Same problem. I brew 2.5, 1, and sometimes even 0.25-gallon batches, but I brew 2-3 times a week. It comes out to about 3 gallons a week, which is more than my liver and waistline can handle. I ship some to friends, enter some in competitions, bring some to the homebrew club, dump some, and let others stay on tap probably too long. I knew I had a problem when I built the second keezer so I could have more than 9 taps going at a time.
 
Awnry Abe - Welcome to the party! As you can see the folks here at HBT are very helpful with lots of good advice. You have an impressive amount of beer brewed already, hopefully you learned something from each of your batches even if they didn't turn out that great. We all have had less than stellar results in our brewing hobby. Here's a couple bits to add to what others have contributed. Sanitation is key throughout your brew day and packaging. Any little speck of crap will ruin any size batch of beer. I had two ten gallon batches that were just horrible and I traced it down to some crud inside of an elbow. Even after circulating hot PBW through that fitting it still had a small chunk hiding that I finally found when I took everything apart. One thing you could try with a not so good batch is blending with a good batch. You can't take a really bad batch and magically turn it into a good batch though. I brewed a brown ale that lacked the flavor I had hoped. I saved it, kegged in the fridge, then blended it with another more flavorful batch. In the end I had double the amount, but I saved that thin one from the septic tank. Smaller batches would be a good route until you get everything ironed out. Good Luck!
 
0411e7a92dc9c81df3796dbd78f4d240.png
 
There’s nothing wrong with smaller batches. Everybody has to figure out what’s the right amount for them. I figured out long ago that brewing 5 gallons at a shot was too much beer for me. I’m really the only one in my house who drinks it. My wife will drink an occasional stout but she’s trying to do Keto so beer and carbs are out for her. We rarely had people over or had parties before all this. I guess we’re not party people.

I have been doing 3 gallon batches for more than 15 years. Now I have an Anvil Foundry 6.5 which has an 8 lb grain capacity. Great for session beers up to average strength maybe into mid 1.050s beers. I have to supplement with extract or break out my cooler mash tun if I want to do bigger beers. 3 gallons works out to right about 30 bottles, which is a case plus a 6 pack at a time.

I’m an older guy and I like the smaller batch size. Everything is lighter and easier to handle.
And I can have more variety. I have a 2 tap kegerator and some 3 and 5 gallon kegs. Plus I have up to 10 cases of bottles at any point. I brewed 20 batches for 2020, 21 batches for 2021. I am on #5 for 2022.

Yes, I also like the reading and improvement part. When I get a bad batch I will just dump it. We all get them from time to time. You have to tell yourself to either drink it or dump it. If it’s not enjoyable, why drink it? Recover the bottles and move on and brew something better.

There is a whole thread for small batch brewers.

5 gallons somehow became the defacto standard after homebrewing was legalized in the 70’s. That probably came about because some group of people got together when homebrewing here was in its infancy and decided that was a reasonable goal or output worthy of the time and effort.

I’m happy now with 3 gallons. I’m not sure I could ever bring myself to 1 gallon batches. Maybe when I get older and I can’t handle this process anymore I would look into it.

128 oz is about (10) 12 oz bottles. I’ve never done it but wonder if I would even get 10 after losses to waste and such. I don’t know what I’d use for equipment, probably would have to be brew in a bag. I’ve tried that at the 3 gallon level and I wasn’t impressed. I can’t imagine a 1 gallon mash tun. The boil would be quicker with such a smaller batch but again more losses to waste and leftover hop matter, etc. A package of yeast would be overkill and at that level yeast becomes a large percentage of cost for each batch, especially if you want to use liquid yeast. I feel good when I can get at least 2 or 3 of my batches out of one yeast. I have a 1056 going right now I’m going to make 6 cases plus 6 six packs out of. Free yeast is the best yeast. Then there’s a whole thing with fermenter sizes. I haven’t read up on it or done it so this is just thought, not 1 gallon experience. I know there are more people doing it these days though.
 
Last edited:
bwible said:
5 gallons somehow became the defacto standard after homebrewing was legalized in the 70’s. That probably came about because some group of people got together when homebrewing here was in its infancy and decided that was a reasonable goal or output worthy of the time and effort.
Click to expand...


5 gallons is how much a soda syrup keg held?
 
Bill Tong said:
I have had a recipe problem for a while now. I have been using acidulated malt for ph correction. All the numbers were right and the measurements in line, but the beers were all tart. Even after months of aging. I dumped them unceremoniously. I started using lactic acid and now my beers are great.
Click to expand...

I’ve been using acid malt in my beers for going on 2 years now, 40+ batches, and I never had a tart or sourness problem. I only use it in the beers where it is need to bring down the ph, which will usually be light colored beers with no dark or roasted malts or only a very small percentage of those. If you’re doing water salts adjustments, enter all those first because they can affect the mash ph. Gypsum, Calcium Chloride and Epsom will lower mash ph. Though not a whole lot. Depends on how much you’re using. If you’re starting with RO or all distilled water and using alot it could make a difference. Also everything says to keep acid malt under 3% of the total grist.

I’m fairly new to water chemistry and ph adjustments so thats about as helpful as I can be.
 
Call me weird, but I like my occasional 1/4-gallon batches. Bottling is practically done before it starts: everything goes in a single 1-L EZ-cap bottle. I can try off-the-wall recipes (for example, smoked braggot) or weird hops without getting stuck with more than the one bottle. Boil-off is so significant, though, that scaling up recipes again can be tricky.
 
UK batches and recipes tend to be 23 litres or about 6 of your gallons. I think it was a fermenter size thing and it was 40 pint bottles in a batch which was a nice round number.
 
AlexKay said:
Call me weird, but I like my occasional 1/4-gallon batches. Bottling is practically done before it starts: everything goes in a single 1-L EZ-cap bottle. I can try off-the-wall recipes (for example, smoked braggot) or weird hops without getting stuck with more than the one bottle. Boil-off is so significant, though, that scaling up recipes again can be tricky.
Click to expand...
There was an article published in Brewing Techniques magazine years and years ago, this is going back to the 90s. It was a sort of tongue in cheek article about brewing one pint at a time at work using the office coffee maker for hot water and sparging, etc. I thought it was funny. I have the magazine but my scanner isn’t working and I’m not sure if the rules would allow uploading something like that even though the magazine has been out of business for awhile.
 
I did 5 12-ounce batches once when I was taste-testing Pilsner malts from different maltsters. SMaSH lagers, very boring, happy to not have more than a glass to drink. I hadn’t considered the coffeemaker approach … I do have a thermostatted coffeemaker, though I don’t know that it’ll do mash temps. Hm.
 
DuncB said:
Somewhere I read about brewing a batch of beer using the facilities in a hotel room during a managed isolation. It was an extract and steeping recipe with the beer fermented under pressure in a large PET bottle.
Click to expand...


where there's a will, there's a way! :mug:
 
@bracconiere
Over here some people who catch covid are moved into managed isolation for a couple of weeks. It would be a bit of a rush getting all the kit together but I'd give it a go all grain, robobrew, kveik, hops and a keg to ferment and serve in. Would be a right laugh. Might be the most watched ferment in history.
 
DuncB said:
@bracconiere
Over here some people who catch covid are moved into managed isolation for a couple of weeks. It would be a bit of a rush getting all the kit together but I'd give it a go all grain, robobrew, kveik, hops and a keg to ferment and serve in. Would be a right laugh. Might be the most watched ferment in history.
Click to expand...


damn, i'm an alchie...i'd keep a pack of 24 hour turbo in the cupboard....just in case! figure i wouldn't be showering, so as far as swimming in beer...you know what the tub would be used for! 🤣
 
That was the main reason I started scaling down batch sizes early on. A five gallon batch took forever to drink and even if it turned out well I wanted to brew so much more often. I think it's good to brew a lot early on and have fun exploring and experimenting but inevitably you'll end up with too much beer no matter how small the batch. Distilling will help reduce liquid volume but it's the same alcohol so unless you only care about calories you haven't solved any problems--just given yourself a secondary hobby to brewing.

I've slowed way down on brewing for years to the point that I'm only brewing a handful of times per year which makes me sad but I still have homebrew going back to 2011 and commercial beer slightly older than that. I'm sitting on about forty cases of beer in my house despite slowing both brewing and buying. I don't have a good answer to this problem.
 

Similar threads

JAReeves
Acid Blend in Beer
Replies
4
Views
592
Agent
Agent
W
First Time Beer Brewer - is this mold?
Replies
6
Views
499
hotbeer
hotbeer
Clint Yeastwood
Can you Make a Really Good Lager with Corn?
Replies
15
Views
2K
DuncB
D
E
Corny Keg Cleanup
Replies
7
Views
714
moreb33rplz
M
TheGC
Soy Sauce beer yeast as Koji?
Replies
6
Views
431
passedpawn
passedpawn
Brewer's Friend 300

Latest posts

Back
Top