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One of the most important things you can do to brew great beer is ensure you have a healthy, unstressed yeast population. From pitching rates, fermentation temperature, avoiding contamination by competitive organisms, all the way through bottle conditioning; an unhappy yeast culture will kill a batch faster than you can drop a 5 gallon glass carboy on a concrete patio. As long as your clean, you can do prepare your yeast for storage outside of a lab. The best way to ensure you have the happiest yeast possible is to completely control the cold-chain of your yeast supply. By that I mean yeast ranching, and doing it the right way to ensure you have a real, pitchable amount on brew day. Add in the ability to archive rare strains, as well...
If you missed Part one, it can be found here. Part two is on adding fruit, it can be found here. Blending So, last time we left off with different strategies for adding fruit to your sour meads. But what happens when your batch loses its complexity, becoming one dimensional? Maybe it's too sour, or just a bit too horsey. If you have several batches going, you'll be able to blend them together, which will add that complexity you're looking for back in. This is an easy, and fun process. Plus, you get to drink your sour meads! If that isn't fun, then what is? It's helpful to know what you are looking to do before you begin, but not necessary. If you have a batch that is out of this world sour, you can keep that batch to add into ones...
One of the beers that made me enter the hobby of brewing was a nice and fluffy Paulaner hefe-eeissbier. It was the first hefeweizen I tasted and I fell in love instantly with the style: phenolic, estery, wheaty, refreshing, bubbly… simply delicious. Since then I tried to brew some examples of the style, using the materials I had at hand; good wheat and barley malts, good German hops and some dried yeast (WB-06). It didn’t go well. The beer was crystal clear (an accidental kristallweizen?) and the classic banana and clove were very, very subtle. Not my favorite brew. Then I tried another yeast, Lallemand’s Munich. Same results. I live in Mexico City so liquid strains were hard to find. I was really frustrated because I was brewing nice...
If you've frequented any online homebrewing forums in the past few years, you've undoubtedly noticed the increasing popularity of Brew In A Bag, or BIAB. This method of one vessel, no sparge brewing leads to a much simpler brew day with less time spent on the mash and sparge as well as fewer things to clean. This can be especially good for brewers lacking the space for a traditional system, or brewers who want to shorten their day but still want the control of all grain brewing. With all of these advantages though, BIAB does have its drawbacks. Perhaps the most limiting factor of BIAB brewing is a decreased efficiency when brewing beers with a larger grain bill. Some also argue that they see a lower efficiency in general with BIAB...
Freezing Starter-Sized Samples of Yeast for Long-Term Storage Written by Brewitt with contributions from HBT members WHAT: The purpose of this article is to summarize what has been learned about freezing yeast by a number of contributors to the thread "Do you know how to make a yeast starter? Then why not farm yeast and freeze it?" (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/do-you-know-how-make-yeast-starter-then-why-not-farm-yeast-freeze-269488/) started by, and with extensive contributions from, BBL_Brewer. Other major contributors include Brewitt (me), Forkhead, katy bug, ScoRas, and IsItBeerYet. Many others have made contributions that can be read in their original form in the thread. Together, through reading and experimentation, we have...
If there is one thing homebrewing enthusiasts have learned during the decade-long explosion of craft beer we’ve experienced, it’s that the Reinheitsgebot, aka the historic German Beer Purity law, is a respectable piece of the past, but that beer can be so much more than water, malt, hops, and yeast. Indeed, there is a world of spices out there just begging to be used in your beer. You already know some of them (coriander probably most prominent among them), but others might have you saying, “In my beer? Are you sure?” We’re sure. Get ready to have some ideas thrown your way, both sane and insane, yet all tested in actual beers that real human beings have enjoyed. We’re going to focus on spices that are easy to find in your local grocery...
As a new homebrewer you will soon find that most of your time is spent cleaning and maintaining your equipment. In this article I will attempt to explain some ways you can keep your new home brewery clean and infection free, as well as the difference between cleaning and sanitizing. There are far too many products, and options to go over them all within this article, however I will try to give a brief overview of some of the most popular, as well as give tips for new brewers where possible. First some definitions as they relate to homebrewing: Cleaning - to make something free of dirt, marks, or mess, especially by washing, wiping, or brushing. Sanitize - to kill germs and bacteria either by use of chemicals or heat. Cleaning and...
Charles Caleb Colton once said "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". As brewers, that is an exceptionally true statement. There's a reason that expressions like RDWHAHB have become a staple of brewing. It can be intimidating to develop a recipe, let alone one that's going to have brewers the world over thinking "I can brew that!" In our newest series "Brew It!" we reach into our community to find the brewers and recipes on the the forefront of modern brewing. The recipes defining their styles, the brewers that brew them, how they came to brew that beer, and how they feel about the popularity of their recipe. For our first entry into the Brew It! series we're sitting down with Lorena "Yooper" Evans to discuss one of her many...
There is a strong trend these days toward hot side temperature control, whether merely to maintain stable mash temperatures or to permit automatic temperature ramping, as for step mashes or for mashout. The majority of systems seen use modern electronics combined with electric heating elements, and provide very fine control of temperatures and in most cases the use of proportional, integral, and derivative controls to prevent temperature overshoot. The good news for those who prefer a gas-fired system is that we have that functionality available to us as well, and it isn't terribly difficult or expensive to implement. Broadly speaking, we have three kinds of burner controls from which to choose. We can use our existing high pressure...
We’re in the depths of winter and folks might erroneously assume that fresh wine making produce was incontrovertibly thin on the ground. You’re invited to think again. So, with the wine cellar in likely need of substantive input, where does that leave us with several idle months ahead before the dandelions even begin to display their splendid heads? How about a canned pineapple wine? Fair enough. Maybe a couple of gallons of skeeter pee takes your fancy. Bottled lemon juice happens to be in the shops at this time of year. Then again, maybe not! The winter vegetables are a somewhat prosaic candidate for experimentation, yet these uninspired items can nonetheless produce a wholesome wine. For no good reason they appear to somehow...
The pioneering American homebrewers of the 1970s were on their own in many respects. “If you wanted to learn to brew you had to find someone who knew what they were doing or read a book,” wrote Stanley Kaminski in his article for homebrewsupply.com, The Complete History of Homebrew. The early homebrewers were intrepid do-it-yourself types with a common passion for beer. Homebrewing as we now know it in the United States began in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter signed into law HR1337, which allowed brewing at home nationwide. The World Wide Web didn’t become publicly available until August 1991. Homebrewing and computer science have been booming side by side ever since. Today you can hop online and watch video on how to brew. You can...
Here's an assortment of useful features in the HBT forum that don't get used enough. I'm a supporting (paying) member. Some of these things might not work if you are not a supporting member. Also, I have no idea if any of these apply to the mobile app; I only use the web site on my PC, with Google Chrome as my browser. Searches This forum's default search tab sucks (it's a limitation of the basic forum platform, and apparently unfixable). But if you know just where to click, your search results will improve dramatically. Click the little caret next to "Search" at the top. Type your search term(s) into the text box that appears. This search uses Google to search HBT. For another great search tool, try clicking the Advanced...
I have been brewing for some 5 years, 2 of those also as a head-brewer at a local brewery. I don’t have any official education supporting my brewing skills, I gained all of them myself, reading forums, books and articles like this, but most importantly, by experimenting. The information you get from other homebrewers can be useful, but as you probably know, you must take it with a pinch of salt. So many times you read posts from people who are claiming something, but then, after some time, you find out they were completely wrong. Sometimes the wrong information just robs you of your time, sometimes it ruins a brew or two, or slows down your progress. Some of these rumors are so widely spread that the counter-information stands no...
This is it! These are the top recipes here on HomeBrewTalk. Each recipe is a personal journey in brewing that ended up being an influence to a good portion of the brewing world. The top 5 recipes from the top 4 brewers have seen more than 2,000,000 views combined and have been brewed by countless brewers the world over. Lets try to count them all the same. If you've brewed one of these be sure to post in the comments with which you brewed! HomeBrewTalk is a community and these recipes could not have been popular if it weren't for you the brewers brewing them, so special to thanks to everyone who enjoys HomeBrewTalk, however they enjoy it. For recipes 100 - 75 please follow this link. For recipes 74 - 50 please follow this link. For...
Each of the parts in this series will stand alone, but you might be interested in reading the kickoff article: 4 Tips for Making Great Beer in 15 Minutes. One of the most wonderful things about brewing is that every step can be accomplished by a multitude of methods. The advantages of a particular method may make one preferred over others by some brewers, but this doesn't necessarily make one method universally better than the others. These 15 minute brew articles are a summary of what works for me with a focus on some techniques that you may not have heard of. My goal is that every brewer will find some useful information in these articles and, for those interested, the procedure will be laid out start to finish. The most common...
Let’s face it, most of us have jobs and other obligations that can sometimes make it hard to find the time to brew. So, brewing usually happens on the weekends. But what happens when life gets in the way, weekends fill up, but you still want to brew beer? Here’s a method to simplify the brewing process to allow the homebrewer to brew a batch of beer in one hour. This method was inspired by brewing Kombucha, which is a fermented tea. Props also need to go James Spencer of Basic Brewing Radio, who helped popularize the idea of the 15-minute boil. In order to successfully brew a batch of beer in one hour, a few traditional homebrewing “rules” have to be broken. It should go without saying that the process uses extract with steeped grains...
Selecting, using, and caring for pH meters seem like complicated concepts. This article will answer all the questions you were too afraid to ask, did not know whom to ask, or did not know needed to be asked. Selecting a pH Meter There are three styles of pH meters: pen or pocket style, portable handheld, and bench top. The important specifications include precision, calibration, and temperature correction, stated as ATC for automatic temperature correction. 

Precision: For brewing, it is good to have a precision of ±0.01 pH units or at the least ±0.02 pH units. At this level you will be able to detect even yeast autolysis. Remember, when you read an article that mentions pH units in tenths (e.g., mash should be between 5.3-5.7), you...
I've seen so many threads on here with issues with home brewers trying to commercial-level west-coast-style hop bombs I thought I would create this thread to post my tips and add others as people respond. NOTE: I do not claim to be the world's greatest brewer nor an expert on the techniques of hoppy beers, but out of my 100+ batches, almost 75%had hoppy intentions or were experiments to see the effects on hop flavor and profile. I am also extremely critical of my homebrews. I rate them compared to commercial examples no matter what the style, and especially for my IPA/IIPAs. I use untappd and would never score my beers higher than a commercial example and often compare them to the top examples when considering my ratings. Most of my...
What is a Pseudo Lager? For the purposes of this article it will refer to the creation of a lager-like beer with greater flexibility by using an ale yeast. Defining a Pseudo Lager beyond this can get tricky; technically ‘lager’ simply refers to an extended aging of the beer at cooler temperatures, which any beer of any style can be stored and be called a lager. To make matters more confusing, styles such as Kolsch and Altbiers are made with top-fermenting yeast (ale yeast) and then require a period of lagering. The Kolsch and Altbier styles are representative of the Pseudo Lager method that have fallen under the much larger label umbrella of ‘lager’. The easiest way to create a Pseudo Lager on the homebrew scale would be to follow this...
If there is one thing that can be said about homebrewers, it is that we are a DIY-type crowd. In fact, the very act of homebrewing is DIY, in that you are brewing it yourself, instead of buying in from the store. It is no wonder, therefore, that homebrewers tend to fabricate or re-purpose items to perform a variety of the tasks involved in homebrewing. Whether a homebuilt stir plate made from a computer fan and hard drive batteries (I’ve made two), re-purposing kegs as brew kettles, or converting freezers into fermentation chambers, there is no limit to the ingenuity of homebrewers to accomplish a task or simplify a process. Oftentimes the goal is also to save money. Take the DIY stirplate as an example. A basic stirplate usually runs...
If there is a topic that is not up for debate, it is that craft beer is a mighty beast, and there is nothing stopping this beast from barreling down most any other alcoholic beverage. What can be debated, however, is the legitimacy of craft soda and its uprising. Some see craft soda riding the waves of its craft brethren and setting itself up for a craft movement of its own. Why else would a company such as Pepsi create lines of craft soda such as Calebs or Stubborn Soda unless they truly saw some glimmer of a brighter future at a time when soft drink sales are plummeting? Is there any truth behind this movement, or is it only a pipe dream? Craft Soda Is Here To Stay It doesn't jump right out at you, but craft soda is everywhere...
Home brewers take great care when constructing a recipe for aroma, appearance, flavor, and mouthfeel. Almost always, water chemistry is an after-thought mainly because it is confusing. I hope to shed some light on how breweries basically have similar thoughts on addressing water chemistry. There are some fairly well established rules of thumb you can apply as well. Some Basic Concepts of Beer Water Profiles Water chemistry is an advanced topic. The explanations provided on water chemistry are greatly simplified so that the information on the water profiles of beers are in context. pH – The measurement of pH is easy to perform - See my article on Selecting, Care and Use of a pH meter. But wait…there is more to water profiles than just...
I remember the first time I drank a nitro beer. Through various forms of sorcery, the bartender had some how arranged for my beer to have bubbles falling down in my beer instead of rising to the top. I was completely enamored by the appearance alone. With great anticipation, I took my first sip of the smoothest flowing beer I’d ever drank. It was a Left Hand Milk Stout, and I was hooked. At the time, I completely misunderstood nitro beers, but I knew I loved them. That was enough to convince me to build my own kegerator with a nitro tap on it. This noble quest is not for the faint of heart however. I sought the perfect nitro pour. I wanted the cascading bubbles. I wanted the 1 inch whipped cream head of Bell’s Double Cream Stout to be...
I have been working on my brew rig for just about a year now and it is up and running with the bugs worked out. I now have a bit of time to go through and document what I did for the community's use. I have been a shameless lurker up to this point and am now coming out of the shadows. Kal asked me to put together a thread when I could so here it is.A little history: I have been home brewing for over 20 years and occasionally lend a hand at a local micro brew place in my neighborhood. I have moved from cook top extract setup to a garage propane 5 gallon setup, added full grain capabilities and now have the full blown electric setup in my basement. I love brewing and the camaraderie of brewing with a bunch of great guys who love brewing...
We all know those topics that pop up time and time again on any home brewing forum. One of those topics is under-attenuation. Why didn't my beer attenuate? someone asks, followed by a string of replies asking how much crystal malt was used, after which ensues the explanation that the addition of unfermentable crystal malt sugars is to blame. I want to investigate whether or not this reasoning is actually sound, and what the effects of using crystal malts are on the fermentability of the wort. As with any investigation, we don't know all the parameters and have to make assumptions. This is no exception, so let's start by taking it as fact that after the malting process, crystal malts contain a lot of unfermentable sugar. I've never seen...
Hello all! I have posted a few threads trying to discover the correct procedures for making a great wine using wine kits such as Winexpert, Eclipse, etc.. I have taken suggestions from many of you and combined them into a procedure that I thought was best. However, I have been doing it all wrong. Since the directions that come with the FastFerment are for beer, and the directions that come with wine kits are for carboys, I decided to share my knowledge for those interested in using the FastFerment for wine-making. Recently, I made contact with the inventor of the original V-Vessel, now known as the FastFerment. His name is Mr. John Piazza of Ontario Canada. He explained how he uses the product with great success, running 450 of them at...
We find ourselves in a golden era of beer. There are more breweries open in the United States than ever before, with more and more opening every day. Countless styles and amazing quality are at our fingertips, and tips of our tongues, in nearly every city in the country. As homebrewers, this massive quantity of great beer can be inspiring, urging us to follow their lead, try new styles, and better our craft. If I drink a great beer, my first reaction is: How can I brew this? But this immense quality can also be very intimidating. After a failed batch or two (or three), we can easily lose our will to continue. As one friend of mine put it: “With so much great beer, why on earth would I bother trying to make my own?” While it takes...
If you love barrel aged beer like I do, you have probably thought about brewing a big beer and adding those wonderful barrel flavors to your beer. Aging your beer on wood will add some complexity to your beer and introduce some great new flavors. Aging in a barrel is the most recognized way to get these flavors. Large wood barrels that were used in the distilling industry are very popular for re-use and aging beer. If you are member of a homebrew club or have a big brew capacity, you could get one of these barrels and age a beer in it, just like the pros. I found they are now available in all sizes from 5-80 gallons. But, it’s still an investment and they have a limited lifetime. The more times they are used, the less flavor you will...
Generally it’s nice to brew with predictable ingredients in controlled conditions. You purchase your ingredients, follow your process, pitch your yeast, and leave your beer in a temperature stable environment. After some time the yeast consumes all the sugars and leaves behind its own flavor characters and some alcohol. I decided that I’d carry out a little experiment to mix the process up a little. I wanted to catch some wild yeast. Yeast grows on a number of plants and also drifts through the air. In the old days people fermented things without even knowing what was causing it. Later brewer’s yeast was isolated and then carefully selected and bred to the different strains we use today. There is however no reason we cannot make use of...
Like most beers with an ingredient other than hops, malt, water or yeast, coconut beers stir up a lot of emotion in the beer enthusiast’s talking circles. Coconut may have more of a reason for this than most other flavor enhancers and that’s because the oils in coconut can quickly ruin any head retention you’ve fought so hard to build into your beer. But, if done well, you can find a balance between stable foam on your brew and great coconut flavor. The Different Ways To Get Coconut Into Your Beer Coconut has seen a rise in popularity over the past few years and it seems there is no end to how many ways you can find it in stores. However, the three most common forms of coconut you’ve probably seen around that are good for adding flavor...
I’ve spent a lot of time researching recipes for homebrewing, and everybody claims to have the best recipe that you need to try for yourself. I find this optimism refreshing since online reviews and comments are usually negative, but I also think homebrewers tend to be too optimistic about their creations simply because they made it. He who chops his own firewood gets twice the warmth right? A lot of times I’m looking for how much of a specific ingredient to use and it’s fun to see how different everybody’s threshold is for each ingredient. I know I’ve brewed beers that feature strawberries, rye, chocolate, honey, brown sugar, vanilla, or just an excessive amount of hops, and many times I don’t get enough out of that featured...
I remember when I first heard about jockey boxes thinking that I wanted one, but then when I actually saw one I thought, "wait, what the hell is that?". What I had pictured in my head was very different from what I was seeing, and what I was seeing was not going to work for me so I decided to build what I thought a jockey box was in the first place. Let me point out that although I have never seen one built like this, I am not saying that I am some kind of innovator here. I am pretty sure that as people read this that a great number of you are going to say, "Oh yeah, I've got one of those in the garage, built it in 1963". I am just documenting this for others that may not have considered such a build. The upside to my version is...
I remember when I first heard about jockey boxes thinking that I wanted one, but then when I actually saw one I thought, "wait, what the hell is that?". What I had pictured in my head was very different from what I was seeing, and what I was seeing was not going to work for me so I decided to build what I thought a jockey box was in the first place. Let me point out that although I have never seen one built like this, I am not saying that I am some kind of innovator here. I am pretty sure that as people read this that a great number of you are going to say, "Oh yeah, I've got one of those in the garage, built it in 1963". I am just documenting this for others that may not have considered such a build. The upside to my version is...
For most homebrewers, the process begins and ends in their brewing area, and whatever goes into their beer comes from their friendly neighborhood homebrew supply shop or their favorite online retailer. While there is nothing wrong with that-- it’s a system that serves countless happy homebrewers every year -– it’s possible (and impossibly fun) to expand your brewing hobby to an unexpected place: your garden. You don’t have to be a skilled gardener to do it either, nor do you need a lot of space. All you need is the desire to be even more hands-on and creative with the things that go into your beer. If you want to get started, here are some ideas on things you can grow at home for use in your homebrew, as well as how to use them and the...
Mash recirculation is a popular technique. Most of the new integrated single-vessel packages (Grainfather, etc.) include the feature. A growing number of home brewers today incorporate mash recirculation in their BIAB or multiple vessel rigs, frequently adding temperature control through either a RIMS (Recirculating Infusion Mash System) or a HERMS (Heat Exchange Recirculating Mash System). The advantages of recirculating the mash are frequently discussed. One obvious result is a very clear wort. However, the importance of wort clarity is generally considered minimal. The aspect of recirculation that is most attractive is that it can provide a consistent mash temperature, with little temperature variation from region to region within...
It's about time I share with you all the insane brewing schedule I put myself through over the last 9 months. I got married earlier this month (yay!), and from the moment I proposed to my then fiance I knew I was going to brew all the beer for our wedding, but how much? What kinds? How much time did I need to allot? To say you're going to brew everything for your wedding is one thing; to actually pull it off is a whole other monster. Because I'm an engineer I started by developing a spreadsheet, and because I love my family and friends, I am never going to let them see it. We entered the names of likely guests and then estimated how much beer, wine, and liquor each of them would consume over the day. Apparently, we consider most of our...
It's about time I share with you all the insane brewing schedule I put myself through over the last 9 months. I got married earlier this month (yay!), and from the moment I proposed to my then fiance I knew I was going to brew all the beer for our wedding, but how much? What kinds? How much time did I need to allot? To say you're going to brew everything for your wedding is one thing; to actually pull it off is a whole other monster. Because I'm an engineer I started by developing a spreadsheet, and because I love my family and friends, I am never going to let them see it. We entered the names of likely guests and then estimated how much beer, wine, and liquor each of them would consume over the day. Apparently, we consider most of our...
Five liter kegs have been used for a long time. You can get them empty for you to fill with your homebrewed beer, cider, or soda. Or, you can buy them filled with beer and reuse the container after you drink the beer. They hold 1.3 gallons of beer, or 169 ounces. That’s equal to 10 pints or 14 twelve ounce bottles. They have gone up and down in popularity. There are several manufacturers that made countertop dispensers for these kegs that were very popular a few years ago and had a fair amount of breweries filling them for the dispensers. That number has gone down quite a bit now. But now, some of the new mini/nano brewing systems are bringing them back for use in their systems. I bottle, keg, and use mini-kegs. I use what works best...
You may have noticed by now, that beer is over 90% water, so saying that brewing water is important is an understatement of galactic proportions. There are many books on the subject, but they are so in-depth usually that most home brewers either lose interest or mental capacity in the attempt. So, I searched and searched and saw that there is a site or two that does discuss generalized water profiles, but not a “catch all” type of formula. There is a good reason for this… All pro-brewers will tell you that each recipe should have its own water profile, each construction of malt, hops and yeast needs its profile fine-tuned to be perfect. This is seriously hard to get your head around in the beginning, I do understand, but ,similarly, you...
Thanks for checking out my brew rig. Please feel free to help out with any suggestions. Here is my process: I fill my BK with the total volume I calculated I will use. I have an icemaker line from my OR tanks with a quick connect and heat the water as the BK is filling. Once I have adjusted the PH and added water treatments and hit my target temp I pump my strike water to the MLT. I mash in at my target temp and then bring it back up to the target with the HERMS coil. One pump circulates the wort through the built-in coil in BK and the other whirlpools the BK. The MLT holds two degrees under the BK temp. On mash out I pump the sparge water through the coil to the HLT and drain the coil to the HLT. I pump from the HLT to an auto-sparge...
Extract brewing can be achieved in a smaller kettle, and only steeping grains for color and flavor are needed (in addition to your malt extract). I’ve been brewing now for what I consider some time--around 2 years--but I’ve done many batches. I believe that’s where the experience comes and not from the length of time. There’s one major thing that always hits me when I question if I would’ve done things differently. That is, I wish that someone would’ve explained to me the differences between all-grain BIAB, and extract. First off, there’s only a small time difference as far as a brew day goes. That is the number one reason I like BIAB. Second is that the beer tastes much better to my palate. Now, for someone who may be dabbling in...
My dad taught me that making mistakes comes with the opportunity for an education; hence the phrase, "learn from your mistakes." However, I prefer to learn from someone else's mistakes. Some of the most fun you can have in this short life is watching someone get himself in a pickle, and then try to get out of it. In fact, that's often the funniest part. A few years ago, I was having an addition to my house built. The construction manager, Owen, and I stood on the deck discussing the plans. I was having trouble listening, though; one of his workers was trying to get a company pickup truck turned around in a small space right at the edge of a cliff. The other workers gave him instructions, holding their fingers a couple of inches apart to...
When I started the hobby and made some research about recipes, equipment and raw materials, I found that almost everything was in some kind of codified volume : 5 gallons. The recipes I found were for 5 gallons of beer with their respective amount of grains, hop additions and yeast. The equipment was mysteriously listed for 5 gallons, like the carboys, the coolers for the mashing and the fermenters. I thought it was a holy number and always followed the instructions: everything for 5 gallons. Then the time came where I could start buying new equipment and found a boil kettle that was 9 gallons. I thought it was weird, because everything I had was 5 gallons and those 4 extra gals were for more free space and to avoid boil overs (the...
It wasn’t that long ago that if you had offered homebrewers and craft beer drinkers a low-impact, low-alcohol beer with approachable flavor, they would have scoffed. Real beer was meant to be big, bold, adventurous, and preferably have a sizable ABV (Alcohol by Volume). Oh, how times have changed. These days, beer lovers recognize that there is a welcome place at the table for flavorful, low-impact beers that can be enjoyed over a long session without worries about going overboard. Brews like this actually have a long and rich history, with the very concept of “session ales” or “session beers” springing from the British pub scene. They were popularized in the U.S. craft scene thanks in no small part to Founder’s All-Day IPA, among...
The brew rig sits on a frame designed so that all my vessels are pretty much at the same level. I have camlocks on all my vessels connecting to the single pump. Using a series of 2-way and 3-way valves have created a system that does not require me to switch hoses between vessels in order to move the wort. There is even a convenient outlet for filling the fermenter at the end of the brew session. I plumbed in a water filter for filling the HLT that will hook up to the garden hose. This will eventually be able to be switched to the plate chiller. All in all, this rig makes brew day a lot less about moving equipment and wort around and more about brewing. Boiling Equipment: Keggle w/ Bayou burner Wort Chillers: Plate chiller w/ immersion...

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