a few questions

[GatorWayne]

Some random questions I have as I learn more about our very fun and intriguing hobby.

1. After you chill the wort, do you aerate before or after adding the yeast?

2. How often do you brew? I’m excited to brew 3-4 more 5 gallon batches of some beers I love before I move on to new varieties and I have no idea how I’m going to either store or drink 20+ gallons of beer. Maybe once it gets warm and the pool parties start but not right now. I want to work on technique so I can get better at brewing. I just don’t know how I’m going to make all that beer go away.

3. What is the best way to aerate wort?

4. What about bottle labels? Anything inkjet printable available that can be glued on with water soluble glue or some other cement that allows me to easily remove the labels once the bottles are empty?

5. How do you find out your water report and then make corrections to it to match some brewer’s profile? Does it matter as long as you use filtered or distilled water?

6. How do mix DME into the wort? My first batch called for nearly 9 pounds and being my first batch, I was stunned when I added the DME and all I saw are huge white chunks. I used a stick (immersion blender) to break it all up. That stuff gets hard and clumpy fast!

Thanks!

 

[loucurr]

Wow! Lots of questions...no problem though...help is only a reply away here on HBT

It is best to aerate before pitching. The best way can depend on your fermentation vessel. I primary mostly in buckets and just open my kettle valve and let the wort aerate itself as it pours into the bucket. You can also shake your fermentation. Easel to add oxygen.

To alleviate the high quantity of beer you could always try and brew small batches at first.

The best way I found to label bottles is to use plain paper in an ink jet printer (Laser printer looks better) then use a glue stick (the type kids use for school) and then stick the label on the bottle.

 

[Cyclman]

Some random questions I have as I learn more about our very fun and intriguing hobby.

1. After you chill the wort, do you aerate before or after adding the yeast? Before, if you're going to make lots of beer, lagers, or big beers, I highly recommend an O2 injector, it makes for better, more thorough fermentations.

2. How often do you brew? I’m excited to brew 3-4 more 5 gallon batches of some beers I love before I move on to new varieties and I have no idea how I’m going to either store or drink 20+ gallons of beer. Maybe once it gets warm and the pool parties start but not right now. I want to work on technique so I can get better at brewing. I just don’t know how I’m going to make all that beer go away.

Do smaller batches, 3G or even 1G. This is a great way to learn, and you can experiment with little downside if you make an undesireable beer.

3. What is the best way to aerate wort? O2 injection with a diffusion stone.

4. What about bottle labels? Anything inkjet printable available that can be glued on with water soluble glue or some other cement that allows me to easily remove the labels once the bottles are empty? Sorry, don't label mine.

5. How do you find out your water report and then make corrections to it to match some brewer’s profile? Does it matter as long as you use filtered or distilled water? For extract beer, use distilled water and don't worry. For all grain, either use distilled and add appropriate salts, or get a report from Ward Labs if your local water department can't answer your questions.

6. How do mix DME into the wort? My first batch called for nearly 9 pounds and being my first batch, I was stunned when I added the DME and all I saw are huge white chunks. I used a stick (immersion blender) to break it all up. That stuff gets hard and clumpy fast! Sprinkle and stir vigorously, it will dissove in a vigorous boil.

Thanks!

Welcome to the group, welcome to the hobby.

 

[Puddlethumper]

Welcome to the hobby! Sounds like you are off to a good start and if you read a little, brew a little and ask questions you'll learn a lot really fast.

1. After you chill the wort, do you aerate before or after adding the yeast?

I was told from the outset to aerate before pitching the yeast.

2. How often do you brew?

I figure it takes 4-6 weeks on average for a batch of beer to get from the flame to my glass. Using that information I can take a look at how much I have on hand, how much is being consumed and make a pretty decent guess as to when and how often I need to brew. In the winter time we drink more wine than beer, but I know that warmer weather is now just a couple months away. I'll probably be brewing every other weekend beginning in a week or two. That will yield 4 cases a month which will probably meet the demand around here. You'll have to look at your consumption/gifting/guests etc. and figure it out from there.

3. What is the best way to aerate wort?

There are several methods available. I like to pour the cooled wort from the boil kettle to the fermenter bucket back and forth a couple of times. Use a strainer the first time to remove the hot break. The wort looks really frothy after a couple times back and forth and I've never had any problems with attenuation.

Some guys use an air pump and air stone designed for the purpose. You can also use an attachment to an electric drill (like a paint stirrer) to aerate.

4. What about bottle labels? Anything inkjet printable available that can be glued on with water soluble glue or some other cement that allows me to easily remove the labels once the bottles are empty?

I use Costco brand mailing labels. Cheap, big enough to contain the needed information, and they float off when soaked in hot water with a little PBW, Oxyclean or OneStep added.

5. How do you find out your water report and then make corrections to it to match some brewer’s profile? Does it matter as long as you use filtered or distilled water?

Look up Ward Labs. (Google) Print their PDF form, put it in a box with a bottle of your water and ship it off. In about a week or so they'll email you the water report and an invoice for about 30 bucks. Pay on line or send them a check.

You can usually make drinkable beer with most water that is safe to drink. But since water is the single biggest part of beer it is only logical that it contributes enormously to the finished quality of the beer. For that reason water is a much bigger issue than some might think. Distilled water doesn't have the nutrients that the yeast needs so never use distilled water. Filtered water (depending on the method) has contaminants removed along with chlorine and (probably) chloramine, but filtering does nothing to the pH of the water nor does it change the water chemistry.

Google for Bruin' Water or EZ Water for calculators that will help you figure out how to adjust your water chemistry for better brewing. You'll need the water report from Ward Labs before these spreadsheets will do you any good.

There are some good discussions on this board on water chemistry so as you get into it more you'll find a lot of good info from really knowlegable brewers here.

Cheers!

 

[wilconrad]

Great bottle labeling trick LHBS recently taught me: use milk. I used to use label paper, but this method works just as well. Print your labels out on standard paper, dip a paper towel in some milk and moisten the back of the paper with it, then slap it on the bottle. It sticks just like label paper and pops right off with a little water. It doesn't smell either (which I thought it would). I was amazed. Try it out.

 

[Dan]

New yeast want oxygen. How they get it? Before or after they are tossed into their new home doesn't matter. In my opinion. Just not 6-7 hours after they're tossed into their new home.

If using wet yeast. The little yeasty fellows want some O2 so they can breathe deeply and multiply, they prefer to multiply in a warmish environment and then like a midwest autumn day prefer cooler temps to work in. (that right there is the difference between multiplying yeast and letting yeast do their intended job)
All instructions say aerate first then toss in the yeast. I've never seen this backed up with data. And, if you're using dry yeast aeration is not really necessary with some of the great dry yeast strains on the market today. The manufacturers, the tailors of the dry yeast perform some of their magic so the yeast cells being pitched already have gained the affect aeration provides with wet yeast, to an extent.

Brew as much as you want and can afford to give away. Beer is not meant to be drunk alone.

There is a difference between aeration and oxygenation. I think for average ale the O2 requirement is around 8-12 PPM of oxygen, a lager 10-14 PPM. Shaking a bucket, carboy, spinning it with a 5 gallon sanitized paint stirrer, creating an air induced vortex generator out your out valve off a fermenter, pouring back and forth between buckets; they all introduce air and might get the wort somewhere close 8PPM at best. (Only reason I say that is because there are discussions about this and the guys that do this for a living and have a very good education on the matter, say 8 PPM is about the max- with aeration).
So the next step in this never ending ladder of purity is oxygenate your beer to achieve a higher level of 02 saturation. This can be done pretty quickly with an 02 bottle, some tubing and sanitized 2mm aeration stone for a 60 second, 02 burst of five gallons 1.050 beer.. or somewhere close to that. I ain’t making this up, just writing what I remember. There are a bunch of charts around here on the perfect way to do all this.

Having said that, dry yeast is very dependable. A bunch of healthy yeast that have been geared up for battle with wort. There are more of them than a vile of wet yeast. They’re pumped. It’s game night. These guys are ready to do battle!

Wet yeast are amazing. There are more strains of them than dry but when we get them in the mail, or LHBS, they need to be pampered at first. Compared to dry yeast, they are released for our use only a few million at a time, their population is full of very unique little guys but they need time to build their army. There are many more strains of wet yeast than dry yeast. The build up, their little yeast family numbers can be increased through yeast starters. You basically make mix some dry malt extract (I've heard of people using corn sugar successfully) Make about a qaurt with an OG of 1.040. Let it ferment for a a day in a warm room, 70-80 degrees, shake the crap out of it everytime you think about it. This will get the yeast brothers and brothers to start multiplying rapidly.

Man, I probably didn’t answer a single question. Sorry, I went out with a friend tonight and he kept buying Sierra Nevada Torpedo ale. It gets me to rambling.

 

[rodwha]

1) Aerate before.

2) I generally brew 2-3 brew a month, though my hobby money is often spent elsewhere. I drink plenty on my own, but there is always a reason to invite people over, especially now that you're brewing!

3) The best way may be with a stone (I'm not familiar). The way I do it is to use a whisk for several minutes and stir with my spoon. Seems to work OK for me.

4) I don't bother with labels. I use a permanent marker on the cap.

5) I Googled my water report. It's online. It's not necessarily accurate for today, but it gives you an idea of the average. But I do partial mashes, and use 1 gal of store bought water for dark beers and 2 gals for lighter beers as my water is hard. The extract portion will help me out.

6) I use a small portion of DME in the beginning. As it's more expensive than LME I don't generally use a whole lot unless I'm doing a wheat beer. I'll use LME for the bulk of my extract needs, and that I add at flameout, when I'm done.

 

[GatorWayne]

Wow! Lots of questions...no problem though...help is only a reply away here on HBT

It is best to aerate before pitching. The best way can depend on your fermentation vessel. I primary mostly in buckets and just open my kettle valve and let the wort aerate itself as it pours into the bucket. You can also shake your fermentation. Easel to add oxygen.

To alleviate the high quantity of beer you could always try and brew small batches at first.

The best way I found to label bottles is to use plain paper in an ink jet printer (Laser printer looks better) then use a glue stick (the type kids use for school) and then stick the label on the bottle.

Great bottle labeling trick LHBS recently taught me: use milk. I used to use label paper, but this method works just as well. Print your labels out on standard paper, dip a paper towel in some milk and moisten the back of the paper with it, then slap it on the bottle. It sticks just like label paper and pops right off with a little water. It doesn't smell either (which I thought it would). I was amazed. Try it out.

Easy enough. I just need to design a label and I am about as creative as a rock in the garden. okay, maybe not that bad but I am no artist. Thanks!

 

[loucurr]

New yeast want oxygen. How they get it? Before or after they are tossed into their new home doesn't matter. In my opinion. Just not 6-7 hours after they're tossed into their new home.



If using wet yeast. The little yeasty fellows want some O2 so they can breathe deeply and multiply, they prefer to multiply in a warmish environment and then like a midwest autumn day prefer cooler temps to work in. (that right there is the difference between multiplying yeast and letting yeast do their intended job)

All instructions say aerate first then toss in the yeast. I've never seen this backed up with data. And, if you're using dry yeast aeration is not really necessary with some of the great dry yeast strains on the market today. The manufacturers, the tailors of the dry yeast perform some of their magic so the yeast cells being pitched already have gained the affect aeration provides with wet yeast, to an extent.



Brew as much as you want and can afford to give away. Beer is not meant to be drunk alone.



There is a difference between aeration and oxygenation. I think for average ale the O2 requirement is around 8-12 PPM of oxygen, a lager 10-14 PPM. Shaking a bucket, carboy, spinning it with a 5 gallon sanitized paint stirrer, creating an air induced vortex generator out your out valve off a fermenter, pouring back and forth between buckets; they all introduce air and might get the wort somewhere close 8PPM at best. (Only reason I say that is because there are discussions about this and the guys that do this for a living and have a very good education on the matter, say 8 PPM is about the max- with aeration).

So the next step in this never ending ladder of purity is oxygenate your beer to achieve a higher level of 02 saturation. This can be done pretty quickly with an 02 bottle, some tubing and sanitized 2mm aeration stone for a 60 second, 02 burst of five gallons 1.050 beer.. or somewhere close to that. I ain’t making this up, just writing what I remember. There are a bunch of charts around here on the perfect way to do all this.



Having said that, dry yeast is very dependable. A bunch of healthy yeast that have been geared up for battle with wort. There are more of them than a vile of wet yeast. They’re pumped. It’s game night. These guys are ready to do battle!



Wet yeast are amazing. There are more strains of them than dry but when we get them in the mail, or LHBS, they need to be pampered at first. Compared to dry yeast, they are released for our use only a few million at a time, their population is full of very unique little guys but they need time to build their army. There are many more strains of wet yeast than dry yeast. The build up, their little yeast family numbers can be increased through yeast starters. You basically make mix some dry malt extract (I've heard of people using corn sugar successfully) Make about a qaurt with an OG of 1.040. Let it ferment for a a day in a warm room, 70-80 degrees, shake the crap out of it everytime you think about it. This will get the yeast brothers and brothers to start multiplying rapidly.



Man, I probably didn’t answer a single question. Sorry, I went out with a friend tonight and he kept buying Sierra Nevada Torpedo ale. It gets me to rambling.

Rambling or not, some great advise. Especially the "beer is not meant to be drunk alone!"

 

[GatorWayne]

Welcome to the hobby! Sounds like you are off to a good start and if you read a little, brew a little and ask questions you'll learn a lot really fast.



I was told from the outset to aerate before pitching the yeast.



I figure it takes 4-6 weeks on average for a batch of beer to get from the flame to my glass. Using that information I can take a look at how much I have on hand, how much is being consumed and make a pretty decent guess as to when and how often I need to brew. In the winter time we drink more wine than beer, but I know that warmer weather is now just a couple months away. I'll probably be brewing every other weekend beginning in a week or two. That will yield 4 cases a month which will probably meet the demand around here. You'll have to look at your consumption/gifting/guests etc. and figure it out from there.



There are several methods available. I like to pour the cooled wort from the boil kettle to the fermenter bucket back and forth a couple of times. Use a strainer the first time to remove the hot break. The wort looks really frothy after a couple times back and forth and I've never had any problems with attenuation.

Some guys use an air pump and air stone designed for the purpose. You can also use an attachment to an electric drill (like a paint stirrer) to aerate.



I use Costco brand mailing labels. Cheap, big enough to contain the needed information, and they float off when soaked in hot water with a little PBW, Oxyclean or OneStep added.



Look up Ward Labs. (Google) Print their PDF form, put it in a box with a bottle of your water and ship it off. In about a week or so they'll email you the water report and an invoice for about 30 bucks. Pay on line or send them a check.

You can usually make drinkable beer with most water that is safe to drink. But since water is the single biggest part of beer it is only logical that it contributes enormously to the finished quality of the beer. For that reason water is a much bigger issue than some might think. Distilled water doesn't have the nutrients that the yeast needs so never use distilled water. Filtered water (depending on the method) has contaminants removed along with chlorine and (probably) chloramine, but filtering does nothing to the pH of the water nor does it change the water chemistry.

Google for Bruin' Water or EZ Water for calculators that will help you figure out how to adjust your water chemistry for better brewing. You'll need the water report from Ward Labs before these spreadsheets will do you any good.

There are some good discussions on this board on water chemistry so as you get into it more you'll find a lot of good info from really knowlegable brewers here.

Cheers!

As I get more serious I will keep this in my mind so I can use the best water possible. Speaking without knowing the process, it seems it would be rather easy to condition water to get the best beer from it.

thanks!

 

[rodwha]

If you need a fancy label I've seen advertisements for printable labels on this site.

 

[GatorWayne]

New yeast want oxygen. How they get it? Before or after they are tossed into their new home doesn't matter. In my opinion. Just not 6-7 hours after they're tossed into their new home.

Man, I probably didn’t answer a single question. Sorry, I went out with a friend tonight and he kept buying Sierra Nevada Torpedo ale. It gets me to rambling.

Lots of great information. I've been emptying my pre-filled bottles tonight so when my Chimay clone is ready I have enough empty flip top bottles ready or my first batch. Chimay is one of a few beers my wife likes and I love so hopefully it turns out good. I followed the recipe exactly so far.

 

[loucurr]

Good luck...that's what this is all about, brewing what you love to drink. Let us know how it turns out.

 

[Dan]

^^^ I concurr (if that means anything ) IT's meant to be a compliment.
We are homebrewers and lucky to have taken such a like in this hobby. We learn to brew, we first learn the basics, then as time goes on we learn a little more. I will admit, I don't make the perfect beer yet. But I do make good beer. The really cool thing is, I do it, myself. (with a lot of help from HBT)

Pretty sure we all have day jobs and we like making beer. If my day job was making beer and I was a cog in the wheels... well eff! I might just like to be a cog in the wheels of making great beer commercially. But I'm not, however, I do make some pretty good homebrew! So can we all if we learn to do it right.

 

[Cider123]

Yes, mine is not perfect but it is good and I've grown to know what I like. I temporarily ran out of homebrew today because my taps froze in the 20F garage. I ran to a couple bottles of commercial beer which I used to like. I realized that I don't like them anymore. I like my beer now. And I like making it from scratch.

 

[Puddlethumper]

As I get more serious I will keep this in my mind so I can use the best water possible. Speaking without knowing the process, it seems it would be rather easy to condition water to get the best beer from it.

thanks!

Like several others have said, the real magic is that we are making this ourselves! It is so totally cool to hear friends/relatives say that after drinking your beer the store-bought stuff tastes like cardboard to them.

Find beer styles and recipes that you like and repeat them. It is OK to tweak them to your preferences. Like anything else you do, your skills will sharpen as you repeat the process and learn from your experiments. Most of all, allow yourself plenty of time. You won't learn this craft in a few months...maybe not in a few years. But you will continue to learn, and with it your beers will continue to improve.

 

[Dan]

As I get more serious I will keep this in my mind so I can use the best water possible. Speaking without knowing the process, it seems it would be rather easy to condition water to get the best beer from it.

thanks!

Brother, if you can without geting lost in the chemistry of it all.. Really cool.

Brewing water is hugely important apparently. Some people get a gist for it and some don't. Those of us who don't just make good beer. Not perfect beer. If you have a decent handling on chemistry there is a Brewing Chemistry class, free, that a lot of us have signed up for.. It's from the University of ... crap I forget.. University of Oklahoma. The instructor is an HBT member..

Let me see if I can find the site.. Hopefully if I can't, somebody else will post it.

 

[GatorWayne]

Brother, if you can without geting lost in the chemistry of it all.. Really cool.

Brewing water is hugely important apparently. Some people get a gist for it and some don't. Those of us who don't just make good beer. Not perfect beer. If you have a decent handling on chemistry there is a Brewing Chemistry class, free, that a lot of us have signed up for.. It's from the University of ... crap I forget.. University of Oklahoma. The instructor is an HBT member..

Let me see if I can find the site.. Hopefully if I can't, somebody else will post it.

The class sounds interesting. I'm going to try to find the link so I can sign up.

 

[Dan]

Gator, the first link is to the class and the second one is a link to the thread on HBT that informed everybody about the class. The instructor has signed in here at HBT and posts a few comments on the thread. Looks like this might become the HBT study thread. Most of us, okay, maybe just me, are a little aprehensive about our chemistry knowledge and ability to follow this class, but if I know HBT folks, there are many who will help us learn.

https://janux.ou.edu/landing/course.chem4970.html

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/free-online-beer-chemistry-course-439877/

 

[Puddlethumper]

Try reading the information page on Bruin' Water's website. See below for the link:

https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/


The information page gives some basics on water without getting bogged down in the heavy chemistry. I agree with Dan on this point - I like information that is easy for a non-chemist to understand and I have found their site to be very useful.

Although I like their info page I find their spreadsheet to be a little too complicated for me. I prefer the EZ Water spreadsheet for figuring water adjustments.