Brewing thread

[merithyn]

When you have your fire are you using aged hard wood?  One of the mistakes I learned I was making when we used a wood fireplace is that green or even not fully aged wood is a crappy heat source. Fun for fire pits, but useless beyond that. And would a thick walled ceramic vessel work? Or would it just crack?

I've tried multiple times with kiln-dried hard woods with a thick crock in a fireplace. I can get it to really hot, but not to a rolling boil like the recipes say should happen.

Also, you might like this channel https://youtu.be/TdvRfPCrR3A  I mean it's not overly in-depth but it's fun.

I've made raston before. It's rather tasty with a good venison stew.

[Threviel]

I'll try and report back here. I appreciate your help 

Of course!

I'm planning to do a video class on making a bochet in the next couple of weeks, too. I'll post the link once it's done.

I haven't had time to brew a new mead, but I did try the one I previously made again. By (bad) luck there's a homebrewing store next to my job and I talked to the owner about mead. He claimed that mead should rest a few months before drinking. And lo and behold, the yeasty flavour was entirely gone. It was okish I guess, not very good anyway.

I have had the time to do my yearly Glögg. Glögg is a Swedish holiday drink, normally a very sweet mulled wine quite different from the German Glühwein. I do a variant based on svagdricka, a Swedish very low-alcohol malt based beverage. About 5l svagdricka, 2kg sugar and lots of spices and a wine yeast. Smells wonderful when it ferments. It's still fermenting, I think it will take up to 6-8 weeks, then I'll heat it up to 60 C to kill the yeast and bottle it. Can be stored and tastes better next year.

This inspired me to try and brew a beer. I got the store to make me a recipe for a belgian style christmas beer brewed with the brew-in-a-bag-method. It has fermented for a week and I will let it ferment for two more before bottling.

[merithyn]

Didn't even think to ask how raw your mead was. Yeah,  mine stays in the bottle for a few months before drinking it.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I made sarsparilla.  It was good.

[Threviel]

How's that made? Where did you get the ingredients?

[Darth Wagtaros]

Youtube shows liek Glen and Friends and How to Drink

I got the ingredients off of Amazon.  It wasn't cheap.

[Darth Wagtaros]

How's that made? Where did you get the ingredients?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-74-KCsZm4

No Gential though.

[Threviel]

Cool. That seems fun. Did you bottle it or do the syrupy version?

Reminds me of Gin and Tonic Tonic. Some small company around here makes a tonic syrup using quinine that I absolutely fell in love with, so much better than Schweppes.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I used some coke bottles, and some yeast.  Made an iced cream float.  I still have the rest in a large jar with an air lock to see how it'd taste if I let it rest a bit.

I do think I watered it down too much though. SO it tastes a little, 'thin'.

[Syt]

Are you using star bottle caps?

[Darth Wagtaros]

NO.   I figured it it sucked then I'd be embarrassed to use cool bottles with stickers.

[Threviel]

My first beer (the Belgian triple Christmas beer) is carbonating (perhaps nicely, perhaps a failure) in bottles. I happened upon a crate of German flip-top 50 cl beer bottles and there was just enough beer to fill them all up. It's quite a turbid beer, I had problems siphoning and stirred up some yeast. I have my 40th birthday coming up in two weeks, I think I'm going to drink the first one then.

Today I'm brewing a dubbelbock, a dark and strong German beer. I'm thinking of it as an Easter beer and am calling it Påskator (påsk being Swedish for easter). I have two crates of danish beer bottles waiting to be returned to Denmark, they've been on my attic for 10 yers or so so I thought I'd use them as bottles. I'll have to thoroughly clean hem out and buy a bottle-cap-machintethingy to put on bottle caps. I did put a tap on my fermentation vat so hopefully the bottling will be easier.

My plan is to brew five beers in total, after this a Belgian blonde, a dubbel and then I'll try to copy Kwak. If the five beers become a success I'll continue and build myself a brewers corner in the garage and fix better equipment.

[Threviel]

I couldn't stand waiting for my birthday, so I tried the beer. Mrs Threviel really liked it, and I think it will improve with a few more weeks of storage.

[merithyn]

That's awesome! And swing-top bottle are my favorite. Expensive, but really easy to work with. Be sure to replace the rubber rings annually or every other brew cycle.

Belgians are high-malt, so time makes them better.

[merithyn]

Necroing this thread.

I'm attending the Women's International Brewing Summit this weekend, and I'm stupid excited about it. So much so that I already signed up for the Homebrew Con in June. (All online, of course.) I'm heading out to Friar Tuck's after work to get the beers on the "tasting list" for this weekend.

I'm considering buying one of the occlusion tasters that you can get to help identify flavors in beer, both good and bad. They're pricey - $195 for the one I'm looking at - but I want to do more judging as well as competitive brewing. I think this will help. Anyone tried any of these?