Monthly discussion thread about brewing.
Share whatever - success brews, failures, questions…
Fruit season is in full swing, so give the people who don’t know what to do with too much fruits some ideas ;-)
Brewed a Pale Ale with some leftover hops I had from last batch. Sadly I accidentally replaced (due to it being out of stock) ~60EBC crystal with a ~110 EBC crystal, so it’s quite red.
Then the BIAB bag broke during sparge, smashed down into my wort, splashing about 40% of it out onto the ground. And myself.
So we’ll see.
Did a raw ale with heather tips foraged from the forest that turned out pretty good.
And now fermenting a raw pumpkin ale. Added around 3 kg pumpkin mash to the mash. A bit difficult to work with and had an OG of around 1.055, bit on the low end there. Fingers crossed it’ll be drinkable. Assuming it’s going to come in at session strength.
Picture is my test cider with hops. My boss said that if I told him it is some kind of beer he would believe me. He really liked it.
@plactagonic Care to share the recipe? Sounds great, especially since I know some folks who can’t take in gluten.
I always make cider from apples I can get my hands on so not specific in that way. But I recently shared here this blog post and it has everything you need to start brewing.
Juicing is the biggest problem so if you sort this out you can start experimenting with it. I will finalize some recipe for it next year.
@plactagonic I’ve made wine from multiple fruits before, the part with the hops was most interesting to me. That’s what eludes me when reading your post. When, how much, etc!
Success - Blond smash. Once again proves that 5 weeks in the bottle is a magic number. 4 weeks? Eh. 5 weeks? AMAZING.
Failure - Watermelon wine. It’s just sour. Not in a good way, at all. Tastes kinda like the rind, though there was no rind in it. Maybe backsweetening?
Waiting - choc hazelnut porter. choc comes thru, hazelnut not at all. Needs more aging time. I feel like darker beers need more time. It’s almost 3 months, gonna test it.
Fermenting - ginger bugged root beer. Made root beer syrup to make root beer soda. Was ok, needs work. Remaining half into a 1 gal fermenter. It was due 2 weeks ago, but it’s fine. It’ll need back sweetening and bottle carb, but that’ll be another drumroll 5 weeks.
On deck - It’s time for a holiday beer. Something spiced. IDK what. It takes 2 months, so it’ll be ready early December if I start now. Hmm…
Hmm that’s a lot of things. What to say Good luck or “Dej bůh štěstí” (Czech brewmasters saying).
I made moscato wine from my grapes a couple of weeks ago and then a second wine that fermented on the skins that I pressed last weekend.
My apples have been harvested so I will probably grind and press those either this week sometime or next weekend to make hard cider.
I finally finished picking all the hops (Glacier and Mt Hood/Tettnang) off the bines that I harvested 3 weeks ago, I’m don’t have any plans for any sort of fresh hop beer or anything but I would like to maybe brew something soon. I was thinking about a high (50+%) wheat saison while using chopped up wheat straw in the mash for a filter aid and fermenting with some of my wild yeast cultures.