Why no /bru/ thread, Veeky Forums? What are some recipes that you have tried and liked? What do you typically use as a sanitizer? I haven't done any beers, but homebrew beer discussion is welcome.
I'm planning on making a mead and was wondering if anyone had had any experience in using brown sugar as opposed to honey and would know what kind of results I could expect. I did read that beer brewers will sometimes add it to increase the alcohol content of their brews, but I just happen to have a lot of the stuff on hand. I was hoping to do that with some backyard peaches, my town used to be orchard back in the day so there are weird semi wild fruit trees all around and the ones in my backyard are mostly like peaches but they might have some apricot or something them, idk but they're better than anything anyone's ever sold me. So yeah, homebrewin' thread.
Why no /bru/ thread, Veeky Forums? What are some recipes that you have tried and liked...
The only homebrewing I've ever done was making a gallon of blackberry wine by fermenting it in the jug the juice it came in. Mixed in a cup of white sugar and winemaker's yeast as directed by some tutorial I found online.Stuck it in my closet for a month with the cap loosened and a plastic bag wrapped around it. The result was sickeningly sweet, but still got me hammered. Will definitely not be adding sugar next time, shit was like liquid candy and barely tasted of alcohol at all.
Sounds decent, I always thought about trying that kind of stuff out as a teen but was always worried that I'd get botulism or something. I've made a couple fruit meads so far with honey, but shits just too spendy. If I'm taking the time on it though, I want it to be better than some storebought juice. I'll let you know how my brown sugar brew comes out, I think that it sounds like the happy medium between cost and quality.
I make mead but haven't got one going at the moment. I've made blackberry, blueberry and pomegranite but never tried peach. I'm not sure I understand your question about substituting sugar. Afaik, mead shouldn't have any added sugars other than the sugars in fruit.
I've got 12 gallons of blueberry wine I started 5 days ago fermenting in my 15 gallon pot. In 7 days I'll transfer it to carboys. I used 32lbs of blueberries and 18lbs of sugar.
>just too spendy
I'm the guy that posted . Try to find a local honey producer. I found a guy that sells me 5 gallons (60lbs) of honey for $145. I usually use 12-15lbs/5 gallon batch and that's pretty damn cheap.
might have some brew threads
I'm still alive, didn't make me sick. I just made sure to clean all the utensils and measuring cups I used with soap, hot water, and rubbing alcohol before using them. Rinse in hot water too. I used some organic blackberry juice that also had some grape and apple juice blended in that I got form Trader Joe's. Stuff even had some fruit pectin in it, so the taste wasn't bad at all through the sugar.
Never made beer but I have made red and white wine with my dad before using filters, a glass keg and some pre-production grapes already destemmed and pressed.
The Reds are usually decent but the whites are almost always shit probably because of the climate.
Have made
>beer
>wine
>cider
>gingerbeer
>various sodas
And that's not counting the food stuff i've fermented (currently on a ferment hotsauce spree)
Currently making
>nonalocholic gingerbeer (aka under .5% alcohol)
>Sumac Soda (same idea as the ginger beer)
and more hotsauce.
Also fixing up an antique fruit press I have
As for teh brown sugar part, go like 1/3rd honey, 2/3rds brown sugar. And pick some really flavorful honey too. I know a lot of cider makers that strengthen their 5 gallon batches with a cup or two of brown sugar, and i've done that before too. It has worked out pretty decently in the past for me.
Also, use champagne yeast. Probably the best/easiest to find.
2lazy to make a new more focused fermenting thread, so I Might as well shit up this one a little
in the fermented hotsauce thread last week someone asked if they could add canned tomatoes for fermenting hotsauce, and I said I would look into that.
And today I sorta am. I have some pickles going, and half an onion and some garlic left over, so I thought I'd try something stupid.
Note, the jar of lard is empty and cleaned out, it's what I plan to put everything in.
So first step, I needed to do something with this onion and garlic that'd been sitting out since 6pm, so lets add those first. And I can't toss um in whole! Well I can, but fermentation is faster when you chop first.
Toss um in the jar! Side note, this isn't the way I normally ferment, you'll get a better idea of that once I bust out the pickles.
Next, get your EZ-DUZ-IT Made In USA Can Opener out, the best can opener on the market.
With this can opener, you'll ENJOY opening the can in one easy smooth motion.
Just gonna mostly fill up the jar with this bad boy, but I'm gonna leave some left over so I can make pizza sauce with it tomorrow. Just finished making a sour dough starter from the butterfly tent at the museum I work at!
Now you got the fun part, bust out those pickles. Now this is a classic hot-sauce user janky air lock, a lid, a cork, and whatever I can find to keep that stuff submerged.
Spoon some of that brine off, just enough to kickstart fermentation! The onions and garlic MIGHT have some good bacteria and yeast to start fermentation, but those canned tomatoes definitely do not. So I want to get that good lacto fermentation that's happening to those pickles going on in this new jar. The hardest part of this step (besides the shitty spoon) is not eating those pickles! I have t keep telling myself, you only started them sateruday buddy, they aint nearly done enough.
Other side note, the pickle container is food safe, but I'd still have prefered to use a glass jar.
Almost done!
>tfw i'm afraid my hotsauce fermentation guys wont' find me in this thread
Oh I homebrew, on an industrial scale.
Next, add some salt. I'd guess this is about a half table spoon? If you haven't caught on from the rest of my posts, i'm pretty loose with the whole exact-measurements stuff.
The only sanitizer you should use is Starsan. It's a 30 second sanitizer you can leave in your vat/carboy.
Shake it up and you're done! I put it next to some of my other much less janky ferments which include
>Fermented fresh tomatoes
>Fermented fresh tomatoes I siphoned off the larger jar and added onion/garlic/basil to
>honey garlic
>dill pickles.
and rice
That's funny. I ferment tomatoes as well.
115L of water
30Kg Sugar
1326ml tomato paste (8.5cans)
5tsp Citric Acid
380g Yeast
1 tsp Epsom salt
2 campden tablets in water
This is true; back when I was a huge pussy and didn't want bacteria in my beer/other ferments I'd use starsan every time.
But my equipment has been getting used for sour beers for 2 years now, so now I just say fuck it.
Is that to make some sort of ketchup? And why yeast and not bacteria?
Or is this just like alcoholic tomatoe juice?
Wow, you're not really into booze. That's a 'wash' for the uninitiated. It's used to make vodka. It makes azeotropic vodka in the gallons.
You'll notice I don't use air traps because the infections never have a chance to manifest themselves. 5 days to .990 dry. Creates a 93% vodka with a hint of vanilla. From the Esters.
>not into booze
>first night sober in half a year
I'm just not into distilling, and i'm much more into wild fermentation than industrial/steralized stuff.
That's cool. What's your distilling set up look like?
It's a 9 gallon, 3inch, 4ft tall pot still boka with a jackson crossflow condenser packed with copper mesh. The azeotropic extractor is a 5ft pipe packed with copper mesh that acts as a stabilized reflux still that can extract pure ethanol. That's how it looked when it was first built.
This is what it looks like when it's all tooled up with the liebig and cooling apparatus.
And this is what it looks like when it's near azeotropic extraction.
Best booze you'll ever have with a surprising lack of hangover, because you can prune out the heads and tails.
The ethyl acetate, all the tail esters. It's clean.
I've always wanted to get into distilling, or meet people that are so I can trade for their stuff. Seems like a lot of fun.
Do you just stick to vodka? Or also make things like gin or whiskey? And know a decent amount about the actual making of alochol because I'm a Certified Specialist of Spirits so I'll understand any random distilling terms you throw at me.
I've done 'steeped' gin, not a fan. I was going to get into whiskey, but the enzyme process just sounded like a hassle. Mostly I just make cheap clean vodka for consumption and buy expensive scotches on the side. Rum sound like a fecal nightmare, corn whiskey has never been my favourite. Although flavouring with white oak char is intriguing.
A distillery near me made barrel aged vodka once which was pretty great.
Where do you live that you got into this? I've asked locally and I haven't met anyone that does it. I feel like it is a more regional thing,
This is the 'sony guts' of my knockdown condenser. I'm kinda proud of the craftsmanship. I had to mate that and solder it with a 3inch tube without leaks, and solder an endcap without releasing the internal solders and add that T joint nonsense. It was nuts.
It's grey law here, I can't really say. They just ignore craft distillers at this time, I just don't want to taunt them. Sorry.
You drink pure hearts from a reflux still and it literally tastes like a gentle vanilla extract. A craft distiller doesn't have to add heads or tails, so they make a gourmet vodka. It's almost creepy.
Any good soda recipes or sites?
I've tried making rootbeer and ignore fermented too long and went on my walls instead of my mouth. Did the same thing with strawberry lemonade. Is there something good measure of yeast to vol?
I'm going to bed now but I can post some recipes I made tomorrow.
Warning though, if you want fermented soda, it will either be dry and shelf stable, sweeter and nerd to be refrigerated, or you have to be ready to boil your bottles to kill the yeast.
I ordered all the parts for a CCVM a couple weeks ago, should be here soon ish. Been distilling for around 4-5 years, been doing UJSM which comes out like a bourbon with the right oak. Can also taste like a really light Irish whiskey if you don't oak as hard. Got sick of my store bought reflux and how finnicky it is, so that's what going CCVM. Current reflux is a shitty CM and sucks.