Pro Brewer v2 thread

I could (and almost have) wrote a thesis on this.

Pros for Bottling:
Great for aging styles that you would want to
Cheaper (for homebrewers)
Easier for beginners

Pros of kegging:
Really fast
You can really dial in the amount of carb you want
If brewing a lot, easy to clean, keg, carb and go

I do think beginners should bottle, just to get the sanitation aspect down and it gives an understanding of carbing. I prefer cans, once again a whole different story.

I make $54k a year plus health and dental and a 401k. I have been working at it for awhile, and I have good bosses. I know there are guys out there slogging making much less, believe me. As you know, labor of love. We are just janitors that get to make beer. I have heard talk of unionizing but that won't happen and we all know why.

Make something worth drinking, that won't make you fat.

I'm pretty my ginger beer picked up a bug... lacto if I had to guess.

The problem is that it's actually really good. I haven't found a sour ginger beer on the market. Do I have a thing?

Making some moonshine?

EtOH, yes. The only thing I'd bother fermenting. Beer is work and can end up tasting like yeasty shit.

Did you use natural fresh ginger? Ginger is used as a natural lacto starter. I have seen some people do this...and it can be pretty decent. If it drinks it drinks.

Imagine the guys that decided to take that, make charred oak barrels, and let it sit in them for 12 years to find out how good it was. Thank god for those guys...they make my Imperial Stouts taste amazing now.

I mean if you do it as a profession, it's great. But doing it as a hobby with any regularity makes you a model train hobbiest kinda guy. I can buy 120 bucks worth of shit at costco and make 30 liters of pure ethanol without even thinking about it. Beer is better from the store.

At every stage. I thought about it after I put another pound into the primary: "Am I giving this bastard an infection by doing this?"

Hopefully nothing a handful of very thorough scrub/sanitizer runs can't kill.

And I know some distillers in Bardstown, KY that say you are making garbage that they wouldn't touch their tongue to. It is perspective. I have distilled before, nothing wrong with it. I would probably go for rum if I were to actually make a living at it.

starsan is a magician for sanitizing. You probably already know that.

bakers yeast and a tomato wash is the cleanest vodka you will ever make. It's the least stressed yeast ever. They don't know what they're talking about.

Here's the calculator. Make that at 25 degrees C and you end up with no fusils. If your friends even know what those are.

It probably is loaded with lacto. I would just run with it. Maybe throw some lime or lemon, or orange peel in there. Pasteurize it and there you go.

shuggo.com/birdwatchers/calculator.htm

Didn't paste.

Yessir. I figure I'll give my rig two double strength doses before the next batch goes in. Worst case: I brew some extra hoppy beers for a while.

25c sounds too low to me...have you experimented with up to 28-30? Do you use a temp controller?

What can I do to get into the beer industry

the gingerbeer just seems to be getting better as it goes. I felt it needed a bit of citrus after the 3rd week in the bottle, but after 6, it's quite good. It's not the spicy, extract loaded treat I was going for, but I've definitely had worse.

Hard way: Get into Molecular Biology or go through a brewing program at a college

Regular way: Find a cool brewery you admire, sweep floors, clean up nasty hot spent grains, hand bottle until your hands clench up, learn everything there is to know, work hard.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, you will still be doing all the regular way things anyway for the most part.

There you go. With brews like that, I sometimes find that the 2 bottles I stored back for a year and forgot about, seem to always be the best ones. Same with ciders..I would pitch ciders..they would taste green and just not good. I would out of nowhere just open one and realize it is awesome.

Cool, thank you for your advice. With regards to the water, I live in the south of the UK where it's fairly hard. What are things I can do to my water to make it better for brewing? What should I be looking at pH-wise, etc?

>unionizing but that won't happen and we all know why.
Because the United States has had a campaign run against unionization by the upper class through their media outlets and government influence for the last 80 years to paint it as a socialist and corrupt way of organizing labor?

I would do molecular biology if I wasn't already a graduate. If only I realized I wanted to work with beer before I went to university

You will hear a lot of differing opinions but I think if you are going for a Pale Ale/Mild you want the beginning pH to be around 5.0-5.8. I am just using these numbers because you said the South of England. Yours may be a higher pH. Really just test it, I am in the US and here we can get a water profile for cheap, and you can use strips too. Let's say you were in Brighton...they have super hard water. You can use a reverse osmosis filter or just buy some treated water. If you get with some local homebrew clubs they usually are all about doing this.

Pretty much. And "muh 3 tier". Which is so, so ironic.

Ah right. I'm in Portsmouth, which is fairly close to Brighton. I'm sure a water profile came with the paperwork when I bought the place, guess I'll have a rummage.

We currently are doing a mix of beers, ciders, and moonshine. Since I returned to the country I've not set up a proper brew fridge so no temp control. Found one on the street the other day that someone was chucking out - works a treat, so I guess I'll rig up the arduino again.

Do unions hold sway in any developed country these days

Any advice on what would be the best (doesn't have to be the fastest) way to get rid of nearly all of the yeast resulting in almost clear product with having nothing special gear including hoses but only containers/pans/kettles etc?
I like to brew mead alot but no matter how much I try, there is always going to be some yeast left behind which, when consumed, gives me the shits the day after.
I'm afraid that if I keep moving it carefully back and forth from one container to another until the beverage is crystal clear, that I'd lose the carbon/bubbles and end up with flat mead.

There is just something about a good cash Mild Ale. I know the whole CAMRA campaign has kind of muddied the waters there...but there is something to be said about a great hand pulled cask ale, even though it may seem boring to an Englishman. Personally, I like the best of all worlds. The world of beer and styles expanding has helped everyone.

Do a very careful secondary fermentation transfer. How long are you fermenting your mead in primary? I have never done a mead where the trub was even near a problem in filtering out. Use a siphon and expect a bit of loss from yeast trub. If you bottle your mead you can bottle carb, which will take care of any of your worries about flatness. This is a very simple process with mead, using a little bit of champagne yeast in each bottle.

I'm a huge real ale fan. Sadly didn't get to GBBF this year but yeah. One day in the future I'd like to be able to cask-condition the ales I make. I tend to make more trad english ales with a twist at the moment - and making them proper cask ales would be the cherry on top.

That is awesome. There are a few places here in the US that are doing real ale, but not many. I think it could be a new trend. You have to remember, we are only 20 years off "MUH ICE COLD BUDWEISER" so it takes time. For all of the amazing strides the craft industry has made in the US, there are still areas that we need to focus on.

Sadly there's a sort of inverse thing happening in the UK. Craft beer is becoming more popular, certainly on the supermarket shelves. But we're a few years behind the US in that regard - most things are the hop-bomb IPAs and things like that, good luck finding a sour outside of a specialist craft beer shop (shouts to Beer Muskateer in Southsea)

I kind of feel like the sour thing is dying out now here, but there are still breweries putting out total whales that I just do not understand the draw to. I am old enough to remember when Cantillon was sitting on shelves and I am in my mid 30's. Now, so many kettle sours have invaded the market...it seems like people just want the most acidic thing they can find and if there are a hint of fruit in it, $10 more then! It is pretty ridiculous. I think it is all coming back to a mean though. I have seen a lot of people really wanting a well crafted Pilsner...personally I drink Pilsner Urquell cans fresh and it is one of my favorite beers. But it is so expensive to make as a style due to the process...it is so much easier just to bang out a double dry hopped IPA with some cheesy name.

>
OP, what's your thoughts on me using bread yeast to brew some shitty beers?

I can't find any brewers yeast anywhere near me

Bread yeast and brewers yeast (in all it's forms) are very different. Are you in the US or Canada, or Europe..or anywhere where you can get mail? You can order dry yeast for $2 a pack and hydrate it. Don't use bakers yeast.

Cheers. My mead is usually in the primary from a week to a couple of months depending on recipe and how strong I want it to be. I'm professional noob at brewing as mead is basically the only thing that I've ever brew.
>Boil the water + ingredients in a pot
>Pour it in a bucket with lid + home made air lock using a balloon poked with a needle
>Let it cool down but not too much
>Add yeast + sugar
>Stir
>Let it ferment for X amount of time
>Pour into bottles through funnel and muslin cloth
>Add some additional sugar
>After the yeast has set in the bottle I transfer liquid to another
>Add little bit of sugar
I use plastic bottles which really expands into almost a sphere shape unless I release the gas about twice a day.

I expect the sour thing will start here at some point. It seems the beer trends tend to focus on a single aspect of a style and take it to silly levels - not really a fan of that myself.

Idont have any more questions to ask, thanks for your advice. Here's a picture of a pumpkin beer we brewed, that I wanted to share with everyone. The head actually comes out a little orange! Here's a summary I posted in the /diy/ thread about it:

I caramelised some sugar on top of some slices of pumpkin (only came to about a kilo or 2 of pumpkin, should've used more). Was an extract brew at 6 gallons.

Extract: Maris Otter (about 3kg I think) + some dark brown sugar added at start of boil to make up the missing pumpkin and raise the sugar contents a little
Speciality Grains: Light Munich, Munich and something else I can't remember the name of (was a substitution since my brew shop didn't have what I wanted).
Hops: Northern Brewer (Added at start of the boil)
Yeast: Mangrove Jacks Belgian Tripel M31

5 minutes before flameout I added 4 tsp of cinnamon, 1 tsp of ground ginger and 1tsp of nutmeg. At secondary I'm going to add a little vanilla. I'm hoping the yeast I used will help, given that I've read it adds spice tones (including a bit of clove, which I elected not to add during the boil). The recipe I was loosely following suggested english ale yeast but I figured this brew is weird enough, I may as well make it a little weirder. I'm also thinking that for bottle conditioning, I might use a small amount of treacle instead of my usual white sugar. Thoughts?

All in all, certainly the most interesting brew I've done so far. My past beers have generally been more traditional english ales and IPAs.

Invest in a nice glass carboy. 5 gallons. Get an airlock, and a bung/stopper. To make a good mead, you do not need to boil anything other than your water. Honey is sterile. Mix the honey into the water. 15 lbs if you want viking strength..11 if you want normie strength. Get the water to around 75-90 degrees. Pitch the yeast. Shake it like you want to kill it. Add some "yeast nutrient" to it. Let it sit forever. You can't let it sit long enough. A year minimum.

Hey, looks good enough for rock n' roll to me. It is funny how many people think a Pumpkin Ale has a ton of real Pumpkin in it..usually it is very little, if any!. Many people have no idea what a "real pumpkin" even tastes like. It is just this notion of what a pumpkin pie is and they go from there. I know a guy who made a brown ale, spiced it with store bought "Durkee Pumpkin spice" and won a homebrew competition. It is truly in the eye of the beholder. I am guessing you added some carmel malt, maybe 90 L to get that color?

Can I use sourdough starter instead of yeast? If not would I be able to somehow isolate the yeast in the starter and use that? I made a starter a while back and I'm getting sick of making bread with it so I'm trying to find more uses for it.
Either way I've been wanting to try to make ginger beer. Is that ok for a beginner and does anyone have a good recipe for it?

Unless you live on the far ends of the earth, you can order a $2 pack of any yeast you want and pitch a starter. Don't use bread yeast.

This was my first pumpkin ale. But yeah on looking at recipes, plenty of people neglect to add any pumpkin at all. To be honest, it's not a fantastic tasting vegetable. People just associate it with the taste of cinnamon and nutmeg due to the whole pumpkin spice thing. The spice additions come through subtly, nothing too extreme. Reminds me of a ruby beer more than anything.

As for the malt, you might be right. I gotta start documenting my brews better.

northsouthfood.com/homemade-alcoholic-ginger-beer/
I've used this recipe twice so far. Next time I do it, I'm going to add some lemon or citric acid or something else to give it a bit of a sharp sweetness to it. Probs the one thing with this recipe is it could do with a tad more sweetness (really not that much).

If you ever want to try a really good example of a Pumpkin Ale, try one from a brewery called Schlafly Brewery, from St.Louis, Mo. They really nail it. They use a pumpkin squash. Really a great example. They recently did a rum barrel aged version...did not enjoy it.

15lbs of honey?! Even a pound of cheapest honey here costs around $3 which would make 15lbs of honey worth of $45

That is why mead is expensive. Bees don't work cheap.

I will say, my last batch of mead I made, I paid almost $90 for the 15 lbs. I bottled it. Are you reall going to smash 16% abv mead like a 5% abv beer though? I have seen people try.

Okay friends, the girlfriend is calling, must retire now. I will be back, good questions and keep brewing! Don't be afraid to take a risk, don't let anyone tell you it can't be done.

I'm Finnish so I can smash pretty much anything up to 80%. Also mead is delicious as hell regardless if it's our traditional citrus mead or that really strong viking honey mead. I've also heard that honey has a little bit of yeast in it by itself and obviously sugar, so you could just mix water + honey and let it ferment on its own

I kegged up 2 batches this morning, the whole process from start to finish took less than half an hour.
Back when I used to bottle that same amount would've taken about three hours, plus there's that problem of having hundreds of bottles scattered around your home and rinsing them after you pour a beer.
Kegging, you just fill up a cup and drink it, repeat until the keg blows.

Good quality swing top bottles are worth it, capping is a pain.

Brown glass > clear glass also because sunlight fucks your hops.

polyclar or some other sort of fining?

how much money do you make?