Since when is brewing alcohol a fucking meme?
Since the dawn of human civilization.
>>7477322
Since some tool on /ck/ said it is.
>>7477325
This
Without beer there would be no numbers
That being said if you check the catalog there is probably 2 "home brew" threads
Forced meme cause niggas too lazy to check the catalog
Tapped my keg of recently kegged pale ale. Not enough C02 yet but it looked like the gelatin fining did its job well!
>>7477325
Brewing might literally be the meme that kickstarted civilization.
>>7477322
Got 15 gals of cream ale on secondary.
Why wouldn't you just buy your liquor at the store?
Honestly, if you're drinking so much that you decide to make your own instead of shelling out $15, you should probably stop drinking so much.
>>7477634
>15 dollars
I live in Canada so Alcohol is extremely costly.
1 750 ml bottle of cheap shit is $25. The only lasts 1-3 days.
Meanwhile you can make that amount of alcohol for 30 cents.
>>7477658
>1 750 ml bottle of cheap shit is $25
I live in Canada and I've seen wine as low as $8 for a bottle, and I can easily find them for around $10.
4chan likes to call any popular hobby a meme because they hate things that everyone likes but aren't smart enough to properly express themselves. Bonus points if the hobby has a subreddit.
>>7477683
He was talking about liquor. Please go back to talking about video games with the rest of the children, this conversation is for grown ups.
>>7477897
>He was talking about liquor.
There was no way for me to determine that, considering, at least in my province, our liquor stores carry both wine and spirits. Secondly, this is a homebrew thread, which doesn't include home distillation.
>>7477329
>forced meme because inexperienced users want to have genuine discussion
is that how the banana peel meme came to fruition?
What stuff are you guys brewing right now?
I have a gallon of apricot mead in a primary and a gallon of apple mead in a secondary.
The apple mead has been in a secondary for about a month now, so I'm probably gonna just crack it open pretty soon.
How long should I bottle condition my ale?
>>7477909
Not him, I'm an American.
>no way to determine he was talking about liquor
He said 750 ml. If you weren't a kid, you'd know that meant liquor.
>>7477909
>which doesn't include home distillation.
why not
I brewed with mr beer back when they had west cost pale ale and line backer dopplebock. It was fun and a little cheaper than buying beer. The west coast pale ale was pretty darn good kind of like red stripe in taste. After I did that I mainly worked on making high alcohol content brews with canned fruit and honey they weren't as tasty but they did the trick for me.
>>7477973
>He said 750 ml. If you weren't a kid, you'd know that meant liquor.
750 mL is also the most common size of wine bottle.
>>7477395
We really got started by raping Neanderthals, leading to the production of babies who weren't complete morons.
>>7478111
>rape and alcohol jumpstarted civilization
Suck on that, moralfags
>>7477976
Probably because it's illegal in most first-world countries because muh fun tax and muh industry protection
It's more expensive than just buying normal shit. If you want to make your own amaretto or irish cream or infused whatever, that's fine, you can save money doing that. But brewing your alcohol itself is almost always more expensive
>>7478164
>But brewing your alcohol itself is almost always more expensive
Not when you live in eastern Canada, where a 12 pack of beer is almost $27
some day this current crop of people will be dead and the word meme will die with them.
>>7478123
Before I expanded the image I thought that lightbulb was a big booty bitch bending over
>>7478242
Have another drink.
>>7478238
>12 pack is $27
>>7478263
Why you gotta be like that
Brewing alcohol is fun.
I just enjoy the whole process, cooking up the recipe, adding the yeast and watching it do its thing, it's like your own little baby that you created.
Then after your booze is bottled up or kegged the waiting game begins, the anticipation of that first taste.
Will it be good? Will it be great?
If it's just OK who cares, invite your drinking buddies over and binge on cheap booze.
I wouldn't care if homebrewing costed more than store bought, I'd still Brew.
>>7478291
>adding the yeast and watching it do its thing
I love watching carboys ferment. It's relaxing as fuck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3-bQwXdu6M
>>7477344
just crank up your co2 to 30psi for one or two days. I haven't force carbed since doing it this way
>>7478238
This
I could buy 15 beer for 33 dollar
Or buy a beer kit that makes 50 beer for 30 dollars
Hmmmmm
Is it always a better idea to use yeast starter?
What's the best cheap cider method? Preferably something that only tastes like 90% ass.
bottled my raw sour Rauchbeir today.
Its a good one. Smokey, slighly grainy, thin mouthfeel loads of funk. 2-3% alcohol depending on how heterofermenting my home lacto strain is.
Shame it only lasts a couple of weeks due to the protein content. It'd make a good summer beer.
Saved the yeast and bacteria cake for re-pitching into a Berliner weisse style in a couple of months.
Looks like most people in here brew ciders and wines, anyone else have any experience with sour beers or using yeast/cultures you harvested yourself?
>>7479538
forgot to add, it fermented all the way down to 1.000 in just under a week. never had a beer get that low before. I guess the bacteria can metabolise some of the higher sugars and residual starches that the yeast can't chew through.
>>7479177
~12L apple cider/juice (with no preservatives)
32 oz Treetop apple juice concentrate
1 package of ale yeast (Wyeast 1272 recommended)
>>7478242
Damn son I saw the same thing
>>7479538
>>7479546
never heard of a sour rauchbeir... what % smoked malt did you use in the grist? I could see a little bit of smoke adding complexity but I find it overpowers the beer more often than not.
could you go into more detail about your yeast/bug profile? I've done some sour brewing myself (commercial brewer here, all clean beer though).
1.000 in a week is unheard of (and I'm pretty sure impossible), and makes me think you might have made a mistake taking your readings... whats the pH?
>>7479538
>Shame it only lasts a couple of weeks due to the protein content.
also... what?
>>7479886
just under 30% beech-smoked pale german malt. The rest was mostly marris otter, wheat and a bit of oat that I like to put in most of my beers for head stability.
It only started at 1.022, and fementation was fairly vigorous, and had dropped down to no visible activity when shining a light through the vessel and watching the surface.
>>7479890
The beer is raw, meaning no boil, and no hop addition. normally these steps increase the shelf life of a beer. The boil removes protein by making it come out as a solid precipitate and the hops have anti-bacterial content. high protein content in beer leads to less shelf stability. plus its only a couple of percent alcohol anyway.
>>7479886
This batch was mostly just an experiment to see how close I could get to a really ancient style of beer and still make something actually palatable. Think I succeeded, drank the whole sample tube without realising instead of just taking a small sip and spitting it out like I normally do before switching to secondary/bottling.
>>7479914
I'm familiar with raw beers... I guess I was under the impression that mixed fermentation beers in sanitary conditions simply evolve as the bacteria continues to work, and am surprised they would spoil that quickly. I guess that it makes sense if gravity is 1.000 and the bacteria have nothing to work with.
do you always bottle raw beers that quickly?
what yeast/bugs did you use that got the gravity down so fast?
>>7479947
okay, thought you were a different guy.
The brew was starting to drop bright in the container so I figured there'd be no harm in bottling now.
This is actually my first ever raw beer that I've brewed. hence the small batch size and my amazement that it actually worked.
Yeast was a low flocculating english ale culture that originally came from a dry packet about 5 brews ago. that never tends to get below 1.010 no matter how much encouragement I give it. The rest came from a teaspoon of sauerkraut juice.
I knew the juice is L. Brevis dominant because i managed to set the alcohol in it on fire cooking with it once. It also tends to form a pellicle so there's probably some pediococcus and brett in there. Never taken it to anyone experienced enough with a microscope to identify anything thoroughly though so this is all guesswork.
When fermenting I let the yeast do its thing for a day and then innoculated with my lacto/whatever's managed to get in it culture. The foam then dropped down a couple of days later and a thin pellicle formed. I was expecting to have to ferment it for nearly a month and took multiple gravity readings to confirm the 1.000.
>mfw about to start some cider
>>7478263
I think he meant beer that you can drink and tolerate enough to actually finish the pack and maybe even get drunk with.
>>7481760
All cases are around that price though
>>7478164
dude, give me ten bucks and I could make a 24, where I am that'd barely buy a 6.
So I'm thinking of starting a blueberry mead this weekend, probably a 3 gallon batch. I was hoping someone here might be able to recommend a recipe if they've made a good one in the past. Looking at homebrew forums I've found via Google there are a couple that sound pretty good, but they're ancient threads that aren't active anymore and I'd rather deal with a more lively community.
Also going to talk to the people at my local homebrew store tomorrow about it and see what they say.
Thanks for any suggestions, gonna be at work soon and will only be able to check my phone in a few hours but I'll be back.
>>7482189
but that implies your time is worth less than beer
>>7482927
It's not like it's a huge time sink. A couple hours of free time and that's all it requires too brew beer and bottle it. It's also spread out over a couple weeks. And if you're making enough money that downing a couple hours of free time means you're losing money, and you could be making money instead of brewing beer, then I guess that's a conflict of interest you will have to solve yourself.
>>7482941
Okay, under that same line of thinking you could grow pot for a much better "profit" for your time invested. Then sell the pot for beer.
>>7482948
Nah, growing good weed is pretty intensive and is mostly only practical for people who have difficulty leaving their homes due to disability
>>7482948
Sure, you could. But not all of us are in it for profit and really would just like the end result (beer/alcohol) and happen to enjoy the proves of making it. Not everything needs to be about profit, anon.
Anosmic here (No sense of smell), does brewing give off a strong smell?
Would my housemates complain?
>>7482980
It gives of a smell a bit like baking bread. Whenever I've done it in the past my roommates never complained about the smell. In fact it was the opposite, it smells great.
>>7482980
It is sooo negligible compared to brewing hard liquor.
Once you have it out of the beer out of the primary and into the carboy I don't find it smells at all.
Then I brew in my room so maybe I'm nose blind
>>7482923
3 lbs of honey per gallon. Add whatever number of blueberries you want. Use champagne yeast. Be patient since it will probably take a couple of months to ferment fully.
>>7479561
I do something similar.
6 gallons Treetop AJ from Costco
2 lbs dark brown sugar
yeast nutrient
M 02 cider yeast
>>7478239
this is LITERALLY like saying one day these people will be dead and their genes will die with them.
>>7482923
Honestly, I usually keep my honey at 2.5 lbs/gallon and people seem to like it a lot more. Most people I know prefer medium-sweet meads, as they are much more sessionable than dessert meads (where 3 lbs/gal tends to get you).
I'd also recommend Lalvin D47 for yeast. A lot of people use champagne yeast, but it really doesn't have much to contribute other than alchohol tolerance. I don't know: I see so many people using champagne yeast because they want squeeze the most ethanol out of their brew, when that doesn't necessarily make a better end produce. Sometimes its preferable to have something clock in at 13% and taste pro, instead of 18% and taste like rocket fuel.
>>7482923
Follow up:
Per gallon-
7.5 lbs Honey (orange blossom or mesquite work nice)
3 tsp Yeast nutrient
1 tsp Energizer
Lalvin DV10
Water up to 3 gal
Mix all ingredients in clean carboy, do not boil honey or water (used purified water and be clean)
After about 10 days, rack onto 4-5 lbs of blueberries (rinse berries in 1:10 vinegar solution to kill mold spores and wild yeast).
Let sit of fruit for two weeks, then rack to clean fermenter. Let clear and bottle. Usually pretty drinkable after 6 months.
>>7484192
>being afraid of wild yeast
don't be a pussy, horse blankets taste nice.
>>7478238
>Not when you live in eastern Canada, where a 12 pack of beer is almost $27
Are you fucking serious? You can get 4 high life "cannons" (equivalent of 12 beers) for $6 in murica
So the little tiny bubbles that rise up from the bottom of my carboy. What are those.
>>7486223
dat is da yeast faring carbon dioxide while pssing alcohol into your brew
dem yeasts will eat da food until all gone they are or they eat the food and piss alcohol until they are die in their own toxic waste
all da time they budding and making more little yeasties
it's beautiful when you think about it
>>7486264
>and piss alcohol until they are die in their own toxic waste
sounds like the guys who post in the al/ck/ threads.
>>7486264
So it's done fermenting when those stop rising up?
Say I want to stop fermentation because it's reached the gravity I'm after. How do I kill the rest of the active yeast.
what is it about orange juice and homebrew? Every time I make something with it it tastes like vomit. Blueberry juice wine always turns out great for me
>>7477963
Depends on the abv usually. Most beers between 2 and 7%abv are fine in about 2 weeks for me. Longer conditioning for stronger beers and like a year and more for some beers like lambics and other wild/spontaneous brews.
>>7486284
>So it's done fermenting when those stop rising up?
Correct.
>Say I want to stop fermentation because it's reached the gravity I'm after. How do I kill the rest of the active yeast.
Heat (pasteurization) or by adding something to kill the yeast such as potassium metabisulfite (aka campden tablets)
>>7486284
>Say I want to stop fermentation because it's reached the gravity I'm after.
Was you initial gravity as high as you planned for it to be? Is the flavor right? Check these things because it's pretty unusual for a ferment to go father than you would want. If you really want to, heat is probably the easiest way.
>>7486295
Citric acid is pretty harsh without sugar to balance it.
>>7486585
Is there any way of measuring alcohol content if you didn't take a specific gravity reading before fermentation?
>(apart from drinking it to judge how wasted I get)
>>7477634
Because the stuff I make is better than most of the swill they sell in the store. Some people don't drink just to get drunk
>>7486585
I made my first batch of mead last month and did a few steps incorrectly. I mixed damn near the whole gallon of water with my 3.5lbs of honey. As a result I had extra must and my gravity was only 1.100. I was hoping for a semi to sweet mead so I'm also hoping that my fermentation doesn't go absolutely nuts to the point I get a dry one.
I believe i also racked too soon. I still had lots of tiny bubbles but I had maybe a cm or more of lees at the bottom. I read youre not supposed to leave it on the lees so no went ahead and racked. Now that it's settled in its new carboy I still have bubbles but not nearly as many as before. Tasted like sweet champagne when I racked.
I've been told that airlock bubbles are shit indication of fermentation that's why I've been focusing on the tiny ones in the carboy, having said that, my airlock had little to no activity when I racked.
Anyone here made apple-jack before? I have made a few batches and it has tasted pretty good. But I have been worrying recently about methanol.
Me ginger beer has been bottled and is back in the boiler cupboard.
Hopefully I can get it pretty strong fizzy
>>7487019
Watch out for bottle bombs there m8, are you taking gravity readings.
>>7487139
I have not. I'll do it proper next time but for now I'll make sure it doesn't over pressurize. Lot of leway in the bottles and I'm checking on them
>>7487150
Good stuff, you using glass or plastic?
>>7486613
uhhh there's some complicated chemical shit that a mead book i have talks about. let me see if i can pull it up, but it's probably going to be more effort than you would find it to be worth.
>>7486659
candidly, there's no real need to rack before bottling day with mead. if you find yourself in a stall like that again with 3.5 lb to the gallon, you should probably just bite the bullet and pitch another yeast, maybe backsweeten at bottling if you really feel the need. there are a couple of varieties that are specialized for this situation.
>>7487153
One plastic and one Jack Daniel's bottle.
It's going to be a disaster but I had Ginger about to go off and I wasn't sure if freezing it would have much of an effect to use later.
Put some chilies in for an extra kick
I wanted to buy some glass swing cap bottles or get glass and a corker but I don't really have anywhere significant to incubate them.
>>7487164
Uhh, the Daniels bottle really won't be able to hold much pressure at all. They're not to designed to, the corners present structural flaws and the glass is made thinner than pressure safe bottles. I'd switch it out of there as soon as you can.
>>7487180
Thanks for the heads up. Just switched it to another plastic one.
>>7487199
No worries, bottle bomb isn't just an expression. I had a couple bottles of beligian wit blow up on me in the middle of the night once. Thought the house was being broken into.
>>7487226
*Belgian
>>7487226
Kek. The jack bottle was pretty full and smell from when the plant was brewing was pretty strong so I didn't want that stinking up the house with the addition of more alcohol
>>7487234
What's brewing ginger beer entail? I made beer flavoured with ginger a couple of times but its not the same as a proper scoby.
>>7487252
http://food52.com/blog/9927-how-to-make-alcoholic-ginger-beer-from-scratch
This is what I am going by.
Not many places have it in the UK asides from Crabbies' so I thought making some would be a laugh. Might "infuse" other flavors in it if it is successful
>>7486295
Citrus fruit and the like contain oils that are metabolised into shit tasting esters and stuff. Or so I've heard.
brewed my first beer, a Galaxy single hop IPA, about 6 weeks ago, bottled it up and then kind of ignored it for a while
currently have a couple in the fridge but I'm kind of afraid to crack them open because I know I fucked up about a thousand times on brew day and during bottling and they're in all likely hood infected to all hell
>>7488145
Just open one. If it's shit, down the sink it goes. Then just repeat e.g. weekly.
On another note, just started making beer myself and the bottling's due soon. Do you guys disinfect the caps? Is it harmful to the gaskets, should I maybe just rinse the caps?
>>7477322
>meme
>>7488845
Star san the caps for a minute or two and let them air dry. They'll be fine.
>>7488145
Weird, one of my last beers was a session galaxy IPA. Its a pretty resilent hop to aging and should still be fairly good. What's the point of brewing beer if you're to afraid to drink it learn how to get better?
>>7488845
Disinfect everything that touches beer, or things that touch things that touch beer. Most beers that get infected get infected at the bottling stage.
