CP Home Brewing

[Strongside]

Anyone here into this? I recently caught the bug, and it's addicting as hell. I'd been toying with mostly 1 gallon batches, and racking via siphon, but I recently upgraded to a larger setup with a FastFerment conical. I'm totally pumped as tomorrow is brew day and I'm whipping up a 5 gallon batch of Cascade double IPA to try this thing out. I'm in a loft downtown now, and am limited on space so I really only have room for extract brewing, but we're buying a house soon and my main requirement is a garage or basement big enough for a fermentation chamber and an all-grain system.

Here's my new setup with the room I have.



If anyone here is into the hobby, share your setup, favorite recipes, etc. it'd be great to have a CP home brew tasting at some point. I know some of you ****ers HAVE to be doing this stuff...

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Yea its hard to do all grain without decent equipment. I actually got lucky and got both kegs for free.

That being said I probably still have probably $1000 in my brewing equipment. The quick disconnect fittings are the best investment I ever made but they weren't cheap.

Brew in a bag is actually fairly easy and takes about half the equipment but the efficiency is much lower. I still consider doing that ever now and then since its so simple.

I used a 5 gallon stock pot for my brew pot, had a copper immersion wort chiller, used a couple of plastic trash cans for the mashtun, and a had bucket primary fermentor and a glass carboy secondary.

That limited me to 5 gallon batches which took like 12 hours to brew. Kitchen looked like Vietnam when I was done.

[TimBone]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Wow where to start?

Yes you can make beer cheaper than you can buy it unless your goal is to make Keystone or Coors.

I do 10gal all grain batches regularly and cost varies from $25 - $60 per batch which is less than $1 a beer and you cant buy good beer for that at the liquor store.

You definitely have some equipment investment that gets paid down the more you brew.

Brewing is for people who enjoy it kind of like cooking. Its not simple but if its your passion then its always fun.

I have been brewing mostly my own recipes for several years and have made some really good stuff. You can make beer that is as good or better than most commercial beers with a little practice and education.

My first suggestion is to read John Palmers "How to Brew".

Then buy and use a brewing software like Beersmith.

http://beersmith.com/

And to get a subscription to BYO. http://byo.com/

I have brewed around 150gal per year the last few years and actually plan to up that this year.

Right now I have 5 beers either on tap or in the bottle from Pilsners to Stouts to Brett Beers.

I am not an expert but have brewed a lot the last 4 years and if you have questions I am willing to help if I can.

Extract
Mini Mash
Brew In a Bag
All Grain Multi Vessel


They all make good beer if you do it right.

I can attest to this man's skills.

He makes good beer.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I used a 5 gallon stock pot for my brew pot, had a copper immersion wort chiller, used a couple of plastic trash cans for the mashtun, and a had bucket primary fermentor and a glass carboy secondary.

That limited me to 5 gallon batches which took like 12 hours to brew. Kitchen looked like Vietnam when I was done.

Yea I used to brew in the house early on doing 5gal batches. My wife put a stop to that pretty early.

I can do 10gal in about 5 hours with clean up and all.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Yea I used to brew in the house early on doing 5gal batches. My wife put a stop to that pretty early.

I can do 10gal in about 5 hours with clean up and all.

I was doing recipes that called for a 4 hour boil. I'm not sure that long of a boil was necessary.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I was doing recipes that called for a 4 hour boil. I'm not sure that long of a boil was necessary.

Interesting.

Unless you are making a really, really, really, strong beer, like 14%, I see no reason for a 4 hour boil. A lot if stuff has changed over the years though.

Anything past 90 minutes doesn't make sense to me unless you miss your preboil gravity by a mile and need to boil off some extra water.

I do mainly 90 minute boils as it removes more of the DMS from the wort than 60 minute but I don't add any hops until after 30 minutes.

I think the longest boil I have ever done was around 1:45 and that was just to remove a little water.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Interesting.

Unless you are making a really, really, really, strong beer, like 14%, I see no reason for a 4 hour boil. A lot if stuff has changed over the years though.

Anything past 90 minutes doesn't make sense to me unless you miss your preboil gravity by a mile and need to boil off some extra water.

I do mainly 90 minute boils as it removes more of the DMS from the wort than 60 minute but I don't add any hops until after 30 minutes.

I think the longest boil I have ever done was around 1:45 and that was just to remove a little water.

It was from a hardcore specialty book. I will look it up when I get home.

[Sorce]

Just finished moving the red ale to the secondary. Not bright red anymore.

[KCUnited]

Happy National Homebrew Day. Anyone brewing or got anything fermenting?

Got a Pacifica (NZ), Amarillo, and Citra APA that I'm ready to bottle. Forgot how much ass bottling sucks, going to look into keg options this summer.

[Zebedee DuBois]

In the basement I have 10 gallons of an amber ale in secondaries, dry hopping with Spalt hops.
My previous batch was an Alt, my first go at lagering - which I tried to accomplish in a water\ice bath - which ended up being a pain in the rear. I won't do that again without a refrigerator of freezer - but I don't have the space for one. I was hoping it didn't taste good so that I wouldn't be tempted - but darn it - it was tasty.

[KCUnited]

My wife is out of town this week for work, so one night this week I plan to brew the same beer as above but take the late addition hops and use them in a first wort hop instead to see if I can tell a difference.

I've been doing 2.5 gallon batches inside the condo since I don't have the risk tolerance of firing up a burner on my all wood rooftop deck.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by KCUnited

My wife is out of town this week for work, so one night this week I plan to brew the same beer as above but take the late addition hops and use them in a first wort hop instead to see if I can tell a difference.

I've been doing 2.5 gallon batches inside the condo since I don't have the risk tolerance of firing up a burner on my all wood rooftop deck.

Have you added any hops at flame out? I like to do a big hop add at the end of the boil usually 2oz or so in a 10gal batch and let it steep for about 20 minutes. Adds a nice hop flavor.

Ive done FWH as well but havn't been able to tell a huge difference but I have only tried that a few times.

Right now on tap I have a Saison, an APA, a Habanero Stout, and a hoppy wheat beer.

In fermentation I have Belgian blonde that I split a 10gal wart and did half with Belgian yeast and half with a bohemian pilsner yeast. The grain bill seemed close enough to e to make a pils with it. Should be interesting.

[KCUnited]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Have you added any hops at flame out? I like to do a big hop add at the end of the boil usually 2oz or so in a 10gal batch and let it steep for about 20 minutes. Adds a nice hop flavor.

Ive done FWH as well but havn't been able to tell a huge difference but I have only tried that a few times.

Right now on tap I have a Saison, an APA, a Habanero Stout, and a hoppy wheat beer.

In fermentation I have Belgian blonde that I split a 10gal wart and did half with Belgian yeast and half with a bohemian pilsner yeast. The grain bill seemed close enough to e to make a pils with it. Should be interesting.

I've done a 0 minute hop addition on an IPA, but I brewed this particular beer with 15 and 10 minute additions that I'm moving to pre-boil for this go around. Mostly based on Palmer's recommendation in HTB and the fact that I've never done a FWH. I'd like to see how the 2 compare as it's on the top end of IBUs for the style. I'm keeping the same dry hop schedule, just moving the late additions to FWH.

One of the things I like about small batches is the ability to play around with things.

[srvy]

Originally Posted by Strongside

Anyone here into this? I recently caught the bug, and it's addicting as hell. I'd been toying with mostly 1 gallon batches, and racking via siphon, but I recently upgraded to a larger setup with a FastFerment conical. I'm totally pumped as tomorrow is brew day and I'm whipping up a 5 gallon batch of Cascade double IPA to try this thing out. I'm in a loft downtown now, and am limited on space so I really only have room for extract brewing, but we're buying a house soon and my main requirement is a garage or basement big enough for a fermentation chamber and an all-grain system.

Here's my new setup with the room I have.



If anyone here is into the hobby, share your setup, favorite recipes, etc. it'd be great to have a CP home brew tasting at some point. I know some of you ****ers HAVE to be doing this stuff...

How do you like the fast ferment conical? I got out of this about 30 years ago but my brother kept it up. He can get me one thse for 80 bucks from his supplier. For some reason I want to give it another go as things have changed alot since. I still have all my old equipment bottles, brew bucket 2 glass carboys. Back then I just used a big ass stainless steel sock pot for the boil. I plan to remedy that. My brother bought a grainfather he plans to give a go with looks interesting.
http://www.grainfather.com/#!home/mainPage

[KCUnited]

I brewed another IPA on Friday, this one with all late hop additions. I'm also planning to dry hop at the tail end of fermentation to see what kind of hop flavor/aroma I can get. This will also be the first beer I keg so I'm a little excited about not having to bottle.

[srvy]

Originally Posted by KCUnited

I brewed another IPA on Friday, this one with all late hop additions. I'm also planning to dry hop at the tail end of fermentation to see what kind of hop flavor/aroma I can get. This will also be the first beer I keg so I'm a little excited about not having to bottle.

Nice I'd love to keg also but first things first gotta get back into.

My brother had his Grainfather delivered today and I have rest week off so I helped him set it up and we cut out some aluminum backed insulating he got at HD. We did a cleaning and then a trial boil. This thing rocks he is doing a brew end this week I'm gonna try to be there. Hoping on non cook weekend he will let me borrow.

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