Cimarron29414

So, I have a co-worker who is disabled and wanted to start brewing beer at home. Since he couldn't do any of the lifting, or fine-motorskill work, I offered to be his hands.

Our first batch was a mead. It is in the secondary fermentor now and has another six weeks. It looks and smells beautiful. Only 10 months to go before we drink it. Our second batch was an Irish Red. It looks great too. Racked it to the secondary fermentor yesterday. Only 6 weeks to go before we drink it.

Third batch was going to be a Honey Weizen. Yep, was going to be. We brought the water to a boil, and I poured in the Malt extract without turning off the burner. The extract is sort of like honey. It fell straight to the bottom of the pot and burned. Done before we started. For practice, we went all the way through the cooking process, and racked it into the primary fermentor. Then, we threw it out. 5 gallons of glorious, unrealized potential.

So, the schedule is as follows: Next week, blueberry wheat (to satisfy the Mrs.). Then it's the Honey Weizen v2.0, followed by another mead, followed by an English Brown. We are doing 5 gallons a pop and we intend on starting with bottling. I'm told that gets old REALLY fast, and we'll be forced to move to kegging soon enough.

So...adventures in homebrewing? Anyone ever burn their extract before? Did you bottle it anyway? Was it drinkable? Anyone brew beyond the kits and in larger batches that 5 gallons? Anyone brew wine? Anyone have particular incredients they prefer? Anyone ever grow their own hops?

Crack one open and tell us your stories.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

genuinegirly

What fun! It's great that the two of you are able to get so much done - sounds like a spectacular time.

I've grown hops! But those flowers never made it into our homebrew.
Tt makes little batches every now and again. We'd like to do more, but have no space for it at the moment.

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Cimarron29414

Well, not much traction here, but I'll document this weekend anyway. We brewed the American Wheat this weekend. This time, I removed the boiling water from the burner and slowly poured the malt extract while stirring vigorously. This actually worked great.

We had to stop cooling the wort in the sink because the sink was sagging under the weight. We used a large plastic container with bricks in the bottom to sit the pot on, then we started with hot water and slowly added ice to cool it. We went from 220 degrees to 70 degrees in 55 minutes. We are still going to need a wort chiller, which is a coiled piece of copper pipe you put in the pot and run cold water through it. It is very effective and brings your cooling time to 15 minutes. The gear looks more and more like moonshine stuff!

We now have 15 gallons of hooch fermenting. We will bottle the Irish Red this weekend, which is another first for us. We have friends and family saving their bottles for us, as we will need hundreds for our endeavor. Many quit the bottling and go to kegging pretty quick. This is done because it's a pain in the ass to clean hundreds of bottles all the time. Also, you have wait 3 to 4 weeks for bottle conditioning. Kegging reduces that time to about 2 days! So, you get to drink your beer in about 3 weeks instead of 6 weeks.

However, bottlie allows for an unexpected pleasure in home brewing. Once you start brewing, you get to name your brewery and your product. This has been a really fun conversation. Drinking beer while making beer while naming your beer while naming your brewery. My buddy is a professional web designer, so it offers lots of opportunities for cool label design...

We think we have some good ideas for brewery names, but what about you guys? What about names for the beers?

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

Psycho Dad

Since you are doing extract, are you doing partial or full boils boils? Partial boils are easier to cool with an ice bath in the sink or other container like you are doing.

Depending on how bad you burned your LME, the batch may have still turned out OK. Never toss a batch unless you absolutely have to. In the future, continue to turn off the heat or just add the LME slowly to avoid the scorching.

Kegging is faster than bottling, but I suggest not expecting the beer to be ready in two days. It is still green at this point and will benefit from aging. You will be IMHO much happier building a pipeline of beer so that you always have some ready rather than rushing it from fermenter to glass. Typically for my beers I let the keg sit and age for three weeks before carbonating. Then inside my kegerator I have two kegs on tap and one connected to co2 at normal serving pressure. At normal serving pressure and temperature the beer will be perfectly carbonated in a week to ten days. That two days at high pressure or shaking business often over carbonated my beers and just didn't turn out as well as being patient.

Hops are quite easy to grow if you have the space for them. They grow quite tall and need a structure that allows them to reach often in excesss of twenty feet or you can train them along a garage or fence top. Expect a couple of years for them to produce enough cones to brew with.

BTW, brewing beer is the best hobby I've ever had. No regrets

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

snowy

My SO wants to get into homebrewing. Since he is a chemical engineer, he would like to eventually perfect a continuous process for brewing at home A friend from his program is leaving town and probably giving my SO his carboys, so my SO is planning on teaming up with some friends to do some brewing sometime this summer, as a friend has all the other equipment needed.

Yay beer!

Also, my future MIL grows hops. We're going to use them to decorate the tent (marquee) at our wedding. Hops are a big cash crop around our part of the Willamette Valley.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cimarron29414

Busy, busy weekend!

First we racked our American wheat from the primary fermentor to the secondary fermentor. Then we bottled our Irish Red, 53 bottles. Finally, we boiled our Honey Weizen and put it in the primary. The Honey Weizen was a do-over of the one that we (think we) ruined. It went really well. So, we have 3 batches (15 gallons) of beer in various stages in the process. We also have the mead with 5 weeks to go in the secondary.

Psycho Dad,

I think I'm too ignorant to know the difference between a partial and full boil. We are still doing Northern Brewery kits, since we are novices. I can say that our boils have been 60 minutes in every instance. As for the burned one, we had quarter-sized flakes of black char floating through the batch for the entire boil. I used a hand-held strainer to trap most of them as they boiled past, but there were a lot of them. We moved from our boiling pot to the primary by racking into the filter funnel. This caught most/all of the sediment. I think if this had happened to us a few months from now, we would have been more inclined to take the chance and keep going. The other problem was that it was our first wheat extract beer and it hyper-fermented the first night, out of the airlock and all over the lid and plastic floor mat. We had a terrible mess the next morning. Since then, we've made an overflow valve - but our nervousness about the taste just made us scrap it rather than put that many more hours into racking and bottling.

Our cooling is taking about 45 minutes using the ice method, but it's very labor intensive. I'm thinking the wort chiller is a great investment, but by the looks of them, it looks like they'd be difficult to keep clean. Sanitizing is easy, obviously, but it seems you get particulate matter between the coils.

Snowy,

We should trade some hops/rhizomes for some brew! We've used Willamette in one or two of our recipes already. I have some friends who have a cabin in the mountains, and we can grow hops there, if our climate is too harsh for what we want to grow. There seem to be varieties which will grow here, though. I'm trying to ease the wife into this, so an immediate 20 ft trellis might be too shocking!

When I pondered this endeavor, I was thinking the whole house would smell like beer for weeks and it would be a giant mess and all, but it's really been pretty easy. The only day it smells like warm beer in the house is on boil day. After that, it smells a bit on racking and bottling day. All the other time, it's sealed up and you wouldn't even know - just a bucket in the corner.

We are in the process of designing our first labels for the Irish Red. We've also found a nice summer beer in the store - Lienenkugel Sunset Wheat. We are going to try to clone it. This will be our first non-kit beer. I've got my crack R & D staff working on a recipe as we speak. He tells me he only needs to drink 10 or 11 more of them to get the recipe just right, but I think there's something fishy going on.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

Psycho Dad

A partial boil is boiling the malt extract in about 2.5 to 3 gallons of water and then topping off in the fermenter to get five gallons. It is fairly common with extract brewers although some extract brewers do do a full boil of about 6 to 6.5 gallons boiling off to about five gallons. Some feel that a full boil is better but with extracts a partial is fine IMHO. All grain brews use a full volume boil, I collect about 6.5 gallons of wort from my mashes and wind up with about five. Your mileage may vary.

Cleaning the copper coiled immersion wort chillers is very easy. After use I simply rinse it off as no wort goes through it, only water. Then the next time I use it I put it in the boil pot with about 15 minutes left in the boil to sanitize it. Counterflow chillers obviously need more work to clean as do plate heat exchangers. I've been happy with my immersion chiller for years and see no need at this time to switch to one of the others.

One thing to keep in mind, my advice is just what works for me. There are tons of forums on brewing and you will find that there is more than one way to skin this cat. Everyone who has brewed for some time finds that out. I've even noticed that on some forums it seems everyone does something one way and other forums everyone does something different. Dry yeast vs. liquid yeast, if you need to make a starter or not, Starsan or bleach all get debated and IMHO the best thing is to see what works for you and have fun.

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

Cimarron29414

Ah! Well, we are doing full boils. My buddy believes the beer will be better if all of the water is present during the boil. However, we did a partial boil for our mead.

We were going to go to Lowes and get copper tubing and make our own wort chiller. Do you run tap water through your chiller or do you run colder water using some more elaborate technique?

For what it's worth, we are using WYeast Liquid. We are also using sanitizer, not bleach.

The Honey Weizen is bubbling up through the blowoff valve pretty hard. We have several bubbles a second. It's been going about 40 hours now. We won't be able to move it to the secondary until Monday night, as I'm away for the weekend. Either that, or we move it Thursday (or get some help from someone else).

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

Psycho Dad

Tap water is fine unless your tap water is not very cool. Then some people use a prechiller that basically is another coil before the wort chiller in an ice water bath. My water from my garden hose cools my wort fast enough for me even in the summer months. Cooling faster simply saves time in my opinion. In fact there are many people these days doing no chill brewing where they simply wait until the next day to pitch the yeast. Palmer's book I believe is what made people think that if the wort wasn't cooled in a half hour or less then bad things would happen.

Wyeast smack packs are also what I use. I've pitched some pretty big beers with smack packs and never had a problem. The only time I make a starter is when I wash and reuse yeast.

If you can't move the weizen to a secondary when you want, it will be fine. You will find that the beer will wait on you and that letting it wait is better than rushing things. Something else I do as far a secondaries go is not do a secondary on my wheat beers. Typically by style the weizen should be cloudy anyway. A kit that I used to buy had Irish moss that I quit using just to get that pretty straw colored wheat beer that I wanted.

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

snowy

I'm going to make my SO read this thread.

Some friends of his got together and bought him a complete brewing starter kit for our wedding present. Fabulous gift! We're looking forward to brewing our first batch--a pale ale--tomorrow.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

fancybone

I had some home-made mead at a party of the brewer. The bottle he gave us was excellent, it was a little like champagne, so I grabbed a bottle to give my parents... and when we drank it, it tasted awful. I don't know if we just stored it wrong, or if the quality just differs that much between bottles, or if I was just drunk at the party and didn't realize it tasted like boiled gasoline

My dad brews his own beer, it always turns out great.

snowy

So the pale ale turned into an India Pale Ale...trust my SO to go that route instead I mostly watched, because my husband had two capable assistants and I had a cake to bake. A friend brought over his kettle, made from an old Red Hook keg, and that helped considerably. We have a large boiling water canner that apparently could have been used should we have needed it. The other cool thing our friend had was a wort chiller.

So now we have a bucket sitting in our coat closet, under an old t-shirt, bubbling away.

Next up is an attempt to make hard cider, as my in-laws rented a cider press for the week.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

chriswin8

OOOo i have always wanted to try this. I have a few recipes for Mead and a few other things. But I don't even know were to begin, nor do i think that i could afford to.

Do you have any links on resources that i might look up otherwise i have other projects that i have to spend time on before I can get started on this.

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snowy

Our go-to resource is the local brewing supply store. Ours has a big book of recipes and knowledgeable staff. Try and find one in your area.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Psycho Dad

Good call. Hops are good and the world needs more of them.

I have an IPA bottle conditioning now that I'll refrigerate come Tuesday for about a week and I'm kegging a new IPA recipe I made with Magnum, Centennial, Cascade and dry hopped with Cascade and Citra today. I'll force carb it in the kegerator and start enjoying it next Sunday. Both of them were fermented with Northwest Ale yeast that should have done well with the warmer temperatures we had a while back.

I'll taste a sample from the secondary today of the batch I'm kegging and hopefully it will be good enough that I can buy some grains and brew it again in time for the current keg to kick. I already have enough hops as this is a good time of year to buy them in bulk as suppliers want to make room for this year's harvest.

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

snowy

Yeah, we live in Hop Paradise, so the next batch is going to be brewed with fresh hops gathered from friends and family. My in-laws have a bunch of Cascade growing at their place, which is great.

And that IPA sounds fantastic, PsychoDad. I pretty much love drinking anything with Centennial and Cascade in combination, and I do like Citra a lot too.

Our IPA is getting racked into the secondary today.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Psycho Dad

BTW, the warm flat sample of my IPA I tasted from my racking tubing today was fantastic. Of course I'm bias.

Here is the recipe, I got the name from what my sons nicknamed my old truck.
The caramel 60 and the aromatic made it darker than IPAs should be according to style, but I like the darker color. Were I a style Nazi or entering it in a competition I'd use caramel 10 or cut back on the aromatic.

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

snowy

We bottled the IPA this last weekend. Holy crap, that made a mess. My husband complained I kept getting in the way. I told him that next time, he can't bottle in my kitchen. There's a sunroom with tile floor that he can clean up and use for that.

He brewed a batch of fresh hop pale last weekend that was a very vigorous fermenter. It's probably going to get moved into secondary this weekend.

I got to taste-test a bottle of the IPA last night, and even though it was flat, it still tasted good. Reminded me a bit of a cask beer just because of the flatness. It made a tell-tale hiss when we popped the cap off, so it's carbonating. Can't wait.

I'm saving your recipe for the next time we brew an IPA, PsychoDad, because it sounds so good. Next up on our list is a porter--got any good porter recipes to share?

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Psycho Dad

I'm pretty much a hop head so I don't do a lot of porters and stouts. But I did brew this once and I enjoyed it. http://www.highgravitybrew.com/docs/PetesPorter.pdf It is a kit sold by the shop I buy my ingredients from.

The IPA turned out very good if I do say so myself and my wife who normally does not care for hoppy beers is now a hop head too. I have the ingredients for another batch and I plan on keeping a keg of it in rotation pretty much full time. The aromatic and the Northwest Ale yeast made it a very interesting IPA IMHO.

This APA is in the fermenter now. The grain bill is from another kit sold by High Gravity, but that kit used Glacier hops which I don't care for. Centennial and Cascade are among my favorites.
And yes, bottling can be a mess. When I do bottle I clean all my bottles well in the sink and then run them through the sanitize cycle on my dishwasher. After that I set my bottling bucket on the counter above the dishwasher, put all the bottles on the opened door of the dishwasher and fill using a bottling wand on my bottling bucket. That contains 99.9% to the dishwasher.

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

snowy

That's genius. I am going to share this strategy with my husband.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

genuinegirly

That is the most practical use for a dishwasher I have ever come across. Ingenious.

So, what do you look for in a good brew shop? Do you shop for most of your equipment online, or do you prefer to go to speak with knowledgeable staff at a local store? I ask because my husband is bumping around the idea of starting a brewshop in our little college town...

snowy

We prefer the brewing supply store, because we appreciate the expertise they provide, and the customer service is excellent. Our brewing supply store sells a lot of beer and wine, too. The store is kind of split into two sections--the bottle shop up front, and the brewing supplies in back, with the cash register in between. It's not out of the ordinary for us to go in there, buy our supplies, and also buy a couple of 22s to help out with the brewing process. They also have a ginormous book of recipes that they will photocopy for you. The porter we ended up brewing is from the recipe book.

From talking with ZombieSquirrel about homebrewing in your neck of the woods, it sounds like homebrewers there kind of have to order off of the Internet right now, which sucks. Having a good store is so much better. It's a social place as well--we run into friends down there all the time, and they do tastings that we go to. The guys behind the counter are starting to recognize us I think TT might be on to something--it sounds like there is definitely a need for a good brewing store where you are.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Psycho Dad

I'm lucky, High Gravity Homebrewing and Winemaking Supplies is only an hour away (but I'm usually in Tulsa at least once a week anyway) and they also sell online. This is where I first learned about the dishwasher thing.

I've read horror stories on other forums about some home brew shops. These people have to rely on good online sellers like High Gravity, Austin Home Brew, Midwest and others.

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

Cimarron29414

We are still doing kits from Northern Brewer.

So far we've brewed

2 Irish Reds
2 Meads
2 Honey Weizens
1 Blueberry Wheat (For the wife)
1 Raspberry Wheat (For the mother)
1 Carribou Slobber

The Carribou Slobber is the most complex recipe we've done yet. We had specialty grains, 5 lbs of liquid malt, 1 lb of dry malt, 3 hops. We are far behind you guys in terms of experience. I'll keep reading and learning.

We did purchase another primary bucket and a wort chiller. I think we are close to doing our own recipes or doing an all grain brew. Keep in mind, our motivation is to make beer cheaper than we can buy it in the store, to save our households money. So, we will be brewing as good of beer as we can, as cheaply as possible. Also, we are going to plant hops this spring and start purchasing bulk grain, all to decrease cost.

Every once in a while, we will splurge for a more complex recipe, though.

Psycho Dad, we use Northern Brewer rather than Midwest because the kits have better instructions for beginners AND the shipping is $7.99, regardless the size of the order. Midwest shipping can go crazy quickly. Just an FYI.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

Psycho Dad

Just keep having fun. That's the main thing about not only this but any hobby.

__________________
Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

Cimarron29414

Ah, the perils of ordering from Northern Brewer. Because of their $7.99 shipping, they like to CRAM everything they can into a box. Well, this results in about 50% of the WYeast packs we receive to be snapped and unusable. Today, we received a pretty large order and 4 out of 4 of the packs were snapped. So, now we have to wait for replacements. I'll be this happens A LOT with them. It's almost enough to quit buying from them, it's terribly inconvenient to the brewing schedule.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

Psycho Dad

Were the packs swollen or just puffy? I've bought smack packs before that just seemed to be puffy and not actually activated, this is common. If it was swollen like it was activated, as long as the outer package wasn't damaged and leaking, the yeast is likely still OK. If you make starters anyway, this shouldn't be an issue IMHO, not that it would be a huge issue otherwise.

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

Cimarron29414

It's so hard to tell. Three of them were really swollen, the 4th was puffy (it was a mead yeast.) We are such novices that, to us, it looked like they do after you smack them and wait 3 hours.

I don't know how to do the starters just yet. We just thought, "Well, they are activated. They could have been activated 3 days ago (the amount of time it took to ship) and we can't brew this stuff for another 3 weeks or so. All that considered, it seems like we are screwed so they re-shipped them for us. Northern Brewer has always been good with returns, but it would be so easy to solve this problem - yet they keep packing the stuff so poorly.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

Psycho Dad

Starters are another thing that people debate about. Many people feel that you need to make a starter with liquid yeast but I've found the smack packs to be sufficient for most five gallon batches. Many feel that there are optimum cell counts that the yeast colony should be so it doesn't stress the yeast. I feel that yeast are stronger than we give them credit for and that since one of the things they are going to do during fermentation is multiply, the colony will should grow to a sufficient point to ferment out the wort IMHO.

My reason for making starters is I wash yeast and save it in the fridge. I make a starter with the washed yeast a few days before brewing so I know that it is active and ready to go.

__________________
Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

Cimarron29414

God has sent us an angel! "The New Guy" at work? Yeah, he has a degree in microbiology and is an avid beer drinker! We just gave him those smacked yeast packs and he's going to build us a yeast farm. So, it seems I'm going to know a lot more about starters pretty quickly. We received our replacement packs today. As it turns out, the yeast pack we received for the mead is identical in size to the previous one, so it probably did not smack in shipping. The other three definitely did, though. We'll call NorthernBrewer and "buy" the replacement mead pack because we don't want to cheat them. Or, we'll just buy the honey and nutrients and make another batch. I like that idea better!

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

snowy

Homebrewing update:

We have now made an IPA, fresh hop pale, cider, porter, a hazelnut brown from a kit (Rogue), a stout, a Russian Imperial stout, and a mead. The IPA and fresh hop pale are gone. The cider is bottled and ready for Christmas. The porter supply is dwindling. The brown is good--less sweet than Rogue's actual hazelnut brown and that's good, in my mind. The stout is carbonating. I am really proud of both the porter and the stout--I didn't help much, but I picked the recipes and they are DELICIOUS! The Russian Imperial was dry-hopped today (also picked that recipe). The mead was made today and is now in primary.

My husband is now looking to do an ESB and I am curious to know if anyone here has a good recipe for an ESB.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

YaWhateva

It's always been a dream of mine to work at a brewery brewing beer. I have degrees in chemistry and biology but I really don't care for research in a lab. I would love to work at a brewery but I have no idea how to get a foot in a door at a place. I also wish I had space at my place to homebrew. Your guys' stories have gotten me really wanting to get into this.

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“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly

"This is my United States of Whateva!"

snowy

It's pretty fun! We use it as an excuse to have small get-togethers with friends. Extra hands are usually helpful when brewing.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cimarron29414

Now's the time to mind your schedule. We have suspended operations for a week or two so we don't have any work to do right before Christmas. The family doesn't like it when you have to spend 8 hours bottling/brewing the Saturday before Christmas.

We have two meads and a Wiezenbock in secondaries. We will bottle one of the meads and the Weizenbock around Dec 11.

Snowy, I think you will like the mead. We can't get enough of it. It's simple to brew and tastes great. Actually, I've found two local bee keepers and we started getting honey from them on the cheap. We also have our new guy spinning up some mead yeast strains for us. So, this next mead will be a true "local brew". First time using Tupelo honey as well.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

snowy

Our family (mine and his) are all very involved and/or supportive His mom bought all the supplies for the cider, because it was her idea. His dad helped bottle the cider. Then, she bought him another kit for the hazelnut brown because she likes it. My folks were down visiting a couple weekends ago, and my dad helped brew the stout. Every time we talk to one or the other set of parents, they want to know what we've been working on, and could we possibly bring some with us to sample.

I think we'd only be in trouble if things had to be done on Christmas proper, but we don't have anything in fermentation right now that can't wait a day, and I doubt we'll brew anything between now and then that can't do the same.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cimarron29414

Well, you are lucky in that regard. My wife has become increasingly less tolerant, primarily because it means every Sunday she is watching the boy. He's almost three, so if she can hold off a bit longer, I'll just bring him along. He just needs a bit more discipline. To run a batch all the way through takes about 8 hours for us - prepping bottles not included. We have about 400 bottles in rotation now, but getting the commercial labels off and getting them cleaned is ~almost~ not worth it when compared to buying virgin bottles at the brew store.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

Cimarron29414

We have a wildflower and a clover mead fermenting now. We had already brewed the wildflower, so we know what it is like. We tried the clover when we racked it to the secondary. I couldn't really taste a difference between it and the wf. The color is pretty different, though. The wf is darker and more "red". The clover is almost yellow in color, very little red. Honestly, it looks like urine. We were primed for bottling it around the 15th, but it is still fermenting like crazy, so we will have to put it off. Alas, it was going to represent some Christmas gifts.

It will be interesting to see how the Tupelo comes out, as it is much darker than either of those. We purchased two differerent yeasts for it - a semi-sweet and a sweet. So, we will see the difference there, too.

We brewed a coffee stout on Sunday. It smelled great with the chocolate specialty grains. It's pretty short running at 4 weeks to bottling, so I'll have a report in six weeks or so.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

rmarshall

I used to brew quite a bit about 20 years ago. I used to buy the grains and grind them and mash over a couple of days. I have a book from England with recipes on how to make beers like those you buy. I loved to make ales and stouts.

It then became difficult to get the grains in the stores so I switched to kits. I made both beer and wine. Sometimes I'd have a batch of beer and a red and white wine fermenting at once. I used to bottle the beer in 22 oz. Canadian "quart" size and I had a few hundred of them. I never labeled them, just wrote a letter on the cap to make a note of the batch, which I kept details of in a logbook.

Now I just make wine at places like Wine Kitz where you pay the money and pitch the yeast and then come back a month or two later and bottle. The wine is made on premises and they do all the work. Its not as much fun at it used to be, but my girlfriend is happier to get the mess and smell of fermenting out of the house.

I've since given away or lost most of my equipment. I have about 100 wine bottles, some large, some small. I have a batch of Merlot I need to bottle this week. I better start getting the bottles ready tomorrow.

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"Do not resent growing old. Many are denied the privilege" Irish proverb

snowy

I bet it smelled fantastic! When perusing recipes at the brew store, I tend to pick the recipes with the grain bill that most appeals to me...these typically include chocolate malt.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau