Thread: Home Brew

I've been brewing for around two years now. I jumped in at the deep end (I always do for some odd reason) and began with all-grain. It took me a few brews to get the hang of it - but these days I always have a keg or two chilling.

Next up is an American IPA using some Weyerman Pale ale malt (10kg) and some cara red (½Kg) and a mix of Challenger and Galena taking it up to just below 60 IBUs. That should give me around 40 litres / 10 gallons

Awesome. I just sampled my IPA that's been bottled about 6 weeks. It was good. Lost a little of the aroma but the taste is right on. It turned out a lot darker than I had planned, though. Looks more like a stout bit drinks like an IPA.

Hello all, I recently returned from the 8th annual cider making weekend help with my friend Ben in Maine. We processed about 1000kg of apples in a day using custom engineered and built bicycle powered machines. Now I've got 100L of hard cider fermenting in my basement now, which is about enough for me to have a cold 250ml glass every night of the year.

I put up a writeup on my blog:
Tooling Up: 8th Annual Cidering

I had a little free time today so i went on another forum i am a member of for homebrewing and found the following recipe for alcoholic coke. So ive had a crack at it and the mixture is currently sat fermenting.

Here is the recipe:

4.5L Water
800g White Sugar
3g Youngs High alcohol Wine Yeast
5g Yeast nutient
200ml DIET Coke Concentrate (from Dunelm Mill, Home Bargins or Currys)

1)Add yeast and a few spoonfuls of sugar & yeast nutient to a glass of lukewarm water cover and set aside.
2)Put sugar and half the water in a pan and heat till all sugar is dissolved.
3)Add the rest of the water to cool down the sugar water and add to Demijohn.
4)The mixture should be cool enough for you now to add your yeast starter but please check and allow it to cool further
if in ANY doubt (your looking for below 30c).
5)Top up with water, it doesn't bubble up too much so you can leave about an inch space before the neck then
fit airlock and leave it alone!
6)Fermentation should start pretty rapidly and will take about 10-15 days.
7)If you are patient with it it will go crystal clear on its own without fins or pectins.
When its clear and has finished bubbling add a further 4.5L of water and the Coke concentrate.
Add more water or coke to suit your tastes.
8)Batch Prime these on the low side, I use about 6g per 1L because I have had this stuff fizzing everywhere when
bottles are opened.
9)Bottle and leave to mature, I drink mine after about a week!

Its a very hyperactive drunkenness and has lead to a hell of a lot of dancing and what surprised me is it isn't far off tasting like proper coke! 5% approximately

Please note before you ask:
I use DIET COKE CONCENTRATE because it contains artificial sweeteners to keep use coke tasting like coke and keep it sweet!
If you use normal coke the sugars are fermented leaving the coke very bitter and tasting horrid. The overall drink comes out tasting good, and the colour and clarity is identical to big brand cokes!

Here are todays pictures:

The yeast mix:


The sugar being dissolved:



Racking the mixture into the dhemijon:


Adding the yeast mix:


Fermenting time:


Ill post more pics and updates as it progresses.

Tomorrow is brew day! A Sweetwater 420 clone. 5 gallon all grain batch.

Sounds nice sir. Going to be starting another brew next week. Currently got a black cherry wine on the go thats ready for bottling early next week.

I went to college with a friend who studied fermentation sciences and another who had an interest in mead making. Needless to say, our house never had any shortage of delicious home brew on tap. The funny thing is- because they were doing all the work, I never found myself very interested in brewing/fermenting on my own.

That all changed a week or so before Christmas. I came down with a bad cold and since it was raining outside and I was sick, I ended up spending the entire weekend indoors. I had just had some tasty store bought hard cider (Crispin) and decided that it probably wouldn't be very hard to reproduce and furthermore would probably save me quite a bit of money in the long run to just make it myself. Since I was stuck inside all weekend, I took it upon myself to learn as much as I possibly could about making hard cider. Thanks to the infinite knowledge of the internet, by the end of the weekend I had a pretty good understanding of the process, and I had picked up two gallons of fresh apple juice from a local farmer's market. a week later, I convinced my girlfriend to help me buy the necessary brewing supplies as a Christmas present.

My first batch went perfectly. I bottled them at a gravity of about 1.015 and let fermentation continue in order to bottle carbonate. I then pasteurized the bottles in the dishwasher to kill the yeast leaving me with a semi-sweet sparkling cider. I enjoyed two bottles of my cider on New Year's Eve with some good friends and as of today, all but one bottle of my two gallon batch has been enjoyed by myself along with friends and family.

I just bottled two more gallons of some more interesting test ciders (one made with a can of raspberry concentrate and another with raisins and black tea to add complexity to the sweet apple juice that I have access to). I also have a gallon finishing up fermentation that I made with 3/4 of a pound of Dry Malt Extract to add some mouth-feel and residual sweetness. Tomorrow I'm planning to head out to get some specialty grains to try a 3 gallon batch of a cider/stout hybrid that will hopefully come out well.

Here are some pictures of my first batch:
happily bubbling away:


and the finished product:


I'll look forward to posting more here as my brewing adventure progresses .

Looks good. Right now I got my grains milled, my strike water heating up and my hops measured for addition.......gotta love brew day!

Hit the numbers for the mash right on the nose! 6.5 gals of 1.048 sg into the pot for a 90 min boil. Things are moving right along!

I got the American stout/cider hybrid put together last night...fingers crossed. OG was 1.071 so it should pack a pretty good punch while maintaining drinkability. The wort (or would it be must in this case- haha) tasted incredible - a ton of chocolate and coffee flavor with a bit of smoke and then the crispness of the apple juice at the end. I actually ended up putting about 45oz of cranberry juice in with it all because I had it in the fridge and wanted to get rid of it so we'll see if that imparts any extra berry flavor or tannins. I'm really hoping it will turn out well. I will post results if it's a success and pretend it didn't happen if it ends up being gross .

Here she is, happily bubbling along this morning:

What a mighty fine picture sir! Sounds like a very interesting brew. Keep us posted on its progress.