Homebrewing

Anyone got some good recommendations for good "Do it yourself" guides for brewing IPAs?

My cellar is ~60 degrees outside of the winter.

Not quite sure what you are asking, do you need information to teach you how to homebrew, or do you already homebrew and are just looking for some IPA recipes?

If you are looking to start homebrewing, I got my start readingThe Complete Joy of Homebrewing.Admittedly there is a little bit of outdated information in there, but it was good enough to get me started. John Palmer is also a highly respected homebrew author who wroteHow To Brew, which may be slightly up-to-date because he is, you know, still alive to update his book, but I personally haven't read this book.

Once you have the basics down,homebrewtalk.comis a great resource for everything from the latest techniques to a plethora of recipes. If you are doing all-grain brewing I would be happy to share my (award winning) hoppy pale-ale recipe and my current IPA recipe.

/r/homebrewing

Bottled my beer last night and my OG/FG (1.092 / 1.014) readings put it at 10.2% ABV... Just drank two glasses and I'm pretty sure they were right, can't really feel my face right now. Definitely the strongest home brew I've made.

So I just updated my all-grain setup to "ghetto HERMS". Running tests with cleaner/water right now, hoping to brew up my tried-and-tested NWPA recipe tomorrow. I don't have a stand built yet so the kitchen floor will have to do for now. Budget was key on this project as I don't have a lot of disposable income right now with a newborn. Assuming you already have a mash-tun, you could build this whole setup for under $100 ($81 for parts listed below plus misc. tubing and barbed connectors) including the price of the pump.



Parts:
Pump:US-Solar Pump- $27-$75.You can get these on Amazon for cheap, I went toUS Solar Pumps, Micro-DC Pumpsand got the more expensive 3.0gmp pump with stainless fittings. If you don't have an old cell phone charger or something you can use you'd also need a $10 AC/DC converter.
Heating Element:Aroma AHP-303 Single Hot Plate- $19.00.Probably not powerful enough to do any sort of ramping/steps, but I only do single infusion/single batch sparge brews anyways. Plus my STC-1000 will run this without any sort of modification to account for the additional wattage of a more powerful heating element.
HEX Coil:10ft 1/2" ID Copper tubing- $18.This coil fits almost perfectly in my 5 gallon pot that I no longer use (have an 8 gallon pot that I use as an HLT and a keggle for my BK). Only takes 2 quarts of water to cover the coil. Low thermal mass should allow for quicker heating.
Temp Controller:STC-1000- $17.If I was running a bigger system or wanted to do steps/ramping I'd probably want some sort of PID. But even with a little overshoot I should still be able to keep my mash temp within 0.5*F using the STC. Plus I already have 2 of them built and laying around.

Now I should be able to maintain mash temps with 1/2 a degree even over prolonged mashes and will have the benefit of nice clear wort running to my kettle without having to spend 20-30 minutes vorlaufing thanks to the recirculation. I may see a bit of an efficiency boost as well, but I was already at 84% so not sure if there is much more to gain there.

So my brother grew his own hops this year, got the cuttings from a hop farm in prosser, WA.

Really depends on the tower, but last one I worked on had a cap that popped off the top of the tower.

Another option is you could just cut the lines where they connect to your sanke-keg coupler and put your corney keg connectors on those lines instead. Only issue is making sure the gas-line in the kegarator is the some ID (inner diameter) as what you have on your corney. Homebrewers will often have 1/4" ID gas line for their corneys when commercial setups will use 5/16" ID gas line.

Also, they make quick-disconnects that will allow you to easily switch between your sanke-keg coupler and your ball-lock fittings so you don't have to cut or removes hoses anymore.
Easy Switch Fitting Kit (MFL Stainless Steel)

Finally got a chance to test my new ghetto HERMS system, didn't get to do the pale ale as I had an issue with my yeast starter for the pale ale going bad, but I did a cream ale (which I normally don't drink but brew up for parties when I know there will be a strong BMC crowd there) and as expected, a couple of extra gravity points were squeezed out. Also as expected it allowed me to skip the vorlauf. Overall it held temperatures pretty well although it does overshoot a tad so I need to adjust for that, but as long as it is consistent that won't be an issue.

I also used the system to cool my wort by filling the pot with my HEX coil with ice water and recirculating my wort through that (coupled with my normal immersion cooler). That significantly cut down on my cooling time. Although after trying to move all my hoses and the whole HERMS system around it really made me wish I had a dedicated brew stand all plumbed in with quick disconnects everywhere and what not. I think that is the big problem with this hobby, I am always wanting to spend more and more money upgrading my equipment. I probably won't be happy till I have a professional brewery and then I'll wonder why the hell I ruined a perfectly enjoyable hobby by making it my job.

So I was finishing up a brew today, went to grab my wort chiller from the garage and didn't find it in the normal spot. Turns out I accidently left it sitting in a bucket of sanitizer outside on the back deck. I wonder if it'll work better this way...

I think it must.

No props for my brewing joke? You people suck.

TJT_sl said:

I always hated my Wort Chiller, I think it would work best if it was part of a closed system. Ice baths have always worked for me. What cold ass place do you live in Opiate?

Click to expand...

I'm in the Pacific NW nearish to Seattle. It actually usually isn't that cold here but this last week has been odd. It's funny, I was listening to a podcast with some pro's and they were all talking about how they really miss their wort chillers from their homebrew days. The logistics and expense of putting one into a pro system are prohibitive. Might have more to do with the fact that dealing with their plate chillers is probably a pain in the ass.

I for one usually only chill down to 90-80 or so (enough to get good cold-break) then just throw it in my fermentation chamber to get it down to the low 60's for pitching. Mainly because I don't like wasting all that water. I thought about setting my wort chiller up as a closed system with the water circulating through my HERMS pot filled with ice water, but really my method is pretty much the laziest so it is probably what I'll stick with.

So it was a pretty good year for me. Just put batch #36 on the year into the fermenter which is a 100% Brettanomyces fermented Pale Ale, first time doing a 100% Brett beer and only the 2nd time I used Brett with the other being a Saison-Brett. I plan on letting the Brett Pale bulk age for at least 6 months which means it will be ready right when my remaining supply of Brett-Saison has 1 year of age on it so it will be fun to taste those side-by-side. That will put me right at the 200 gallons yearly homebrew legal limit for the year, not that that would stop me at all.

I did a couple of contests this year, took 2nd in the APA category in one of the biggest homebrew contests in the state (38 entries in the APA category alone) and also came in 3rd out of 40 homebrewers in a contest where we did 4 brews over a period of several months where each style was drawn at random and everyone had to brew it. I would have taken first if it was based on cumlative points alone but they changed the rules for the final brew just to give the top 5 remaining brewers a chance to win. Also got involved with a local club and took 3rd in the first contest of theirs I entered but the judging is pretty informal so I don't put a lot of weight into it. The club meeting that night was hosted at a local brewery and both the pro brewers singled my brew out as the best of the evening.

For next year I really plan on dialing in some recipes. My IPA is 90% there but needs a little tweaking. IPA has been my white whale brew since I started taking homebrewing seriously, for whatever reason I just haven't been able to get that recipe right, probably because I'm super critical and picky. Couple other recipes that need some revisiting and tweaking but my "regular" lineup is starting to shape up nicely. Have some fun experiments planned too for 2015 including filtering vs fining (doing two tasting, once the beer is ready and then again 6 months down the line) and I have a few hops left over from my 2013 crop so I am going to brew up a beer and split the wort 5 ways to see the difference in how the hops aged. There will be 3 different Cascade hopped beers, two beers from the 2013 crop which were stored different ways then one from the 2014 crop, plus I will compare the 2013 Amarillos to the the 2014 crop since there was a lot of controversy about the Amarillo harvest last year.

I want your sour pale ale.