Great to see a homebrewing community starting up! I don't have anything in the fermenter right now, but in the coming days I'll probably brew my house helles :-)
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2023
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Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider
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A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.
Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.
Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
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Could never bring myself to brew low temp fermenting stuff, I'm too lazy for temperature control. Kveik was godsent from this respect (yeah, I know I should heat it, but strains I've used so far seem very forgiving at basically room temp).
Yeah, it's a bit more work with temperature control.. But I think it's very nice to be able to remove temperature as a variable when trying to reproduce beers. Being able to get the same temps (regardless of if they're high or low) removed some of the guesswork for me.. There's enough of that anyway! :D
Some lager yeasts supposedly perform very well even in higher temps (especially if you ferment under pressure!).
I should brew with some kveik again myself.. They're nice yeasts!
I made some #Makgeolli, a milky white Korean rice "wine". It's made by fermenting steemed rice with the "nuruk" starter culture, which contains both the enzymes to break down the rice starches into sugar and the yeast cultures for turning the sugar into alcohol. I used the Danyangju recipe from A Primer on Brewing Makgeolli.
The most difficult part is finding the Nuruk online. I found it in a Korean online store as "Powdered Enzyme Amylase". And you need a steamer that fits 1 kg of glutinous rice. But the fermentation is done in a single step after just around 7 days at room temperature.
Today I filled it into plastic water bottles. Not pretty on pictures but the store version is also sold in plastic and it makes it easier and safer to gauge the pressure, as it will contiue to ferment and make CO2 (though slowly after refrigeration).
I first tried Makgeolli in Asian supermarkets, but the exported one is pasteurized and not alive anymore, which is why I wanted to mak my own. The homemade one is much stronger in Alcohol than the store one, so usually I dilute it before drinking, and thus the 2L brewing yield is not that little.
thanks for that! the reading material will help me further down the rice wine rabbit hole
what tasting notes are you getting on it?
This only my second home-made batch overall, and I didn't taste this one yet, so will speak from memory from my first batch. Also I have not much "tasting" expertise, so I can't give a sommelier-style description. Makgeolli has this fine sparkling going on, a smooth mouth feel and is quiet sweet. Compared to other alcohols it's maybe similar to Federweisser, a fresh, still sparkling white wine. Home-made makgeolli is surprisingly similar in taste to the one you get in the store, but has a bit more of a sour note. I did the variant where in addition to nuruk I added some brewer's yeast which contains different yeast strains. If I remember correctly it might get even more sour and less alcoholic if you omit that, but not sure, never tried.
To be honest I never tried any other rice wines, makgeolli is my first brew after mead, and I like how simple it is, no need for aging or fermentation caps, no temperature control. Also due to my Korean girlfriend I'm very interested in Korean culture and its cuisine, especially its richness in fermented products.
Sandor Ellix Katz in the "Art of Fermentation" also describes a variant of Makgeolli with sweet potatoes, I might also experiment with that in the future. Surprisingly, in his book he has rice wines in the same category as beers and not as wines, because both are done through fermentation of grain using enzymes to bread down starches. Which in beer is done in a distinct fermentation step, but for rice alcohols usually happens in parallel to the alcohol fermentation.
don't sell yourself short on the tasting vocabulary, everybody's interpretation is subjective and there is no standard. I understood and managed to get a picture of the thing you're describing, so purpose achieved :)
if you want to have some fun, try looking through some whisky tasting notes with such enticing flavours as 'harbor rope', 'wet dog' and 'kippers'
Stoked to have found this community, as I'm very interested to start brewing after I move to my new house.
Have never brewed previously but have have sampled my fair share!
Will be keeping an eye out for pearls of wisdom and will likely ask a question or two.
Welcome, glad to have you! Do feel free to ask anything. There are no stupid questions and we were all beginners at one point. Bonus - if you get seemingly contradictory responses, it helps paint a picture of all the practices out there and may help ease any anxieties about starting up.
I have a few things on the go at the moment.
Currently Fermenting:
A toasted coconut and cacao nib stout (going for a nice chocolatey stout with a sweet coconut finish à la Mounds or Bounty bars)
Currently Drinking:
A Sorachi Ace saison with some spices brewed with Omega - Jovaru.
A Brown Ale with Applewood-Smoked Hops that I'm not too happy with how the beer turned out which is a shame because this is my favorite beer label I have ever designed
Currently Aging (fairly long term):
A 16% oaked dessert mead with Lapsang Souchong and maple syrup (it's probably somewhere around 4 years old at this point and has been blended several times over the years with various dry meads.
A bochet with cacao nibs that I'm still trying to figure out how to improve (it smells AMAZING and chocolatey but the body is too thin and acidic and just lacking in something)
Nice spread!
If the bochet is lacking and blending's your thing, have you considered blending it with a barleywine?
That's not a bad idea. I had thought to keep it purely a mead and maybe blend it with a sweet mead I have yet to make just to give it some body but honestly a nice big beer might be just the thing to give it some complexity. I think if I am to go down that route I might choose a nice big stout to blend it with because I think the roastiness might complement the chocolateyness of the bochet nicely.
Thank you! I like making mead because it is high enough ABV that I can just let it age and do other brews whilst I work out what to do with it!
Sure, I’m around, trying to figure out how subscribing works to this.
The one that always gets asked about is a hibiscus mead! I have fallen behind my usual brewing schedule this year, but there’s always five gallons of this around somewhere in production.
It's been so long since I made a batch of mead.. Long enough that I've forgotten half the homebrewing lingo lol. Honey is just so dang expensive nowadays, even in bulk!!
I will brag just a tiny bit about an old creation though... A meadery opened in my state several years ago and it's been awesome to see their business thrive. The mead is absolutely fantastic. But I will admit... I was super proud when I compared a sample of one of my traditional batches (d-47, orange blossom honey) to a bottle of their own. I'll be the first to admit when one of my batches just ain't hitting right, but I honestly preferred mine. Pretty sweet moment for me, especially since I remember babying that batch like you wouldn't believe.
That was a couple years ago, but that mead is still aging in bulk. I wanna say it's around 6 or 7 years old now, but I've lost all my old notes. About time for another sample, I think.
I admire your restraint in testing your batch
I'm going to keg an IPA today made with 90% marris otter 10% table sugar, hoped with Idaho 7 and Mandarina Bavaria, then dry hopped with BRU-1. I am trying to make something Pliny the elder/heady topper inspired, so quite bitter, no oats/wheat, heavy on sulfates, and heavily dry hopped. This is my first iteration with another to follow in a few brews. This one also used a Kveik blend I had on hand. Next one will use verdant dry yeast.
Nice one. Just got into kegging myself, with a 9.5 L corny keg, to only bottle half the batch now. Saves so much time. And I feel myself getting the itch to buy a new FermZilla and a pressure fermentation kit + a couple more kegs aaaand I'm already having some difficulties imagining how I'm going to store them all.
Cause otherwise I tried brewing something hoppier and my process just yields muted hop flavours, so I leaned into the maltier sorts first.
I've been brewing IPAs in plastic buckets for years, and I make some pretty good ones without taking too much special care. I don't really think a whole pressure fermentation kit is necessary to make hoppy beers. I do think kegging makes a big difference. I imagine bottling could result in a lot more oxygen ingress. I also can drink my kegged beer the next day, so that's nice.
Recently bottled a Peach Ginger mead that managed to get to 19% without permission. Tbf though I didn't try to stop it. I Have English breakfast, Chai, Black Currant, and Chocolate Vanilla meads that need to be bottled. Next plan is Pineapple Cayenne. I have Carolina Reapers growing that my friends want to try a mead of...might try a very small batch just to see if its feasible.
sweet. might I ask what yeast you used?
I've done a chilli mead once, with the honey slightly caramelized and used about 2 habaneros for 5 L (1.3 gal). Came out spicy enough that I felt some burning going down. Would be interesting to see how Carolina Reapers work.
I used D-47 for all of them and Orange Blossom honey. It's tolerance is 14% and thats around where I wanted it to stop but it had other plans. If you only used 2 Habaneros I can't imagine what Carolina Reapers will do.
Trying to imagine it. If it's too hot it might overpower every other flavor so I'd probably try to balance it out with something and maybe try to keep it from getting too dry. But that's just me. Do give an update whenever this is done!
So far, beer brewing has remained on my "things I'll try one day" list but my time is already stretched too thin to take on a new hobby.
I'll crack one of my locally brewed (or import) IPAs in your honour though!
Cheers!
Beware though, homebrewing may have the unintended effect of modifying your beer palate in strange ways. One day you're brewing your first pale ale, then before you know it you're wondering what weird stuff you can cook up.
Went to a beer show and the homebrew stand was serving beer made with mealworms. Not bad at all, but very interesting.
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