Lets Talk Brewing

[Nitack]

Originally Posted by alexander

well, baker's yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a strain derived from yeast that grow on grapes and other fruit's skin that ferment those fruit, and is the strain that has been used for making bread and alcoholic beverages since, at least, ancient egypt, it's a top fermenting yeast, and you can, absolutely, use it in brewing.

How much distillation are we talking about here, by the way, what level of alcohol are you looking for, that is.

Well the brand is fleishman's, but I am pretty sure it is a bottom fermenting yeast. I know there are more specialized strains out there specifically for brewing.

For the apple-jack I am not looking to make anything above 80 proof. The idea is just to get something with a wee bit more kick as a sipping drink. I don't have a hydrometer so I can't say what the proof of my mead or apple juice is. I know, I am working with archaic methods here. Although some quick research reveals that I could distill out the methanol with out losing the ethanol if I keep a pretty tight control on the temperature. Methanol boils at 148.4 F and Ethanol at 173.

Perhaps this is not worth the trouble considering that it really is illegal and an judge having a bad day might throw the book at me for it. Or worse, the ATF gets pissy with me.

[alexander]

It is not a bottom fermenting yeast, those are a lot more complex and unnecessarily harder to manage, they require a lower temperature to ferment and they really dont stand up to higher temperatures very well at all. No, from what i can see, these are all top-fermenting yeast, if you are talking about the stuff on the bottom of your fermentation vessel, those are mostly dead or inactive cells and cell residue.

methanol is something to worry about, yes, but fusel alcohols are even worse, and those run at the end of distillation.

I mean if you want to get a bit more kick, then freeze distill it a bit, you can also use distiller's yeast that will go as high as 25%, granted it will make your drinks dry as hell, but you can freeze distill a little, maybe by an 1/8, to get 20 or so to 22.5 or 44 proof and a bit more body... I dunno, i find moderately alcoholic drinks enjoyable in a different category then highly alcoholic ones, i make beer and other crazy fermentable things (like i am planning a raspberry honey wine), and sometimes drink wine, but if i am at a party and its a choice of mediocre beer (like Heineken) and a decent 20 year old single malt scotch, well, i'd rather have the scotch

[alexander]

its nearing the end of week two of fermentation. Firstly my air lock blew off sometime over sunday (or someone accidentally dislodged it from it's position), but i think i am ok, beer seems to be fine anyways, it smells very well, it seems to be a little active again, forming pressure, so yeah, i think it should be fine.

I have the last sugar addition to do today, hopefully the muscat concentrate is in, if not i will have to improvise... This ofcourse means that i will be racking the beer twice, reaerating for another hour, dry hopping and pitching in high gravity yeast this weekend also starting another 5 days of sugar addition, that's fun times by the way, this also means another 2 weeks or so and this beer is ready to bottle (more or less).

the beer smells amazing already, but we'll knock it up a notch and bring it to a completely different level

But i am working on coming up with a recipe for the next batch, it seems like it will be as crazy of an idea as this current beer is, maybe even crazier, something on the virge of "You are going to do what!!!?", its a secret for now, but i will reveal it in due time

[Nitack]

OK, so the apple jack was not so good. I was really digging the taste, but after having a small glass of the not so distilled stuff I got a headache and figured there was bad juju at work, down the drain the rest went.

On a better note I just bottled a batch of mead. A little sweeter than I had hoped, but it was damn good stuff. A slight slight edge to it that I am sure will mellow out with a few months of aging.

Hoping for my birthday to get some proper brewing and bottling equipment.

[alexander]

my batch of mead started blowing up bottles... darn thing got carbonated somehow

[Nitack]

Ah, this I may actually be able to help with. You bottled too soon. Beer you bottle when fermentation is still happening and that provides your carbonation as the pressure builds. With mead you have a few considerations. Honey has a lot more available sugar than malted grains do. Even if it looks like your fermentation is done racking your mead will normally restart fermentation that will go just as strong as the primary fermentation. At gotmead.com some of the more experienced meaders talk about racking 5-7 times per batch. That allows fermentation to completely finish (either due to all sugar being exhausted for a dry mead or a high enough alcohol ratio to kill the yeast for a semi-sweet or sweet mead). If you bottle too early the fermentation will continue and push the cork out of the bottle. Let fermentation go, rack it, let it go some more and rack it again, as fermentation slows down just rack and let it wind down again.

The exception is if you want a sparkling mead and then you need to use a thicker bottle and a wire secured cork like you find for champagne.

[alexander]

i most certainly didnt bottle too soon, i think 3 months is enough time, but i think there was some carbonation in the carboy due to the type of yeast i used and the cork didnt push out, the bottle exploded on me, could ocfourse have been some other issue with it, like someone touching ma bottles... i may just uncork the bottles, shake them up real well, letting the gases go, and leave on the counter for a couple of days before recorking them....

busy with more important things at the moment, like my passion fruit belgian

[alexander]

update on the crazy batch, it got racked today, it somewhere in the 1.040 mark now, problem is, since there has been a lot of sugar added to this beer, guessing the alcohol content is actually rather hard, if we take the original gravity 1.105 or so, and use that as a base we get somewhere around 8-9%, but i have added at least 6-7oz of sugar to the beer, so, tis hard to know correctly, i think its in 11-12 mark somewhere.

Anyways, here are a couple of things on preparing a yeast starter.
In this recipe, i used grape juice concentrate, which is perfect for a yeast starter, because unlike wart, grape juice has most of the minerals needed for the yeast to grow

i used about 1/10 of a quart of grape juice concentrate, about 1.5 cups of water, boil for a while, put in a wine bottle, add yeast, shake like hell, airlock and leave for 48 hours before pitching. This should grow many, many yeast cells, which really helps when you are trying to get them to take over as the main fermentation facilitators

Also you can dryhop a couple of different ways, i used a grain sock to contain all the hops, and i used plugs (as they are mostly full flowers that give you more smell, which is what you are achieving by dry hopping). Just break the plugs apart and then in half (my dumb self forgot).

Also aerated for another hour (with less sugar it does not foam).

Oh, before i forget, normally you dont want to aerate your beer after the start, this would make your beer taste more bitter, and sometimes cardboardy, but because i am pitching in another yeast and planning to let it go for another 2 weeks, and yeast NEED air, this is something i have to do for the high gravity yeast to make it multiply a lot faster and take over the batch.

[alexander]

Ok i gotta bottle 8+ gallons this weekend, and my shoulder still cant really be used (dislocated it 2 weeks ago) But beer has to be bottled, especially the belgian... (cuz i wanna drink it already)

Oh i finally calculated out the IBU here, the crazy beer is 125-130IBU (or thats the general consensus between different hop calculators i've used, they go as low as 77 and as high as 165 with the same setup)

[alexander]

well, 11 hours of work later, i have finally reached envy... from you guys that is (jk)

Left, in the 22oz and 12 oz are the Belgian Wit with lime, sour orange and passion fruit. About 3-4%, its golden colored, should be good summer beer

Right, is my birthday batch, its 14-16% @ 125-135IBU, full body and very very delicious smelling, it has this fruity smell, that has a touch of a mead smell, some sweet in it, that finishes with a slight piney smell Having said, recommended serving size is about a 1/2 bottle, 3/4 and you are legally intoxicated, lastly 4 bottles and you are on your way to the hospital with alcohol poisoning And only ONE bottle is going to be opened before September (to check for carbonation)