re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

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I believe i'm going to try my hand at making Lambic Geueze. I want to brew one every year and keep a rotating crop of 1, 2, and 3 year lambics.

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I aspire to get here one day! I'm often impressed by the mixed ferm posts in this thread.

Finally got around to doing a review of my last brew. LINK
I started out designing a DIPA but my MT lacked the volume to handle the grist so I down sized it to an IPA. It was a 12g split batch where one carboy was DH & the second received DDH.

I periodically tasted both versions throughout the aging process & have to say that the final beer turned out completely different than what I expected. At first it was really sweet with unnoticeable bitterness that morphed into tropical flavored caramel. After about 20 days it had a great light orange hue & was reminiscent of Tropicália with a pronounced candy orange rind flavor. Finally, after 34 days of aging, the beer balanced out and really started tasting good.

Here is a pic of freshly poured glasses of each version. DH on the left & DDH on the right. Both have a little chill haze but the DDH is slightly noticeably darker.


Here are both examples after being allowed to warm slightly, DH on left DDH on right. Not sure if you can tell by the photo but the DDH was slightly cloudy & the DH could be read through.


DH:
Light amber with translucent orange hue. Nice off white creamy head with delicate lacing.

Strong orange & lime zest aroma that gives way to expressions of caramel, gooseberry & dried mango.

Orange again on the palate that recedes & allows other tropical flavors to come through. Very low bitterness & almost too sweet in the finish. Good malt backbone without being too intrusive.

Overall the DH version is a little too sweet. I mashed @ 156°F (or so I thought) to create a little bit of perceived sweetness to highlight the hops but this came out sweeter than I would have preferred (more on that later)*.

DDH:
Slightly darker with a little more suspended particulate matter. Strong foamy head with long lingering lacing. Looks like beer!

Orange & stone fruit aromas some tropical undertones. Malty sweetness.

Mildly bitter with balanced hop & malt. Sweet. Fruity with great hop flavor.

This came out better than the DH. Perhaps the additional hops in the dry hopping method led to a more balanced bitterness vs sweetness.

*After the fact, I decided to test my temp probes, first I tried the freeze point method & then the boil method. Apparently my MT temp probe was registering -8°F which means I really mashed in @164°F... which would explain why the beer is so sweet. Not sure when & where this could have happened but I recalibrated it & will employ an insta-read thermometer temp check into my process for redundancy & to prevent this type of mishap in future brews.

Definitely going to chalk this one up as a learning opportunity. Meanwhile, I'll be drinking & giving away 20-30 IBU, IPA...

Can you go into detail on your NEIPA? Hopping schedule and how you transfer to your keg?

Going to brew a gose this week. Considering adding limes in the boil and maybe a little vanilla and cinnamon during fermentation. I'd like a little bit of the key lime pie style, but without adding lactose. What would y'all do?

So quick question for the beersmith gurus. My last two beers have had efficiency around 85%. While brewing both of those I adjusted my mash ph with acid malt since I have high residual alkalinity in my tap water.

Tomorrow I am brewing an AiH kit for a shandy and I noticed that they assume an efficiency of 70%. Rather than follow their simple instruction sheet, I wanted to play with it in BS. Mashing 8lbs of grain and a using lb of corn sugar in the boil at my previous efficiency is going to yield an OG 12 points higher than the recipe calls for. Assuming I get 85% efficiency again, my best option for brewing the beer true to style is to increase my sparge volume/add extra water to the kettle after sparging yielding a larger batch right? I would stop adding water when I reach my pre boil OG right? This is not the same as the recipe OG because this recipe adds a pound of corn sugar to the boil in the last five minutes.

The other option is to omit the corn sugar addition altogether which would yield an 5.5 gal batch that hits the recipe OG. What do you guys think? Sorry this is my first time using a kit.

But if I just omitted the corn sugar I'm not going to miss anything flavor wise right? That seems like the easier solution to me because the expected OG will line up without adding the corn sugar. If my efficiency is lower than it has been in the past I can add some back to the boil. I can also save it for bottling purposes.

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BigPerm30

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I like those lights on the trees. Are those solar?

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Tomorrow I am brewing an AiH kit for a shandy and I noticed that they assume an efficiency of 70%. Rather than follow their simple instruction sheet, I wanted to play with it in BS. Mashing 8lbs of grain and a using lb of corn sugar in the boil at my previous efficiency is going to yield an OG 12 points higher

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Keep in mind, there is a difference between brewhouse efficiency, and mash efficiency. I get around 83% mash efficiency, on average, but my brehouse efficiency, is closer to 75%. Brewhouse efficiency takes into account your mash efficiency, volume into fermenter, volume @ packaging.

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I like those lights on the trees. Are those solar?

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No, low voltage. They look much brighter in pictures for some reason. They are Volt from Costco. Very nice fixtures.

thanks again for your help guys. My shandy was more or less a success even if I had to adapt on the fly. I ended up making 6 gal at least out of that 5 gal batch even leaving a half gallon in the kettle. I hit the OG right on thanks to yalls help.

One thing I can say about BS is when you get your equipment dialed in, it is pretty damn accurate. I am glad I didn't rely solely on the standard recipe instructions alone.

Another bright spot is now I get to use my new kegerator as a fermentation chamber and will be kegging my first beer in a couple weeks. I am very excited to not have to bottle this batch!