Homebrewing

[BriarLinedMeer]

Is anyone here into homebrewing?

I love wheat beers and am wanting to get back into all grain, rather than extract which always tastes like rubbish.

What have you guys brewed recently?

 

[craiginthecorn]

Currently on tap are Sumac Saison, Toasted Hickory Bark Vienna Lager, Norwegian Vossaøl made with juniper branches and berries, a Best Bitter, a hazy IPA, and. Festbier. Nearing bottling is a Flanders Red Ale with Balaton Cherries. Kölsch, Dry Irish Stout, cream ale and California Common are planned when the weather gets warmer.

 

[BriarLinedMeer]

Bloody fantastic mate!

I'm about to brew this when I can:

===========================
Makes 22.5 Liters // 5.9 Gallons:

Water:
Standard tap, carbon filtered, nothing fancy.

Grain:
6.0475 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row).
4.8675 lbs. White Wheat Malt.
1.18 lbs. Flaked Oats.


Hops:
0.7375 oz. Hallertauer Mittle Whole 19.3 IBU 76 min (Put in at 76 Min into the 90 min boil)


Spices:
0.5 Oz. Crushed Corriander Seed (Ellipcical Seed, or Indian Coriander) (boil @ 10 remaining)
1.20 Oz. Crushed Dried Valencia Orange Peel 5 (Sweet Orange will do in a pinch) (boil @ 5 remaining)

Yeast:
Prefered * 1056 Chico Or 1187 Ringwood * Prefered.

Other Yeasts if can't get the above:
Wyeast 1187 or White Labs WLP005
Safale S-05 or Nottingham

Boil:
90 mins at 150-151F / 65.5-66.1C

Gravity:
Try to hit around 1.050-1.055 OG
Final 1.014 - 1.015

IBUs:
IBU should run between 16-17.5.
However my target is 9.

4 weeks primary at 68F/20C.
Bottle condition for a month.


===========================

 

[craiginthecorn]

Is there a particular style you're brewing? Or perhaps attempting to be something similar to a commercial beer? Or are you designing your own from the ground up?

Your expected FG looks high to me with the strains you've indicated. I'd think you'd end up from about 1.008-1.011, depending upon actual OG, mash temp, and yeast strain. Personally, I wouldn't think of using any of the true English ale strains, like Ringwood or Nottingham for this recipe. They're best used for English ales and IPAs. The Chico strains will at least produce a clean summer-style ale. However, the beauty of homebrewing is experimentation. Maybe an English ale strain would be perfect in a witbier recipe. Lots of innovation has stemmed from homebrewers.

With that same recipe, you could use Wyeast 3944 and get a nice witbier, which is another wonderful summer beer.

The Aussies and Kiwis have a thriving homebrew scene. There's some great new hop varieties coming from NZ.

You may want to check out either homebrewtalk.com or www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk. Both are great places to discuss homebrewing.

Finally, with those yeasts in your recipe, four weeks at 68F is unnecessarily long. Generally speaking, two weeks for most ale strains is plenty of time, but it's always best to check that the gravity remains the same for 3-4 days to know it's done. Four weeks is OK, but I wouldn't go much longer, as you risk yeast autolysis off-flavors.

 

[Paul 3.0]

Ditto a fan here, I prefer to brew mostly ESB or brown ales style wise.

Cheers

 

[karam]

I have brewed mead for many years, now since we moved I had to leave my equipment behind. Set about to do beer but when I read through the processes i fet they are too involved, so stuck with mead and didn’t look back.
Mostly brewed bochet (burnt honey mead) and ancient orange mead, but before we left I put up 20 bottles pf sour cherry mead for aging. That thing made it to 17% alcohol so I expect it will take months to years to get drinkable, but my orange should be amazing, they’ve been asleep in am actual cellar in Greece.
Great thing about beer is that you get a great drinking product in as little as two weeks, while mead needs three months as a minimum, and goes on to improve after that. Distilled my burnt honey mead once too, was among the best things I ever drunk but absurdly expensive in materials.

 

[BriarLinedMeer]

Is there a particular style you're brewing? Or perhaps attempting to be something similar to a commercial beer? Or are you designing your own from the ground up?

Your expected FG looks high to me with the strains you've indicated. I'd think you'd end up from about 1.008-1.011, depending upon actual OG, mash temp, and yeast strain. Personally, I wouldn't think of using any of the true English ale strains, like Ringwood or Nottingham for this recipe. They're best used for English ales and IPAs. The Chico strains will at least produce a clean summer-style ale. However, the beauty of homebrewing is experimentation. Maybe an English ale strain would be perfect in a witbier recipe. Lots of innovation has stemmed from homebrewers.

With that same recipe, you could use Wyeast 3944 and get a nice witbier, which is another wonderful summer beer.

The Aussies and Kiwis have a thriving homebrew scene. There's some great new hop varieties coming from NZ.

You may want to check out either homebrewtalk.com or www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk. Both are great places to discuss homebrewing.

Finally, with those yeasts in your recipe, four weeks at 68F is unnecessarily long. Generally speaking, two weeks for most ale strains is plenty of time, but it's always best to check that the gravity remains the same for 3-4 days to know it's done. Four weeks is OK, but I wouldn't go much longer, as you risk yeast autolysis off-flavors.

I love wheat beers, however for some reason, I love blue moon, its exceptional to my palate.

On a homebrewing forum I spoke to a dude who made it commercially back in the day, and that is the recipe I came up with, the ringwood is the strain they originally used I believe.

Blue Moon Clone

I'm trying to figure out a Blue Moon Clone recipe. Things I know about Blue Moon: Uses 2 Row Malt Uses White Wheat Uses Oats Doesn't use a Belgian yeast, uses a "standard ale yeast" Orange zest and coriander go in the last 3-5 minutes Things I assume to be true about Blue Moon...

www.homebrewtalk.com

 

[BriarLinedMeer]

I have brewed mead for many years, now since we moved I had to leave my equipment behind. Set about to do beer but when I read through the processes i fet they are too involved, so stuck with mead and didn’t look back.
Mostly brewed bochet (burnt honey mead) and ancient orange mead, but before we left I put up 20 bottles pf sour cherry mead for aging. That thing made it to 17% alcohol so I expect it will take months to years to get drinkable, but my orange should be amazing, they’ve been asleep in am actual cellar in Greece.
Great thing about beer is that you get a great drinking product in as little as two weeks, while mead needs three months as a minimum, and goes on to improve after that. Distilled my burnt honey mead once too, was among the best things I ever drunk but absurdly expensive in materials.

Honey is exceptionally expensive!

 

[karam]

Honey is exceptionally expensive!

Yeah, even the bog standard discount no name blended honey I use for bochet (since boiling it for a few hours is bound to make it lose all character) costs a lot, and in a best case scenario I think I got about 700ml of 40% alcohol from my distillation of 5L of bochet. But damn was it amazing.

 

[craiginthecorn]

I love wheat beers, however for some reason, I love blue moon, its exceptional to my palate.

Ha! That's funny. My initial thought was that maybe you were trying to give Blue Moon, but given that your profile says you're a Kiwi, I figured that you wouldn't be familiar with that brand, so I was guessing it was something else. As you may know, Blue Moon is at its core a Belgian Wit.

I've never brewed with Ringwood because it has a rotation for being temperamental and for creating lots of diacetyl. That said, when the stars align, it's said to produce really tasty beer.

A couple years ago, I listened to this really good podcast where Keith Villa, the brewer from Miller-Coors who developed Blue Moon, was interviewed. No insights on yeast, from what I recall. However, they definitely use Valencia oranges, which are a sweet juice orange grown extensively in Florida. I brewed a wit last year with fresh sweet orange peel and it was quite good, but probably due to the protein rest in my step mash schedule, it came out sparkling clear, despite being half raw wheat.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Honey is exceptionally expensive!

I now run a very small winery. I also make a lot of mead for my own uses. I buy the honey in 60lbs buckets, and it runs me about $200. Which gives me 90 bottles per bucket, making each bottle about $2.25, which is less than most fruit wines.

I do brew a very strong ginger beer in the summers. But, not a grain beer. I just never developed a taste for beer.

 

[craiginthecorn]

By the way, Northern Brewer sells a Blue Moon clone kit that gets excellent reviews. Here is a link.

The instructions and recipe are downloadable.

 

[BriarLinedMeer]

Ha! That's funny. My initial thought was that maybe you were trying to give Blue Moon, but given that your profile says you're a Kiwi, I figured that you wouldn't be familiar with that brand, so I was guessing it was something else. As you may know, Blue Moon is at its core a Belgian Wit.

I've never brewed with Ringwood because it has a rotation for being temperamental and for creating lots of diacetyl. That said, when the stars align, it's said to produce really tasty beer.

A couple years ago, I listened to this really good podcast where Keith Villa, the brewer from Miller-Coors who developed Blue Moon, was interviewed. No insights on yeast, from what I recall. However, they definitely use Valencia oranges, which are a sweet juice orange grown extensively in Florida. I brewed a wit last year with fresh sweet orange peel and it was quite good, but probably due to the protein rest in my step mash schedule, it came out sparkling clear, despite being half raw wheat.

Thanks for the link!

I now run a very small winery. I also make a lot of mead for my own uses. I buy the honey in 60lbs buckets, and it runs me about $200. Which gives me 90 bottles per bucket, making each bottle about $2.25, which is less than most fruit wines.

I do brew a very strong ginger beer in the summers. But, not a grain beer. I just never developed a taste for beer.

I do love my ginger beers, when you say strong, do you mean alcoholic strength, or the strength of spice?

By the way, Northern Brewer sells a Blue Moon clone kit that gets excellent reviews. Here is a link.

The instructions and recipe are downloadable.

Thanks heaps mate!

 

[cosmicfolklore]

when you say strong, do you mean alcoholic strength, or the strength of spice?

Most ginger beers are like 2-6% abv, but mine are more like 8%, and yeh, my ginger is also very flavorful. I grow ginger, so I put a lot in them, along with some juniper berries and rosemary.

 

[pipingfool]

I brewed for years, but haven't brewed in quite a while as life just tended to get in the way. Had a pretty good all-electric, PID controlled, 3 vessel HERMS system that got my efficiency consistent at around 92%.

Had two half-barrel stainless, conical fermenters that were run off of a glycol compressor, so I could actually ferment and Lager in my garage in Florida.

I used Ringwood almost exclusively for my English styles and they turned out great. Diacetyl is a concern with that strain, but the key is keeping the fermentation temp on the lower side. The resulting ales were very clean with a touch of fruitiness that offset the earthy UK hops that I normally used.

It's interesting that they would use Ringwood for Blue Moon/clone. It could make a very clean style, IF you can control the Diacetyl levels. But it is also a high-flocculation strain, so the beers made with it are usually very clear, which Blue Moon is not. Only thing I can think of is that they skipped the Protein Rest during the mash so that the residual proteins in the wheat made the beer cloudy. Sounds plausible in my mind, but I could be completely wrong.

Weissbier styles typically go for the high-phenol character that the German Hefeweizen yeast strains produce. They are also low-flocculation strains that tend to stay in suspension and give the beer its characteristic cloudiness.

I typically used the White Labs Bavarian Weizen Ale strain (WLP351) if I wanted more of clove spiciness. But if I wanted the classic banana aroma, then I would use White Labs Hefeweizen Ale strain (WLP300).

There is also a White Labs American Hefeweizen strain (WLP320) that is slight lower in phenols, so the clove/banana character is more subdued.

Hope it turns out for you, and keep us posted. I'm interested to hear how the Ringwood performs in a wheat-based grain bill.

Cheers!

 

[karam]

Most ginger beers are like 2-6% abv, but mine are more like 8%, and yeh, my ginger is also very flavorful. I grow ginger, so I put a lot in them, along with some juniper berries and rosemary.

How do you make it? I made ginger mead (metheglin) by heating honey, water and grated ginger and using that for my wash. Came to about 10% as most bread yeast meads do.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Brown sugar, ginger, lemon, and I use a black tea for tannins, and then pitch the yeast. I would have to look up which one I use. I think it was 72B. Then, when I bottle them, I add two or three juniper berries, and a few blades of rosemary. I just bottle before the yeast has finished, and then pasteurize them to stop the CO2 build up... to give them carbonization. It's really easy.

When I did this for the first time, I gave my girls one, not knowing what the abv was... I didn't have a herculometer back then, and I had to seal with two drunk little girls.

 

[BriarLinedMeer]

I brewed for years, but haven't brewed in quite a while as life just tended to get in the way. Had a pretty good all-electric, PID controlled, 3 vessel HERMS system that got my efficiency consistent at around 92%.

Had two half-barrel stainless, conical fermenters that were run off of a glycol compressor, so I could actually ferment and Lager in my garage in Florida.

I used Ringwood almost exclusively for my English styles and they turned out great. Diacetyl is a concern with that strain, but the key is keeping the fermentation temp on the lower side. The resulting ales were very clean with a touch of fruitiness that offset the earthy UK hops that I normally used.

It's interesting that they would use Ringwood for Blue Moon/clone. It could make a very clean style, IF you can control the Diacetyl levels. But it is also a high-flocculation strain, so the beers made with it are usually very clear, which Blue Moon is not. Only thing I can think of is that they skipped the Protein Rest during the mash so that the residual proteins in the wheat made the beer cloudy. Sounds plausible in my mind, but I could be completely wrong.

Weissbier styles typically go for the high-phenol character that the German Hefeweizen yeast strains produce. They are also low-flocculation strains that tend to stay in suspension and give the beer its characteristic cloudiness.

I typically used the White Labs Bavarian Weizen Ale strain (WLP351) if I wanted more of clove spiciness. But if I wanted the classic banana aroma, then I would use White Labs Hefeweizen Ale strain (WLP300).

There is also a White Labs American Hefeweizen strain (WLP320) that is slight lower in phenols, so the clove/banana character is more subdued.

Hope it turns out for you, and keep us posted. I'm interested to hear how the Ringwood performs in a wheat-based grain bill.

Cheers!

Mate you sound like a pro, you defo should get back into it!

I'll be sure to post pictures of the brew!

 

[BriarLinedMeer]

Most ginger beers are like 2-6% abv, but mine are more like 8%, and yeh, my ginger is also very flavorful. I grow ginger, so I put a lot in them, along with some juniper berries and rosemary.

I do like Juniper, wonderful herb, interesting flavour to say the least!

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I do like Juniper, wonderful herb, interesting flavour to say the least!

It "can" be overdone though. So, I always advise people to use less and add more if needed. Just one berry too much, and it becomes like drinking Pinesol.