Homebrewing

littlefeller · Post by **littlefeller** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:30 pm

yeh, this yeast is great, sits on the top like a pancake, you can just lift it off and reuse it again and again, uuum tent eh. what kind of lights?

bristol_bb4 · Post by **bristol_bb4** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:32 pm

600w 6" cool tubesx2

littlefeller · Post by **littlefeller** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:38 pm

cool, i used to use spectum specific lighting again about 600w

bristol_bb4 · Post by **bristol_bb4** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:40 pm

very very

anyway better stop talking about growing chilli's

littlefeller · Post by **littlefeller** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:42 pm

yeh, gives me the sh*ts anyhow. uuummm curry. followed by home brew beer

JayJay · Post by **JayJay** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:45 pm

Bio - We do it in 5 gallon batches

Yeah it's a pretty basic 1.5kg of malt extract, add a load of water (warm it with the malt to make the wort, about 22L), sugar, yeast, then dry hop about 8 days before bottling. Most of what we're doing is mixing up the hops, types of sugar, amounts etc to play around with the flavour, as opposed to making it from scratch. I read that hopping while it's still fermenting means a lot of the smell escapes along with the CO2?

I'm not much on the terminology, but I looked in to making my own wort but it was just too big a process! Keeping it simple for the moment until I have the space and knowledge to set something up

As for the cider, I couldn't find anywhere that did apple cider without any preservatives (because they'll kill the yeast).

littlefeller · Post by **littlefeller** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:47 pm

damn you jay jay, now you got me thinking about home brew larger

i put on weight last time

took me ages to get rid

i used to have a ally milk urn with an ellement in the bottom for boiling the wort or is it wart cant remember now, this is likely another side effect of home brew - loss of memory, or it could be the chillies

i did wine too, uumm red wine - heaven

Bio · Post by **Bio** » Tue May 08, 2012 3:35 pm

Making your own wort can be complicated and expensive as well as needing space if you are doing proper sparging of the grain.
You can do "brew in a bag" though which eliminates sparging in favour of just heating the grain a lot longer to get all the sugary goodness out. I will try it at some point this year, but I want to perfect these turbo ciders first.

Though I think I've finally got a "good" cider, kinda tastes like a clone of Magners which isn't too bad, if perhaps a little drier as I have been using Wine Yeast (it's fast and works great on ciders) so I might try ageing them with oak a little to see if I can make a Green Goblin-a-like but without all the sweetness.
It's also about 7.5%

Just looked at my recipes sheet and realised I'm actually on my 10th unique batch since Feb so totalling around 40L (after you account for siphon waste)!

JayJay · Post by **JayJay** » Tue May 08, 2012 5:04 pm

Not bad! When I was looking in to cider it turns out Champagne yeast is recommended

Is your apple juice pasteurised and preserved (i.e. has preservatives in it)? Or is it fresh apple juice you're using?

I've got two packets of champagne yeast from when I was going to make cider, I wonder how beer will turn out.

while most wine yeasts have a higher alcohol tolerance, most wine yeasts cannot metabolize maltotrios, a sugar found in wort. But... there is a product out there... I cant remember it's name... it ends in -ase ... it's an enzyme that will break down maltotrios and whatnot to sugars that wine yeasts can metabolize so that you could use wine yeasts and not have a cloyingly sweet beer due to the residual maltotrios.
Never done it, but that's what I've heard.

Might be interesting to try!

I can't work out how much yeast is in the bottle that I bought, but it seems one bottle is good for 5 gallons if you make a 2 litre starter (recommended according to White Labs, the people who sell the yeast). I've never made a starter, so I hope it goes well. The yeast is the same price in GBP as it is in USD (i.e it's $6.99 in the US, and still £6.50ish over here!)

White Labs Pitchable yeast is designed to ferment a 5 gallon (20 liter) batch of homebrew beer. We package each vial with 70 to 140 billion yeast cells, which corresponds approximately to a 1-2 liter size starter.

And I've just bought a trial jar so I can actually see how alcoholic the beer is

I didn't have one (or anything suitable) so the hydrometer was useless.

Something interesting on how it's harder to get higher alcohol % in beers as opposed to wines/cider:

Fruit juice and wort (unfermented beer) are two very different mediums. While they both contain glucose sucrose and fructose, wort also contains maltose, maltotriose and dextrins.

The uptake of glucose sucrose, and fructose into the cell is done passively. That is, the cell does not have to expend energy to move the sugars across the cell membrane. Maltose and maltotriose however, require that the cell expend energy to transport the sugars across the cell membrane.

As we increase the gravity of the wort to the levels necessary for a barley wine, we also increase the osmotic pressure on the cell causing what is known as osmotic stress. Under high osmotic stress, the cells ability to uptake all sugars is reduced, but while the ability to uptake glucose is reduced by around 60-65%, the ability to uptake maltose and maltotriose can be reduced by as much as 90%.

Basically, we need more yeast because we're asking the yeast to do a much harder job under stressful conditions, and "many hands make light work."

For those who don't know, the gravity of the wort is how much sugar there is. A hydrometer measures the amount of sugar (and measuring before and after fermentation can tell you how much sugar has been consumed = how much alcohol there is

).

Bio · Post by **Bio** » Tue May 08, 2012 5:24 pm

Good question about the preservatives. I can't actually remember but the recipe is something like:

4.5L Lidl Solevita Apple (3x 1.5L Bottles) was what I found tastes best so far.
Dissolve 3/4 of a cup of white cane sugar (Silver Spoon) and 1TSP Citric Acid in one carton of juice (1.5L) over heat but don't boil or simmer, just enough to dissolve.
Prepare 1 Cup of Very VERY strong tea (3 bags stewed while doing everything like sterilising)

Dump warm juice and tea into FV, Dump 1x 1.5L of the un-opened cartons into FV, pitch 1.5TSP Young's Super Wine Yeast and continue to dump in the rest of the juice. I don't bother with a primer or nutrient with this yeast as it's very resilient to everything I've thrown at it and contains some nutrient.
Airate by giving the FV a good shake then Airlock on.
Leave for around 1 month for fermentation to stop in full. It should finish around 0.995
Rack into secondary and sit for 10 days or until clear (10 days to clear for me).
Bottle into 2L PET bottles (I use sterilised cola bottles) with a primer of 5TSP sugar and 100ML warm water (dissolve sugar in water) and carbonate for 14 days.
Chill for a month.

Drink

As I use glass demijohns (1GAL UK) this recipe works well so as to not over-fill the DJ and risk and explosion, and once siphoned off gives almost exactly 2x 2L Cola bottles with a little left over to try then and there.

Why the Tea you ask? Well, if you stew the living crap out of tea it releases Tannin which proper Cider apples have lots of in them. It's a way of replacing what we can't get in the juice.
The recipe is a variation of one I found online, I think via Jim's Beer Kit forum, and I'm still tweaking to try and get better results each time. You can leave out the sugar if you prefer a lower percentage too.