Homebrewers - Whats Fermenting?

[Lorax429]

Bottled my Christmas stout and my Saison a few weeks back. The stout ended up around 8% abv and should be ready to drink around Christmas time which was the plan. Of course I couldn't resist sneaking a taste and even now it is already incredible. The wife tells me it is my best beer yet Th Ocamare Cocoa nibs and Vanilla beans did their job well and the beer is like a dessert in a bottle. My initial plan was to bottle with peppermint but I never did figure out exactly how I wanted to do that so I skipped it for now and will try to incorporate that in next years batch.

Haven't cracked a Saison yet but will probably give it a try sometime this week. It will have had a month in the bottle come this Wednesday. This is the one I brewed with Orange Zest, Indian Coriander, and grains of paradise. I fermented it with both Belgian and French Saison yeast. It finished up at about 6.1% abv

Saison about to be transferred to the bottling bucket

Stout in the bottles

 

[jimmypa]

Bottled a farmhouse saison a little over a week ago and haven't tried it yet. ABV was around 6.8% and it smelled delicious! While bottling that brew we made a nut brown ale for the fall. Added a little local honey. We only added a small amount but it seems like it may have spiked our potential ABV pretty good, hope it doesn't make it too strong for a nut brown

 

[twenty5]

Looks really good!

I transfered a Citra IPA to secondary for dry hopping this weekend with 4 ounces of Citra hops and brewed an Imperial IPA that is bubbling like crazy. At least I am smart enough now to use blow off tubes with all my beers for the first day or two because this one would have been a disaster. I also have a Vanilla Stout waiting another week or two to be bottled and a Belgian Dubble that should be bottled in a month. My first Lager was done carbing this weekend. It is basically a hoppier, better tasting, miller/coors type beer, perfect for those that want to try homebrews but dont care for stouts, IPAs or "heavy beers" as they call them.

Next in line is a Quad, this is going to be a PITA because I am doing BIAB batches now and this will take every last bit of space that I have. I think I will be sparging with this one too in order to allow for more grain into the kettle.

My beers are improving, I need to work on fermentation temps next. During the winter I have no problem keeping beers cool with an ambient of 55-62ish. The summer with an ambient of almost 70 in the basement, my beers have been fermenting too high/

 

[jimmypa]

I've seen some nice looking bottle labels throughout the thread, does anyone know of some good quality labels and a good program to make them? I've made some using Avery labels but they were pretty small

 

[twenty5]

I print mine on thick printer paper and use a glue stick to put them on. They look really good, go on relatively easy and come off really easy with an oxyclean soak.

 

[Lorax429]

I print mine on thick printer paper and use a glue stick to put them on. They look really good, go on relatively easy and come off really easy with an oxyclean soak.

+1 this is what I do as well.

 

[smokinghole]

I am lazy about labels, I use .75" round cap stickers. I ave meant to do labels but my artistic and creativeb side dies with beer recipes.

 

[jimmypa]

thanks guys I will have to try that! do you use a specific computer program to design them? Not sure if you guys have tried this but I have also sprayed the small sticker labels I made with clear acrylic spray before sticking them on the bottle to prevent the condensation sweat from wrinkling the label or making the ink run. Seems to work nicely. Thanks again!!

 

[Lorax429]

I use paint.net to create my labels

 

[Lorax429]

Ok so I has to give the Saison a try tonight. It was really good. Proud of this one

 

[jimmypa]

Ok so I has to give the Saison a try tonight. It was really good. Proud of this one

View attachment 24999

That does look tasty!! Thanks again for the info!

 

[Thorne]

Just started my journey into home brewing. I cooked a grain kit porter from Brooklyn Brew Shop a week and a half ago. I put the blowoff tube too deep in the fermenter and lost about 1/2 of it. Rookie error. I made a honey wheat 1 gallon batch and an orange creamsicle ale 5 gallon batch on Saturday that seem to be doing well in their fermenters. I hope to make a festbier this weekend with time permitting.

 

[mthhurley]

Welcome to the slippery slope Thorne.

One question to you...When you said you put the blow off tube "too deep in the fermenter"...what do you mean by that? Where exactly was your tube at?

 

[Thorne]

Welcome to the slippery slope Thorne.

One question to you...When you said you put the blow off tube "too deep in the fermenter"...what do you mean by that? Where exactly was your tube at?

I overfilled the bottle and the tube was actually touching the brew/wort. Didn't take it long to run out.

 

[smokinghole]

You created a perfect pressurized dispenser for your beer that way. As it fermented and built pressure it pushed itself out the tube. You live you learn.

 

[Thorne]

You created a perfect pressurized dispenser for your beer that way. As it fermented and built pressure it pushed itself out the tube. You live you learn.

I'm really glad it was only a gallon. A 5g would have been very bad on my hardwood floor.

 

[smokinghole]

What has two thumbs and has a 15 gal freshly dumped rum barrel on the way with a double batch of a brettanomyces spiked imperial stout destined to replace the rum?




















ME!

 

[unfairtoast]

This may have been asked, but my neighbors an apple tree that drops buckets, of apples into my yard. I have been throwing them away, but it feels like waste.
I have thought of pie, but that seems like a lot of work with little pay off.

Any brothers have a cider recipe or some knowledge they could pass to a newbie to the trade?

 

[smokinghole]

What kind of apples?

With only one tree here's the recipe. Gather apples, grind and press them. Then you can let them either ferment allowing the wild yeast and bacteria to do the job (its a crap shoot but you can end up with a nicely complex drink). Or you can add sodium or potassium metabisulfate tablets to kill/inhibit the wild yeast and bacteria. Then you just add your own yeast, it can be wine/champagne or ale yeast.

 

[unfairtoast]

I have no idea what