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[Randos]

agreed on stormthecastle.com!  I haven't tried it yet myself but that is something I want to try.  I have a Chinese friend who started off with beer kits in the US and later went back to China and opened his own brewery, it's a lot of hard work to get everything perfect, but when it comes out right it's awesome.

If my understanding is correct, the process is fundamentally simple.  Yeast eats sugar and poops alcohol   So if you have yeast in a bottle with some fruit and honey it's going to make alcohol, that's the point between the 2 bottles of honey for a mead.  Now for the "quality" part, sanitation is extremely important, the type of yeast you use can make a huge difference, the fermentation time has to be respected, and the other ingredients will obviously affect the flavor.

[Lord Inquisitor]

Another problem I had while making it, is that I couldn't find any conventient small one-use packets of the yeast, so I got like 100 grams of the thing. I used like one teaspoon or whatever the equivalent was, thing is, the closed pack has been sitting on my fridge for over a month and I think it's not supposed to be stored for so long... throwing it away feels like such a waste :-/

Date dont really matter, I never checked the 60g box of Youngs Super Yeast Compound I  bought until latly and found it was out by months when it was sold to me and it worked fine. No special storage just shoved in a box on shelf. Just use more if worried about it and chuck some nutrient in as well. Definetly need nutrient when making yeast and lots of aeration at start to get the yeast in growth mode. Avoid bread yeast like Fleishmann’s Yeast, thats made for gas not alcohol. Youngs yeast is good general yeast you can get in bulk and can hit 16% though others have hit 18%.
Step feeding is a good way to control the ABV of your brew. Basically add in sugar, Take SG, when SG in few days hits 1.010 or so lob in more sugar. I would use 1Kg per gallon max as  tends to push the yeast too far and you can be excessivly sweet. You can go from low to high as it suits you.

FermCalc is brilliant for figuring out loads of stuff. From sugar to add to sugar already in juice.
Get a Hydrometer and Airlock they are dirt cheap and make life easier.

[Sergius]

Well, when I said closed pack I meant, the already opened pack that I re-closed afterwards with a clip. So it's already got some contaminants inside or whatever.

[Lord Inquisitor]

shouldnt matter, if that was case 100g tub be useless once opened.

201211 Vitafit Tropical Cocktail Turbocider - Ingredients
Started a New batch.
Tropical Cocktail is a mixture of Pineapple, Orange, Passion Fruit, Lime, Lemon, Banana, Mandarin, Mango, Papaya, Kiwi.

201211 Vitafit Tropical Cocktail Turbocider - Sugar + 2nd Aeration
Cloudy compared to Apple juice, will be interesting I hope.

[Kamin]

I need to just come and live at YOUR place, Inquisitor. I'd be playing so much Drunk Fortress...

[Lord Inquisitor]

08 Kilju - Day 41 - 1ml Blue Dye - To The Light

08 Blue Kilju - Day 42 - To The Sun Light

A Kilju, I made a bit too blue and soon to be carbonated. what it tastes like is mosly likely too sweet. F.G. 1.024 and bit too fresh to me. Need a source of Flavour packs someplace, blue berry would be good I think. ABV is 9.8%

[Lord Inquisitor]

American president Drinks homebrew, Pity his too lazy to make it himself and has the servents do it. But hell at least its a start and (removes damm beer phobic Mormon Rant)!
 Also where is the Honey Blonde recipe?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/image/wh_beer_recipe_1.pdf

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Whitehouse Beer Recipies 02-09-2012

They sound interesting. Extract has purists up their holes again, but you gotta start someplace.
Honey Ale is usually good, I liked Fullers Organic Honey Dew When I had it.

[Kamin]

Holy fuck that is awesome. I think I just preed my pants.

[Lord Inquisitor]

ARKEG the Arcade machine with built in kegerator
$4000 to buy, $150 a day to rent. A rip off, but a very cool rip off.

kegerators are not that dear to make, a cheap pc running a pile of MAME, some plywood a bit of creativitry or outright rip it off the internet for art and you can make this for less than $4,000.
Definetly be a good one, I like the idea of a car arcade game so you can drink and drive at the same time. Prove all the talk I hear from you about your driving skills.

[bucket]

This is true. Homemade arcade cabinets are the best. You can buy all the innards for about $100 (I recommend I-PAC) and the rest is just carpentry skills.

[Lord Inquisitor]

07 Youngs Harvest Barley Wine - Water Bath

The Waterbath, A big container:
I use a storage box got from a discount store, in use it has foam around the outside and a sunlight heat protector on top, reflective foam  piece you put on car windscreen to stop sun baking insides of car. Works to keep heat in the tub. A big black bin would work just as well, probably be big enough to enclore it up tight as well. Fill with bleach containg water to stop growing undesireables. Large water mass helps to regulate the temperature of the fermenting beer.

Temperature Controller:
Most important part. I use a ATC 800+ for eaby, wired to turn on the heater and pump at the same time. It is cased in a foxes biscuit box as appearance dont matter. Keeps it nice and neat.
ATC800 Manual
ATC 800+ is a bit expensive, nut you can get cheaper units like the STC 1000 nowadays. Its about €16  and 1/2 the size. They are popular to use in kegerators as well.

Aquarium heater:
A 50w stainless steel covered unit from ebay. Stainless steel to stop it exploding if it comes out of the water while still on for whatever reason. They appear to be quite hard to find on ebay.ie right now.
A similiar one but 100w €7.20 inc P&P
Larger heat does not make much differece that the 50w, lenght is the big differece mine is 9" while this is 11".
Heater is set high temp usually about 30°C, but is controlled by the temperature controller. So it only gets to what you set it. I just heat the water as ambrient temp even in the portacabin do not rise the water mass above set temperature. Then let it cool at its own rate.

Aquarium Pump:
This is mainly to just make the water flow around the waterbath evening out the heated water so you don't get really hot near the heater and cold on the otherside of fermenter. Any cheap submerged pump should be fine. All we are doing is moving water about.

--
You could probably use a big thermowell, a capped pipe into the wort, and just put the heater there with the probe in another well. Well have to be filled with water or vodka to function, esp the heater one if this idea was tried. Main argument against this is the wort is static and heating would not be even.
wall of Info

[Lord Inquisitor]

201210 Coopers Canadian Blonde All Malt - Day 21 - Homebrew Bottled 40 bottles + 1 2lt bottle + 1 pint loose glass
More home brew Bottled up
40 x 500ml PET bottles
1 x 2 litre Swing top Bottle, as ran out of PET Bottles.
1 x pint glass drank as too tired to bottle any more.
It would have been all PETY bottles except i overbrewed and brothers keep taking and throwing away the PET Bottles! They are reusable for a reason!

This is a All Malt, no dextose this time so better flavour but weaker. If, If I make it again am steeping grains and adding hops as well as the 1 Kg of spray malt.

[Kamin]

Where do you live? I need to drop by and drink some of your delicious brews! 

[Lord Inquisitor]

My latest Beer Brew

201212 Coopers IPA -Ingredients
A Thomas Cooper Brewmaster IPA Indian Pale Ale with 1 kg of Spray Malt and 500g of Dextrose. I have also added a EKG Hop tea to improve it. Currently coming out as 5% which is confusing slightly as Coopers Site say 6.5% ABV. Unsure as to reason for ABV loss.


201212 Coopers IPA - In the Waterbath 21°C

[Lord Inquisitor]

Ale, brewing and fulacht fiadh
 
Billy Quinn and Declan Moore of Moore Environmental and Archaeological Consultants in Galway present a bleary eyed experimental reassessment of the nature and function of fulacht fiadh

Video
Billy and Dec's Bronze-Age Beer

We could have made 300 litres of this beer but we only made 110 liters

300 liters water
50 kg malt

Web page
Ale, brewing and fulacht fiadh: Archaeology Ireland