Tasty Libation Thread!!!

[srboone]

cheers!
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One of my favourite tipples (and a cider that actually tastes like what they're made out of - the pear, particularly, is heavenly)

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[Dan Hocker]

Dan, color me impressed. That modified cooler - way to go. You've made a lot of different beers, which I'm sure is part of the fun. Thanks for sharing the stories and photos - now if only you could share the beer!

Wait till I take some pictures of the next piece of equipment I've been building. It's a temperature controlled fermentation chamber.

[Patrick]

Dan, color me impressed. That modified cooler - way to go. You've made a lot of different beers, which I'm sure is part of the fun. Thanks for sharing the stories and photos - now if only you could share the beer!

[njhorror]

Chocolate covered cherry hot chocolate. Nuf said.

[Dan Hocker]

Nothing special, but one of my favorite day to day beers.

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[srboone]

Great pics, Dan! My brother tried this in college but lost patience with it.

[Dan Hocker]

This last picture is of my 3 gallon carboy. I used an air lock on the top there, found out the hardway that I filled it too full and should have used what called a "blow off tube", which is a tube that runs from the stopper down into a bucked of water so air can come out but not in. I woke up the next morning to my carboy spewing foam out the top of it, luckily I thought ahead and sat it inside a pot in the closet.

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[Dan Hocker]

These next photo's are of the actually brewing process.

This is the grain in the mash tun I made.

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This is me heating the water for the mash (exciting I know)

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This is the resulting "wort" after the mash

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This is the actual boil

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This is a larger view of the "epic" pot I had to buy to do this. It's a 10 gallon pot, and it's so big it has to sit on 2 burners.

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Here's all my hops laid out. If you're a beer lover, these just smell amazing, don't try to taste it though. That being said the leftover grain that's been heated in the mash is delicious, a bit like oatmeal, but way better.

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[Dan Hocker]

Oh no, Squire, there's lots more where those came from.

Dan, tell us more about your home brew experience!

Sure thing, here's some "Tasty Libations" before they are "Tasty Libations"

Well a friend of mine took a brewing class in college (apparently it was a high level science) and started making beer a couple years ago. Then earlier this year another friend picked up a beer making kit at a yard sale for like $5 and made some beer, so I decided to join the party. The first beer we made was a Amber Ale, from an ingredient starter kit. We modified the hops in the recipe and boosted the bitterness a fair bit. It came out surprisingly well for a kit beer, and I think the longer it sits the better it is (although I think it's all gone now). At the same time we also made an Apfelwine, which is like a German hard cider. Probably one of the easiest things in the world to make. You take pasteurized apple juice that has no preservatives, put it in a jug with an air lock, and add some cider yeast. 3 months later and you have a Apfelwine, that gets better with age (6-8 months is peak). We added some more sugar and some honey to it for flavor as well as a higher alcohol content.

The 3rd beer I made was a "Blonde Ale", which is what's called a "Light Hybrid Beer" which is supposed to be a combination of an Ale and a Lager, since Lagers are notoriously hard to make at home as they need to be kept around 35-40 degrees for at least a month during fermentation. This was the first all grain batch I did, and I didn't get a very good startch conversion rate in the beer. Which means I didn't get enough of the starch in the grain converted to sugars in the beer. So I added more raw sugar and some of the leftover honey to the beer to help make up for that. The honey adds a little bit of flavor but the sugar doesn't really do anything. It still came out surprisingly well.

The 4th beer we made was a recipe my friend who took the class designed and wanted to make. It's an English Special Bitter, or ESB for short. This is the first large scale (5 gallon) all grain batch, and we got a fairly decent starch conversion on it. I can't tell you if it's any good or not yet though, as when I checked the bottles last weekend they where not carbonated yet. When we brewed this one we also made another batch of the Apfelwine, since the first batch was done. The first batch came out tasting a bit like wine, so the second time around we used cider (unfiltered apple juice) instead of the regular apple juice. We also added some nutmeg and cinnamon to the mix. This one is still sitting in the fermenter till January. We're not 100% sure that this one worked, as it took the yeast a bit too long to get started, and I even added a second packet of yeast. It eventually started working, but that could have been caused by bacteria.

The last thing I made was a small 1 gallon batch with a bunch of the leftover ingredients from all the other beer I made. I tryed a different startch conversion method on this one, which didn't work out too well so I didn't get a good conversion. It however was high enough that I didn't need to back sweeten it. It supposed to be an american pale ale. I can't tell you how it came out as I only made it on Monday, so it has another 3 weeks in the fermenter befor I can bottle it.

I have some picture I've taken along the way.

These first 3 are a custom piece of equipment I made out of a cooler called the mash tun. You use a cooler because it's insulated, and the goal is to keep the grain a stead temperature for a long period of time without using direct heat.
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[Patrick]

Oh no, Squire, there's lots more where those came from.

Dan, tell us more about your home brew experience!

[srboone]

Thanks for the posts, Patrick. I was beginning to feel a little lonely in this thread. It's only every so often that I go out in search of a brew, so I wasn't expecting a mother lode like that! Very nice.

[Patrick]

More from Lost Coast...



Ok, that's ten beers I've posted. Someone else's turn now.

[Patrick]

Lost Coast is a good brewery with fun labels.

[Patrick]

This one is from my hometown...