# Home Brew



## Nobellius (May 2, 2013)

I couldn't find a thread on home brewing, so I decide to start one in case anyone else here is interested in sharing their spirit crafting experiences. 

Thought we could share recipes, tips for beginners, horror stories (those are always fun) etc. 

Today I am going to try to make a hopped mead Pale Ale style. I'll be using home grown cascade hops and organic clover honey from a local Bee Farm. No fruit in this one. No spices. Just a straight mead with those lovely, bittery, tasty, wonderful hopssssss ;D


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## mel z (May 2, 2013)

How'd ya' know I was waiting for you to spill!


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## Nobellius (May 2, 2013)

mel z said:


> How'd ya' know I was waiting for you to spill!


Haha let me preface this by saying you will not brew anything today. There are few things that you need to collect first. 

The two most important things you need are a hydrometer for measuring gravity and sanitizer. 
A hydrometer is a tool used to measure 'gravity.' "What the heck is that?" Basically, the specific gravity of pure water is '1'. Sugar is heavier, alcohol is lighter. How your solution compares to water is what you want to know. As your sugars ferment into alcohol, the gravity will drop. When the gravity stops dropping, you know you can bottle it safely. We'll come back to this later.
Sanitizer is SUPER important. You are putting a lot of sugar in a small, moist, warm place and bacteria will LOVE you for that. You need to kill them. :evil: Sanitize your counters, your stir spoons, your fermenter, your airlock, your stopper your hands, your shoes, the neighbors' house. (Why my shoes, you ask? I'm exaggerating for effect! LOL) Sanitize anything and everything that will potentially come into contact with your brew. Some people use bleach. I don't recommend it because it only takes a very very small concentration to kill your yeasties. I use iodine. I've used just plain boiling water in the past, which is fine, but you have to be really careful with glass, then. Iodine is probably the easiest thing to use. Once everything is sanitized, let it air dry, but do not rinse with tap water. If you use iodine, you don't even have to rinse at all if you followed the direction on your bottle. 
Your fermentation will be in two steps - primary and secondary. You can do more if you really want to, but two is plenty for most brews. It can be tempting to go to your local hardware store and buy a 5 gallon bucket for your primary - don't. It absolutely has to be food grade plastic. (That's why I recommended the Hawaiian Punch jugs ^^) For the secondary, most people use glass carboys. These can be expensive. (That's why I recommended the glass wine jugs. You get to drink a gallon of wine and you get a free carboy for 1/4 the cost ^^)
Airlock. An airlock is a pretty simple device that let's the pressure out but doesn't let any air in. Fermentation produces CO2 and if you had a truly sealed container, it would explode in probably a few hours. Big mess, I'm sure. 
Rubber stopper. You can either buy a pre-drilled stopper or you can drill your own. For the ten extra cents or whatever it is, ya may as well get the pre-drilled one. Your airlock goes in the hole, and the stopper seals your fermenter. 
I'll make a list of those things.
Hydrometer
Sanitizer
Fermenters
Airlock 
Rubber Stopper
Those are your ABSOLUTE essentials. 

From then on, it's pretty simple. I recommended starting with plain mead and working your way up in complexity. Mead is probably the simplest thing to brew, then wine, then extract beer, then all grain beer. 
There are approximately 2.59 billion recipes on the internet (I totally made that number up lol) for mead. You can choose any one of them, or go with my standard 3.5 lbs of honey and one gallon of water recipe. Mix your honey and your water together (this is called 'must' at this point) and pasteurize it. Basically, boil it for a while. While it boils, you will see some scum forming on the top. Scoop that out and discard it. Don't worry if a little bit of your must gets in the spoon, you'll have a bit extra from the volume of the honey. And don't worry about trying to get every single speck of it out; that would take you forever. Once it's boiled for about an hour or so, you can remove it from the stove. Cover it and let it cool to room temperature. DO NOT ADD ICE TO COOL QUICKER. Ice could have germs. When your must has cooled to roughly room temperature, you can pitch your yeast. Just like making bread, 1/4 water and some sugar, stir in your yeast. It will start producing foamy bubbles (sound familiar? ) once it's activated. When your must has reached room temp, read and record the gravity, pour it into your fermenter, add your yeast and forget about it for a month or so. 
>>Make sure you get a yeast that suits your taste. Some strains of yeast die off in a relatively low level of alcohol, others are a little more hardy. Yeast will die off pretty early for a sweet wine yeast and stick around a bit longer for a dry wine yeast. What you get is up to you and what you like. I tend to use Lalvin brand yeasts, and for meads I use strain D47. Usually.<<
A month or so later, when you look at it, you'll see some stuff on the bottom of your fermenter. It's lees: the remnants of yeast that has done its duty and now rests in peace. Some active yeast are also down there, so some people save it, freeze it, and reuse it. I don't. I don't see anything wrong with it, but considering how cheap yeast is I just don't see the point. Anyway, this next step is called 'racking' and requires a siphon. You want to 'rack' your mead from your primary fermenter into your secondary fermenter, leaving the lees in the primary. At this point, read and record your gravity. You should notice it is a lot lower than when you started. You can taste it at this point if you want, but you probably might not like it. It'll be pretty dry and the flavors won't have melded together and you'll think you did a terrible job. You didn't! It's normal. If you notice that there's a lot of lees in your secondary, you may want to rack into a third. You should be alright, though. Leave it for about another month. Check your gravity. Then check it every week or two until you notice it's no longer dropping. You gotta be careful, though, because you don't want to be opening and closing your fermenter. Once it's bottled, forget about for a few months. Longer is better. For both ease and cost efficiency, pint size mason jars work great for bottling! And you can easily designate one for monthly tasting . 
That's the basics. I think I got everything. If it seems complicated or overwhelming, it's easier than making soap so you can do it! Let me know if you feel like there is a gap in information or if you need anything explained better.


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## Nobellius (May 2, 2013)

Shopping list:
*Hydrometer*
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Spirit-Alco...072?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53f7bf2630
*Stopper/Airlock*
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Size-10-Rub...597?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e77ca1a55
*Sanitizer*
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BTF-Iodopho...868?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e70bf99fc


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## lizflowers42 (May 2, 2013)

Mmm sounds delicious!  My brother started growing his own hops for his home brew, and I made some soap with it this winter   I think he likes it better for drinking thant washing!


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## la-rene (May 2, 2013)

Brewed my own hard cider last year. It was awesome! If I had room for the 5 gal pails, I'd make some more, but soap takes up all my room.  The gallon jugs just didn't leave enough after racking of the lees 3 times.  But, man, it was some potent stuff.  I shared my two Grolsch bottles of cider that I ended up with after it was all done with 4 friends and we were all feeling it.


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## Nobellius (May 2, 2013)

la-rene said:


> Brewed my own hard cider last year. It was awesome! If I had room for the 5 gal pails, I'd make some more, but soap takes up all my room.  The gallon jugs just didn't leave enough after racking of the lees 3 times.  But, man, it was some potent stuff.  I shared my two Grolsch bottles of cider that I ended up with after it was all done with 4 friends and we were all feeling it.


If I have enough left over must, I seal it off in a sanitized jug and add it at racking if my fermenter is getting low. It takes slightly longer to ferment out, but hey.. may as well. I don't know if that's common practice or not, but I've never had any issues with it.


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## Nobellius (May 2, 2013)

Clemmey said:


> Made a batch of rum last weekend, used a lime in it and got a NICE lime taste in it. I think we will do another batch this weekend, hoping to get the higher proof stuff out of it. We shall see!


I haven't made any grain alcohols yet. I probably won't because it's illegal to distill anything in-home in WI. But Lime Rum sounds amaaazzzing ;D


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## mel z (May 3, 2013)

Thank you Nobellius for such a detailed breakdown and what to expect. Clearly I'm not doing that at this moment! You said you put your brew in the basement and sometimes need a towel wrap. I don't have a basement. I have a third floor apartment that is never cool (and I hate it, although I wanted to move to New Orleans b/c it is great, I hate heat and refuse, and I'm too old to deal), so, sorry to bother you, but what is the prime temperature?


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## Admin (May 3, 2013)

Are you on HomeBrewTalk?


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## Nobellius (May 3, 2013)

mel z said:


> Thank you Nobellius for such a detailed breakdown and what to expect. Clearly I'm not doing that at this moment! You said you put your brew in the basement and sometimes need a towel wrap. I don't have a basement. I have a third floor apartment that is never cool (and I hate it, although I wanted to move to New Orleans b/c it is great, I hate heat and refuse, and I'm too old to deal), so, sorry to bother you, but what is the prime temperature?


High 60's to low 80's is usually a pretty acceptable range. Each yeast strain is a little bit different and it will work outside of the optimal range, just slower. I've had brews ferment as high as 95 degrees, but I usually do a few months of bulk aging on my summer brews just to make sure it's done-done when I bottle it. If your home is consistently above 85 degrees or so, you may want to keep your brewing to fall through spring.


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## Nobellius (May 3, 2013)

Austin said:


> Are you on HomeBrewTalk?


I'm not any homebrew forums.


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## Robert (Jul 12, 2013)

Nobellius said:


> Today I am going to try to make a hopped mead Pale Ale style. I'll be using home grown cascade hops and organic clover honey from a local Bee Farm. No fruit in this one. No spices. Just a straight mead with those lovely, bittery, tasty, wonderful hopssssss ;D


Great idea.  I often drink mead ceremonially, but the sweetness gets a bit yucky for me after a couple sips.  I like other bittersweet drinks like Coca-Cola, so why not a hopped mead?


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## Nevada (Jul 12, 2013)

Hi Robert, You may like a Gingered Mead.
Ginger heat balanced honey and alcohol sweetness.
Ever had a real Jamaican Ginger Beer? Sweet in the front and a long lingering heat finish, amazing.
Hops in mead never worked for me. Hops belong in beer, IMO.
Roy



Robert said:


> Great idea.  I often drink mead ceremonially, but the sweetness gets a bit yucky for me after a couple sips.  I like other bittersweet drinks like Coca-Cola, so why not a hopped mead?


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## Robert (Jul 12, 2013)

Nevada said:


> Hi Robert, You may like a Gingered Mead.
> Ginger heat balanced honey and alcohol sweetness.
> Ever had a real Jamaican Ginger Beer? Sweet in the front and a long lingering heat finish, amazing.


I've had artificially carbonated ginger beers and like them, so I'd probably like a real brewed ginger beer.

I'm not the brewer here, but so far just a conduit between one friend who's bee keeping and another who's trying his hand at brewing mead.  I've never tried alcoholic fermentation of anything, only lactic, and then only a couple times.


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## Nobellius (Jul 17, 2013)

Nevada said:


> Hi Robert, You may like a Gingered Mead.
> Ginger heat balanced honey and alcohol sweetness.
> Ever had a real Jamaican Ginger Beer? Sweet in the front and a long lingering heat finish, amazing.
> Hops in mead never worked for me. Hops belong in beer, IMO.
> Roy



It tasted pretty great at rackings. I'm a pretty firm believer that hops go in just about everything  Stay hoppy, stay happy ;D


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