What are you brewing?

[nzbrewer]

Since this is the most popular thread on the RealBeer.co.nz forum I thought I would start it here just to see what happens

[MrC]

Does it taste like beer?  My attempt at a very low alcohol beer tasted like unfermented wort and wasn't an enjoyable drink.

[jt]

Reckon my 1033 brown is just ok, work in progress.

 

Bettre than a slab of crap from the supermarket or bottlestore, not as good as the beer that I'd actually buy.

[Soren]

yes, it does taste like beer. I think if I tuned down the hops a bit to bring it to balance it would be quite pleasant.

but I prefer to pump up the malt to acheive balance, the trick is to keep the alcohol low at the same time...

[jt]

What's the body like in these 1.033 beers

First one's still in the fermenter Mr Cherry.

But as I usually drink sub 40 beers, it's only a small step anyway

[Chris Banks]

Man sub 1040 beers and ginger beers are the talk of the town who would have guessed!
Hopefully summer turns up and we will have an excuse to drink them!

My latest thought with ginger beer is to skip the yeast and ferment and force carb with a diy carbo cap that I saw on the net somewhere
Im hoping it will put an end to bottle bombs and ginger beer all over the show.Also hoping that no special flavours will be missing without the ferment? (I figured its so short its only to get some carb anyway)

[jt]

I took a hydrometer sample last night Mr Cherry.

I had a taste, savoured and considered and finished the sample and then thought I'd better see what the reading was - oops, the second sample got measured and then drunk

Yea, it's a bit on the thin side. If it had've been the mild it would've had another 5% specialty in there (brown) which might have bumped the feel up a bit.

maybe a bigger base malt would be better for it, or a better mashing regime. The North Welly Research Unit has some options under review for future batches and I'll get the panel to review it in a week or two

But it is a 1.033 beer after all, not a 1.050 and it's meant as a ready quaffer so at this stage it's a work in progress and judgment still to come !

[Tony]

Hexen Hefeweizen V3

2.5kg Wheat malt
2 kg pilsner
200g cara pils

30g Pacifica

50g coriander boil 10 min

stepped mash

Wyeast Bavarian wheat yeast

[Mark Kessell]

lads.

my stout recipe was an absolute winner (IMO).
i'm going to brew it again soon, and have slightly adjusted the mate to get a more smokey flavour to it.

what i'm also doing, is adding blackberries to it. so it's going to be a smokey blackberry stout. gunna be interesting to say the least (potential case swap you say?).


i have some thoughts about what to do with the blackberries.
i have 2 options that might work. so would like some opinions.

1) Rack it. mash grains at 69 degrees, sparge at about 78 degrees. boil, and ferment as normal. and hope it stops at about 1.020. prepare blackberries, and rack to secondary on top of blackberries, and allow the yeast to continue until complete (about 1.012-1.015 maybe).

2) add blackberries to the boil stage. mash grains at 69 degrees, sparge at about 78 degrees. prepare blackberries, and add them to the boil with about 10 - 15 mins to go (like a late hop addition). ferment as normal, with no secondary racking.


so, couple questions off the top of my head.
1) the amount of blackberries to use?
2) how does one go about preparing them? was thinking about adding a bit of sugar, mashing them (to bring out the juice), making sure it's thoroughly mixed, adding a bit of water (to create a syrup), and boiling for about 5 - 10 mins (or not if adding them into the boil).
3) how do i counter all the sweetness thats going to be in there? both from the high mashing (unfermentable sugars), to the blackberry addition.

wot do you recon?

[Reviled]

I've only ever made one fruit beer, with cranberries, and I waited until fermentation was complete, blended the cranberries into a pulp and then added them to the fermenter in a BIAB bag, left them in there giving it a swirl every 1/2 day or so, tasting it daily until it seemed right, which was all up about 8 days...

One thing ive gotta ask you tho - Smoke and Blackberries?!? WTF dude? lol, but seriously, to me it seems like they are two flavours that will clash on top of your base beer - If it were me, personally, id do without the smoked malt and just add the blackberries, and then brew a smoked stout seperately because smoked malt has its own set of problems without adding fruit...

But in saying that, if you make it, and put it in the case swap, ill happily try it, and hopefully be proven wrong ;o) Guess youll never know untill you try it yeh?

[Mark Kessell]

wot was teh amount of cranberries you ended up using?
by punnet.


also, the smoke is more of an after taste. it's like only 200g in a 5.5kg malt bill. :)

[Reviled]

I ended up using 1.5kg of frozen cranberries in 10 litres, it was about the right amount tbh.. Id be more inclined to use frozen or heat treated instead of fresh because of bugs etc...

And with the 200gms, youd be surprised how much that can stick out like dogs balls - My first case swap beer was a smoked golden ale with 250gms of smoked malt and IMO it completely wrecked the delicious american hop flavour and clashed in a way that made it a struggle!! Just my 2 cents

[Stu H]

Just got a couple of second hand fridges, and a couple of days ago I excitedly put 2x fermenters in one fridge for a bit of cold conditioning before bottling.

This morning I went down to check if they'd cleared, turns out they're solid blocks of ice. Doh!

The fermentors are thawing out now. Reckon I'll still be sweet for bottle conditioning, or do I have to pitch more yeast?