tasankovasara
@tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 5 hours ago:
Thanks for the encouraging words :) I guess this one is a goner though, it strangled a fourth pitch of a starter that was certified going strong when I put it in. Even if that stuff did eventually ferment, I’m not sure if I’d dare drink the cursed brew XD
I’ve been trying different temperatures, too – the setup is not super expensive per se, but it is versatile in that I have the fermenter insulated and can both cool and heat it with an automatic temperature controller (to heat it I borrow wife’s hair dryer, it’s there now holding 23 °C :D ). My usual fresh yeast is super easy in that regard, I’d normally allow a couple of hours after pitch at the ~25 °C that the wort tends to stand at at that time and then set the thermostat to 15 - 18 °C for the entire bubbly bit, so normally all I need is cooling against heat produced by the yeast.
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 5 hours ago:
That was a super inspiring read, thank you! I’ve been wary of keeping starters going for long, expecting them to foam their way out of the bottle before I have a place to put them. Next time I’ll make the starter first thing on brew day. Watching these processes is a great way to learn and get a feel for things, and I never get to see what happens in the steel fermenter. Made the birch sap cava in a plastic container and it was the first time I got to see what happens in the process.
As for the sugary starter solution, I can report that the basic fresh yeast from the grocery store (I’m sure you know Suomen Hiivan tuorehiiva) has thrived in even more saturated starters, I’ve been going with 1 dl of syrup in 1 litre water before. And the nutrient was just a pinch into the starter. I get that stuff in satchets made to serve 20 litres of wine juice.
Yesterday I made one last try at a starter with the fresh yeast. I kept it for five hours, and it was very much going and foaming when I pitched it. Also put a heater in to keep the insulated fermenter at 23 °C. It’s been 18 hours since pitch now and so far it looks like the Moloch in my brew has taken another victim. Oh well, weekend on the way and it looks like Saturday I’ll have the house to myself. Looks like a brew day :))
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 5 hours ago:
Yes, I’ve opened it a number of times now and absolutely no foam… Did one last pitch with a starter that I kept an eye on for five hours and it was very much going strong by that point. Yet that too succumbed to the void :[
The thing I like most about this kind of setup is how after the yeast is pitched and the pressure lid is closed, you don’t open it again until all the beer is gone… the peace of mind that the beer is kept hermetically in a steel vessel in a protective CO2 atmosphere. There have been a couple of second pitches in the past, and I’ve kind of branded those batches as second grade simply because I had to open the holy seal and re-pitch :D
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 day ago:
I have a threshold valve on the gas breather line, so I can see on a meter if pressure has accumulated, plus a water lock after the meter to show the escaping gas. These have been my references regarding fermentation.
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 day ago:
Well, I’ve been brewing with a very settled process for a couple of years, and in my experience the fermentation will always have begun by the morning after setting it up. The primary reason I haven’t been taking gravity readings is because I don’t want to lose any of the good stuff (would not pour the OG sample back in), and since my brews tend to just work, I never needed analysis to troubleshoot either.
I have a threshold valve on the gas breather line, so I can see on a meter if pressure has accumulated, plus a water lock after the meter to show the escaping gas. These have been my references regarding fermentation.
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 day ago:
Yeah, such a bummer… It might be the syrup in the starter that has gone bad, I ended up using leftovers there. The starter was 1,5 litres of filtered & boiled water with 1 dl of dark sugarcane syrup and some yeast nutrient dissolved in. It was at 26 °C when I let the yeast onboard. I only had the starter going for an hour, no activity was seen in that time but I wasn’t really looking either.
The grain was:
Simp Maris Otter Pale 3800 g Viking Smoked Wheat 1400 g Viking Black Malt 700 g Viking Choc Light 1000 g
… two top lines are active. And I WILL brew this again :D
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 day ago:
There’s 5 kilos of active malt (Simpson’s Maris Otter Pale and Viking smoked wheat which they say can be used like pilsner malt), 1,9 kilos of roasted non-active stuff. And it’s sticky sugary. Grain bill then is not a problem.
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 2 days ago:
No, I don’t have means to measure that other than carrying the kettle and fermenter around :) Gotta get a meter one of these days.
- Submitted 2 days ago to homebrewing@sopuli.xyz | 22 comments
- Comment on Going to try birch sap sparkly wine 2 weeks ago:
That was a quick one! The result is a dry, refreshing and probably low ABV product. The colour comes from added dark cane sugar. It only took a couple of days to get 6 L of sap out of three trees.
- Comment on Some bitter again 2 weeks ago:
Delicious looking! Welcome back. I wonder what dark circumstances might cause a pause in the first place, but let’s not go there :E
- Comment on Going to try birch sap sparkly wine 3 weeks ago:
I know it’s not going to be strong. However, having tasted birch sap before I’ve got a feeling there will still be a distinct taste there after the sugars have been fermented, and that’s why I wanted to try this. I have a forest industry book about all the things in trees apart from fiber and lignin, and from there I know that the sap has got all kinds of interesting constituents, so this could turn out to be a health cava :D Concentrating the sap would surely boost the taste, but that’s not in my interest for this experiment.
- Comment on Going to try birch sap sparkly wine 3 weeks ago:
Great idea, thanks!
- Comment on First ever homebrew! 3 weeks ago:
Very nice looking brew! Congratulations and welcome to the slippery slope XD
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to homebrewing@sopuli.xyz | 6 comments
- Comment on using regular agricultural barley for making malt 2 months ago:
It would be interesting to experiment with how long one lets the germination to go on before roasting. And of course DIYing the malt opens up opportunities for smoking and such. So a lot of opportunity there, but certainly no savings to be made, since roasting is energy intensive and best done in large batches.
- Submitted 2 months ago to homebrewing@sopuli.xyz | 1 comment
- Comment on What are you brewing? 3 months ago:
I’d argue that with all that killing of single cell life forms, no beer could ever be vegan.
- Comment on What are you brewing? 3 months ago:
I’m going to do a second attempt at a lemon infused beer next. Last one had a single lemon in 22 L of beer and the taste didn’t come through at all. How many limes per how much beverage did you go with?
- Comment on How your Christmas specials turned out? 3 months ago:
Enjoying the sahti-stout here alongside the usual Christmas nutritional overload. Pretty soon I’ll run the rest into bottles and free the Kegmenter for next run. For that one I’m looking to adopt some yeast pups from @alexander 's selection :)
- Comment on Making sure I have some sahti this Christmas, because nobody sells it near me 4 months ago:
Same same! Yesterday was brew day for a Guinness-dark sahti x stout. It was my first beer recipe and this run is the fifth time making it.
Traditional sahti is very well available in my area (not the case for all of Finland) so my stuff can be a bit less trad: 1300 EBC black malt and some Simpsons caramalt backed with a hint of rye malt and standard issue Viking sahti-malt. A particular fresh yeast is the only required ingredient according to EU authentic produce guidelines, that’s what’s bubbling mine. Cheers & merry Xmas!
- Comment on Crafty ideas to spin a 'whirlpool' needed 4 months ago:
This comment right here, Santa Claus :D
Thanks a ton! Makes perfect sense, this is what I will be doing from here on.
To pay it back a bit - I have a trick that reduces the hops gunk a great deal already. Couldn’t find a pic of the product itself, but I put hop pellets in large tea infusion bags. The pic there at least shows the size. Clip the end shut with something, maybe put a glass or steel ball in there for weight if you need them to sink. I just let them float, the boil will roll them around. One bag takes only 15 - 20 g of hop pellets due to swelling, so there will be several bags in the kettle.
- Submitted 4 months ago to homebrewing@sopuli.xyz | 4 comments
- Comment on I've made a yeast lab in Finland 5 months ago:
Finn & a hobbyist brewer & chem engineering person working IT because cash here :) Advertising is the right thing to do, I’ll certainly be placing an order or two now that I’m in the know. I’m in a sahtipitäjä and know some smaller and bigger brewers. Let’s see where this goes :D
- Comment on Post your setup. no matter how uggo 5 months ago:
Can’t but join in the fun. Meet the Egg Mini. Does all sorts of humble servitude, but the coolest thing is a webserver only accessible via Wireguard through HAproxy running on a Digital Ocean droplet.
- Comment on What are you brewing? 6 months ago:
Finished my ‘try and see’ cider batch. Three kinds of apples from the yard, juiced at the juicers, plus a homeopathic 22 g/L pale ale malt. Fermented to fully dry in 17 days at 14 C and 1,8 bar. After that a couple days at 2,5 C to clear it out. Plenty of forced carbonation. Came out a bit mild, like a dry white wine, but that made it easy to drink. Gave most of it away in 3 L bags, because I want to get the vessel empty and get a beer going.
Lesson learned: much more acidic apples next time, and the malt wort needs to be as concentrated as possible so it doesn’t dilute the apple juice.
- Comment on What are you brewing? 6 months ago:
Now is proper.
