tasankovasara
@tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on The x86 Still 5 weeks ago:
Reposting from lemmy.ml/c/linux
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to homebrewing@sopuli.xyz | 2 comments
- Comment on Going to try birch sap sparkly wine 5 weeks ago:
Yeah - moderate temperature, huge surface area and plenty of air movement across the surface would bring best results. I’m absolutely doing this again next spring, aiming for 20 liters of sap so I can put my fancy fermentation setup to work. Was thinking of using two of those under-the-bed storage boxes to make an evaporating setup, having the lids on and feeding in air with an aquarium pump that has two outputs. I’d still add dark syrup for colour though.
- Comment on Going to try birch sap sparkly wine 1 month ago:
By all means! If you can read my English…:
The nice thing about fermenting birch sap is that it naturally comes with nutrients for yeast to thrive, unlike regular wine juice. So no need to use yeast nutrient. But there is not a huge deal of sugar in it, so that needs to be added.
I gathered about 8 liters of sap over a couple of days. Emptied the bottles from trees into five liter containers every day and put in a Campden tablet to stop wild yeasts from messing with my magic. Stored in a fridge until I had enough to start fermenting.
Then I boiled 2 liters of water to sanitise it; dissolved 1 dl of syrup to provide extra sugar and hence extra alcohol in the finished product; let it cool to room temperature and added yeast to this container and let the yeast start making bubbles.
Then just poured the sap and yeast starter in the fermentation vessel with an airlock on. Let it ferment for the couple of days it bubbled. Then put the fermentation vessel in the fridge for a couple of days to clear out the yeast – it sinks to the bottom and the ‘wine’ ends up nice and clear (clearer than the photo I took, it eventually got perfectly clear).
To make it bubbly I used a Sodastream thing :D It was good also without carbonation.
Easy and really good stuff! Go for it :)
- Comment on Spruce tip beer ('tis the season) 1 month ago:
That makes a great deal of sense. I’ll certainly try to make an extraction with no heating next time. Shame that it’ll have to wait a full year…
- Comment on Spruce tip beer ('tis the season) 1 month ago:
Wow, thanks once again for insight! Yes, this method was easy and fast, although what I was hoping for was no caramellisation of the sugar. The windowsill method supposedly produces a clear end result. @CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de there solved that part of the puzzle, in fact it’s going to just dissolve the sugar with moisture evaporating from the spruce. The ultimate extraction in hindsight would probably have been with sugary water in a sealed vessel in the fridge for a couple of days…? Or honey, as you pointed out. I was hoping to not have too many competing aromas so that the tips would shine through.
Filtering was also easy, very little of the tips escaped the mesh basket. I filtered the tips solution heated up, and the sugar didn’t clog the coffee filter at all, and I was able to filter the wort with the same filter bag.
My tall kettle had a lid on, but yeah, some volatiles are gone with the wind. Keenly waiting to sample the end result. However, an extraction method without heating shall be the ultimate goal…
- Submitted 1 month ago to homebrewing@sopuli.xyz | 12 comments
- Comment on Getting serious now 1 month ago:
Certainly don’t load 25 kilos of brewon the glass counter :D
- Comment on RFK Jr.’s FDA chief says diabetics should take cooking classes instead of insulin 2 months ago:
Not if I have the choice, of course. But if I had to, I could follow the ways of my wife, she’s been on ketogenic diet (no carbohydrates) for five years by choice. I wouldn’t need insulin if I did the same. This is what I mean - knowledge is power.
- Comment on RFK Jr.’s FDA chief says diabetics should take cooking classes instead of insulin 2 months ago:
T1D here. I don’t have context but knowing nutrition-fu and having skills to make it tasty is not a bad place to be. Just saying
- Comment on Into the meat grinder! 2 months ago:
I too was doing an analytic chemistry course when this first popped :) Never forget
- Comment on Into the meat grinder! 2 months ago:
- Comment on Improving from first to second batch 2 months ago:
Congratulations, looks very nice!
The process is going to keep evolving, and mastery will grow with time. Being able to control the fermentation temperature is a huge deal, in my increasingly educated opinion it’s key to getting a clean taste. The fridge is definitely something to look forward to. You also get the option to cold crash. Cheers!
- Comment on What's brewing in May? 2 months ago:
Cool adventures there! Respect for brewing for science on behalf of all Alzymologist clients!
- Comment on Sahti x Stout with chocolate malt 2 months ago:
No, didn’t really even think about that - but thanks for the idea, I should try that with this stuff in particular!
- Submitted 2 months ago to homebrewing@sopuli.xyz | 2 comments
- Comment on Does lemon peel kill fermentation? 2 months ago:
One more brewer here routinely making a lemon and ginger infused beer and no problems there. I typically have four large lemons sliced thin for 20 litres of wort. I infuse the lemons and ginger separately and add the infusion late in the boil. I always wash the lemons with hot water to get rid of anything they might spray them with.
Kefir might be different though (I don’t know anything about that process). But maybe making an infusion vs. chucking the peel in the fermentation might help.
- Comment on Happy little bugs 3 months ago:
I’m curious about the Fermaid. Does one dose it in roughly such amount that it all ends up taken up and digested?
- Comment on Happy little bugs 3 months ago:
Finnish for mead is ‘sima’. Nice short word, let’s see what other languages use it for…:
Hungarian: ‘smooth’ Balinese: ‘cement’ Spanish, Basque, Latin: ‘abyss’ Tadzik: ‘face’ Tamil: ‘lion’
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 3 months ago:
I did actually take a sample intending to send it for science, but a taste test settled what was wrong with the wort: it wasn’t sweet. And when doing the re-run brew, I pretty much solved the mystery. Having one litre less water in the kettle for the initial heating to strike temperature meant that my temperature meter wasn’t touching the water when I set it up like I usually do :o) Thus the water got too hot and I ended up mangling my enzymes.
Take #2 was cooked yesterday and is now happily bubbling away. For the next brew due in a month or so, I’ll put in an order for some more Lager Malty from you :)
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 3 months 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 :( 3 months 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 :( 3 months 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 :( 3 months 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 :( 3 months 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 :( 3 months 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 :( 3 months 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 :( 3 months 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 3 months ago to homebrewing@sopuli.xyz | 26 comments
- Comment on Going to try birch sap sparkly wine 3 months 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.
