Brewing

[spectre6000]

@ManSkirtBrew

I started brewing... 14 years ago maybe? with an extract kit my siblings got me for xmas one year. I like really dark beers, and the only kits I could find topped out with brown ale level SRM. Also, I'm not a huge drinker, and 5 gallons takes me FOREVER to get through. I pretty much lost interest. I moved to Colorado near dozens of really top notch breweries (helps when the water is so good!), and had a lot of fun exploring different styles, but really honing in on what I like (big, giant, thick stouts). It was really all grain or nothing, and my understanding of all grain at the time was that it took $$$ in equipment and lots of space, and I just didn't have that much interest.

During the pandemic, I discovered the brew in a bag method that had come up in the last decade or so. Much easier and lower investment for all grain, plus I can make much smaller batches much easier. I've made the same stout recipe over and over and over now in 1.5 gallon batches solely to fine tune my process. I'm getting mid-80% brewhouse efficiency, and with this last brew upped the grain bill by 50% as my first real deviation. My efficiency didn't drop, so assuming the beer itself tastes as good as I expect it to, the next batch will be 200%, and I'll keep going that way until I top out (not sure I want to do a double mash). Once I figure out my upper limit for extraction within a reasonable efficiency range, I'll start playing with other malts. 

It's been a ton of fun, WAY easier and cheaper than I thought it would be, and the beer has been far better than it should be. As objective as I can be, I can honestly say my very first round, mistakes and all, tasted better than all the other beers I had in the fridge, and it's only gotten better since!

[ManSkirtBrew]

It really is such a great and rewarding hobby, especially for tinkerers like us.

I started in 2008 with an Irish Red extract kit, and the hobby soon got out of control. By 2013, it was clear I was going to have to quit or make a career of it.

I had 7 taps of beer and one of plain seltzer in my basement at all times. I converted a chest freezer into a glycol chiller to cool the 22 gallon stainless conical fermenter I was using to ferment my beer.

Now I do the same thing for a living at 10x the scale. I'm running a 7bbl (1 barrel = 31 gallons) system with 7 and 15bbl fermenters. I tend to lean heavily towards traditional English and German styles, especially lagers.

That said, my flagship and most popular beer by far is The Great Porter, an American robust porter.

If you (or anyone else) would like recipes, just head over to my website and let me know what you like! I'm always happy to share.

[spectre6000]

Definitely interested in that porter! I like them dark, with a thick mouthfeel, and the bigger the better!

I used to live near, and my wife worked just around the corner from Avery. They have an imperial stout called Uncle Jacobs at about 18% ABV. They have a barrel aged series that adds adjuncts to that core recipe, and I have years' worth of those stashed in my beer fridge. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the best stout there is (I'm sure there's better), but it's excellent, and the standard by which I judge all other beers.

As I said above, I'm not a huge drinker, so an 18% beer will be my whole evening. My goal is to try to get a similar flavor profile and mouthfeel, but with a lower ABV. Higher mash temps are my approach angle, and I'm mashing in the 155°-157° range so far. I don't quite have the control down well enough to keep it exactly where I want it to the degree for a full mash, but I'm getting close. I don't want to get too far into the weeds to where I can't throw my whole brew day's worth of kit in the dishwasher in a single go (small batch FTW!). I don't yet know how that 150% beer is going to work out in terms of fermentable/non-fermentable sugars and ABV. Bottling day should have been yesterday, but I've been super sick, and absolutely not up to it. Hopefully tomorrow. I'll let you know how it turns out (at least from a gravity perspective).

[RichardHarris123]

7 hours ago, ManSkirtBrew said:

It really is such a great and rewarding hobby, especially for tinkerers like us.

I started in 2008 with an Irish Red extract kit, and the hobby soon got out of control. By 2013, it was clear I was going to have to quit or make a career of it.

I had 7 taps of beer and one of plain seltzer in my basement at all times. I converted a chest freezer into a glycol chiller to cool the 22 gallon stainless conical fermenter I was using to ferment my beer.

Now I do the same thing for a living at 10x the scale. I'm running a 7bbl (1 barrel = 31 gallons) system with 7 and 15bbl fermenters. I tend to lean heavily towards traditional English and German styles, especially lagers.

That said, my flagship and most popular beer by far is The Great Porter, an American robust porter.

If you (or anyone else) would like recipes, just head over to my website and let me know what you like! I'm always happy to share.

Do you make IPA,s my favourites although I'll drink just about every style. 

[ManSkirtBrew]

5 hours ago, RichardHarris123 said:

Do you make IPA,s my favourites although I'll drink just about every style. 

I do, they're just not my main focus.

One of my flagships is Imperial Progress, an 8.2% IPA. Kind of west coast, malt-forward style with really fruity progress hops in it.

Just running out of my Brut IPA, Brutally Bubbly.

And next on the list is June Bug, my G&T inspired IPA with juniper and lime.

[RichardHarris123]

14 minutes ago, ManSkirtBrew said:

I do, they're just not my main focus.

One of my flagships is Imperial Progress, an 8.2% IPA. Kind of west coast, malt-forward style with really fruity progress hops in it.

Just running out of my Brut IPA, Brutally Bubbly.

And next on the list is June Bug, my G&T inspired IPA with juniper and lime.

I'm moving next door to you.  Hehe. 

[mikepilk]

45 minutes ago, ManSkirtBrew said:

I do, they're just not my main focus.

One of my flagships is Imperial Progress, an 8.2% IPA. Kind of west coast, malt-forward style with really fruity progress hops in it.

Just running out of my Brut IPA, Brutally Bubbly.

And next on the list is June Bug, my G&T inspired IPA with juniper and lime.

I didn't know IPA was a thing in the USA. I love a good hoppy IPA like Greene King.

[RichardHarris123]

5 minutes ago, mikepilk said:

I didn't know IPA was a thing in the USA. I love a good hoppy IPA like Greene King.

Didn't use to be but they produce some very good ones now.  Not sure when it started, maybe @ManSkirtBrewcan enlighten us.

[ManSkirtBrew]

37 minutes ago, RichardHarris123 said:

Didn't use to be but they produce some very good ones now.  Not sure when it started, maybe @ManSkirtBrewcan enlighten us.

I don't know that I'm an actual authority, but I can tell you my version of history. As for the actual timelines, I'm not entirely sure, but I'll share things as I learned about them.

Back in the late 1900s (oh god) we started seeing craft beer just start to emerge here. I remember the first big craft breweries coming out of the west coast, like Stone Brewing.

Their tagline at the time was "You're Not Worthy." Their Arrogant **BLEEP** IPA was aggressively hopped, big, malty, and in your face. The west coast IPA craze was on.

Dogfish Head in Delaware on the east coast came out with their iconic 60/90/120 minute IPAs, which indicated how long they were continuously hopped during the boil process by their hopinator machine.

They also pioneered the "Randall", which was basically a reverse water filter that ran beer through fresh hops en route to the faucet.

There were also more reasonable examples, like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Dale's Pale Ale. Not IPAs in name, but definitely in hops and flavor. The American craft palate was all in for the hops.

But then maybe 10 years ago, a backlash of sorts started. Breweries like The Alchemist started making beers like Heady Toppper, a hazy "New England" style IPA, and the NEIPA was born.

It was hazy, juicy, fruity, generally lower alcohol than the big west coast styles, like the 9-18% ABV Dogfish Head offerings. It almost immediately became the new definition of craft beer.

I actually got a review of one of my IPAs with the comment, "It's a great beer, but too bad it isn't hazy."

And now there's something of a backlash against NEIPAs. In classic American fashion, brewers took them to the extreme, adding lactose and tons of fruit to make them more accessible to the masses, watering down the style in the process--milkshake IPAs are a thing here.

Now I'm a big believer in people enjoying whatever they enjoy. There's no shame in it. The thing is, these hyper sweet, thick, fruity NEIPAs are not reminiscent of beer in almost any way.

So the craft beer pendulum is swinging back towards clean, beer flavored beer. Lots of lagers are starting to show up. 5 years ago I won an award for "Most Unusual" at a beer festival with a super classic, clean, light Mexcian style lager, because it was the only one at the event. This year there were dozens of the same beer.

It's fascinating. And apologies for unexpectedly jumping up on my soapbox!

Edited June 2, 2023 by ManSkirtBrew
grammar and spelling

[RichardHarris123]

Very interesting, I thought America was all lager until relatively recently.  I stand corrected. Sierra navada is available here, one of my favorites , jaipur is brewed with American hops. 

[mikepilk]

I know we're way off topic here 

It's a long time since I used to home brew. Do you use similar hops in the USA to what we use - off the top of my head I remember using Fuggles, Challenger, Goldings, First Gold.

[GuyMontag]

I got into homebrewing about 25  years ago. Started with extract and after a few years went to full grain. Over time added a Morebeer sculpture and a heated/cooled SS conical fermentor. I converted a chest freezer into a kegerator as bottling was such a PIA that kegging the beer made more sense.

 

 

The compressor died after a few years so we got a commercial 8 tap keggerator. This one has been going now for about 9 years.

 

And in a bit of a crossover with watchmaking, I had a logo made for our home brewery and had it turned into a clock

Living in the SF Bay Area we are spoiled with amazing breweries and beers (and Hetch Hetchy water for home brewing!). The grocery stores here have extensive selections that are different week to week. Because it's so easy to get amazing beer we have slowed down our home brewing but usually still manage to have something on tap.

1 hour ago, mikepilk said:

I didn't know IPA was a thing in the USA. I love a good hoppy IPA like Greene King.

I spent a few weeks hiking the Cotswold trail with my wife about 10 years ago. There was a definite difference in IPA's in the areas we visited compared to the US. The beers here tend to be much more aggressively hopped with a higher ABV. I was surprised to see beers, like the Greene King IPA, labelled as IPA's with a 3.7% ABV. Stylistically I would consider those more of a session Pale Ale than an IPA. But I did enjoy that one. And speaking of IPA's, I made this label for one of our IPA's and it won a prize in the BYO magazine label contest.

 

 

 

[ManSkirtBrew]

1 hour ago, mikepilk said:

off the top of my head I remember using Fuggles, Challenger, Goldings, First Gold.

Well, that depends on who you ask I make a best bitter as one of my flagships, and it's 100% Fuggle. I use styrian goldings, which is basically fuggle grown in Slovenia.

I used to use Challenger in my Irish Red, but it became a little harder to get.

The classic American hops tend to be the "C" hops: cascade, centennial, challenger, chinook.

But these days hops are going boutique as growers come up with new (and copyrighted) strains. Citra, mosaic, amarillo, simcoe, Idaho 7.

I describe myself as a cranky old man of brewing, so I tend to stick to the classics.

[spectre6000]

I don't think the US has been about lagers since the 90s, like MSB said. I mean... There are parts of the country that still mostly drink whatever megabrew light beers, but not the sorts of places you'd want to be. IPAs have been the "basic" (as in the internet lingo) beer for quite a while. From my perspective, there have been little blips where other things have risen in popularity. Sours, NEIPAs (which may be more than a blip), and there was the white claw thing there for a while... I keep waiting for my big dark beers to get cool, but my tragic unhip-ness will probably prevent that from ever happening. Challenging things rarely become popular.

[Klassiker]

A little off-topic perhaps, but I would be interested in your opinions on the 'Reinheitsgebot'.

[spectre6000]

Probably worthwhile in its time to prevent dangerous adulteration or something, but has no place today. If a brewer wants to challenge oneself, it's a rubric. Oats are great for building body, adjuncts of all kinds are great (in moderation) for adding flavor, there's nothing wrong with wheat (pretty sure that would have been in violation), and rules are meant to be broken!

[spectre6000]

I've been playing with big beers lately. I don't drink much or often, so when I do, I like to do it all the way. I mentioned above brewing a 150% stout recipe. My whole famn damily is in town this week, and my siblings are interested in homebrewing. I set up an educational brew day for them. We're opening/trying the 150% bottles, brewing a 175% stout, and bottling a 200% stout tomorrow (a non-linear full process minus waiting for fermentation to occur and waiting for bottles to condition). With my process/equipment, I am getting about 85% brewhouse efficiency with a 100% recipe, 85% with a 150% recipe, but only 65% with a 200% recipe. I'm hoping to find the point at which my efficiency starts to drop, and then I'll do a two-step mash to see how high I can get. I've been intentionally mashing at a high temperature in order to get a fairly high percentage of non-fermentable sugars (to get that big beer maltiness and mouthfeel without the high ABV), but depending on how these 150%, 200%, and 175% beers taste, I'll likely attenuate that somewhat and let the fermentable sugars convert a bit more (if I can get an 18% beer, why not do so every once in a while?). I also haven't changed the hops at all, and that will likely need to be addressed (as its own variable of course). Eventually, I'll likely end up with a true big beer recipe, and a small big beer recipe. Then... I start playing with adjuncts!