Hey y'all,
Just bought a BrewDemon 2 gallon fermenter and started my brew yesterday. Just wondering if anyone could give me some pointers to get the best product from my future brews. I'm currently brewing (BD Pilsner) and storing my fermenter in my home under a cardboard box to keep it in a controlled climate and out of sunlight.
When transitioning to bottling are there any suggestions for types of sugar to use? White, Brown, Confectionary?
When picking new brews would you suggest getting pre-made mixes from BD and Mr. Beer? When would you advise starting using recipes over pre-made products?
I've seen people sharing ideas for meads and wine too and was wondering if someone's could point me in those directions just to do some research!!
Happy brewing y'all!!
Brewing Rookie Intro
Moderators: BlackDuck, Beer-lord, LouieMacGoo, philm00x, gwcr
Re: Brewing Rookie Intro
Welcome!
My first piece of advice is to be patient. Give it at least two weeks in the fermenter and two weeks at room temperature to carbonate. Then you need to refrigerate for at least 3 days. Longer conditioning times can help most beers, but some beers (notably IPAs and wheats) are considered to be best fresh. Many people discount the benefits of cold conditioning (longer time in the fridge) because the yesat will be mostly dormant at fridge temperatures, but I've found that refrigerating for 2 weeks or so benefits the beer greatly.
I keg now, but when I bottled, I never used any sugar except for plain white sugar.
Temperature control is probably the next most important thing.
There are a lot of different levels of brewing.
Using the prehopped extracts from Brew Demon or Mr Beer is the easiest (heat water, add can, add cold water, add yeast). You can "doctor" these by adding additional extract, dry hopping, steeping specialty grains, etc. Sometimes, changing the yeast can make a big difference.
Before tweaking the kits, you should understand what the different ingredients bring to the table. Many people recommend brewing them as-is first to learn what they taste like unaltered so you can taste the changes that different ingredients make.
The next step is probably an extract kit, using either LME or DME. These generally require a hop boil of up to an hour.
There are also a lot of recipes available online, where you buy the individual ingredients.
If you prefer, you can create your own recipes instead of buying kits. If you go that route, you'll probably want to get some brewing software like Beersmith or QBrew. Qbrew is free and easier to use, but Beersmith has more features. @screwybrewer has a spreadsheet based program (https://www.ezhomebrewing.com/) that probbly rivals Beersmith. I've looked at them, but I've been using Beersmith for a long time and entropy is tough to overcome. Screwybrewer hosts a download of QBrew. There are also some online recipe programs (some free, some not).
Many extract kits include either a steeping grains or a partial mash. With steeping grains, you soak grains that are specially prepared in water at a specific temperature for a set period of time. For a partial mash, you need "base" grains that are malted so that they will convert starches to sugars in water for a longer period of time. The temperature and amount of water used for a partial mash are a bit pickier for a mash than for a steep.
Most kits are 5 gallon kits. You can usually scale these down, or split them between several smaller fermenters. There are small batch kits available, but they tend to be more expensive ona per beer basiis.
The next step is all grain. This approach uses no extract and uses only malted grains to get the fermentable sugars.
There are other things you can do (such as work with water chemistry: https://ezwatercalculator.com/).
Different people progress at different paces. Some people try one or two prehopped kits (Mr/BD), then jump straight to all grain. I brewed prehopped kits for about a year (adding additional extract and/or hops after the first couple of batches), then started creating my own recipes using LME (my LHBS sells LME at a really good price, especially if I buy in bulk), but also continued making some batches with prehopped extracts. I think I started adding steeping grains after about 2 years, and started doing partial mashes shortly after that. I didn't switch to all grain until I'd been brewing for 9 years or so.
It's not a bad idea to do a few prehopped kits first to get the process down and get good at sanitizing everything. But after that, it depends on your comfort level.
My first piece of advice is to be patient. Give it at least two weeks in the fermenter and two weeks at room temperature to carbonate. Then you need to refrigerate for at least 3 days. Longer conditioning times can help most beers, but some beers (notably IPAs and wheats) are considered to be best fresh. Many people discount the benefits of cold conditioning (longer time in the fridge) because the yesat will be mostly dormant at fridge temperatures, but I've found that refrigerating for 2 weeks or so benefits the beer greatly.
I keg now, but when I bottled, I never used any sugar except for plain white sugar.
Temperature control is probably the next most important thing.
There are a lot of different levels of brewing.
Using the prehopped extracts from Brew Demon or Mr Beer is the easiest (heat water, add can, add cold water, add yeast). You can "doctor" these by adding additional extract, dry hopping, steeping specialty grains, etc. Sometimes, changing the yeast can make a big difference.
Before tweaking the kits, you should understand what the different ingredients bring to the table. Many people recommend brewing them as-is first to learn what they taste like unaltered so you can taste the changes that different ingredients make.
The next step is probably an extract kit, using either LME or DME. These generally require a hop boil of up to an hour.
There are also a lot of recipes available online, where you buy the individual ingredients.
If you prefer, you can create your own recipes instead of buying kits. If you go that route, you'll probably want to get some brewing software like Beersmith or QBrew. Qbrew is free and easier to use, but Beersmith has more features. @screwybrewer has a spreadsheet based program (https://www.ezhomebrewing.com/) that probbly rivals Beersmith. I've looked at them, but I've been using Beersmith for a long time and entropy is tough to overcome. Screwybrewer hosts a download of QBrew. There are also some online recipe programs (some free, some not).
Many extract kits include either a steeping grains or a partial mash. With steeping grains, you soak grains that are specially prepared in water at a specific temperature for a set period of time. For a partial mash, you need "base" grains that are malted so that they will convert starches to sugars in water for a longer period of time. The temperature and amount of water used for a partial mash are a bit pickier for a mash than for a steep.
Most kits are 5 gallon kits. You can usually scale these down, or split them between several smaller fermenters. There are small batch kits available, but they tend to be more expensive ona per beer basiis.
The next step is all grain. This approach uses no extract and uses only malted grains to get the fermentable sugars.
There are other things you can do (such as work with water chemistry: https://ezwatercalculator.com/).
Different people progress at different paces. Some people try one or two prehopped kits (Mr/BD), then jump straight to all grain. I brewed prehopped kits for about a year (adding additional extract and/or hops after the first couple of batches), then started creating my own recipes using LME (my LHBS sells LME at a really good price, especially if I buy in bulk), but also continued making some batches with prehopped extracts. I think I started adding steeping grains after about 2 years, and started doing partial mashes shortly after that. I didn't switch to all grain until I'd been brewing for 9 years or so.
It's not a bad idea to do a few prehopped kits first to get the process down and get good at sanitizing everything. But after that, it depends on your comfort level.
Re: Brewing Rookie Intro
Welcome aboard Lbed!
Green pretty much covered it. You'll learn this like anything else, by study and practice. Keep us posted.
Green pretty much covered it. You'll learn this like anything else, by study and practice. Keep us posted.
Making beer and stew for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Never mind, there it is.
Never mind, there it is.
Re: Brewing Rookie Intro
Welcome to The Borg. Sanitation, temp. control and patience are three of the key things to make good beer no matter what method used. Good luck and keep us posted.
Happy Hound Brewery
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
― Thomas A. Edison
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
― Thomas A. Edison
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The_Professor
- Uber Brewer
- Posts: 1018
- Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2013 4:52 pm
- Location: Calif, USA
Re: Brewing Rookie Intro
A basic mead is fairly simple except for one thing.LBed13 wrote: ......I've seen people sharing ideas for meads and wine too and was wondering if someone's could point me in those directions just to do some research!!.......
Mix honey with water. The volume of honey determines the ABV. Add yeast. Ferment.
It's not uncommon to use a "staggered nutrient addition" because honey doesn't really have everything the yeast needs.
The yeast should be appropriate for the mead's gravity. A wine yeast or mead specific yeast. Sometimes ale yeast.
All sorts of fruits and spices are sometimes added to mead.
The not so simple part? If making a strong mead you are talking a year and much longer aging time.
That's the short story.
Re: Brewing Rookie Intro
IF you do the nutrients right and keep the yeast very happy then it can be OK sooner then a year. But still many months.The_Professor wrote: The not so simple part? If making a strong mead you are talking a year and much longer aging time.
Low ABV meads can turn around very quickly IF you do the nutrients right.
MoreBeer has a very good article about mead making with nutrients on their web site that will guide you through it.
But yeah, back in the day when I made Maple Wine (basically mead made with maple $yrup), without nutrients done properly it tasted like cheap cognac mixed with lighter fluid for about 12 months, then after that it was drinkable, and at 2 years it was awesome. But 2... years... of... waiting...
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AcesMarine8282
- Newbie
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- Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:41 pm
Re: Brewing Rookie Intro
Very happy that I just found this thread @the professor had some great beginner info.
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FrozenInTime
- FrozenInTime
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Re: Brewing Rookie Intro
LBed13 wrote: I'm currently brewing (BD Pilsner) and storing my fermenter in my home under a cardboard box to keep it in a controlled climate and out of sunlight.
Welcome to the forum!
I'm not sure I would recommend fermenting under a cardboard box. I would let it breath, the box might keep in some heat and cause a slightly higher temp than my desired temp. I place my carboys in cheap rubbermaid containers with open top. That is to keep any over flows from hitting the floor. I also use an old cooler for containment with lid open. You can also use a blow-off tube into an empty jug to catch any blow-off if any happens. Just put bubbler back in after fermentation slows down.
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