Homebrew / Moonshine - Sink vodka appreciation

what do most of you all brew, seems like we got a lot of wine/mead/still brewers in here but i dont read much about beer brewers.

i have made a mead but i was not that happy with it, stilled some shine (but i dont drink much liqour) but i do do a lot of all grain beer brewing.
i have not bought beer from the store in over a year.
i brew with a brewzilla and love this nigga like you would not believe(effing amazing if you want to still also)
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but the main thing that makes brewing so worth it is force carbonation and kegging instead of bottling.
it saves so many hours of labor cleaning bottles and bottling (and then waiting weeks for carbonation), we allready had a kegerator for sanke kegs, and just converted it to ball lock.
we keg in cornys and then force carbonate, and it makes it worth doing.
we are thinking about getting the larger brewzilla and moving to 10gal batches as it would let us get more beer out of the time we spend brewing but are worried about having to change our process and recipes too much.

just wanted to make a post about brewing, there are alot of details about brewing that matter but i have felt like it is much more forgiving then some people make it out to be.
if you are on the fence about brewing you should try an extract kit, but i really enjoy all grain brewing and we just buy grain (mostly 2 row) from a local brewery for pretty cheep.
 
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code123 said:
what do most of you all brew, seems like we got a lot of wine/mead/still brewers in here but i dont read much about beer brewers.

i have made a mead but i was not that happy with it, stilled some shine (but i dont drink much liqour) but i do do a lot of all grain beer brewing.
i have not bought beer from the store in over a year.
i brew with a brewzilla and love this nigga like you would not believe(effing amazing if you want to still also)
View attachment 6619752
but the main thing that makes brewing so worth it is force carbonation and kegging instead of bottling.
it saves so many hours of labor cleaning bottles and bottling (and then waiting weeks for carbonation), we allready had a kegerator for sanke kegs, and just converted it to ball lock.
we keg in cornys and then force carbonate, and it makes it worth doing.
we are thinking about getting the larger brewzilla and moving to 10gal batches as it would let us get more beer out of the time we spend brewing but are worried about having to change our process and recipes too much.

just wanted to make a post about brewing, there are alot of details about brewing that matter but i have felt like it is much more forgiving then some people make it out to be.
if you are on the fence about brewing you should try an extract kit, but i really enjoy all grain brewing and we just buy grain (mostly 2 row) from a local brewery for pretty cheep.
Click to expand...
I'm two years into meadmaking and absolutely love it, but I'm definitely going to get into braggots (mead with a grain bill) soon.
 
code123 said:
what do most of you all brew, seems like we got a lot of wine/mead/still brewers in here but i dont read much about beer brewers.

i have made a mead but i was not that happy with it, stilled some shine (but i dont drink much liqour) but i do do a lot of all grain beer brewing.
i have not bought beer from the store in over a year.
i brew with a brewzilla and love this nigga like you would not believe(effing amazing if you want to still also)
View attachment 6619752
but the main thing that makes brewing so worth it is force carbonation and kegging instead of bottling.
it saves so many hours of labor cleaning bottles and bottling (and then waiting weeks for carbonation), we allready had a kegerator for sanke kegs, and just converted it to ball lock.
we keg in cornys and then force carbonate, and it makes it worth doing.
we are thinking about getting the larger brewzilla and moving to 10gal batches as it would let us get more beer out of the time we spend brewing but are worried about having to change our process and recipes too much.

just wanted to make a post about brewing, there are alot of details about brewing that matter but i have felt like it is much more forgiving then some people make it out to be.
if you are on the fence about brewing you should try an extract kit, but i really enjoy all grain brewing and we just buy grain (mostly 2 row) from a local brewery for pretty cheep.
Click to expand...
I mostly brew beer and occasionally brew mead and cider. I also use the BrewZilla for my all-grain brewing. I'm not sure if you've seen this, but they make an extender that increases the volume of the 9.25 gallon system to a little over 12 gallons. You'd probably want the bigger system for beers with high starting gravities, but I've had good results making lagers and lighter ales with the small system and the extender. It takes a while for the 110V system to get that much water up to temperature, but it's a lot cheaper than buying a second system.
 
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Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa said:
but they make an extender
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yea i have thought about the extender but i assumed it was not that water tight and would be more for dealing with foam over then truly letting me boil that much more.

i dont think it would work with even a low gravity beer, i have made a double batch before and the grain basket was full on a low gravity recipe i use calls for 8lb, around 15lb the grain basket is so close to overflowing. even if i could fit more water i cant fit enough grain.. a normal batch uses about 12lb, so looking at 24lbs of grain, 30lb for a high gravity brew. some of the reason im not sure about upgrading is just having to deal with that much grain, 15lbs is hard enough to bag and throw away, idk about 30lbs.

my brewzilla is the 220 so that is nice.

another reason i want the larger one is i can then save about an hour and use the smaller one to heat up my sparge water while i am mashing. saving about an hour to heat up the ~5 gallons that i put aside in a cooler for sparging after the mash.

i get most of my recipes from morebeer, the citra session (https://www.morebeer.com/products/citra-session-pale-ale-grain-beer-brewing-kit-5-gallons.html) is my goto right now.
its a pretty simple recipe without requiring me to keep a bunch of ingredients.
 
code123 said:
yea i have thought about the extender but i assumed it was not that water tight and would be more for dealing with foam over then truly letting me boil that much more.

i dont think it would work with even a low gravity beer, i have made a double batch before and the grain basket was full on a low gravity recipe i use calls for 8lb, around 15lb the grain basket is so close to overflowing. even if i could fit more water i cant fit enough grain.. a normal batch uses about 12lb, so looking at 24lbs of grain, 30lb for a high gravity brew. some of the reason im not sure about upgrading is just having to deal with that much grain, 15lbs is hard enough to bag and throw away, idk about 30lbs.

my brewzilla is the 220 so that is nice.

another reason i want the larger one is i can then save about an hour and use the smaller one to heat up my sparge water while i am mashing. saving about an hour to heat up the ~5 gallons that i put aside in a cooler for sparging after the mash.

i get most of my recipes from morebeer, the citra session (https://www.morebeer.com/products/citra-session-pale-ale-grain-beer-brewing-kit-5-gallons.html) is my goto right now.
its a pretty simple recipe without requiring me to keep a bunch of ingredients.
Click to expand...
That's very fair. I use their extended malt pipe to add grain capacity and fermcap to deal with the foam, otherwise I would be worried about boil-overs. This setup seems to work for 16-20lb batches. For 30 pounds you'd definitely want a bigger system. My extender doesn't leak, but your mileage may vary.

I have also had issues trying to handle large amounts of wet grain. I've been debating trying to rig up a pulley system or building out a multi-vessel system to deal with higher grain loads, but I haven't found an easy solution yet.
 
It takes some balancing of acid, tannin, and sugars to get a mead/wine to impress anyone. How hard is it to make something appetizing with grains?
 
Troonos said:
It takes some balancing of acid, tannin, and sugars to get a mead/wine to impress anyone. How hard is it to make something appetizing with grains?
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It's very easy to make an appetizing beer if you follow a recipe from somewhere like MoreBeer or Northern Brewer and pay attention to things like sanitization, temperature control, and oxygen exposure. Creating your own recipes is a bit harder, but brewing calculators can do a lot of the math for you. There are also plenty of books that go into the specifics of recipe design, like Designing Great Beers and Brewing Classic Styles. I haven't tried making a braggot yet, but if you already know how to design good meads I doubt that you'd have trouble making something decent.
 
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa said:
It's very easy to make an appetizing beer if you follow a recipe from somewhere like MoreBeer or Northern Brewer and pay attention to things like sanitization, temperature control, and oxygen exposure. Creating your own recipes is a bit harder, but brewing calculators can do a lot of the math for you. There are also plenty of books that go into the specifics of recipe design, like Designing Great Beers and Brewing Classic Styles. I haven't tried making a braggot yet, but if you already know how to design good meads I doubt that you'd have trouble making something decent.
Click to expand...
Yeah, mead is actually pretty resistant to oxidation, but I've heard beer is really easy to oxidize.
 
Troonos said:
Yeah, mead is actually pretty resistant to oxidation, but I've heard beer is really easy to oxidize.
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Beer does oxidize pretty easily. The best solution in my experience is if you use a pressure rated fermenter and keg your beer. Once it's in the fermenter, you can just push it around with CO2 and keep it out of contact with the air until you serve it.
 
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa said:
Beer does oxidize pretty easily. The best solution in my experience is if you use a pressure rated fermenter and keg your beer. Once it's in the fermenter, you can just push it around with CO2 and keep it out of contact with the air until you serve it.
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I keg everything I make that isn't a wine-ABV mead, so that's no problem.
 
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Beer is very easy to do well, I've doing it for a while now and in my experience, it is far far easier than wine to get a serviceable product. I did the American wheat kit off More Beer and It was very simple and very good. Higher alcohol beers can be harder to do depending on the system you use to brew, but if its lower ABV (4-8%) you can consistently make great tasting stuff.
 
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Does anyone have any recommendations of brew supply merchants in North America? I'm planning on getting into brewing wine and maybe mead this winter and I'm looking for some 1 gallon carboys and basic brewing equipment.
 
Honored guest said:
Does anyone have any recommendations of brew supply merchants in North America? I'm planning on getting into brewing wine and maybe mead this winter and I'm looking for some 1 gallon carboys and basic brewing equipment.
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Northern Brewer and MoreBeer are my go-to online homebrew stores. The only brick and mortar store within driving distance hasn't really impressed me (limited bottle selection, expired yeast), and I'm pretty sure it'll go out of business soon.
 
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Does anyone in this thread have experience using actual juniper berries to make gin? I have a crapload of Eastern red cedars, and I'm thinking of throwing together a still and making some gin.
 
I visited a meadery in Virginia a few weeks ago that invalidated my two years of experience. I've been in a community for those two years that mostly makes subtle, mild meads that win competitions because judges are looking for "honey varietal character and tannic value and acidity" but this guy makes extremely rich fruit bombs that age on like 8-10 lbs of fruit per gallon for 6-8 months, then sit on vanilla, chili peppers, peanut butter, chocolate bars, graham crackers, etc for months. He has carbonated meads that perfectly mimic a half dozen different commercial sodas. He's a former chemist, so he's really good at this stuff.

So I've been sitting here the last two weeks trying to figure out how I can adapt my current batches to make them more like that.
 
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Troonos said:
I visited a meadery in Virginia a few weeks ago that invalidated my two years of experience. I've been in a community for those two years that mostly makes subtle, mild meads that win competitions because judges are looking for "honey varietal character and tannic value and acidity" but this guy makes extremely rich fruit bombs that age on like 8-10 lbs of fruit per gallon for 6-8 months, then sit on vanilla, chili peppers, peanut butter, chocolate bars, graham crackers, etc for months. He has carbonated meads that perfectly mimic a half dozen different commercial sodas. He's a former chemist, so he's really good at this stuff.

So I've been sitting here the last two weeks trying to figure out how I can adapt my current batches to make them more like that.
Click to expand...
That sounds amazing, it also sounds expensive.
 
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VeteranOfTheRetardWars said:
I had a coupon for strawberries and raspberries, and because I work there I know where we keep the secret clearance local honey that is still perfectly fine (regulations regarding foodstuffs, not because it's expired or bad). So, today I'll start on a melomel, and given that I fucking love raspberries it'll be fun.
My cyser went from hillbilly wine to proper wine after it aged a few months, it got good reviews from my friends and it's kind of neat to make your own brew from your own tree. I really like how it tastes, real smooth and appley with various cider spices adding to it pretty well.

UPDATE:
It reads 1.08, you can taste all the raspberries and strawberries really well, the yeast is now grooving, I’m pretty hopeful for this one.
View attachment 6501130
My next big project will probably be prickly pear wine, the season to pick them will be here soon and I’m thinking a juniper and prickly pear wine would be pretty neat. For that one I’ll definitely get more fancy yeast and do more reading.
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I pitched it on 10/8, and just let it vibe in the closet and run dry, cold crash, added some of the original syrup I froze back in and let it sit again for a few weeks and run dry a second time.
It came out at a hair over 10% and the little sample I took tasted actually pretty good like a dryer wine, and in particular there’s a nice fresh raspberry taste.
I’m just letting it chill out in the fridge for now, but I’m much more impressed with this mead than I thought I would be.
 
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VeteranOfTheRetardWars said:
It came out at a hair over 10% and the little sample I took tasted actually pretty good like a dryer wine, and in particular there’s a nice fresh raspberry taste.
I’m just letting it chill out in the fridge for now, but I’m much more impressed with this mead than I thought I would be.
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I'm really a fan of drier meads and wines as I have gotten more into brewing. I made a wine out of maple syrup last year and it had this wonderfully dry-buttery finish that was absolutely to die for. The only sweet mead I've really enjoyed was this cinnamon mead I made with some chili infused honey. Anything with too much sugar seems to give me a headache.
 
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