Home Brewing

[aMillionDreams]

I have three Oktoberfest/marzen recipes: Sin City Amer, Sudwerk Hubsch Marzen, and New Belgium Hoptoberfest.  Pick your poison.  Here's the DFH Shelter Pale Ale

Dogfish Head's Shelter Pale Ale
OG= 1.052
FG = 1.013
IBU = 30
ABV = 5.0

Ingredients
6.6lbs Briess light malt extract
7oz light dried malt extract
6oz crystal malt
2oz amber (substitute dark munich or carastan if needed)
1/2 tsp. Irish moss
1/2oz Warrior hops (60 min)
1/2oz Glacier hops (10 min)
1/2oz Simcoe hope (0 min)
White labs WLP 005 (British ale) or Wyeast 1187 (Ringwood ale) yeast
0.75lb corn sugar (for priming)

Steep the crushed grain in 1 gallon of water at 155f for 30 minutes.  Remove from wort and rinse with 1 quart of hot water.  Add 1.5 gallons of water plus extracts and bring to a boil.  Add the hops according to schedule above. Add Irish moss after 45 minutes of boil. Top off with water to five gallons in fermenter.
Cool wort to 75f.  Pitch yeast and aerate the wort heavily.  Allow the beer to cool to 68f and ferment at that temperature. Rack to secondary and let beer condition for one week then keg or bottle.  Allow to carbonate and condition for additional two weeks.

One weird thing is that the instructions in the recipe said to add the yeast nutrient with Irish Moss but it's not listed in the ingredient list so do with that what you will.

[TEO]

Dude, like, you are making me sooo thirsty! ;)

[aMillionDreams]

Anybody else make the dfh 90 yet?  I just "tested" mine.  My god, it's good.  If I do say so myself. Tastes just like the real thing.  As it should since the recipe same from Sam at dfh.  btw, the recipe should've said to dry hop for 3 days instead of 7-10.  

I've been making a lot of melomel or fruit meads.  So far I've made a raspberry, a blackberry, and two orange meads.  I just can't slow down on this brewing thing.  Just like everything else I do, I've jumped in with both feet.  But the rewards are well worth it.  Cheers, friends!  [smiley=beer.gif]

[ALady]

I got my dad an "age your own whisky" barrel for his birthday last year, and he's aging a honey porter in it right now.

Pretty excited to see how that's gonna turn out!   :)

[aMillionDreams]

Fellow brewers- I've been getting my hops through this guy online and he's running a few really good deals.  He's selling 2lbs of pellet hops for  $14 (a combo pack of Columbus, Centennial, Cascade, and Williamette). He's also selling a pack with all the hops you need to brew a pliny the elder clone for 12.50.  And finally all other hops are 10% off with this discount code: test2190
http://farmhousebrewingsupply.com/

[aMillionDreams]

I made the move to all-grain brewing.  So far I've done two batches all-grain and it's pretty cool.  I bought a turkey fryer off craig's list for $50, a 10 gallon cooler for $40, and $40 for the hardware to convert it into a mash tun.  $130 total, not bad.  Right now I'm drinking on clone versions of Pliny the Elder and Fat tire.

[jones]

I need to get back into brewing.  Hopefully things will slow down this winter and I can pick it back up.

Dylan, what has been your favorite clone so far?  I will probably be hitting you up for some recipes...

[aMillionDreams]

DFH 90 min IPA is a great recipe and fairly cheap to make.  Two-hearted is good.  Pliny the Elder is amazing but it uses 13oz of hops which isn't cheap.  I made a celebrator and samuel smith's oatmeal stout that I'm waiting on, don't know how they'll turn out, but I can't wait to find out.

[darkglow]

Have to breathe life into this old thread.

Converting a 60 quart igloo cube cooler to a mash tun with manifold similar to this pic

I know iLikeBeer mentioned all grain brewing in the beer thread but wanted to bring the discussion here. BIAB method seems more cost effective but the cooler was given to me and the hardware for the manifold should only be 40$



Plan on perfecting my recipe by summertime for a Bell's Oberon style brew

Tips? Tricks?

To this point I have only done extract no-boil brews with the mr. Beer kit my brother gave me for Christmas, but the 2 gallons it makes goes way too fast. Moving up to a 6 gallon car boy

[iLikeBeer]

Have to breathe life into this old thread.

Converting a 60 quart igloo cube cooler to a mash tun with manifold similar to this pic

I know iLikeBeer mentioned all grain brewing in the beer thread but wanted to bring the discussion here. BIAB method seems more cost effective but the cooler was given to me and the hardware for the manifold should only be 40$



Plan on perfecting my recipe by summertime for a Bell's Oberon style brew

Tips? Tricks?

To this point I have only done extract no-boil brews with the mr. Beer kit my brother gave me for Christmas, but the 2 gallons it makes goes way too fast. Moving up to a 6 gallon car boy

Nice darkglow!  The only reason I went BIAB is because I didn't want to invest in more equipment.  If its given to you, go for it!   

I've been working on perfecting an Oberon clone as well and I think I found a recipe that comes damn close.  Yeast is a big key as Bells uses a house strain in most of their ales.  You can actually harvest the yeast from their bottles though.  I have harvested from Bells Amber Ale to make my last clone and it was damn good.  Not exact, but its very close. 

I can PM you my recipe if you'd like.

BTW, here is a great forum I frequent that has helped me a lot since I started homebrewing.  Pretty much any question you can think of you can find an answer for there.  Here is a link to the forum:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum.php

[iLikeBeer]

I also went to the local brewery and noticed they were doing some brewing and asked my server if I could get an impromptu brewery tour.  They welcomed us back, told us all about their operation, and even offered us free brewers yeast as long as we call ahead in advance.  Pretty cool.  He seemed like a normal homebrewer doing it on a huge level.  One interesting thing they told me is that it's too difficult to dry hop stuff there and if they did it on a regular basis it'd be too difficult to keep up with demand.  In other words, it'd sell too well, so they just don't mess with dry hopping for their brewpub brews.

I went back and read over this thread and it was cool to read this post from aMD.  Dylan went from being a regular homebrewer to now working in the BBC brewery!  Cool shit if you ask me.

We had a small brewery open in my town of Wooster, OH less than a year ago and me and some friends were there enjoying some pints when we asked the owner for a tour.  Like Dylan said, the owner/head brewer was just like a homebrewer on a larger scale (although he's on a much smaller scale than BBC).


Also, reading over this thread makes me laugh at how into this hobby I've become.  I started out doing extract kits (mainly clones) mainly because they were relatively fast, compared to traditional AG brewing and it was easy and I was making some damn good beer.  Hell, I wasn't even making yeast starters then.  The more I read, the more I saw people who would make the switch from extract to AG and were blown away by how much better their AG brews were and I just couldn't believe it. 

But as I kept learning more about this hobby I stumbled upon BIAB which is a simplified version of AG brewing and I figured I'd give it a shot as the only equipment I needed was a $10 mesh bag.  Now I've got about 8 BIAB's under my belt and I've been converted to just how much better AG brews are!  Not only that, but they are so much less expensive to brew!  And on top of that, not only did I start making yeast starters, I have also learned how to harvest yeast from Bells Brewery beers to make some of my favorite clones (Oberon, Two Hearted and Best Brown).  And I  have also learned how to wash yeast after I'm done with it to be re-used so I can save even more money on not having to pay $7 per yeast pack per brew! 

I'm just amazed at how much I enjoy this hobby to go from brewing out of box kits to basically running a small scale brewery out of my home in less than a year!     Of course it doesn't hurt that I can jam to my favorite music (my other obsession) during my brew day either...   

As they say on Brewing TV, "All for brew, brew for all!"   

[darkglow]

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum.php

i surf that forum a lot lately. They have a pretty snazzy ipad app for that forum that allows you to thumb through pictures very easily.

I started out reading about the "ghetto" brewing setups and looking at pictures. I think it's the easiest way to learn the basics when you see how people have improvised.

BTW, aMD now works for foothills brewing company in Winston-Salem, NC.
http://www.foothillsbrewing.com/about.html

Wish he'd post in here and impart some of his rockstar brewmaster knowledge

[iLikeBeer]

I'm brewing a new beer today.  It's an American Red Ale with a lot of hops.  I figured since it's a red ale, and MMJ does the all red lights when they perform Smokin' From Shootin', I'm calling this one Smokin' From Shootin' Red Ale!   

I'm really excited to see how this one turns out as it has a real nice hop schedule.  Should be a good one!

[iLikeBeer]

Anyone still homebrewin' out there?

I just brewed an attempt at a Pliny The Elder clone that is in the first of two dry hop stages.  This is one crazy hopped up beer as I will have over half a pound of hops in this when it's all said and done!   

I have never actually had a Pliny, but the recipe I used came straight from Russian River so I'm pretty stoked about how it's going to turn out!   

Getting into fall mode and I'm brewing up a pumpkin ale this weekend that was fantastic when I brewed it last year!