Cheapest adjunct

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With Melbourne No 1 hitting the decks, da sugaz will be all the go shortly in the Bronzed Brews community!

Confession, last year I got a bootleg sample of Melb from someone who would have to kill me, so will remain nameless and it produced excellent full bodied and very malty beers with a bloody alarming amount of raw sugaz.
 
I'm sold too. Gotta give adjuncts a try now. When I progressed to all grain I somehow gave myself the rule of 4 ingredients.
Water, (All grain malt), Hops, yeast. Summer coming time to break out of that square. For session abilities.

:drinkingbeer: < Admin. the session able smiley's drink is too dark.
 
There is at least one guy in the US that won something like 3 years in a row for a Belgian that did not use candi-syrup. He may well be the only one.

Personally I believe there are things learned along the journeys road, even when the destination may seem pointless. It's almost always more revealing along the way than the experience of the final goal being realised.

I think we should promote conversations, if we can..
 
With Melbourne No 1 hitting the decks, da sugaz will be all the go shortly in the Bronzed Brews community!

Confession, last year I got a bootleg sample of Melb from someone who would have to kill me, so will remain nameless and it produced excellent full bodied and very malty beers with a bloody alarming amount of raw sugaz.
Yeah I am thinking the whole 4 packets thing might have been a good idea, though I don't brew that much to get through it all in time for next year :D

So with the yeast any notable flavours you remember?
 
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It actually reminded me a lot of "old time" beers that were still around in the 1980s like Reschs DA and Tooths Old, quite grainy and not at all lagery.
 
The idea of this thread is 'what can we learn' or at least 'what does xyz bring to the table '.

The cheapskate comment was that most of us started on the home brew bandwagon.

Most of us stay because of the craft. You get some awesome beers at case swaps you never heard of except for brewers.
 
Potato is like $1 kg at most. One im yet to try personally though. BYO just had an article on brewing with all sorts of vegetables, got me thinking of doing a carot cream ale or something
 
So your contention is that, if you are making a 25L batch using around 5kg of malt and use 20% adjunct (1kg of rice) at a saving of $1.40, that saving of $1.40 is more important than the quality of the beer and that's why we brew.

Sorry price has nothing to do with what and how I brew, the commercial beers I buy commonly start around $10/330mL bottle, call it $30/L, some are a lot more expensive than that, if I make a no holds bared clone of one of the top Belgian beers I might spend $45 on a batch ($1.8/L) or the equivalent of $750 worth of beer for $45
Brew for quality first, last and always - price is irrelevant.
Mark
Price is irrelevant but being able to brew quality beer at a good price is something you're proud of? Me too but phrased oddly.

While I agree with the philosophy of quality over quantity (ingredients, time, process, etc), typing profanities in capitals is unnecessary and not in the spirit of
either the forum, nor this thread.

Say what you like about the quality of posting (and I might agree with a lot of what you say but signal/noise here is as much numbers as it is ratio -it's a big place) but you're still here and it's testament to how much respect the community has for you that you can write such things and remain.

Please, in future attempt to temper your temper.

Hope your virus gets better soon, may your beers all be rich and delicious.

Can't answer the OP though because the main adjunct I use is belgian syrup and that ain't cheap. Ocassionally white sugar or dex for a golden strong or tripel but commercial d2 only for the dark stuff. Far from rich - just what does the job the best.

Have used oats (mostly golden naked) but I only ever really look at purpose rather than price.
 
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[QUOTE="MHB, post: 1465712, member: 1550"
What I object to is someone deciding that I am either tight, was tight or am perceived as tight. Not a decision someone else gets to make for me.

No good objecting to the perception of who you are; by others. who have no knowledge of who or why you are.
Its is a very common belief that homebrewers are cheap pissheads....LRG was certainly not tainting any of us as cheap.

I hope you get better...and like I have done myself....don't let sick, cranky Mark play bad with the other kids.
 
Anyone starts a thread called "Cheapest Adjunct", opening sentence ends with "I thought I'd see how cheap we can be."
A thread discussing how to use adjunct, what beers it works in, pros and cons of different adjuncts... well you would get a very different response from me for one.
The way it is stated, saving around $1.50 on a 25L batch is the main point of the thread, which is in my opinion a really silly excuse for starting a thread, not to mention a really silly motivation to brew, What is the best adjunct? best way to use said adjunct? - nope - its all about price.
Ah CBA
 
Anyone starts a thread called "Cheapest Adjunct", opening sentence ends with "I thought I'd see how cheap we can be."
A thread discussing how to use adjunct, what beers it works in, pros and cons of different adjuncts... well you would get a very different response from me for one.
The way it is stated, saving around $1.50 on a 25L batch is the main point of the thread, which is in my opinion a really silly excuse for starting a thread, not to mention a really silly motivation to brew, What is the best adjunct? best way to use said adjunct? - nope - its all about price.
Ah CBA

Silly excuse to tell someone to f themselves.
 
that saving of $1.40 is more important than the quality of the beer and that's why we brew.

Mark
Brew for quality first, last and always - price is irrelevant.

Mark
"What I object to is someone deciding that I am either tight, was tight or am perceived as tight. Not a decision someone else gets to make for me."

Mark

Errr... and to add on top of the contradiction, no one incinuated that you were tight nor would anyone care if you were. Before you jump on a high horse realise not everyone lives the same privileged life you do. It was never suggested that piss was used as an adjunct, so i don't get this nonsensical 'quality' argument you are persisting with. Calm your farm.
 
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To me, brewing is about producing a product I am passionate about on a system I engineered and built myself.

In my opinion, engineering is inextricably tied with cost. Thus, part of the challenge for me is about optimising quality at minimum cost. It's not cutting corners, it's good engineering.

Oats are pretty great, but the adjunct that's got me out of a few brew day disasters is dextrose so I always keep some handy.
 
Agree that glucose can be very useful, it also happens to be the cheapest adjunct available.... if you are large enough.

This works a bit the way baseload power to ally smelters did: as long as you can guarantee that you'll take enough of it, the producers will just about give it away as it's a by-product of gluten production and the gluten is much more valuable.
 
So your contention is that, if you are making a 25L batch using around 5kg of malt and use 20% adjunct (1kg of rice) at a saving of $1.40, that saving of $1.40 is more important than the quality of the beer and that's why we brew.

Sorry price has nothing to do with what and how I brew, the commercial beers I buy commonly start around $10/330mL bottle, call it $30/L, some are a lot more expensive than that, if I make a no holds bared clone of one of the top Belgian beers I might spend $45 on a batch ($1.8/L) or the equivalent of $750 worth of beer for $45
Brew for quality first, last and always - price is irrelevant.
Bum
 
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Regardless of my poor choice of intro, this has still turned out to be a good discussion.

I had an oatmeal stout that probably (even according to the brewer) had too much oats. I returned him a porter that had no adjuncts, and I preferred it and so did he.

I used (because the Mrs got it on special) some really cheap brown rice. Made a fantastic beer, but took way too long to gelatinise. Cut costs, but really didn't meet the mandate, so it was shown the scrap heap.

Brewing is about problem solving without dropping quality, and cost becomes part of that (but not the only part). Throughout all my 'cheapo' threads, I've always put it as a problem solving exercise, not a 'I only want to make cheap beer' thread.

Heck, the fact that it's been often quoted that home brewing is "an expensive way to make cheap beer" - because once we all get brewing, we spend lots of money on non-ingredient based things.

Anyone who says that they either didn't start brewing as a cost-cutting exercise or continue it, in part, because it is will be very much in the minority. Even MHB made mention of a Belgian beer bought is $x/L more than what he makes. We all brew, in part, because it's cheaper than buying. The fact that it fills a creative need, need for stainless, hobby need or that we can make better than commercial quality beer is important, but I would hazard a guess that if it were more expensive than buying, then many of us would have either never attempted it, or wouldn't persist with it.

If I have a very small shed, and SWMBO is saying "no more sacks of grain", then my problem is, if I need a pilsner based (or partially based) beer, how do I engineer a result that's similar? I think I found one.

Same thing goes - do I want to buy a stout tap (this is pre-Interap Stout Taps), when I make maybe one stout a year at absolute most? Or will a $1 syringe, which gets used for other purposes, brewing or otherwise, do the trick.

A bit like my cheap build thread with the 2 pots on the stovetop and a bucket in bucket lauter. I moved states twice in 2 years, and was thinking I may again. Why shell out for stuff I have to get rid of, when I can repurpose.

Does the fact that I now own an urn and am doing classic textbook BIAB mean that I'm invalidated as a brewer, or as a backyard cost-cutting engineer? Or both? Does it make my thread invalid? My answer is - the number of brewers that have said that it helped them get a feel for AG before they shelled out for more expensive equipment is fairly decent evidence that there is a niche for 'cheap', without it being a 'cheap booze' issue.

AHB has always been a home of pushing the limits, ingenuity and experimentation. The day that is frowned on by the majority (and not the minority), is the day I leave.

Anywho, I didn't start this thread as a treatise on why cheap brewing is not a sign of poor quality or why one should have to defend their systems and procedures, if they stack up in light of evidence. But simply to say 'what adjuncts work for you and how much do you pay'.
 
I've become a real fan of golden syrup to lighten body in British style beers. Not the cheapest, but I'm convinced it adds to the aroma.
 
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