How Do You Keep Your Brewing Simple

[Pumpy]

As I look out of the hole in my shoebox , and watch the tumbleweed blow through the barren wasteland of the backyard ,the bleached white bones of a sheeps skull

I think to myself


Do I need 20 varieties of hops
Do I need a March pump
Do I need a $16 file of yeast
Do I need a refractometer
Do I need the top of the line grain
Do I need to be cool B)


Should I just consider

JW Pale malt .
Bit of crystal .
Safeale O4 dried yeast .
Some Goldings and Fuggles hops
little Chocolate Malt

Do I really need more!!!. :blink:

Is you brewing developing into an Obsession

What do you do to keep things Simple ?????


Pumpy

 

[lou]

Is you brewing getting out a little more of an Obsession

nothing wrong with an obsession - consider , I know someone whose obsession is remote control toy boats.

Where's the dignity in that?

Brewing on the other hand :beerbang:

.

"Just cause you are not making money for other people doesn't make it a 'hobby'

lou

 

[sosman]

Pumpy - you have mixed up simple and cheap, not always the same.

For example I haven't bought yeast in a long time, my yeast farm keeps me going. Is it complicated, not for me but ymmv.

I pretty much buy the hops I need for the next brew - not the cheapest way to go but simple. I have been known to buy a kg of hops on occasions.

Refractometer - don't need one but makes my brewday simpler and quicker and it didn't cost all that much.

I use Powell's malt, can't get less expensive and it works well for me. Doesn't mean I don't buy specialty malt sometimes.

You could try a gravel bed in your mashtun.

 

[Pumpy]

Sosman you will never let me forget the gravel bed in the bottom of my Mashtun

You must have a memory like an Elephant


I am just trying to keep my brewing less complicated than it was .

I suppose I have been impressed by some really great brewers ,who have the simplest of gear and people who are starting out must think ,they need special gear rather than getting started with the basic gear like we all did .

Pumpy

 

[Gough]

G'day Pumpy

FWIW I think simple is generally better in terms of recipe formulation if nothing else... A malt bill with 8 different malts and a hop bill with hop additions every 30 seconds might look and sound great ( and let's be honest. we all need to get one of these brews off our chest just to say we've done it... :lol: ) but in my limited experience, my favourite brews have almost always been the simplest... I think you should give liquid yeast a chance - not really 'complex' at all as I'm sure you know and gives more varieties and better results than the dried in my experience - but other than that your recipe sounds great to me. Simple is good in my brewery at least Don't 'stint' on your ingredients' quality though - use the best you can find and let them shine...

Shawn.

 

[Pumpy]

Shawn you are right I try to stimulate some debate .

I suppose with ingredients you only get what you put in !

That Apa recipie has gone down really well it was highly drinkable refreshing beer for the hot days , I wish I had done a double batch

Pumpy

 

[tangent]

i think it all hinges on what you're trying to obtain Pumpy
some people want a pilsner urquell (and why wouldn't you) on tap or in bottles and nothing even close will suffice, so they have a damn lot of steps to achieve this. eventually wanting some big bloody backyard factory belching steam with bar attached (ken)
i like a simple ale most of the time, so i suppose i'm easy to please.
i'm swilling the lastest simple APA recipe as well Pumpy. i'm just trying to get rid of my oldest hops

5kg pale
200 caramunich
75 malted weyermann wheat
64C rest
simcoe, cascade, cascade, cascade
whatever yeast i have that's ready to pitch
18C

it's scary how fast a pint slides down

i'd post you a bottle but I CBF bottling

 

[Pumpy]

Your right Tangent I reckon everyone should make the Pilsner Urquell I used about 185 grams Saaz hops in the last batch .

I just made an english bitter and used Ross's idea of the curtain Nylon mesh bags to contain the hops worked a treat did not loose all the hops up the side of the HLT

pumpy

 

[Jye]

I just made an english bitter and used Ross's idea of the curtain Nylon mesh bags to contain the hops worked a treat did not loose all the hops up the side of the HLT

You may have seen pics of Ross's hop sock... well I have taken that one step further and made a hop sock big enough to put my IM chiller inside of This will hold the bag open and allow the hops to move around.

 

[bindi]

I just made an english bitter and used Ross's idea of the curtain Nylon mesh bags to contain the hops worked a treat did not loose all the hops up the side of the HLT

You may have seen pics of Ross's hop sock... well I have taken that one step further and made a hop sock big enough to put my IM chiller inside of This will hold the bag open and allow the hops to move around.

[post="114032"][/post]​

Love to see a photo of that Jye

 

[timmy]

I just made an english bitter and used Ross's idea of the curtain Nylon mesh bags to contain the hops worked a treat did not loose all the hops up the side of the HLT

GEEZ! You hop early!

 

[Jye]

If it is a sucsess I will post some pics with a bit of a write up.

 

[Doc]

I guess it is all relative.
I brewed an American Pale Ale/Hourglass IPA today.
9 varities grains in the grist.
4 varities of hops with 9 seperate addtions.

After dinner last night, setup the HLT, and had the chiller, inline aeration unit santising overnight with fermenters, meant I could also get the form work done for the garden shed foundations going down next weekend, whilst playing with the kids while brewing today.

Got the brew into fermenters into the temp controlled freezer before heading off for a family arvo out.
Pitched the yeast after dinner.

Seemed simple to me.

Beers,
Doc

 

[stephen]

Got home from work Friday arvo. Have time to do the 75 km round trip to LHBS. Buy ingredients, social chat, glean some more information off the resident experts: In general - have a relaxing time in LHBS. Get home to find that kitchen is a disaster. Do a load of dishes in the dishwasher. Do another load of dishes in the dishwasher. Load dishwasher again. Wash large stuff that won't fit in dishwasher. Clean bench tops. Clean stove!!! Now start heating mash water. Tidy up rest of house. Water up to temp, start mash. Bring all your gear from the shed into the kitchen. Heat water for sparge/lauter. Mash time now complete. Sparge for one hour - or thereabouts. Lift kettle (that resembles a keg with the top cut out - but isn't) onto burner. Set TV to channel nine to watch football. Start boil. Feed cat who has decided to visit house and walk all over clean/sanitised equipment demanding food. Wash, clean and sanitise all stuff cat has touched: (Everything) Add hops etc and do the boil. Set up immersion chiller. Mop floor of excess water. Start cooling. Get spare towels and place under leak that has never been there for the last eight brews. Chill. Answer phone. Drive to hospital to pick up step daughter. Get back home. Brew now down to 28 deg. Start pre chiller and lower to 20 deg. Whirlpool. Wife gets home from work - demands a cup of tea - NOW!!! Clean space to make tea. Start syphoning brew from kettle. Stop syphon - wife wants to get into kitchen - NOW!!! Resume syphon. Look at clock - 2AM!!! Finish syphon. Aerate.Aerate.Aerate. Pitch yeast. Place fermenter into brew cupboard. Enter kitchen...Wife!!! Spend next hour cleaning up - EVERYTHING!!!. 4AM go to bed. Get woken at 10AM next morning: "What's this bit of carp doing in my kitchen? I want my kitchen left clean!!!" Makes the three loads in the dishwasher pale into insignificance.

Brewing - easy peasy!

Steve

 

[scott]

I am onto my third all grain, a dry stout that I will re define as a sweet due to some errors. Into the all grain after about four kit brews. I was concerned at the amount of gear every one has and I do not have the room also have other spending priorities (dive gear also needs some capital investment).

How to do all this simply and with the minimum of fuss. People have been brewing for many hundreds of years without all the gear we have today. This site has been great to see what and how other people do things.

Other than a basic brew kit from the HBS I have only braught a 21ltr S/S stock pot (also needed it for boiling crays & crabs) and thermometer.

Boil mash & sparge water in S/S pot in the kitchen on new stove with good wok burner. Mash in 30L esky (already owned) no modification.

Use the fermenter for sparging. Less than ten bucks worth of tubing and fittings to make a manifold which is connected to the tap via a drilled out sediment trap.

Pour mash into fermenter mash tun add sparge water mix well, let grain bed settle then start draing off slowly into pot, no sparge method as detailed here on this site. Have achieved apparently about 75% efficiency. That is why my dry stout is now redefined as a sweet stout I had used a lower efficiency in my formulation.

Boil on BBQ. Then cool overnight by placing pot into tub of water. Add ice packs and frozen water bottles to help. In the morning tip into fermentor. Add re hydrated dried yeast. May consider liquid yeast once I have more experience with good beer via dried yeast. Hops are filtered with some muslin cloth in a strainer although I will make some hop bags shortly to improve this.

Put the fermenter back into the water tub to keep the temp constant at about 20 degrees for fermentation.

When the shed is complete and have some more room available I may invest in some extra gear such as a fermentation fridge.

Simple and cheap whilst I get the hang of things. The results so far are better than the kits and should improve as my experience improves. Also I try to keep the recipes very simple.

 

[Pumpy]

Doc & Stephen ,

You must realise that you are probably highly domesticated members of society who have a great deal of structure and organisation to your life .

There are many brewers whose life is turmoil and are trying to fit AG brewing into this anarchaic way of life and everything looks way too involved .

I must confess to finding that there are a number of bits of gear that make ones AG brewing experience a way lot less stressful .



pumpy

 

[Tseay]

Interestingly there is a poll on the "Foam on The Range" web site that asks, "which of the folloiwng leads to great beer":Recipe, Technique, Luck or equipment.

With 70 responses to date the numbers are:

Recipe 34%
Technique 49%
Luck 14%
Equipment 3%

While equipment that makes brewing easier and/or time saving has a place, given we are only brewing small quantities, the inherant batch to batch variabilty might well wipe out any small gains to be made, especially in formulation.

Given debates like " does HSA actually happen" with small batches (Radical Brewing) , one can only wonder if people are being led down an increasingly expensive path without any detectable result.

T

 

[Duff]

There are many brewers whose life is turmoil and are trying to fit AG brewing into this anarchaic way of life and everything looks way too involved .

[post="114127"][/post]​

For those days Pumpy, there are good alternatives:

1. Open Fresh Wort Kit of your choice.
2. Pour into fermenter.
3. Top up with 5L of cold water (if desired).
4. Pitch yeast.

Cheers.

 

[Pumpy]

I like that idea for the occasion Duff, done a few of those they taste good too

pumpy