Signs of a good brew

[fletcher]

If I made a comment about a German product with poor components and quality control would it still be considered racist?

Seriously?

I just laughed at your comment and thought man I don't want a beer with that guy.

yes it would be.

and i read your post and felt exactly the same about you.

 

[TimT]

If you can learn to trust your senses at each stage of production (that includes the cold-side), then the technological toys just become confirmation, rather than something to slavishly rely-on.

Very good point.

You never know when that trusty "made in china" temperature controller's going to say bye bye. I'd prefer to just go with my gut, intuition and an old brewers advice then swap out a temp controller in record time to have it pop again.

I very much agree with this sentiment elcarter - it's too easy to rely on technology. Expensive, also.

 

[TimT]

Have you tried using hot rocks a la stein brewing?

Manticle, no I haven't. MIght have a look at it though! Prior to the advent of widespread, cheaply available thermometers and measuring equipment I think not only would the making of beer have been more intuitive but it would have relied on a much wider variety of techniques. I've read about a couple -

1) Finnish and Norwegian style, setting up a mesh of juniper branches over a fermentation pot, putting the cracked barley malt on top of that, and then performing the mash and sparge at once by just pouring hot water through it a couple of times.
2) Simply setting the pot at a set distance from the fire and letting it gradually warm to the correct temperature.
3) Heating the water up to boiling point, taking the pot off the fire, waiting for a bit and then adding the barley malt.

Might look up hot rocks. Now I wonder if the following method might yield worthwhile results:

4) Warming the water up to 50 degrees or so - easy to judge because this is about the temp of the hot water from the tap. Add cracked barley malt, put pot on stove over extremely gentle heat so that the temp of the mash rises only gradually. Stir occasionally to encourage circulation and make sure nothing gets stuck. Keep heating while the temp of the mash rises incrementally; the important thing would be to get it slowly through the 66-71 degree range I think, to encourage the fermentable sugars to come out. (This is a reverse variation of no.3 - not sure whether either method is better, but it would probably work best with large quantities, as they store and maintain heat more reliably than small quantities).

When I made a (very small amount of) Sumerian ale it felt very simple and intuitive, like making a soup. Never bothered with instruments.

 

[jyo]

Using your senses will only get you so far. The difference between trusting the 2 year old stick on thermometer on the side of your fermenter or an STC 1000 is real. My set up is fairly primitive. A couple of cheapo stick thermometers sees me well on the mashing side.

At a case swap a few years ago, Jimboley (forum member who doesn't post anymore) brought along a keg of ale he made as an experiment using no proper measuring of ingredients or temperatures whatsoever.

All malt was just tipped into a bucket, handfuls of crystal and hops were also estimated. I don't think he timed the mash or boil either. It was a decent beer. Slightly cloying (shedloads of crystal and I think may have been a very high mash temp used) but pretty drinkable.

I guess what I'm trying to say is we know how to make the best beer possible. And that is to measure what we are doing. I know I can make decent beer by fermenting in my spare room with a wet towel and fan in Summer, but I know I can make vastly better beer by whacking it in my fermenting fridge and setting the temp mate to 18'.

 

[TimT]

The other issues are space and expense - not everyone has space for lots of brewing software, and a fermentation fridge, and assorted paraphenalia. And every specialist product you get to help with brewing will cost money, often unecessarily, because the same job can be done in a similar amount of time with ordinary kitchen equipment. I also do cheesemaking and there's a lot of specialised equipment I could get for that too.

There's another issue too - when I started brewing and cheesemaking, I was really struck by how much history they had, what a large body of knowledge has been amassed over the centuries, and how little comparatively ordinary folks these days know about that history. So I love trying to brew in ways that are fairly close to the traditional styles, reading old recipes and finding out how and why they did things the way they did. Just my personal brew-philosophy! I suppose in the end we all have different ways of doing things, and want something different out of our brews.

 

[elcarter]

Tim if your a fan of the old historic side of brewing you need to track down a TV show named Brew Masters.

Additionally a new series "Brew Dogs" is by far my favorite and also has some really interesting "out of the box" brew experiments that was super entertaining.

 

[TimT]

Just reminded me. Got some time to spare right now and my laptop open.... might look at a bit of Brew Dogs on the Tube right now

 

[elcarter]

Try and keep this alive.

Signs of a good whirl pool...

Stir slowly, don't aerate the hot wort and cause hot side aeration.

Some say leave for 10 mins I go 15-20 and then siphon into cube or chill if that;s your thing.

Nice hop cone, less hop material in the cube, clearer beer.

 

[indica86]

Wort in my fermenter is a sign of a great brewday.
All the better several weeks later when I crack the f-er and smell and drink MY beer which is of course the best beer ever.

 

[philmud]

Signs of a good brew: I go to the fridge and ignore a reasonable commercial offering on favour of MY beer. Friends give me side eye and say incredulously: "you MADE this?". And most of all, my FiL drinks it without making some indirect reference to "that homebrew taste".

Back OT, I'm interested in the discussion re: Lo tech brewing. My scales shat themselves for my last brew and I had to eyeball my hops - bottled this last night and it tastes pretty good. However, without accurate measurement I won't be able to replicate this beer. Same goes for temperatures (mash, pitch and ferment). That might be part of the fun, but I like the ability to be deliberate about these things.

 

[TimT]

Because I brew in small quantities a lot of my amounts look suspiciously like 'a handful'. Hops go by the teaspoon or the tablespoon! It works a treat.

 

[Spiesy]

Technology is your friend. Embrace it.

 

[GalBrew]

Technology is your friend. Embrace it.

I agree wholeheartedly. How can you possibly aim to replicate or improve your processes if you don't even pay lip service to measuring and controlling the myriad variables involved in brewing?? Timers, scales, hydros, refracts, thermometers, temp controllers are all vital bits of technology required to know what it is that you have actually done.....not what you think you have done.

 

[TimT]

Spiesy - this technology lark. Well I just remembered a story about that: I have one pair of scales in this house, not electric, one of those ones with a needle - mostly they work all right, but once when I was cooking something or other (can't remember what), as I loaded an ingredient into the scales I noticed the needle was going *backwards*, putting the weight of the ingredient into the *minus* figures! I just assumed that they were still accurately measuring the weight - albeit backwards - and kept on loading the ingredient on. Can't recall any problems with the final product, anyway, so I guess I was right. The scales have never since tried that trick on me....

 

[TimT]

I agree to an extent GalBrew, I just think overreliance on technology can be misleading.

I think of brewing as an extension of cooking - and while you might take care to accurately measure out some recipes, others you can just take a bung-it-all-in-and-turn-the-stove-on-approach - ie, intuition plays a large part in cooking.

The main difference between my brewing and the rest of my cooking is I use a thermometer consistently.

 

[verysupple]

I agree to an extent GalBrew, I just think overreliance on technology can be misleading.

I think of brewing as an extension of cooking - and while you might take care to accurately measure out some recipes, others you can just take a bung-it-all-in-and-turn-the-stove-on-approach - ie, intuition plays a large part in cooking.

The main difference between my brewing and the rest of my cooking is I use a thermometer consistently.

I agree, technology is great if you understand what it does but can cause broblems if you don't. E.g. you can take a hydrometer reading of your mash liquor and it might show a reading of, say, 1.050. If that was your target gravity going into the kettle it doesn't necessarily mean the mash is done. All this tells you is that the liquid has a density 5 % higher than pure water (at whatever temp the instrument is calibrated at) and that may be due to starches (or anything else) in solution rather than sugars. At this point you could taste the mash to see if it's sweet, which works, but a more reliable method would be to do an iodine test.

I think what I'm trying to say is that a balance of science and experience is probably ideal. My philosophy, which I practice, is visually observe, measure and taste everything.

EDIT: As for the OP question: A sign my brew day is going well is an absence of cursing .

 

[Scooby Tha Newbie]

Lol I always curse at my wort. Makes it work harder. Baking is very much the same. You can take a temp of a dough 28c. That doesn't tell you if it is developed, it doesn't tell you that there is salt in it. And most importantly whether you can make the same bread tomorow. That's the thing it takes years to learn to use your intuition to make bread consistently. Same for beer. For me I don't have years to learn the "how",I'm happy to take years to perfect it tho.



EDIT;
I spell like a Baker as well

 

[Scooby Tha Newbie]

Sorry that sounded a bit negative on read back.Deft not my intention, I think it's great trying "old" ways.I had the same convo with my local Hb owner about yeast farming. I just do it ,not shor how,hard to explain. I don't follow the rules just sanitise and go with it. 20yrs of baking, me and yeast have an understanding.

EDIT ;SpelLing