ITT: post your homemade alcohol. Share recipes, advice, opinions, ect.

Picrel is mead. My recipe is pretty much just 3 pounds of honey for every gallon of water. Honey displaces a lot of volume so a 5 gallon container will hold around 3 gallons of water and ~9 pounds of honey (hence my recipe lol). This will yield around 10% abv mead. More honey equals higher alc.

Put in a carboy and add yeast, and airlock, and wait about a month, until the airlock stops bubbling.

As you can see from my picture, I am incredibly poor and stupid, therefore cannot afford high-end fermentation products such as Amazon tier airlocks. I improvised by drilling a 1/4 hole in a sparking wine cork and stuffing a length of quarter inch airline (stolen from work) into the cork, which is then stuffed into the mouth of the water jug, creating an air tight seal. The end of the line is submerged in water to keep contaminates from infiltrating the warm sugary water. Warm sugary water is a very suitable environment for a wide variety of bacteria, so a moderate amount of care is needed when cleaning the equipment. Once fermentation takes off though, the yeast is usually based and chad enough to overpower any foreign bacteria.

The yeast used is Red Star champagne yeast. The yellow packets. These were purchased from Amazon for around $1 per packet because no local stores stock them.

Now show me what you're up to

>>21427438 (OP)
Goddamn sideways picture pisses me off reeeeeeee

>>21427438 (OP)
I do the same ratio but never thought of honey displacement. I always do gallon jugs so its never been a problem but my next batch is gonna be 5 gallons.
You let it sit after brewing? Picrel is a batch from January that mellowed out a lot sitting in swing top bottles. I thought they would clear up more sitting for 6 months but you can see it's still pretty cloudy. This was with pectinase too.

>>21427800
I'm kind of an alcoholic so it usually doesn't last long, but I did let some sit for 6 months or so and it cleared up very nicely. It was a very faint yellow/green, almost clear. Very good drinking. I wish I had taken pics, but I assumed 4chan was going to be ruined forever because of the horrible captchas

>>21427864
I would make another batch to compare fresh vs aged but I think the summer heat would affect the flavor.
I tried flavoring a couple with strawberries but it just ended up being chunky and not a whole lot of strawberry flavor. I think I have to add it during the primary fermentation and not let it sit in bottles as secondary.
You ever try making sparkling mead? If you're drinking it immediately bottle a little early and you'll get natural carbonation. I made a 6% hydromel and put it over ice for a less syrupy white claw and it was great. It has more honey flavor since the yeast hasn't eaten all the sugars yet too.

>>21427438 (OP)
That’s some fine lookin mead

>>21427966
Fruit quality is very important for strawberries. Most grocery store strawberries are not flavorful enough for strawberry wine / melomel. Also, like many fruit flavors, it is better preserved through fermentation if the temperature of the ferment is on the cool side.

Also, strawberry seeds* will slowly leach a weird, unpleasant plastic-like flavor into the wine. Therefore, it's important not to leave the berries in too long — 1 week max.

*technically "achenes"

It would be nice if we could keep a thread on this topic alive regularly. All the places to discuss beer / mead / wine / cider / hooch suck ass. One problem is what to call it. Mead isn't really brewed, so "homebrew" isn't that accurate. Maybe it should just be a "fermentation" thread? That would include culinary ferments like kraut or miso, but maybe those posts would help keep the thread alive?

I do 1 gallon test batches and then scale them up to 5 gallons. Right now I have a raspberry mead going...3.5 gallons of local honey, 1.5 lb of raspberries in primary. I racked off into secondary, used EC-1118 yeast.

>>21428719
How cheap do you think you could make a gallon a of beer for or some other alcohol of choice? Do you think you could match the ~£0.25 per gallons the Victorians supposedly had?

>>21427438 (OP)
What temp you keep it anon? Where you based? I have to keep mine warm or it dies

>>21428758
Yeast does its thing at like 70 degrees and higher. My carboy is on my uninsulated front porch, so it always gets hot out there in the summer. The temp is around 80 to 85 most days, and probably around 75 at night

>>21427966
>sparkling mead
I corked some in 1.5L wine bottles but didn't know it wasn't done fermenting. Figured it out when one of them exploded in my cabinet

>>21428949
It depends on the yeast, and what you want that yeast to do. Fermenting too high can throw off some some crazy flavors. This is great in a Saison, not so great in a Pale Ale. I do my primary fermention in meads around 70...but I like to drop the temps in secondary down near 60 for the long haul.

Can I use sourdough starter to make booze?

>>21429866
It will ferment, but it won't taste good.

I like to make basic sugar rush with tomato paste, it tastes kinda like sugary pomelo juice

1/5th sugar in the base and its very high in alcohol, i just use supermarket yeast

>>21428590
I didn't even think of fruit quality. It was shitty clearance strawberries from a discount grocery store. Would frozen berries be better? I heard frozen berries are riper than fresh when picked.
>>21428953
My first batch had one bottle so pressurized it sprayed shit all over my kitchen including the ceiling. Luckily no broken glass. Now I burp bottles every few days until they stop pressurizing.
For sparkling I would drink it within a week. Actually I wonder if you could do a secondary fermentation on year old mead to get it sparkling. Like ginger mother and some cane sugar just for bubbles.

>>21428734
>How cheap do you think you could make a gallon a of beer for or some other alcohol
You can make a gallon of alcohol for the price of 4 cups of sugar and a little yeast.
So probably about $1 per gallon.
14% alcohol. Same as red wine.
This is a basic sugar wash which gets further distilled into vodka or whatever.
Or you can just drink it. It tastes like alcohol mixed with water. Maybe add a little Sprite or Coke for flavor.

>>21429866
Sourdough starter contains lactobacilli. That's what makes it "sour." If you use it, the ferment will develop a pellicle (a layer of alien-looking slime on top) and taste like a sour beer. You have to ferment it warm or it will develop a vomit flavor unless you're lucky.

Commercial yeast really isn't expensive given that you don't need a lot of it for a batch. I recommend wine yeast.

If you don't have access, add 1 tablespoon of honey and 6 ounces of water to a jar with a small amount of hops (extract, tea, pellets — exact quantity and form doesn't matter). Make a few small holes in the lid of the jar with a nail or awl. Put the lidded jar in a pot, fill with water until the level is 3/4 up the side of the jar and let it come to a boil for about 5 minutes.

Next, in the afternoon, take a new plastic baggie out where some non-poisonous flowers are being visited by bees and wasps. Snip a few into the baggie your carrying, bring them home, and add to the jar. Rubber band a paper towel over the jar lid to keep out fruit flies.

If the honey must in the jar is fermenting visibly, if there's no mold, and if it doesn't smell bad, you successfully captured yeast. Pitch about half the liquid from the jar to start your fermentation.

If it's winter, you can use pine needles instead of flowers as a source of yeast, but it's less reliable.

>>21430144
In theory frozen fruit should be riper at harvest. I haven't found it to be true for strawberries (or a few other fruits such as mangoes). Sources for good strawberries include bougie grocery stores, farmers markets, u-pick farms, the wild, or growing your own. The average grocery store strawberry is practically flavorless compared to a good one. You just have to taste them. It's clear as day what is a good strawberry and what isn't. The good ones taste like strawberry candy. Candy flavors are idealized, simplified versions of the real thing. People who say candy flavors don't resemble the corresponding fruit have no idea what they are talking about and have never tasted good fruit in their lives.

>>21430262
>It tastes like alcohol mixed with water.
That is an extremely charitable description. Sugar wash tastes awful. If you make a sugar syrup and boil it with some acid (e.g. lemon juice) to invert the sugar, that will make it taste much more neutral. Still not great, but much better.

>>21430579
It's hit and miss. The sugar-only wash stresses the yeast and they produce skunky flavours. I just wanted to point out how cheap it can be.
I usually add some form of yeast nutrient, some citric acid or lemon juice. Even just a few dried raisins can help a lot.
Many homebrewers swear by the birdwatchers recipe which uses tomato paste.
https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5018

>>21430602
Home distillers swear by TPW. I don't think any homebrewers are praising it.

If you're just making a point about price, fine. However I wouldn't encourage anybody to drink that shit. Are turbo-cider and Welch's wine not cheap enough?

>>21430606
>Are turbo-cider and Welch's wine not cheap enough
I don't live in North America.
Here the cheapest alcohol is Toddy wine, which is coconut flower sap. You tap the coconut palm flower, and the juice naturally ferments to around 8% alcohol in less than a day.
That's the cheapest (free).
The second cheapest is sugar washes and sugar wines.

>>21430262
You need some micronutrients for the yeast to eat or they'll get stressed out and make sulfur farts.

My recipe for a 5gal batch is:
>3 3qt bottles of Great Value apple juice (9qt)
>2 gallons spring water
>10lb white sugar
>1 packet champagne yeast

Then I make a yeast nutrient blend that I add twice. Once in the beginning after aeration, and again 3 days later.
Boil together:
>1/2 cup grape nuts
>Juice of 2 lemons
>2 liptons tea bags
>1/2 of a vit B complex pill
>1 packet active dry baking yeast
>2 cups water

This mixture ferments vigorously if well aerated and at the right temperature (not above 75°F), finishes ferment in 8-10 days at 16% ABV, clears up after racking into gallon bottles and sitting overnight in the fridge. Tastes like white wine with added vodka, no farty smells or anything. The whole batch costs about $20 and gets you the equivalent of 25 750ml bottles of wine, less than a dollar each.

I have 2 gallons going now.

1 is a maple blueberry wine. 2 lbs of maplesyrup. 1lb blueberries. Cinnamon, clove, ginger. It's about to get racked to secondary, and im going back sweeten to 2% for a semi sweet finish.


The second is a simple mead.2 lbs meadow foam honey. It's super tasty and marshmallowy in honey form, so i have high hopes. I've only added some tea leaves for tanin to this one.

>>21431135
What's the point of only making a gallon at a time? Unless it's an experimental batch, that'll only give you like 5 bottles

>>21431135
I doubt that you'll get much flavor out of 1 pound per gallon of blueberries.

>>21431866
I, for one, am a hobbyist, not an alcoholic looking to get drunk with maximum efficiency. Making a 5 gallon batch is no more fun than making 1 gallon — in fact it is more tedious to have to wash and then fill all of those bottles. It's much more entertaining to make 5 different things for the cost of 1 and see how they all turn out. If I made a 5 gallon batch for every promising recipe idea or procedural variation that comes to mind, I'd turn fermentation from a fairly cheap hobby to a fairly expensive one and I'd have nothing to do with all that hooch. I have a big wall of it as is.

Homebrewer turned pro here, keep it up anons!

>>21432205
I thought about getting into brewing to become skillful at it
How would you recommend someone who doesn't drink much to get as good as possible?

>>21432235
Keep making it and giving it to your family and friends. Get to know people at your local craft breweries and homebrew supply shops and find out who is willing to give you feedback.

>>21432205
Glad if it's working out for you. I briefly considered but decided against trying to go pro, because all the trends in the industry are bad.

If I move to New Hampshire, something I've been considering, I may reevaluate, since it's the best state in the country for starting a brewery (low alcohol and business taxes, few regulations and getting fewer — new law just this year allowing public drinking in social districts).

Currently making a 1 gal. low ABV metheglin with lemon verbena, lemon thyme and black locust honey. I'll let it ferment dry then blend it with some sweet mead I made previously for a semi-sweet finish and force carbonate. Yeast = Lalvin K1V-1116

>>21428695
I assume you mean 3.5 lbs of honey instead of gallons. I think 1.5 lbs of raspberries is probably not enough. Then again, you seem like you have some experience, so maybe you only want it lightly fruited?

I've never made raspberry, but I've had good luck with boysenberry which is from the same genus.

>>21427438 (OP)
You should add backflow prevention anon

>>21432183
You were right. The blue berries are very subtlety in there. It's kind of unlucky, but next time, it will be better. And I'll probably put them in secondary.

>>21431866
Space and money are the big reasons. It's unfortunate, but at the rate i drink, my 3 carboys in rotation keep me satisfied

Why do some types of alcohol ferment faster than others? Mead takes a month, beer and moonshine mash take like a week.

>>21433336
>'ll probably put them in secondary
That's not necessary. R*ddit tells everyone to put everything in secondary, but it will make your mead taste like sangria: refreshing and enjoyable, perhaps, but unsophisticated like making a wine that tastes of grape juice. Honey is the most expensive source of fermentable sugar next to maple syrup, so it should taste sophisticated. Don't use expensive ingredients to make something pedestrian.

If you just use more berries it will be good (probably).

>>21433362
Mead doesn't always take a month. Beer and corn mash have a lot of accessible organic nutrients and high turbidity also makes it go faster.

Op here. Decided to make Bochet (botch-ette). Basically burnt mead.

I'm boiling 9 pounds of honey. You boil it until it turns black. It starts to boil around 230 degrees american.

>>21434285
It overboils af, so make sure you've pot enough to accommodate the honeyfoam.

>>21434292
Really hot, be careful

>>21434298
Boil until it's almost black, then add the water. I don't know how much water I added. I only know the top set of rivets on this pot is about 5 gallons

I've got like 10 liters of bochet fermenting now, will probably be ready soon!

>>21434303
Well at least it doesn't look burned so you didn't get blistered for nothing
I've wanted to try bochet but I'm too scared about not under/over boiling

>>21434587
Get a wee plate and dip some honey every 15 minutes of boiling to see the colour change

>>21434586
I haven't made a bochet yet, but everything I've read indicates they take a while to age. I'll oak mine when I get around to trying it.

>>21434970
That's my plan, after it's dry I'll stabilise and backsweeten and age on oak, maybe split the batch, infuse vanilla in one and cinnamon in the other perhaps

>>21435061
That sounds like a plan. One caveat: anything you chemically stabilize with metabisulfite and sorbate will develop an unpleasant celery-like taste over time. This takes about a year to become faintly detectable and more to develop into a noticeable fault. If you want to keep any longer than a year you should change your plan. One option is to hold off on backsweetening until it has bulk aged for a while. Another option good for bochet is to pasteurize it. You could also ferment until you reach the yeast's tolerance, then you don't need to add sorbate. It's good to add metabisulfite soon after fermentation ends as an oxygen scavenger. It's sorbate that's a problem. It slowly breaks down and ruins the flavor.

>>21435155
Thanks for that, I think pasteurising sounds like my best option, I imagine I won't lose much flavour in the heat process.
Cheers again!

>>21434303
Here's what it looks like in the carboy compared to my regular batch of mead

>>21435544
Love the colour, I desperately need to get some big glass carboys, I have a cheap plastic one but I'd rather not age anything in plastic for too long.

>>21435716
Mine were given to me by someone who has one of those water coolers. I'd imagine you can buy just the glass jugs with water in them but I have no idea where

Is brew in a bag worth it?
Doing it the kit way just seems like cheating

>>21436703
I think brew-in-a-bag is a good option. Gear-heads shilling all-in-one brewing systems and making loads of expensive and space-consuming shit seem necessary for brewing has largely killed the hobby.

I remember reading some forum post where a bunch of homebrewers reminisced about home brewing when they were kids and how their dads just expected their homebrew to taste like shit and yet they kept on doing it
I thought that was funny
I'm more interested in learning the entire process and getting a product that is as good as possible

>>21436846
If this was directed at me, process knowledge ≠ expensive gear. You can't taste expensive gear. I can guarantee that (all grain) brew-in-a-bag in a big kettle on a propane burner can produce beers just as good as an automated, all electric, app-enabled IoT monstrosity.

>>21427438 (OP)
twu

Picrel is my "wine" made of dried dates and sugar. 3kg dried dates / 5kg sugar so far (added 2kg at the start and been adding 1kg each week, I plan to add just one kg more next week) for 25l liquid.
The basic plan is to distill this once into some sort of brandy that will hopefully taste decently neutral.
So far, it tastes like alcohol.

>>21438442
What did you do to the 6 and 153/250 pounds of dates to prepare them for fermentation? Just crush them?

>>21438779
I used a hand blender to blend them after boiling and soaking for a bit. It wasn't exactly a paste but it was fine enough

>>21439502
Seems like a lot of work for something you want to taste neutral in the end. Did you get the dates for free?

I made a dried fruit wine with figs, dates and zante currants without adding extra sugar. It came out excellent, but it was a hell of a mess and the yield suffered. Still, I will probably make it again.

>>21439520
I plan to make a date port style wine, make 10 gallons of date wine at about 10% half dates and half tempranillo grapes and distill half of it to fortify the wine to 20% then sweeten with a little date syrup, might even oak age it a little

>>21439520
The dates cost me roughly 5€ (1.7€ per kg) so basically free.
The work will pay off because with my setup distilling even twice would take a lot more time than making a better quality mash in the first place. There's a ton of work involved with distilling at least twice and filtering a sugar wash that I pretty much won't have to do at all.

>>21439968
I feel you'd be better off with just a simple sugar wash -> spirit -> infuse with the dates, but that's just my little opinion

>>21439977
Sugar washes are garbage, you need to filter them and distill to get rid of fussel oils and all other garbage. Wine fermentation doesn't require all this filtering, so I'm using the dates explicitly to make a wine without much flavor at all.

>>21427438 (OP)
Haven’t brewed anything in years, had several great batches of mead but couldn’t keep any of my wine attempts from going sour
I’ll have to give it another go one of these days

>>21440044
but you've basically made a sugar wash with a hint of date?

>>21440044
I recently got a myvodkamaker and i can run an unfiltered uncleared sw once through it on vodka mode and I'm getting 96% with no off flavours

>>21440121
I've been looking into getting one of those for vodka, might wait until they have the mini version again as I don't care much for brandy/whisky/rum

how is it?

>>21434285
>>21434303
Does it matter what kind of honey you use if you’re going to cook the hell out of it like this?

>>21440327
imo no, but you probably don't want the ultra cheap stuff that is mostly chinese sugar

whats up ck this is my werthers original and apple mead
not gonna lie this is pretty good!!

>>21440448
Sounds class, I've put werthers in whisky before, I'll have to give this a go

>>21440119
The difference is that I'm using wine yeast not typical sugar wash spirit yeast
Wine yeast cannot survive in pure sugar washes because it requires nutrients from the fruits, so I put a minimal amount of fruit for it to feed on
No kind of wine yeast can survive in a sugar wash, you have to get a shitty turbo yeast or equivalent that will give you a ferment that smells like piss beforehand and smells like extra old piss after distilling.
>>21440121
I'm too poor for a reflux still. I use a doohickey pressure cooker for a pot still that will probably explode one day

I'm thinking about getting into beer brewing
Going to get an extract for my first brew but my end game will be 20L brew in a bag
Is it worth getting a glass carboy/vessel for beer? I read that glass is needed when aging mead but is it just a meme?
What bottling type do you guys recommend? Swing tops seem too good to be true

Is it possible to make professional tasting sake at home?

>>21440707
Plastic is fine for fermentation vessels, but it is slightly oxygen-permeable. This is actually a worse problem for beer than for mead, assuming you don't bottle straight out of primary fermentation. I'd say the best arrangement for beer is to transfer directly into a keg for conditioning and carbonation, but if you're not getting the gear for force-carbonation then you need glass for conditioning and clearing.

Swing-tops work (at least, if they're the kind that can hold pressure). They're more expensive than ordinary crown-cap bottles. The seals are untrustworthy after one use, so you'll need replacement seals.

>>21440718
It's very difficult to procure sake rice in most places. Both the available cultivars of rice and the extent of polishing are inadequate for premium sake.

Another difficulty is that good sake is fermented quite cool, so you would probably need temperature control.

You can still make something that tastes good. It's an interesting process.

>>21441559
Ok that's disappointing because I thought swing tops were good for a dozen bottlings before the seals needed to be replaced
My uncle owns a bar, should I ask him for used bottles?
How would you do heavy duty cleaning?

>>21441681
Well, to be fair my "single use" criterion might be an exaggeration, but "good for a dozen bottlings" is an exaggeration the other way. It probably depends on how long it stays bottled before re-use.

A cleaning agent called "PBW" is often recommended for these purposes. I've never used it, but I only reuse my own bottles by filling them with warm water and dish soap not too long after I've drunk them (i.e. prior to any residue becoming dried-on and hard to remove). I think unscented oxyclean also works.

>>21441793
I mostly just use plastic bottles these days. They sell packs of bottles at the home brew stores but I just use any random bottle, the beer doesn't last too long once it's drinkable. They go straight in the fridge and I start a new batch.
For sanitation I just use regular household bleach diluted heavily in water. Never had a problem. I think our local water has chlorine also, I could probably just clean with tap water alone and it would be fine. Bleach is cheap though

>>21441808
He asked about "heavy duty cleaning" not sanitation. Bleach is an inconvenient sanitizer because you have to rinse it. Star-san, iodophor or metabisulfite is better.

Currently got a Bitter in a secondary
5 imp gallons
>4.5lbs Golden promise
>3.5lbs maris otter
>2 oz black malt (added to the boil for colour as i haven't got any brewers caramel atm)
100 minute boil with 3 hop additions
>@ 100 minutes 20g Bramling Cross
>@ 50 minutes 15g each of BX and EK Goldings
>@ 25 minutes 10g EK Goldings
OG reading about 1042-43, IBUs around 38. finished primary a bit lower than I was originally planning at 1008, Should be about 4.5%.

Seemed to be one of those brew-days where everything seems to go wrong.

If any anons want to try homebrewing, one of the easiest homebrewed alcohols is Tecate. It's a pineapple beer from Mexico.
You only need three ingredients: a pineapple, sugar, and water.
You get a gallon of warm water and add two cups of sugar and stir.
Then you cut up a pineapple and add the pineapple skins to the sugar water.
(Eat the rest of the pineapple)
The natural yeast on the pineapple skin starts to ferment the sugar water very quickly.
Within 24 hours you have an alcoholic drink.
After 2-3 days it will ferment all the sugar and you will have a gallon of delicious strong pineapple beer, around 5% to 7% ABV.

up to nothing now because I am on a diet and all my bottles are full so I only want to make more once I've cleared some space
but I've been brewing beer and it's been a banger - reward is commensurate with effort, taking the time to malt instead of buying premade wort improves the product quality tenfold.

>>21441912
Latest hop addition at 25 minutes? I wonder how much aroma you're getting out of those EKGs.

Sounds good though, I do like a good bitter.

>>21441947
>Latest hop addition at 25 minutes? I wonder how much aroma you're getting out of those EKGs.
Well usually you do add hops in the last half hour of a boil if they are for aromatic purposes. If you add all your hops for most of the boil then it just boils off the aroma and gives you just the bitterness.

Usually I do my late hop addition at 30 minutes but I did that at 25 just to keep the times of additions nicely symmetrical

>>21441979
I was implying that 25 minutes sounds too early to me for an aroma addition. I'm American and brew mostly American and Belgian styles, but I'd put my latest aroma hop addition at 15 minutes max.

>>21441986
>>21441979
I'd agree that typically 15-0 is normal for late additions but in my experience anywhere in the last 20/30 minutes is good for a bitter, depending on what you're after of course

>>21440124
not that anon but i have the plus and it's brilliant!
I was going to do a few test runs for vodka after cleaning/sac runs but I was too excited to get a rum out of it, I did have a problem with some pins not being plugged in (only noticed after running for a few hours with no product and everything coming out of the vent) but that was a 2 second fix after opeining the case.

It's so handy to have a relatively hands off still, no need to line up all the glasses in the house and pick the tasty ones, 25 liters of rum wash after 15 hours of running and I have 1.5liters of rum @60% and it smells and tastes fantastic fresh off the still, once I have enough I'll oak it and age for a few months before properly trying it

>>21440696
>I'm too poor for a reflux still
I understand this, I was in a similar spot for brewing beer, I highly recommend saving a little and investing in a myvodkamaker (not an ad i swear) it's a wonder

What is the difference between fermenting to dry (i.e. using up all of your sugar before moving on to secondary fermentation or consumption) vs intentionally wanting to make vinegar? At what point will my ethanol begin turning in to acetic acid? How do I prevent this?
Does air mixing with my solution inhibit the growth of acetobacter? Should I airlock and then leave alone until I think it’s done? How much headspace do I need, is it overkill to fill liquid up to the neck of my carboy?

>>21443304
Fermenting dry has nothing to do with making vinegar. In fact, a brew is more likely to turn to vinegar if it stalls and doesn't go dry, since most acetobacters have an alcohol tolerance < 10%.

>At what point will my ethanol begin turning in to acetic acid?
At the point when an acetobacter colony (i.e. "mother of vinegar") starts growing in it?

>How do I prevent this?
Sanitation and keeping the finished brew away from oxygen, since acetobacter is an aerobic microbe.

>Does air mixing with my solution inhibit the growth of acetobacter?
The total opposite. That is how you make vinegar.

You want as little headspace as possible once it's finished.

To be honest, you're not very likely to make vinegar accidentally. All the obsession about the risk of making vinegar is from people who don't know what dry mead or dry wine tastes like and somehow conclude that their dry beverages with tons of fusel alcohols (because they stressed the yeast) have become vinegar. To me, it's a real headscratcher how this confusion arises. Vinegar has one of the most characteristic, unmistakable odors of anything in existence.

>>21442684
Nah in general anything 30 minutes before the end counts as "late hopping" for aroma, you aren't going to see that much difference between 25 and 15 minutes. But it might also depend on your chill system when you put late hops in.

>>21443807
> you aren't going to see that much difference between 25 and 15 minutes
That is absolutely false.

A 25 minute addition will contribute slightly to aroma, but much less than a 15 minute add. The timing of aroma hop additions matters a lot. What doesn't matter is whether you add bittering hops at 90 minutes or 50 minutes.

Any hop addition at more than 40 minutes might as well go in at the start of the boil.

>>21427438 (OP)
jenkem thread?

>>21443827
>A 25 minute addition will contribute slightly to aroma
This is just nonsense
source: having actually done it
>What doesn't matter is whether you add bittering hops at 90 minutes or 50 minutes.
complete nonsense, go look up something call hop utilisation.

What's the difference between the various types of beer handles/taps? Say, between these big ones set into wood, and the more elevated brass-looking ones.

>>21444255
The single ones are cask hand pumps. They aren't carbed by c02, but by pumping the beer by hand from a cask/keg usually in the basement. It's called Cask Conditioned. The other ones are just regular beer taps, fed by c02.

>>21444255
cask v kegs as the other poster said. Cask beer has to be pulled manually up the lines or served on gravity because it doesn't have added CO2 like keg beer where the artificial carbonation
additionally provides a steeper pressure gradient.

>>21443827
>What doesn't matter is whether you add bittering hops at 90 minutes or 50 minutes.
Completely wrong. At 90 minutes you won't get much flavour, just bitterness, whilst at ~60 minutes you'll get a lot more flavour. This is why three hop additions timings are used: one for bitterness, one for flavour and one for aroma.
>That is absolutely false. A 25 minute addition will contribute slightly to aroma, but much less than a 15 minute add
You'll still get plenty of aroma at 25 minutes. I'd argue anything under 10 minutes is rather pointless and might as well be used as a dry hop.

Anyone remember when hop bursting was the hot new shit?

>>21444306
I would bet $220 to your $10 that you couldn't tell two otherwise identical beers, where 1 had a bittering addition at 90 minutes and the other at 60 minutes, apart in three successive triangle tests.

I would bet even money that I can tell an IPA with the latest hops at 5 minutes apart from a dry-hopped one in a similar test.

You're completely wrong.

>>21444449
I could, 60 min and 90 min Dogfishhead IPA. Now give me my money.

>>21444456
Those are not otherwise identical. They're called 60 minutes and 90 minutes by the total duration of the boil, not the timing of hops additions. As far as I know, they don't even declare their hops schedule.

Until now, the conversation has just been dueling assertions, but you just proved you have no idea what you're talking about.

>>21444464
You are wrong. The 60 min and 90 min do refer to the boil times, but also refer to the hop addition times. Those beers became famous because he was adding hops at 5 min intervals throughout the boil. He even invented some machine that allowed hops in at that time interval. I am not the anon you were responding to, but just an oldfag brewer.

>rack mead into new jar after four weeks of primary fermentation
>decide to cold crash it in fridge after a day of racking it
>secondary fermentation jar starts bubbling again in fridge
>have a pretty large headspace as well to top that off
Uh fellas, I am fucked?

>rack mead into new jar after four weeks of primary fermentation
>decide to cold crash it in fridge after a day of racking it
>secondary fermentation jar starts bubbling again in fridge
>also have a pretty large headspace as well to top that off
Uh fellas, how fucked am I?

>>21444561
Nobody was claiming that a wort boiled for 90 minutes tastes the same as one boiled for 60 minutes. That's obviously not the case.

>>21444593
There's no real way to tell what's going on with your mead without hydrometer readings. It could be continuing to ferment, but it's most likely just degassing.

Do you know the temperature of your fridge? Nothing will ferment if your fridge stays at 38°F, but it may continue to ferment slowly if it's closer to 48°F.

>>21444612
Well, the fridgerator is on the lowest setting, I don't have an exact temperature for it. Hopefully, it's just degassing. I'll have to do a hydrometer reading when I get a chance to do so. Hopefully, the headspacing issue doesn't ruin it.

>>21444636
Don't you have a more appropriately-sized jar? If you take a reading, and it's done, you can just bottle it. Otherwise add some cheap white wine until the jar is full.

>>21444593
It needs longer. I have had mead in secondary for 6 months

>>21440718
Korean sake (mange something or other) is a little more forgiving

So now that my batches are becoming a little more complex & I’m experimenting with new yeasts, do I need to start using a complex online calculator? My abv (based off my hydrometer) for a basic honey-water batch approached 16.2%
High! But i’ve heard beyond ~17% you can’t reliably just multiply your delta by 131.25
What about different fruit pulp additives?
I don’t like the idea of needing to use an always-online calculator. The internet is becoming less reliable

>>21445591
I think the accuracy of the 131.25 approximation only comes into play for people who are claiming "I fermented this to 23%!!" It exaggerates high abv, but it's adequate for all ordinary purposes. I've never bothered with any online calculator. If you're making sack mead, does it matter if it's really 16% or 17.25%? I can think of more consequential things to concern myself with, like flavor.

>>21446362
NTA but It matters insofar as that stuff like ABV is indicative of the quality of your materials and process which in turn affects your product and your repeatability.

>>21428601
Agreed, fermentation general

>>21437679
most definitely

Venusian yeast

>>21430571
Ok, going to break it down about strawberries for those in the US. Strawberries are extremely perishable; being highly sensitive to ripeness at time of harvest, moisture content, surface moisture when packed, and mechanical damage from handling and shipping. The big beautiful flavorless varieties sold in stores are reliably grown in greenhouses year-round in the desert, i.e. Yuma, AZ and Mexico. They survive shipping and distro to get out to the nationally big grocery chains. In US, the 'candy' tasting strawberries mostly come from the Willamette Valley and are extremely fragile so they are not usually found as whole produce. They are specifically grown and sold wholesale to ice cream and confection companies like Ben & Jerrys, Bryers/Dryers, etc. as ingredients to flavor their products.

>>21447648
Yeah but if you’re super derivative you might not mind. I make batches in rough proportions, wild ferments mostly. I start small and once I know my “starter” is active I scale it up and go larger. It’s inconsequential to me if it is 14% or 16% or whatever. I do each batch by taste, no real recipes.
I’m only scientific with commercial yeasts (mostly) for a predictable abv

>>21443719
Microbiology is still witchcraft to a good 75% of people. That doesn't go away just because they're actively putting it to work.

For some reason everyone still thinks rust causes tetanus infections, as if some iron dust can hurt you by magic.

>>21427438 (OP)
Sir that is illegal

Any reading recs for getting into distilling?
was thinking about just distilling cheap wines to get practiced at picking heads, hearts and tails etc. Though gotta be careful with sulfites in those wines.

Also any recs for starter stills? I was literally just going to buy a basic chemistry still set to start off with.

https://youtu.be/yzDSmYnn_fw?si=we6vJwwiDQ0NTHu1

>Wake up still alive
>>21447777

>want to make cider
>apple juice costs too much
>extracts make too much cider
>making it from fresh apples apparently sucks if you don't have the right varieties
Goddamn it

>>21450262
Juice? Give me the drank Babe

>>21450262
Don’t worry too much about the varieties, there are no wrong apples to make cider from, there are “cider apples” but you can make it from cooking and eating apples. Here in England most of the “cider” varieties are from the South-West whilst here in the East traditionally eating apples are used, generally the ciders of Kent and Essex tend to be dryer as opposed to sweet bodied ones from the south west, personally I think most of West Country ciders are too sweet and heavy.

I’m surprised you actually managed to get your hands on enough apples though, in my experience it takes about a gazillion apples to get a pitiful amount of juice and that’s with a proper press.

What apples did you use?

>>21450087
*Should be. As long as it's for "personal consumption," though, the Law doesn't really care. I wonder if they have the same philosophy towards meth labs...

>>21450262
You seem to be suggesting fresh apples are cheaper than juice, so perhaps you have access to trees? Seedling apples are often good for cider. If they're standard eating varieties, you can still make good cider by blending them with crabapples (assuming you have some of those around) or adding tannin from a non-fruit source (less good).

>>21450518
Choke to death on a boot, moralfag.

>>21450591
>Choke to death on a boot
The 21st amendment was a mistake, and no amount of childish name-calling will shake me from that fact.

>>21450593
Wanting the government to be everyone's daddy is childish. The government is currently financing and arming a mass murder campaign, yet you want to give the same rotten people the authority to persecute grannies for making homemade scrumpy. It's hard to overstate how utterly despicable you are and how meretricious the faux-morality you're peddling. Every time I encounter your sort, I get closer to Nietzsche.

>>21450597
>Wanting the government to be everyone's daddy is childish
Indeed, that's why I don't.
>The government is currently financing and arming a mass murder campaign
Is what you call every armed conflict "pie" we have one of out many, many fingers in, because you were first exposed to politics through Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz and American Idiot. My (half-sincere) condolences.
>persecute grannies for making homemade scrumpy
And every brewing conglomerate for mass-producing a waste product and marketing it indirectly (read: with just the thinnest veil of plausible deniability) to teenagers.
>It's hard to overstate [...] how meretricious the faux-morality you're peddling
You want faux-morality? Try a four-year-long experiment on the public where every psychoactive chemical under the sun is de jure "legal," so says one glorified municipal Government that de facto exists in subservience to the Federal Government; or the forty others that declared a Schedule I substance "legal" for medical use within their jurisdiction, because "well, people voted for it and it works, I guess..."

>>21427456
Congratulations. You just destroyed the quality.

>>21450636
Yes, we really need the highest-possible-quality image of his drug production lab to send to the appropriate authorities. If they ever gave a damn...

>>21450591
>moralfag
Believing in morality or not you'll still get arrested if you get caught.

>>21450087
>>21450518
>>21450593
>>21450597
>>21450634
Not everyone lives in yankee-doodle land idiot, some of us live in the free world.

>>21451004
What "free world"? Some unclaimed territory where you've nonetheless managed to maintain a stable lifestyle for yourself, complete with internet? Do you mooch it from the nearest Civilization, or is it that oh-so-wonderful StarLink I keep hearing about?

>>21451004
What are you even talking about retard. Home brewing is completely legal in the US. There is not a single state where it's not.

Tell that to the posters I replied to then

>>21451574
Why? Only one of them seems to indicate anything involving the US, the rest is you assuming for no reason it has to be something involving America.

Or do other countries not have laws?

>>21451574
What does knowing that it is legal to manufacture a socially-acceptable drug for personal abuse change about the fact that its legal protection under the US constitution remains a mistake?

>>21451583
Why is it a mistake?

>>21451585
Simply put, I believe Prohibition to have been a noble cause that did not have the technology in its day to fully enforce.

>>21451608
Oh, you're retarded.

>>21451614
I'm glad that decades of a drug's social normalization, absent any meaningful dissent in the mainstream, has expanded your argumentative palette for when such dissent arises.

>>21451623
Holy shit you are retarded.
>decades
Literally millennia. Intentional large scale alcohol production predates writing by many thousands of years. You think this is something that was normalized in the last few decades? That's absurd. Alcohol production has existed longer than civilization itself.

>>21451581
>for no reason
Fuck off you disingenuous cunt, this idiot is clearly going on about America.
>>21451608
>>21451623
>>>/his/ or >>>/pol/ this is supposed to be /ck/ thread for us anons to discuss our production of alcohol nobody cares about your opinion on whether we should be doing it.

>>21451638
>>decades
Between the ratification of the 21st amendment to today, yes.
>Alcohol production has existed longer than civilization itself
I'll easily buy that yeast has existed for that long, but you'll need some hard evidence that Civilization managed to come about after what would be a significant brain-drain caused by the intentional and intentional abuse of ethanol.
>>21451644
>this is supposed to be /ck/
And ethanol is not a food, nor is any formulation that contains it in significant quantities; just like how cannabis "edibles" made to get you "high" cannot be considered a food, but a drug delivery method.

Bros I can't get drunk any more
Alcohol doesn't affect me
What do

>>21451657
>but you'll need some hard evidence that Civilization managed to come about after what would be a significant brain-drain caused by the intentional and intentional abuse of ethanol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raqefet_Cave
13,000 year old brewery. That's from the paleolithic era. Or, for the slower like you, before civilization. Of course, everyone already knew alcohol was widespread everywhere, that's not up for debate. Beyond beer, it's basically impossible to leave natural fruit alone without turning into alcohol on its own. Go ahead and pick some apples and do nothing, just chuck them in a pot. It will be cider in no time, converted by the yeast that is on the skin. Same goes for honey, mix it with water and leave it alone and you will have mead in no time. Which another pre-civilization society spread across the world, there's a reason the word for honey in Irish Gaelic is related to the Japanese word for honey, and that's the Indo-Europeans who spread mead to the corners of the earth, literally straight from the Pacific to the Atlantic and everywhere inbetween.
>And ethanol is not a food,
That's the most retarded and wrong thing you've said so far. And you've already been extremely retarded and wrong, so that's impressive. Not only was it historically an essential part of a normal person's diet, it is indisputably a food. Ethanol is nearly as energy dense as eating straight fat. What even is food, if not something your body converts into energy? You have some other definition?

Recap:
>People have been intentionally producing alcohol at scale for a minimum 13,000 years, likely longer as fruit alcohol production requires no infrastructure and leaves little to no evidence
>Alcohol was so important it was one of the most universal cultural exports of the Indo-Europeans, spreading faster than the fucking wheel and horse
>Alcohol is food and always has been, it is the most reliable and safe way to preserve food naturally

>>21451657
>I'll easily buy that yeast has existed for that long,
What's the alternative, exactly? It was willed into existence by 18th amendment-breaking Egyptian wizards?

>>21451709
He doesn't know that ethanol is food, so I'm guessing reality isn't the strong suit here.

>>21451685
what’s your limit? Are ya drinkin beer, wine, or are we talking distilled spririts

>>21451697
>converted by the yeast that is on the skin
I'd call that a sign of rot.
>there's a reason the word for honey in Irish Gaelic is related to the Japanese word for honey
I personally find it more likely that they kept bees because honey is sweet, and the fermented potion that caused madness and sickness (in that order) came later.
>honey or mead
Oh, yes, entirely interchangeable concepts: sweet nectar and a poison derived from it. Clearly...
>Ethanol is nearly as energy dense as eating straight fat
So your body mistakes a disinfectant for a source of energy. Small wonder you wake up the next morning emptying yourself from both ends of the digestive system...
>spreading faster than the fucking wheel and horse
You don't read something like that and wonder how it's even possible? You're this close to parroting Stoned Ape "Theory" and saying Jesus was a mushroom...
>>21451709
>What's the alternative, exactly?
That you don't know what an "understatement" is.
>>21451724
>ethanol is food
A damn shitty one, given its numerous recorded health effects...

>>21451729
Not sure about my limit, but I was drinking this lemon and vodka mix thing, supposed to be 6% per can and I have 5 in an hour, felt nothing

>>21451734
>Oh, yes, entirely interchangeable concepts: sweet nectar and a poison derived from it.
Yes, that is entirely correct: In most languages, there is not a distinction. That is also etymological evidence of the importance of mead production, and the universality of it from honey. Honey and the fermented beverage made from it are the same word. Contrast that with other alcoholic beverages, grain is not the same as beer, because many other things are made from it.

English (and other Germanic languages) is only slightly different; mead the beverage was so much more relevant the word came to refer only to it, and we began to use honey (meaning amber) to refer to honey.

>I personally find it more likely that they kept bees because honey is sweet, and the fermented potion that caused madness and sickness (in that order) came later.
Mead production is older than beekeeping. Again, there's that whole "It's literally older than civilization" thing.
>Small wonder you wake up the next morning emptying yourself from both ends of the digestive system
I have literally never vomited after consuming alcohol.
>You don't read something like that and wonder how it's even possible?
No, it's quite obvious. Wheels, chariots, horses, those take knowledge to make and are not things the Indo-Europeans would spread willingly, but were instead copied from observation. Mead on the other hand is quite easy to make, again, honey, water, time, that's it.

Even if you have wild horses, you cannot simply capture them and make them pull carts or accept riders, it will not work.
>inb4 but there are wild American horses and people did that
Literally all American horses are descended from domesticated horses, they may be feral but are not truly wild. This is true of essentially all modern horse populations, an actual wild horse is more akin to a zebra.

>>21451734
>stoned ape theory
Somewhat relevant, because alcohol is the truth of it. Alcohol was deeply important in literally all Old World societies. It is an incredible means of food preservation. It is what made early civilizations possible, both in terms of water sanitation and food preservation, but had many other valuable aspects.

Even something as simple as baking bread, where do you get yeast before industrially produced dry yeast? You can wait for natural yeast to propagate on your dough, or you may instead get mold or bacteria. Not the best prospect. If you're lucky you get sourdough, if not you die.

Or you can use barm from fermenting alcohol, and most certainly get yeast. Which is what was done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC5TkoZu1qs
I think 1 gallon will be my first brew
I love it how he just puts the pot in the sink full of ice lmao, I thought you needed to buy a wort chiller
Only problem is buying a small amount of malted grains

Just ignore the muzzie trying to shit up this thread

Do we like raisin wine in this house?

>>21451804
>>21451821
Okay... let's take everything you said as entirely true. We have clearly progressed to a point where these vices are no longer necessary, and are more bane than boon.
>>21452309
>muzzie
That's funny; according to you people, I'm also the world's least friendly Mormon...

Tf is this melty about

>>21428601
keep a thread but don't make a general, generals are cancer

>>21452530
Addicts being unable to recognize how the normalization of their vice does more harm for the world than good.

Making strawberry nalewka
I'm also making apple juice wine but its in my cellar and i really do not want to go there

>>21452530
it's been doing this for YEARS now. it doesn't shit up every alcohol thread on /ck/ but when it does, it will camp there for hours hoovering up (You)s from people about how alcohol is LE BAD

>>21452655
>it
What is this, now?

>>21451890
If its your first brew, you might want to start with spray dried malt extract before moving onto grain.

>>21441923
Tecate is shitty beer anon. You're thinking Tepache.

>>21452527
Wrong. There is a clear point in history we can draw where everything went downhill, and that is the feminist movement and the temperance movement, both were of course the same thing joined at the hip. If men doubled down, drank more, and beat their wives properly, the modern world would have half the problems it does now.

>>21452948
>
>the feminist movement and the temperance movement, both were of course the same thing joined at the hip
Now I'm starting to wonder how a "Feminists were right about alcohol" campaign would play out, partly because I know modern "progressives" always want to be on the "right side of history," but partly because I think that's genuinely correct. Congratulations, that is the most profound thought you've given me in this exchange.

>>21452948
>the feminist movement and the temperance movement, both were of course the same thing joined at the hip
Now I'm starting to wonder how a "Feminists were right about alcohol" campaign would play out, partly because I know modern "progressives" always want to be on the "right side of history," but partly because I think that's genuinely correct. Congratulations, that is the most profound thought you've given me in this exchange.

>>21452948
The world would have been better had Eve not broken the rules and eaten the forbidden fruit.
Still, the world could be better now if men and women focused their life on christ, had 40 acres of semi-self-sustainability, and fermented all their food into sugary, acidic, alcoholic, briney goodness

>>21427438 (OP)
I think I messed up adding cinnamon powder to my apple cider brew. It smells more vinegar like vs alcoholic...I was going for a apple pie route.

>>21453281
From my experience the cinnamon probably isn’t your problem here.
You probably didn’t decontaminate something enough, or you simply allowed too much oxygen to fraternize with your top layer. Any vinegary-smell is a sign of acetobacter using oxygen and your alcohol to make acetic acid (aka vinegar).
Could be you’re just smelling the initial rot? Is it for sure vinegar? Or is it sulfury? If the smell has persisted for more than a few days I would add a few inches of copper wire (clean it first) and just plop it on in there. It should react with any gross sulfur and form copper sulfide that will safely precipitate out of solution and fall to the bottom of your vessel

>>21453281
>>21453733
The cinnamon is actually antifungal, it will kill yeast. (Cinnamaldehyde)

I've got a big pear tree in the yard. Anyone have experience making Jerry?

>>21453759
It's an exaggeration to say it will kill the yeast, but it causes yeast stress and thus off-flavors. There's a short list of spices that ought to be added after fermentation has completed: cinnamon, clove and vanilla. Some say add all spices after fermentation, but that advice stems from the spices that are not good pre-fermentation being among the most common.

>>21453854
You mean perry? I don't, but if I had a pear tree I would definitely try it. As with apples, eating varieties are not ideal for beverages.

Fun fact: perry, even fermented dry, has a bit of sweetness due to naturally-occurring sorbitol.

>>21452476
In >>21439520 I mentioned a successful wine I made with a mix of dried fruit including raisins. Dried fruit absorbs a lot of liquid and expands greatly, so it's messy. That's not to say it can't be good.

>>21452654
Looking good!

For any other Brits on here, what's your go to crystal malt?

Anyone have experience adding tea to their mead? I had a jasmine green tea mead the other day at a brewery that was excellent
Would you add brewed tea or tea bags, and during primary or after?

>>21453733
Doesn't smell like sulfur, more 60% vinegar smell vs 40% alcohol fermentation, it definitely is bubbling the yeast doesn't seem to be affected but if what you say is true I likely opened the airlock to add more sugar a bit too much. But thank you anon, I will try the copper out if it does turn out sulfury.

>>21456844
The most typical case of adding tea to mead is adding ordinary black tea for the tannin. You only need a cup or two when making the must for that situation. For imparting flavor you need a lot more. I typically favor putting everything in primary, but there's an argument that a delicate floral scent like jasmine might get blown away through the airlock.

I made rhodomel by steeping petals in a half-gallon of hot water, effectively making a rose tea for primary. Based on that experience, I'd try a strong tea in primary with the option of adding more in conditioning if it turns out not to be adequate.

>>21456876
Smell vinegar and then smell your cider. It still totally confuses me how anyone could mistake the smell of vinegar. If it is still fermenting, the chance that it it is already turning to vinegar is tiny.

For reference, I've done troubleshooting on newbie brews. I've seen brews go sideways dozens of times. I have never once encountered an acetobacter infection in any ferment that used commercial yeast, even from a newbie. If you judged by online prattle, you'd think it happens all the time. I suspect there's a greater than 50% probability that a rank online novice will claim to have made vinegar. I have *never* seen it in real life.

Acetobacter infection happens when:
- You're attempting a wild ferment (still not common)
- You're using advanced/commercial equipment like transfer pumps and it's growing in the hard-to-clean recesses of your machinery
- You've improperly stored a finished brew, leaving it exposed to ample oxygen for at minimum 3 weeks.

One way of knowing that all the people claiming acetobacter infection online are wrong is that pediococcus infection is more than twice as common, yet there are 100 people claiming acetobacter for every one who claims a ferment has gone ropey.

I suspect that some of it might be people getting strong acetaldehyde off-flavours as well.

>>21458767
Yes, it could be acetaldehyde (although that's still hard to mistake for acetic acid IMO).

I suspect that some of these cases of failed newbie brews are in fact due to microbial spoilage, but the culprit is spoilage yeast, not acetobacter. Zygosaccharomyces bailii is perhaps the most notorious spoilage yeast, and it produces acetic acid, acetaldehyde and ethyl acetate. Ferments spoiled by Z. bailii or similar spoilage yeasts do not smell like vinegar, however. They smell overpoweringly of nail-polish remover, a.k.a. ethyl acetate or "volatile acidity."