Everyone has a bad batch or two a year, that is just the way of things. Do not fret though, for there is something you can do with it - turn it in to vinegar! I love fish and chips but it is an empty meal without the right vinegar to compliment it. Learn how to use your sour beer to make enough malt vinegar to last you a lifetime after the jump.
The process is simple; find some alcoholic beverage that you will not drink and let time and oxygen take its course. Better yet, you can help it along the way with a mother or some unfiltered vinegar, giving the beasties a head start in the right direction. For this batch we will be using Bragg's Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar to inoculate the beer. I strapped some cheesecloth over the jug to keep out bugs but allow oxygen in. Make sure to keep this bugger at room temperature and in the dark.
This one gallon batch came about after I used a questionable batch of yeast to brew a "darktoberfest' beer. The result was something that was too sour to drink and too reminiscent of straight molasses. Which, to those unfamiliar, is gross - it is only good when cooked into things. Anyway, I will update this post in a few months with the results of this vinegar experiment.
Please feel free to leave a comment if you have ever tried to make your own malt vinegar.
Are your relatives no fun, aggressively religious or just plain boring? Or do you have an awesome family to party it up with on this our most gluttonous of American holidays? Regardless of your holiday company, if you follow the advice after the jump, you should be able to optimize both your food and alcohol consumption and ensure you will end the night full, buzzed and completely satisfied.
Start Off Light! Do not fill yourself up with rich things before you even get the party started. Steer clear from (too much) cream cheese dips, sweets & pastries, bread, high alcohol beers and wine. Yes it is fine to have a taste but make sure to limit the intake of these rich foods or you will crash and burn way before you even get going. Stick with the salsas, fruit and cheeses and make sure to drink a lighter beer; a brown or a pale ale is always a good choice. If you must drink wine, stick with white or you will get sleepy real fast. Do not waste your time on eggnog, that stuff is like liquid lead!
Pace Yourself! You are an adult, you should be able to do this. Whether it be with the food or the beer, do not over do it - your job is to consume, if you vacuum everything up on full power, you will have no chance of filling your whole bag before it bursts. As the old saying goes; this is a marathon not a sprint! Knowing your body's proper 'happy' ratio of beer to food is key before attempting such a schedule of consumption.
Dinner is the half way mark, now is your time to shine! Make sure you try everything but do not take too much all at once; you can always have seconds! As for drink, now is the time to start compensating for all that food in your belly by drinking stronger stuff. I like to switch to red wine at this point or the dark and heavy beers; porters, stouts or even IPAs.
Tryptophan is a Joke! Do not let the placebo effect or your "intelligent" uncle tell you otherwise, you are not extra sleepy, you are regular sleepy and you are just getting full. Getting is the key word, you are not done yet so do not take to the couch like the other fat slobs, stick it out, have something salty or caffeinated and get ready for more!
Kick it Up a Notch in the booze department. You will not be awake for too much longer so it is time to really get that buzz going. Try a whiskey or a bourbon to help make you feel less full and more happy. If you are not into that, a dry dessert wine or a nice Belgian beer will really set you straight. Just beware of the dessert drink's sugar content, you may lose steam if you throw back one of those calorie cocktails.
Dessert is for People Who Have Not Drank Enough Beer Yet! OK, so dessert is going to happen and you are not going to miss out on it but do make sure that it is at least soaked in rum or is followed with a nice sweet beer you can finally take with you to the couch in victory.
If you follow these guidelines, understand and listen to your body and have nowhere to drive to till the next morning, I think you will thank me in the comments.
Hard to beat and easy to make; beer cheese soup is a big hit around here once the mercury drops. Checkout this awesome recipe for beer cheese soup that was submitted by one of our friends!
Ingredients
4 tbsp. butter
1 yellow onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, diced
1/3 cup flour
12 oz milk
16 oz chicken stock
12 oz dark beer (used Brown Ale)
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry mustard & smoked paprika (no recipe is complete without it!)
1 1/4 pound sharp cheddar, grated
salt to taste if the cheese doesn't salt it up enough, which it usually does.
Cayenne pepper to taste if you want some heat.
Sweat the onions, celery and carrots in half of the butter. Once translucent, puree them in a blender if you desire a smooth soup. Heat the remaining butter and add the flour, creating a roux and cook for 3-5 minutes. Increase heat to medium-high and whisk in the milk and stock. Bring to a simmer and stir often for about 10 minutes or until thickened. Bring down to medium heat, add the beer, Worcestershire, and mustard and simmer for 5 minutes.
Whisk in the cheese about 1/2 a cup at a time and let it melt fully before adding more. Do not allow it to boil, or stick on bottom.
This goes great with some Spent Grain Bread to soak up all the last bits in the bowl. Add broccoli to the mix to make it "healthy!"
Here is another quick mead recipe for an outstanding grape mead that is not unlike a sweet and light red wine. By definition brewing mead is a slow process and as many experienced folks know, you should try to avoid impatience when trying to craft something special. A quick mead recipe throws out those beliefs, trading them for a brew that is, not quite perfect but, certainly delicious, easy and accessible to everyone. These glass carboys are perfect and my favorite for small batches! If you want to do a large batch, grab a 6 gallon for the extra head space.
Once you try a quick mead you will change your mind about waiting a year for every mead you brew. Sure, a long fermentation time, rest and the aging process can produce amazing results and should not be ignored but sometimes, you just gotta have it quick! The following is a recipe that will warm your heart with its ease of production and red wine-like characters.
Targets Style
1 gallon Slightly Dry Mead
ABV ~13%
Ingredients
2 lbs clover honey (or Wildflower!)
1 oz buckwheat honey
64 oz grape juice (no preservatives or additives besides Vitamin C/acetic acid)
1 tsp Fleischmann's Yeast
or better yet, Champagne yeast
Materials 1 gallon glass carboy
drilled stopper
airlock
siphon & bottles/caps (as always, sanitize all of the above)
sanitizer
Procedure
Mix the honey with tepid to warm water, filling a quarter of the jug. Shake the hell out of it, seriously, for like five minutes. Add the grape juice and fill the jug, leaving two inches of airspace for bubbles and foam. After the water has reached about room temperature, add the yeast and swirl. Stopper it up, set the airlock and put it, covered, in a dark room and watch it go! Warmer temperatures are fine but I would still recommend keeping it between 60 and 70 F.
Leave the mixture, untouched, for between 30 and 60 days, make sure it has absolutely finished fermenting, siphon off to bottles and enjoy! This mead does age well but that is not the point! Drink this nectar when you feel like it and be free from the heavy burden that goes with emptying a bottle that is 5 years old that you only have a case of. If you like this recipe, checkout this recipe for quick Ancient Orange Mead as well.
Cheers
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By definition brewing mead is a slow process and as many experienced folks know, you should try to avoid impatience when trying to craft something special. A quick mead recipe throws out those long held beliefs, trading them for a brew that is, not quite perfect but, certainly delicious, easy and accessible to everyone. Make sure to use a glass carboy for this one - this is my favorite one!
Once you try a quick mead you will change your mind about waiting a year for every mead you brew. Sure, a long fermentation time, rest and the aging process can produce amazing results and should not be ignored. Sometimes, though, you just 'gotta have it quick!' The following is a recipe for a quick orange mead that has been passed around the dark depths of the internet for many years. Its original name is Joe's Ancient Orange Mead and was formulated on the idea that mead should be simple. Way back when, mead was not as complicated and he thought we should get back to the roots. I have tweaked the recipe ever so slightly, so feel free to do the same.
Targets Style
1 gallon Sweet Mead
ABV ~14%
Ingredients
3 lbs clover honey (or Wildflower!)
2 oz buckwheat honey
1 orange or 3 clementines (ripe, in season only!)
30 raisins
1 stick cinnamon (spicier sticks will show through well)
3 whole cloves
1 tsp Fleischmann's Yeast
or better yet, Champagne yeast
Materials
1 gallon glass carboy
drilled stopper
airlock
siphon & bottles/caps (as always, sanitize all of the above)
sanitizer
Procedure
Mix the honey with tepid to warm water, filling half the jug. Shake the hell out of it, seriously, for like five minutes. Wash the orange, cut it into slices that will easily fit in the jug (getting them out is less work if the pieces are small) and stuff them in. Add the raisins, cloves and cinnamon stick. Fill the jug, leaving two inches of airspace for bubbles and foam. After the water has reached about room temperature, add the yeast and swirl. Stopper it up, set the airlock and put it, covered, in a dark room and watch it go! Warmer temperatures are fine but I would still recommend keeping it between 60 and 70 F.
Leave the mixture, untouched, for 60 days, siphon off to bottles and enjoy! This mead does age well but that is not the point! Drink it when you feel like it and be free from the heavy burden that goes with drinking a bottle that is 5 years old that you only have a case of.
This was one of the most successful recipes I ever brewed as an extract brewer. The time has come to up the anti, increase the quality and control the recipe more precisely - let's turn it in to an all grain adventure. If you like bourbon, porters or any sort of robust but drinkable beer, this is the one for you!
Never before have I had such serious reactions to a beer, this is the one, this is the beer that will make your homebrew famous. Revel in its dark depths, vanilla complexities and roasted flavors. Oh, did I mention there is bourbon in it? Because there is.
Ingredients
8 lbs US 2-Row
2 lbs munich light
1 lbs chocolate malt
1 lbs brown malt
4 oz Crystal 120 L
1 oz Northern Brewer
2 oz Willamette
1 tsp Irish Moss (15 minutes - how to use properly)
Danstar Nottingham Yeast
16oz bourbon in keg or secondary *Recipe calculated with BeerSmith 2.0 - The best brewing software around*
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Procedure
Mashed 16 qt at 154 F for 60 minutes
Sparged with 5 gal at 180 F (brings my mash up to 168 - 170 F very nicely)
Brought to boil, followed hop schedule, chilled, siphoned off to bucket and pitched yeast.
OG: 1.058
- - -
I pitched this batch on top of the yeast cake from a the previous brown I brewed but a regular batch of Nottingham is just fine! This will be repeated in a week or two to make sure that there is enough porter to last the early winter before I start in to the keg of Oatmeal Stout.
Beer is no uncommon ingredient in chili for a good reason; it is badass and delicious. The following recipe has been developed over years of painstaking trial and error, burnt tongues and full bellies. Reap the rewards of my efforts by following this recipe, you will not regret it.
Ingredients
2-3 lbs boneless pork short ribs, cubed
1 white onion, chopped
1 sweet yellow onion (or vidalia), chopped
6 cloves garlic, roasted
2-6 chilis, quartered & roasted (anaheim, jalapeno, ect.)
2 vine tomatoes, quartered & roasted
6 medium tomatillos, quartered & roasted
1-2 can(s) black beans
2-3lb acorn or butternut squash, quartered & roasted
½ tsp cinnamon, ground
½ tsp coriander, ground
¼ tsp smoked paprika, ground
2 tsp cumin, ground
4 tsp chili powder
1 tsp dried oregano
½ tsp nutmeg, ground
1 tsp worcester sauce
1 dried New Mexico chili (or equivalent) for steeping
16 oz dark stock (veal, beef or chicken)
16 oz medium-dark beer
2 oz rum
salt & pepper to taste
Procedure
Roast vegetables on high heat until darkened and soft. Partially caramelize onions in large pan with a small amount of oil on medium-high heat. Add spices and stir. Place in crockpot on high with stock and dried chili. Deglaze pan with rum, add half of pork and ‘sear.’ Transfer pork to crockpot and cook the remainder, transfer to pot. Deglaze pan with beer , reduce beer by half, add to pot.
Once roasted, cube the squash and set aside for later. Coarsely chop or lightly blend all the remaining vegetables, making sure to leave the mixture chunky; then add to pot.
Simmer in crockpot for 6+ hours. Before final hour, add cubed squash and rinsed black beans. Remove dried chili and serve with cornbread, cheese and or sour cream.
Aeration stones are expensive and, in all but the most complicated of meads, are unnecessary! Simply suspend your tubing with a clip as you siphon off your wort from the pot; that you have already cooled, whirlpooled and let sit for an hour, of course.
Use this nifty trick and you yeast will never go hungry for oxygen!
To ensure a successful brewday, always plan ahead! There is nothing more frustrating than spending the time to setup only to realize something is missing. One small ingredient, no starter or you simply misjudged the timing and will be late for your big date. Everyone's brewday is different but for me there are a few things that always get reviewed 3 days before any project and I hope they help you with yours.
Do I Have a Recipe? Whether it be a newly designed recipe or one from my favorite book, I always make sure the recipe is set and I am satisfied with it before I begin to gather ingredients.
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Do I Have the Time & Space to brew in 3 days? Let's hope so! Keeping a (Google) calendar is always a good way, in general, to keep organized. Also, make sure to check if there is a free fermentation vessel or keg/bottle space to empty one out in to and reuse.
Do I Have the Correct Yeast? Working from a homegrown yeast bank saves a lot of money so it is always an excellent idea to check your stores before you go to the store. You could also brew on the yeast cake of a previous batch, at the same time clearing out space and reusing yeast.
Make a Starter. Not all beers need one but they are a good idea. The starter will also allow you to harvest some of the new yeast to save for another generation later. Always make the starter 3 days ahead if you can, two days is acceptable but you will profit more from that extra day.
For the most part that is all that gets done 3 days ahead, the next items on your checklist can happen between then and your brewday, or if you have the time, the morning of your brewday. I find, however, that the following is less stressful if I do it the day before.
Buy the Ingredients that you will need. If you store grain in your house, that's great, just make sure to not forget to go buy your specialty grains, hops and other items. Make a list so you do not fall short and have to run out mid-boil to buy the missing ingredients.
What Else can you do on brewday? All grain brewing can often take 6 to 8 hours, leaving plenty of boil time for you to utilize for other tasks. I like to bottle, keg, clean taps, transfer brews, cook (with spent grains!) crochet, run or read during my down time. It really depends on how productive you want to be and how tired you are willing to be at the end of the day.
Do you have a checklist? Leave it in the comments to share your ideas about how to make your brewday less stressful.
After finishing the oatmeal stout brewday, I baked something new with the spent grains, cookies! The original recipe was not so successful but with a bit of tweaking I have come up with a delicious way to add sugar back in to those grains and create a delectable dessert everyone can enjoy!
Ingredients
5 tbs butter, room temperature
1 cu brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cu white flour (may need more)
1/2 cu Spent Grain Flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon (or any 'winter' spice combo)
1 1/2 cu spent grain (darker the better)
1 cu chocolate chips
Notice the left image; the dough is too runny, add more flour!
Mix the sugar and butter well then add egg, vanilla and all the rest of the ingredients. Bake at 350 F until almost done (a little longer than your average cookie) and remove. Immediately transfer to a cooling rack to stop the cookies from cooking on the sheet.
The first sheet of cookies turned out very flat and did not hold together, I added a bunch more flour to the mix and the next sheet was great! The recipe above includes these changes, however, make sure that your dough is relatively sticky and not runny - like a regular cookie recipe you may or may not need to add more flour. I also think that the fact that the grain used was so roasted& and dark, they really pack a flavor punch!
When thinking about what to brew next, one will often default to their favorite book, website or local expert for advice; nothing wrong with that but why not ask yourself for advice? In all likelihood, if you are an all grain brewer, you already have enough experience and wherewithal to make up your own recipe. You have been enjoying beer for years and have developed at least a small understanding of what malt characteristics and hop additions add to a beer - you can do this. Follow me as I design my first oatmeal stout recipe after the jump.
I am no stranger to designing original recipes and this is a style I have rather strong opinions about so it will be a stout for me but maybe not you. A stout, to me, is a beer with a crisp flavor of heavily roasted malts, the bitterness of dark chocolate and the mouthfeel of whole milk. I am not looking for an overly sweet or citrus character, nor do I want something so hop forward that the roasted, fresh baked brown bread, aroma and flavor is lost.
FirstThings First; How much booze do you want in this brew? Sure, there are style guidelines and they should be followed but hey, this is your beer, make it what you want. For this recipe, however, I will be following the guidelines found on bjcp.org, they are as follows:
Now that the guideline is chosen we will have to insure that the grain we use will put us in the proper gravity range and thereby proper alcohol by volume (ABV). Assuming we are making a 5.5 gallon batch (final product will be about 5 gallons, kegged), we can use software or long-hand to estimate the amount of grain we can use to get our targeted ABV. My target will be, as it often is, the higher end of the style's range.
The Main Grain we chose for the backbone of the beer, more often than not, is the malt lowest in complexity. US 2-Row is the default of many brewers, it is cheap, high in sugar and low in color contribution. Do not think that this is bad grain, it is wondrous and used so widely its importance is often forgotten. Specialty grains are very powerful and a beer can not easily be made solely from them. A beer made of ten pounds of chocolate malt would taste like liquid burnt toast - yuk. Instead the main grain, or base malt, must be balanced with smaller amounts of specialty grains in certain combinations to achieve a properly complex and delicious beer. I have decided to use two types of base malt; 2-Row and Munich. The 2-Row will provide a great deal of the overall sugars and the Munich will provide a more malt heavy character to the beer as a whole; think Marzen/Octoberfest flavors.*
Specialty Grains make up a very small percentage of the mash but will be contributing most of the flavor, color and malt aromas. Traditionally, and quite obviously, oatmeal stouts are created mainly with heavily roasted grains. For this batch I have chosen to add Crystal 120L, a reoccurring favorite, and biscuit malt to the common tag team of roasted barley and chocolate malts.
The Flaked Oats will provide the desired silky mouthfeel, body and head retention without using any derived adjuncts and if roasted could even provide a nuttier flavor to the brew. All that remains is to pick a yeast.
Yeast can alter the flavor, aroma and texture of a beer as much, if not more, than any of the other ingredients so it is important that the right yeast is chosen for the job. For this recipe though, I will choose my all-time favorite and most versatile yeast; Nottingham. As you know, I make sure to never let my home-bred stock get low so it is always around but I do not chose it out of laziness (OK, maybe a little). I work with this yeast often because it is so good at revealing the true ingredients of the brew. This yeast, at the correct temperature, will hardly impact the flavor of the beer at all and allow the malt profile to really show through. If Nottingham does help with anything it helps to bring out that inborn and delicious fresh baked bread quality that a good beer has and an oatmeal stout requires. Perhaps the next batch I will try a true stout or red ale yeast, but this time - Nottingham it is!
Wait, What About the Hops?! Well, in truth, they are of a smaller concern to this brew than say, an IPA. All that matters is they provide enough bitterness to counteract the sweetness from the 120L and do not overpower the malt profile we have created. What this means is that we will be using a long boiling, low-power hop and a very small amount of aroma hops.
1.5 oz Willamette (5.5%) for 60 minutes
0.5 oz Willamette (5.5%) for 15 minutes
1 tsp Irish Moss
Mash Profileaffects the recipe as much as ingredients, so pay attention to your boil times and hop schedules! We want a full body so a higher mash temperature is going to be required.
Mash 14 qt at 156 F for 60 minutes
Drain wort
Sparge with 5 gal at 180 F
Follow Hop Schedule
Cool, transfer, pitch yeast
Give this batch 4 weeks in primary before you keg or bottle it please and thank you.
I Hope this has given you insight into the recipe design process and inspired you to create your own. This recipe was researched a bit but honestly, I just added what I thought would work! It is easier than you think and with a mildly educated palate, some experience and a bit of practice you will never want to follow a recipe again!
Skunked beer is wasted beer, don't be a fool and break the #1 Rule: do not waste beer. It is not hard to avoid skunking your beer if you take a few easy precautions, learn the facts and be mindful of your beer's surroundings. Learn how after you say hello to Abbey the program skunk.
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Do Not leave beer or wort, once yeast has been added to it, come in direct contact with sunlight or UV light of any kind. Most fermentation buckets are opaque white, this is not light safe! Use a dark room or closet and make sure cover the container with a towel or cardboard box, especially if you use clear carboys.
Do make sure to follow your yeast and style's guidelines of temperature. Fermenting a stout at 75 F will give you a fruity and possibly even banana smelling concoction that may be to some people's liking but do not try to enter it in a competition, off- (or out of place) flavors like that are not always welcome. If you want to brew a lager, you better have a cold basement or a fridge you can adjust to 52 - 58 F, lager yeast is amazing if it is treated right.
Do Not let your beer ever get above 80 F, if you can manage it and for that matter, do not let it freeze, duh.
Do use brown bottles, clean and green glass will not help keep your final product safe from light. Also, make sure to store those bottles, even the brown ones, in a cool and completely dark place to preserve its life.
Skunk, by the way, refers to the occasional odor that converted hop oils can produce after being exposed to direct UV light, even for as little as 15 minutes. I love Abbey, the smell of skunk and beer but I do not want to taste her defensive weapon in my glass.
