The Brewers' Guild

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

put the Treacle ale into bottles should be ready to drink beginning of next week

[Mercury Wells]

Just come up these rambling suggestions for wines/ales...Earl Grey¹ Ale/Wine or even Coffee* Ale/Wine.

Question is:- Would they work (e.g. be palitable)?. Would the tannin in the tea/s kill the yeast though?

¹Or Assam, Lapsong Sushong et cetera
*I mean using coffee beans (not "Happy Shopper" stuff)

Apparently you can make Coffee Wine and Earl Grey Wine 

[Madasasteamfish]

Just come up these rambling suggestions for wines/ales...Earl Grey¹ Ale/Wine or even Coffee* Ale/Wine.

Question is:- Would they work (e.g. be palitable)?. Would the tannin in the tea/s kill the yeast though?

¹Or Assam, Lapsong Sushong et cetera
*I mean using coffee beans (not "Happy Shopper" stuff)

Apparently you can make Coffee Wine and Earl Grey Wine 

Well, I've made tea wine before now, and it's pretty good after a bit of aging, haven't tried coffee wine (I hate coffee, or as I refer to it as; the piss of Lucifer himself) but I've seen recipes for it. And the main 'problem' tannin causes is if it's present in abundance when it gives the resulting wine/ale a yeasty taste as tannin is usually used as a yeast nutrient or to give the wine more 'body' or a more robust flavour.

[von Corax]

Just come up these rambling suggestions for wines/ales... Coffee* Ale/Wine.

Question is:- Would they work (e.g. be palitable)?.

Coffee stouts and coffee porters seem to be popular micro products up this end of the planet. Papazian (NCJoHB) suggests half a pound of freshly ground beans per 5 gal., added either to the last 5 minutes of the mash (do not boil the coffee grounds!) or "dry-hopped" in the secondary fermenter.

[Rev. Jade]

Just come up these rambling suggestions for wines/ales... Coffee* Ale/Wine.

Question is:- Would they work (e.g. be palitable)?.

Coffee stouts and coffee porters seem to be popular micro products up this end of the planet. Papazian (NCJoHB) suggests half a pound of freshly ground beans per 5 gal., added either to the last 5 minutes of the mash (do not boil the coffee grounds!) or "dry-hopped" in the secondary fermenter.

Oooh a coffee stout does sound good!
Thanks for the tip!

[Rev. Jade]

put the Treacle ale into bottles should be ready to drink beginning of next week

How did it turn out?
Well, I hope.

I finally kegged my cider tonight (I know, it should have been done awhile ago; on the bright side, it has no sat for long enough in secondary fermentation that all of the sediment has settled out).
I decided to do something a little different this time; as my kegerator is set up for 2 taps, I split the cider between both kegs and added some strawberry flavouring to the second keg.
I tasted a little bit of the strawberry flavour cider in a glass, and it was pretty good and a little strange, so hopefully I won't get sick of it after a week!

Oh yeah!
I also bought myself a 3 gallon glass carboy today as well as an auto-siphon!
I'm moving up in the world! 

Anybody else have any news?

[Madasasteamfish]

Well my grocer's red has been racked and is settling out. I've got a batch of rhubarb wine going and I'm going to be putting a big batch of my treacle ale into the pressure barrel later.

And I bought myself a maslin pan for making any big batches and or any grain brewing I decide to do.

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

How did it turn out?
Well, I hope.

yeah.... whatever you do.,... DO NOT PUT SUGAR IN THE BOTTLES!! resulted in hitting the ceiling at  a very high speed!!

2nd batch sorted out earlier this week

2 more Gallons of Ginger beer ready as of...*looks at watch* now....

picked up some wine yeast so i can attempt some mead!

[Madasasteamfish]

How did it turn out?
Well, I hope.

yeah.... whatever you do.,... DO NOT PUT SUGAR IN THE BOTTLES!! resulted in hitting the ceiling at  a very high speed!!

Yourself or the bottle top?

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

Yourself or the bottle top?

the bottle top.... and contents of said bottle

[Madasasteamfish]

Yourself or the bottle top?

the bottle top.... and contents of said bottle

Oh bugger. The best solution for that is to open it all into a bucket and then rebottle it. Sounds like the yeasts been too active, or you've added too much sugar after bottling.

[von Corax]

How did it turn out?
Well, I hope.

yeah.... whatever you do.,... DO NOT PUT SUGAR IN THE BOTTLES!! resulted in hitting the ceiling at  a very high speed!!

John Palmer's How to Brew (1e) recommends 2/3 cup sucrose boiled into 2 cups water then stirred into the bottling bucket for a 5 gal. batch, assuming it's completely fermented out. How much did you use?

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

*snip* How much did you use?

it was 1tsp which tbh a bit too much as i can now say

have now made a 2nd batch and there have been no explosions...

Spoiler: ShowHide

....yet

[Madasasteamfish]

*snip* How much did you use?

it was 1tsp which tbh a bit too much as i can now say

have now made a 2nd batch and there have been no explosions...

Spoiler: ShowHide

....yet

Ah, that'd be why the explosion occured. You need to add 1/2 tsp per pint (usually one bottle) rather than 1 whole teaspoon.

[Kieranfoy]

Has anyone had or created spiced, mulled beer? An Austrian aquaintance of mine waxed rapsodaisical abour it a few months ago. Told us all about how he used to drink it in the 'old days.'

[Madasasteamfish]

Has anyone had or created spiced, mulled beer? An Austrian aquaintance of mine waxed rapsodaisical abour it a few months ago. Told us all about how he used to drink it in the 'old days.'

No personally. Never actually tried it myself, closest I've tried is mulled cider. But would be easy to make, might attempt some at christmas or around winter. But all 'mulling' is the heating of any alcoholic beverage and the addition of spices.

[Unsubtle Pete]

Might be the right place to ask. I now have access to a friend's cellar, with permission to set up a small brewing rig to provide beer for both these friends and for myself.

While fantastic, I now need to track down the required materials, specifically a boiler, as the rest isn't too hard to achieve.

Assuming I can't get a baby Burco cheap, How hard would it be to make the thing myself, and what should I use to do so?

[von Corax]

Waht about a honkin' big stock pot on the stove?

[Rev. Jade]

Or if a stove is out of the question, a large-ish propane burner?
Such as this one: 14" Propane Burner - 220,000 BTU

[von Corax]

Or if a stove is out of the question, a large-ish propane burner?
Such as this one: 14" Propane Burner - 220,000 BTU

If there's a "Little Italy" near you — a real one, not a tourist area — get down there during tomato season and look for an outdoor propane ring similar to that one; when I lived in the Eglinton/Spadina neighbourhood of The City at the Centre of Itself, the locals used them to brew up their year's supply of homemade tomato sauce.

[Rev. Jade]

Or if a stove is out of the question, a large-ish propane burner?
Such as this one: 14" Propane Burner - 220,000 BTU

If there's a "Little Italy" near you — a real one, not a tourist area — get down there during tomato season and look for an outdoor propane ring similar to that one; when I lived in the Eglinton/Spadina neighbourhood of The City at the Centre of Itself, the locals used them to brew up their year's supply of homemade tomato sauce.

Unfortunately, New Mexico doesn't have anything like that, or I would definitely check that out.
However, deep-frying turkeys is popular around the holiday season, and a decent propane burner can be picked up for cheap in the weeks following Thanksgiving.
If I can convince the Lady to let me spend more money on my hobby, I will hopefully be getting myself a burner this season.

[von Corax]

Good point — The City at the Centre of Itself is the second-largest Italian community (second only to The Eternal City) on the planet, after all...

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

I have 2 Gallons of really basic Mead on the go, I shall put up the recipe shortly, one has been going for month now and the other has just been put on as of last week. also will be putting on another brew of the infamous Chilli Ginger beer at the end of the week!! (just waiting on the Ginger beer plant).

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

The Professors really basic mead

Ingredients:
3 Jars of Honey (1 jar is approx 340g (sainsburys basic)
1  packet wine yeast
1 box of raisins (small)
1 Orange

Making the Mead

1.   Add 2 pints of water to the pan and bring to the boil,
2.   Add the 3 jars of Honey to the boiling water,
(warm the jars up in a separate pan of warm water to make the honey runny.)
3.   Stir the honey in to the water and leave to cool down to room temperature,
4.   Cut up the Orange into Eighths and add to the demijohn,
5.   Add raisins,
6.   Add the contents of the pan to the Demijohn (once cool),
7.   Pitch yeast and top up the water,
8.   Give the demijohn a little shake periodically,
9.   Leave to brew

What will happen next?
Somewhere between an hour and twenty-four hours later the brew will start bubbling away nicely. This is a great sign and it means that your yeast is transforming the contents of the demijohn into wine. Gases are forming inside the demijohn and are escaping through the Airlock. This setup insures gases escape but no contaminants get into your brew.

After two to three weeks the major portion of the ferment will be done. At this point you can taste a little bit to see how it is coming along but it isn't really a tasty wine at this point. It will need another couple of months to start to get delicious. Over time, as you check on it you will notice that the cloudiness disappears and it slowly clarifies and transforms into wine.

The Orange and the raisins can stay in the mixture for the whole duration but if you want to make the mead a little milder and help it clarify faster you can transfer the liquid into another gallon Demijohn. This would be after the two to three week ferment period has completed. This process is called racking and it will move your mead along nicely.

Approx Brew time :- 6months

[Sam Watson]

I followed a recipe from 1907 for "Scotch beer" (which is to distinguish it from "hop ale" which doesn't have any barley at all in it - just sugar and hops). The recipe reads:

Add 1 peck of malt to 4 gallons of boiling water, and mash for 8 hours. Strain, and boil for half an hour with:
1 lb honey
4 oz hops
1 oz coriander seeds
2 oz orange peel
1 oz bruised ginger
Strain, and ferment in the usual way.

So detailed! I used 1 peck (which is a unit of volume, not weight, equal to 2 gallons) of 2-row pale malt, which I measured in a spare plastic brewing bucket marked off by gallons. 1 peck is about 7 lbs, by the way.

I boiled 4 gallons of water, and added the hot liquor and malt to my mash tun. I left it there for 8 hours and strained it without sparging (since the directions don't mention sparging). This left a lot of gluten behind, and probably a lot of sugar, but also the grain soaked up almost 2 gallons of water, leaving me with 2 gallons remaining.

I brought that to a boil, and added the other ingredients, hops all at once. That should make for a pretty bitter beer - 4 oz of hops in 2 gallons of beer. The recipe didn't say anything about adding water to increase the volume of the wort.

Now as for fermenting "in the usual fashion". I strained the wort into an open brew bucket, let it cool, and pitched some dry English ale yeast, then covered it with a tea towel. Since this recipe comes from a book of household recipes, I figure it'll be "farmhouse style" so I'll ferment it open, with just the towel to keep out the worst greeblies. I may rack it and put it in a carboy with an airlock for a short secondary fermentation, since there was a lot of sediment left over from the hops and coriander that I'd like to settle out. I think the sediment might also have thrown off my hydrometer reading - it showed 1.072 which I think is a little high, but then again 7 lbs of malt for 2 gallons of beer plus a pound of honey might put it that high. We'll see what it ferments out to.