Ask Me Anything about Beer

Driven5 said:

In that case, I don't think they're adding enough fruit... Perhaps American sours are going through an equivalent to the hop wars?

Oh yeah. There are people who are bragging about being able to drink the most sour of beers. Or complaining that our sours aren't *really* sour.

That gets to my earlier mentioned rant about legacy styles. Most "gose" infuriates me. No resemblance to German gose, which is refreshingly lemonade tart. Sit and drink a liter of it in the Garden on a hot day kind of beer.

Kettle souring vs souring bacteria?

Kettle souring vs tank souring. In both cases, it's sour bacteria. It's where in the process you sour.

Kettle souring, you cool down your wort before boiling, add a straight lactobacillus culture, and let it sit overnight. It goes to work creating lactic acid. Then you heat it up to kill the bacteria and finish your brewing process. Adding the yeast to finish the fermentation after.

This is done to keep all the bacteria "hot side" to avoid contaminating other beers. That's why it's more popular. It's safer in a brewery that doesn't want to invest in multiple sets of equipment.

The result is, the lacto gets to work first before the yeast, so it becomes overwhelmingly the dominant flavor.

As opposed to a more traditional style tank or vessel souring. You make your wort as usual, and it gets innoculated with a mixed culture of yeasts and bacteria. Everything gets to start at the same time, and the yeast gets a chance to gain a solid foothold creating a more unified flavor profile.

So from an equipment and overall effort perspective, is partial mash appreciably closer to extract than all grain?

Much closer to extract. You need no special new equipment for a partial mash - just a nylon bag. Extra effort is relatively minimal. Just... pull the bag of grains out and squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Yet the control, variety, and end result tastes closer to all grain than extract.

What I typically did for home brewing was use 3lbs tubs of liquid malt extract. Just using whole tubs. Then making up the difference to hit target abv with the grains that I'd mash myself in a bag.

You've basically got:

• Extract - just extract
• Flavor grains and extract - steep your specialty character grains in a muslin sock for specific flavors, but extract still forms your base
• Partial mash - all your flavor grains and a portion of your base malt done in a temperature controlled mash for improved control, body, and efficiency. Extract will still be 1/2 - 3/4 of your fermentable sugars.
• All grain - it's all grain. Most control. Most work. Requires a lauter tun.

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

Newcastle is no longer imported from England. Instead, it's now brewed in California and seems to taste completely different from the old stuff that came in the clear bottles. Is this just a side effect of the venue change or might there have been some tweeks to the formula?

Are brown ales difficult to brew, or just not big sellers? There aren't that many good ones out there.

Just not big sellers.

I'd have to drink a new Newky to say for certain, but probably a bit of all of the above. Probably different equipment, different brewers, and sourcing different ingredients that are easier to get. Probably also that they aren't shipping it across the ocean.

If they got rid of the clear bottles, they're using completely different hop products for certain.

Thanks Beer Baron et all for the suggestions. I've got a list ready for my next shopping trip. 

Beer Baron said:

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

Newcastle is no longer imported from England. Instead, it's now brewed in California and seems to taste completely different from the old stuff that came in the clear bottles. Is this just a side effect of the venue change or might there have been some tweeks to the formula?

Are brown ales difficult to brew, or just not big sellers? There aren't that many good ones out there.

Just not big sellers.

I'd have to drink a new Newky to say for certain, but probably a bit of all of the above. Probably different equipment, different brewers, and sourcing different ingredients that are easier to get. Probably also that they aren't shipping it across the ocean.

If they got rid of the clear bottles, they're using completely different hop products for certain.

Newcastle Brown Ale for the US is brewed by Lagunitas. 

In reply to Beer Baron :

I give every Scottish ale a try... currently second street brewery out of sante fe has an excellent one in their breaking plaid.

While we were on the Dingle Peninsula several years ago, I found I really liked Smithwick's Irish Ale.  Unfortunately, can't get it behind the Redwood Curtain where I live. 

Is there anything that is similar that might have broader distribution?

In reply to Beer Baron :

Thanks for the insights! Partial mash definitely sounds like the way to go.

Why is a really good balanced amber ale so hard to find?

Is there any decent gluten free stouts or porters?

One of the reasons I wanna try Homebrewing is so I can try to make my wife a decent gluten free beer, porter or Stout would be great although she also loves belgians. 

Ok- avid beer drinker and brewer here- 

-I love golden promise malt for brewing. The body tells the story. 
 

- I'm a little sick of the anti hop crowd. Don't drink hoppy beers dudes. Also- the new hoppy beers aren't pine cones. They have amazing new hops that give fantastic flavor.  
 

-belching beaver- cool brewery- I love the deftones beer - but quality is spotty. I hope they figure it out because the beer is great when they get it right. 
 

rant off. 

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

Is there any decent gluten free stouts or porters?

One of the reasons I wanna try Homebrewing is so I can try to make my wife a decent gluten free beer, porter or Stout would be great although she also loves belgians. 

I'm not the person to ask. I want to say New Belgium may have been working on something?

I think it's just a case where there isn't enough market for people to put effort into trying to be creative with it. People have asked me if we have any plans to do gluten free, and my response is sort of that... we don't have a high enough demand to justify doing a batch, and I'm not confident that I could actually brew one that would be good and widely appealing. Instead, we answer the gluten-free question with good cider and mixed drinks.

I think the issue of appealing to different tastes is why there aren't any "good" gluten free beers. What will get one person excited will turn off another. They're probably more focused on making them not-bad and not alienating anyone. It's like... 90's midsize sedan styling. No one loves it, but no one hates it.

I think homebrewing is the best route to make a beer that *you* will like.

If you like Golden Promise, see if you can get your hands on Irish Stout Malt (it's distributed by BSG, who also carries Weyerman. So ask your homebrew shop if they can get some).

It's not *as* good as Golden Promise but it's very good and like... half the price. That cost difference is probably less of a concern for you homebrewing than a brewery on a production scale. 

Teh E36 M3 said:

- I'm a little sick of the anti hop crowd. Don't drink hoppy beers dudes. Also- the new hoppy beers aren't pine cones. They have amazing new hops that give fantastic flavor.  

I don't think it's people being anti-hops. I think it's frustration at so few craft breweries putting the effort into creating something good for people who want a different flavor profile.

It's fine if IPA is more prevalent than any other single craft beer style. It's frustrating when IPA is more prevalent than EVERY other craft beer style put together. When you go to a bar, and more than half the taps are IPA.

Also, most brewers don't know their science and follow the conventional homebrew wisdom of adding hops 5-15 minutes from the end of the boil. Boiling hops will cause you to lose those wonderful aromatic oils. You should hold your last hop addition for flameout and hot steep your hops but not boil them. So a lot of breweries are getting less flavor and more bitterness from their hop additions than they realize.

It's the same idea as making tea. Get your water to boil, take it off the heat, and then steep your tea.

In reply to Beer Baron :

Exactly! It's not about being anti-hop, it's about being pro-variety. Most breweries putting their attempt to make an IPA they're hoping will be the proverbial atomic bomb of the hop war on the menu? Great, go for it! Use the tappers needing bragging rights to keep the doors open and the lights on.  And by all means respond to IPA's being the best selling beers by making that the style with the most options! But when ANY one 'style' of beer singularly account for more than half of the menu, it necessarily comes at the expense of variety or creativity in the rest of the lineup... That's what I have a problem with, regardless of whether generally enjoy that particular style or not.

Going out on a limb, I have have been considering how much of it has to do with the number of brewers that think of IPA as being their 'specialty', since that's what the style they enjoy the results of best and/or get the best feedback on, when really it's just because that's the only beer that is masking themselves (and others) from seeing just how unskilled of a brewer they are. It can't be a coincidence that most of the breweries with the extreme IPA bias on the menu also tend to generally have the worst drinking non-IPA's. Thus causing their extreme IPA bias to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

EastCoastMojo (Forum Supporter) said:

Thanks Beer Baron et all for the suggestions. I've got a list ready for my next shopping trip. 

 

It's not a cream brulee but my favorite flavored stout is Samuel Smith's Chocolate Stout. It's available everywhere here, even Walmart and it's very very good

I agree, it's not anti-hop but when I go to a bar with 45 taps and 42 if them are IPAs? That's stupid.

People that get deep into a hobby a lot of times will go to massive extremes. That's why you get musicians that want to play uber-dark-xtremo- metal that has no real musicality and no one likes ( I like heavy music a lot but there are some outliers) or guys will strip the interiors of their DD so they can be faster.

In beer, it's mega hops. I've told this story before so I'll shorten it a lot: we went to a Bach and Brews and the guys in front of us were bitching that only 2 of 3 beers we're IPAs because only IPAs were "real" beer. They complained that the beer they currently loved whose name I couldn't catch so I'll call it SuperMegaPineConeBitter IPA wasn't there. One of them said he loved it but the first time he drank it he vomited from the bitter hop taste and that it took him 3 beers to be able to hold it down. The other complained that craft bars should have hops out that you could chew on while you drank your beer.

Those people are insane

In reply to Beer Baron :

I think you are right. Most the gluten free beers are IPAs that she can find and she's not a fan. Most the time she drinks whiskey or cider, we have a great nationally reconized cidery semi local and at one time was 5 min from our house, but sometimes she misses beer.

My hometown brewery follows the German purity law pretty damn close and when I talked to the brewer/owner, he said they have brewed 40 some odd brews over the past year or year and a half, maybe 2 or 3 were ipa style.

So why the pepper taste with ipa's? Is that the bitterness?

Why for the love of god, does brewers licorice exist!?!? :puke:

I have acquired a kegerator from a friend and they included the co2 tank and lines. Do I need anything to connect this setup to a corny keg?

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

I agree, it's not anti-hop but when I go to a bar with 45 taps and 42 if them are IPAs? That's stupid.

They do this because that is what sells. Bars don't keep beers on tap if they don't move. They will disconnect a keg if they don't sell enough of it and replace it with something that does.

As someone who has transitioned from a heavy beer drinker, to a daily drinker, to an occasional drinker to finally someone who is pretty much teetotal but occasionally thinks a beer with a meal sounds nice, I too bemoan modern beer culture. When I was drinking every day a brutal IPA was great,  Go six months without drinking a beer and then try to drink a Boneyard IPA and you will wonder what the berkeley was wrong with you.

In reply to thatsnowinnebago :

That is a commercial keg coupler. It will not work with Cornys. Are your Corny kegs ball lock or pin lock? Once you know that you can buy the new couplers and cut the lines and install them.

Yeah, that's called a sankey keg adapter. You can convert your lines to corny and there are adapters to put corny male connectors on the sankey adapter to make your system work with both. 

two years ago I posted on FB that IPAs had jumped the shark. I was spit-roasted by most of the beer drinkers I know. I stand by it, and more people agree now. 

I'm afraid small batch bourbon is at the point IPAs were 2 years ago, just past the shark. 

Hey, there are IPAs I like, but they are one note in a huge, varied world - and not my favorite note at that. 

I've been aiming to drink less alcohol in general so I've been exploring NA craft brews. Most are IPAs and ok for NA, but would be really bad compared to a good full-boat IPA. I've got stuff from Athletic Brewing and WellBeing on order that is some of the only well-reviewed NA on the market. We'll see. 

In reply to Trent and Teh E36 M3 :

Thanks y'all! I don't have a keg yet so I was going to the answer to my question to figure out which kind to buy. Sounds like I can go either way and just buy the parts needed to adapt. 

Trent said:

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

I agree, it's not anti-hop but when I go to a bar with 45 taps and 42 if them are IPAs? That's stupid.

They do this because that is what sells. Bars don't keep beers on tap if they don't move. They will disconnect a keg if they don't sell enough of it and replace it with something that does.

But how much of that is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

When I go into a brewery with a wide and varied selection, typically any given style I try has a unique and multi-dimensional flavor profile. When I look around, I see people drinking every type of beer on the menu. That's because there are multiple styles/beers on tap that any given person will enjoy... While some will always sell more than others, and some I will enjoy more than others, essentially all of them seem to sell well enough in addition to being properly drinkable.

When I go into a brewery with more than half IPA's, typically whatever I try all pretty much taste the same... One dimensional and generally Bitter. The majority of people look to be drinking IPA, which makes sense as there is little there worth drinking for people who want non-IPA's, and/or want multi-dimensional IPA's. Well, perhaps they would have had more success with those beers that "don't sell", if they had cared enough to learn how to brew them better.

This phenomena is not unique to beer, but applying it to the current beer trends is a more recent realization for me. All of the pieces have been there, I just needed some help seeing how they fit together. Thanks again, Beer Baron!

In reply to Beer Baron :

great idea about the t shirt over the fermenter. I will give that a try. I think I will still need some supplemental cooling as I am in the humid ss where evaporation effect can be limited.

"How are you dosing your carbonation?

I mix your sugar syrup into the whole batch instead of using tabs"
 

I have been adding a sugar syrup to the bottling container and stirring it in before bottling. I suspect it may be a temperature issue as mad scientist mentioned? I group bottles on a stone countertop that stays moderately stable temperature wise but there may be some heat build up in some parts of the grouping?

thanks for the advice!