The Brewmaster is in.

[Compass Rose]

Main thing to remember when making wine is use lots and lots of boiling hot water to clean everything. I suspect same thing is true of beer brewing equipment. Can't use bleach or soap as any residue will kill off the yeasts you want to keep alive, and/or give a nasty taste to the resulting wine. Wine making is time consuming when cooking up the ingredients to start with and getting it into the carboy, then a lot of patience and waiting. You really need to be a bit anal about following directions, as it is easy to accidentally get wild yeast and such into the mix. Said wild yeast can really do a nasty number on your fermenting mixture. (Shudder)

[Paynesgrey]

With beer you can use bleach, I suspect with wine too.. but you must rinse, rinse, super-rinse, power ninja dragon space-angel hyper panda rinse, and then, just to be sure, rinse one more time.

Cross contamination is probably the biggest brewdevil you've got to look out for with wine or beer.  Set your spoon down on a contaminated counter top that you cleaned, but leaned a hand on after touching something in another room, etc.   Good idea is a set of hooks to hang your spoon, ladle, thermometers and such off of so the business end never touches anything but the wort until you're completely finished with them.  Windows shut, fans, AC, or forced air turned off to prevent the circulating air from depositing some bit of wild yeast, mildew or bacteria that was lurking in the ductwork.

[Esperacchius23]

I've been home brewing for some time now. I use starsan sanitizer for everything. It's easy. I make beer, wine, mead and cider.

I've been trying to put together a rich american brown ale to call Mac's brown ale. My current brown ale recipe is  great but it already has a name...Doc Brown Ale.

Anyway, great topic. I am also "arrogantdusty" over on the homebrewtalk message boar.

[Quantus]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/11/28/for-winning-the-nobel-prize-niels-bohr-got-a-house-with-free-beer/

You guys will apprieciate this.  When Niels Bohr won the Nobel Prize in 1922, the Carlsberg brewery gifted him with a free house near the brewery.  And the best part of the house was that it had a direct pipeline to the brewery, so that his private (and free) beer tap would never run dry.

And there are theories that it is part of what helped him crack much of Quantum Physics.  From the Article:

So how did Bohr keep his mind supple and flexible, ready to accept new ideas when his peers like Einstein couldn’t? Well, here’s the thing – there are several studies that indicate that being drunk can actually improve your creativity. That’s because it prevents your mind from being able to focus, so it more readily drifts from one connection to another, which can yield creative solutions to problems.

So was free beer the reason why Bohr was able to make great strides in developing quantum mechanics? Okay, probably not – but I’m sure a few late night drinking sessions with other physicists didn’t hurt.

[Chiana]

I've been doing a lot of research and reading on wine making.  I think it requires more time and patience than I possess right now.  I will stick to throwing some fruit in a blender with some ice and hard stuff.  My hat is off to all you beer and wine makers!

[Torvaldr]

I don't brew myself. But a couple of my friends do, and there are a couple of seriously awesome micro breweries near me. One with awesome German food, and one with awesome hamburgers.

[AleEvangelist]

This is actually my first post on these forums.   I've been brewing for 7 years or so and currently have a pretty decent 3-tier, gravity-fed brew stand.  I brew 5-10 gallons a month and give away most of that.  lol.

I second the use of StarSan in brewing.  I'll never use a rinse-required sanitizer again. Don't fear the foam!

As for sanitation, it's important, sure, but only really important after the boil. Prior to the boil, anything that gets into your wort is going to die off during the boil. It won't cause any off-flavors in your beer, and it won't infect anything.  Once you've cooled below about 170F, you do need to be careful. I keep some StarSan in a spray bottle while I'm brewing, and anything that needs to be sanitized gets a couple sprays. Keep in mind you can't sanitize something that isn't clean. If there's debris or gunk on something, it can't be sanitized.  So it's good to keep a couple buckets around filled with clean water.  Spoons, mash paddles, etc, can be soaked in the water so it doesn't get dried gunk on there.

As for the most important tip in brewing, once you've figured out sanitation, probably the most useful thing you can do in terms of quality of the finished product is fermentation temperature control. This is because probably 90% of the finished product flavor and aroma are dependent upon yeast. Yeast is a living organism which performs well only under conditions it's been bred to like. If the temperature of your fermenting beer changes by more than a couple degrees, you're going to get a significantly different beer.

Brewing is the absolute best, and it's one of the things that caused me to fall in love with these books!

If people are interested, I can post some recipes that have done well for me. Brewing is mostly about technique. Several people can brew the same recipe on their equipment, and get vastly different results, so I don't mind sharing my recipes.    I've got a Southern English Brown aged on Oak, which is turning out quite good!

[Paynesgrey]

Yeah, share those recipes!  I usually go with a basic nut brown and sometimes the odd honey brown ale, and I'm not big on hops.   (Just enough to call it beer.)  Want to find a recipe that uses a hint of maple. 

I've also done some decent sweet stouts.  But my best batch was one I didn't write down.  Just threw in every odd half-pound of this or that malt I had sitting around.  Dark, thick, and sweet, and I must have had some Power Super Devil Yeast, because that stuff had to be 16-18%.  You could smell the alcohol coming off of it, but it was sweeeeeeet.  Like liquid cake that would fuck you up....

[Paynesgrey]

OK, I made a sticky for recipes and recipes ONLY!  All the discussion, Q&A and such, I'd like you to transplant here, we'll use that thread just as a recipe box!

[AleEvangelist]

I have a Southern English Brown that I think would be great with some maple syrup.  I aged it on some oak cubes for a week, but it seems to me it would be great with 2-4 weeks on the oak cubes and then a TINY bit of maple syrup in the mix at priming time.  Problem with maple syrup is that it's almost 100% fermentable, so most of your maple flavor will be gone if you add it before fermentation. If you're not careful when adding it at priming time, however, you could end up with bottle bombs. 

[Paynesgrey]

Yeah, I've never had bottle bombs, but I had the batch I tried to use maple in turn cider-ish.  Learned later that's because of all that easy to ferment sugar, I might as well have just added a similar quantity of cane sugar. 

It occurs to me I could cook a batch so heavy in malt that the yeast would hit it's alcohol tolerance, and *then* add the maple, but that would be overpoweringly sweet. 

Think I'll just try to find a maple wine recipe.  I'm cautious though... My one attempt at mead produced a hot, high-octane beverage that vaguely had a honey-like aftertaste.  I guess it was a yeast with a very high wine tolerance...

[AleEvangelist]

Cidery flavors are acetaldehyde. Also described as green apple flavors. Sometimes that's due to taking it off the yeast cake too quickly, or underpitching yeast. It can be due to too much simple sugar, as well, and that's an interesting cause, too. When yeast ferments too much simple sugars, it actually loses the ability to break down and ferment maltose. The yeast naturally secrete an enzyme which breaks down maltose (malt sugar) into monosaccharides, which are easily fermented. When you use too much simple sugar, the yeast hit that stuff first, and after awhile, it just stops secreting the enzyme and essentially "forgets" how to ferment maltose.  So, while some styles REQUIRE simple sugars (like some Belgians, Double IPA's, etc) in order to ferment down dry enough to be drinkable, too much simple sugar can do exactly what you describe. The other problem is that since maple syrup (like honey) is so fermentable, the yeast really consume the heck out of it. When the yeast is done with it, most of it (including the flavor) is gone.

I just read through the syrups section in Randy Mosher's book, Radical Brewing, which I just got for Christmas. (HIGHLY recommend this book if you're looking to experiment. I've only read through parts of it, and it's already helped me redesign one of my beers to help with some efficiency issues I was having.) The subject of maple reminded me of it, and I'm glad I did. He recommends adding the maple syrup to the secondary fermenter. (In the secondary, most of the alcohol has already been created, so there's not much for any bacteria to get a hold on.)  The yeast is also mostly spent, so most of the maple flavors will remain in your beer. However, it seems to me you'd be running the risk of adding bacteria along with the syrup.  I agree with him that this would be the best time to get the most flavor, and you won't have to worry about acetaldehyde, because your yeast won't be doing a TON of fermenting of the syrup.  Finally, he recommends that you use the B grade maple syrup. It's not as refined as the A grade "Fancy" stuff, and will leave a lot more flavor in your beer.

He also suggested that if you want to enhance and extend maple flavor in your beer, the spice fenugreek has such a "maply" flavor that it is often used as a substitute for actual maple in the cheaper fake maple syrups. He says you can add this instead of or in conjunction with your maple syrup to the secondary.

Good stuff!

[Paynesgrey]

I'll keep that in mind, some good info there!  Thanks.  When I get around to trying some batches I'll let you know.  Might do a small batch of plain old oatmeal stout this week. 

[AleEvangelist]

Next batch I'm doing is a Spiced Mild Ale probably in a couple weeks.  I recently stocked up on British Pale malt, so I'm sort of stuck on various british beers for the next couple months.  I'm planning on doing some Christmas Pudding spices in the mild, and we'll see how that goes.  In Feb I'll do a strong Scotch Ale, which I've been hankering for.  After that I may do my Galaxy Pale (posted in the recipe thread) or I may end up doing a Doppelbock, if I can get my hands on some fermentation temp. control stuff I need.  We shall see.

[Kevin Findley]

Long time fan, first time poster and two year brewer here.  I generally just hang out at the Dixonverse, but finding a brewing board here was too good to ignore. 

Right now, I'm finishing a honey porter and have a basic porter carbonating as I type this.  There may be a week with no home brew in the house.   

Anyone have a commercial suggestion?