Archive for category Experiments
Home Brew – Kombucha failed, well kind of
Posted by bradinator in Experiments, Home Brewing on April 7, 2011
I bottled the Kombucha I made last week today and unfortunately it did not grow a SCOBY. It did ferment the tea and some of the fungus did in fact grow but not into a solid mushroom it is supposed to. I put them in the fridge for drinking tomorrow. Honestly I have no idea is this is going to be even drinkable as it does not smell entirely good.
Either way tonight I am going to try growing another SCOBY in a similar fashion as my first attempt, because there is now more of the fungus it may have a better chance. I also think that I may have bottle too soon. Some of the reading I did after bottling pointed out that it may take up to four weeks for a SCOBY to grow and not a single week like I originally had thought. This time I am going to give it a good month before touching it.
Home Brew – Kombucha, a slightly alcoholic tea fermented by fungal bacteria
Posted by bradinator in Experiments, Home Brewing on March 29, 2011
Sounds horrible doesn’t it?
Well it gets better; The Kombucha’s SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) or as the Kombucha brewing hobbyist calls it “The mother” will actually birth additional bacteria cultures. Each of these bacteria cultures can be used to create their own individual Kombucha batches. The whole process is actually quite simple, especially when compared to making beer. You simply mix you tea and sugar together into about a gallon of water, add the SCOBY to the room temperature water and wait a couple weeks for it to ferment.
I do not own a “mother” culture so I cannot just start brewing Kombucha. Instead I need to start growing the first culture which will in turn be used to brew future Kombucha batches. You can opt to buy a pre-grown culture online or from some shady guys garage, but making your own is very easy to do.
Ingredients —
- -Unpasteurized- Kombucha Drink (I bought mine from Community Natural Foods). It must be unpasteurized otherwise you cannot grow your own SCOBY!
- 5-6 tea bags (I used 2 green, 3 blacks, organic is recommended but to hell with that)
- 1 cup of sugar
- Room temperature spring water (I am using RO water for this. Tap water is not recommended)
Procedure —
1) In a pot boil 2-3 litres of water and remove from heat.
2) Add and stir sugar until dissolved.
3) Add tea and let steep for 15 minutes.
4) Remove tea and add tea/sugar mix to a sanitized jar. Allow to cool to room temperture.
5) Add Kombucha drink to the jar. Fill with water until about 2 inches of space is left from the top.
6) Cover with paper towel or a coffee filter to prevent dust from getting into the jar while its fermenting.
7) Wait for fungus to grow!
Its kind of like a science experiment from junior high school.
Home Brew – Mead-Beer-Thing sampled…
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Experiments, Home Brewing on January 4, 2011
I broke down. I had to try one.
It needs time. Lots and lots of time.
I sampled one of the “Lager yeast” bottles, not one of the EC-1118 bottles. Honestly though, its not terrible but it still has that raw, unfinished taste to it that some of the ciders I have made had. Its going to need another 3-4 months minimum if I want it to be good. It’s cleared nicely though but its obvious the yeast is not done its work yet.
You can taste the mead-ness, you can taste the beer-ness, you can taste the cider-ness. You can taste the unfinished-ness. I think in a year this is going to be divine.
Home Brew – Red Ale
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Experiments, Home Brewing on January 3, 2011
I really wanted to get one more home brew under my belt and I wanted to try something different. A red ale may sound quite standard, but I am using a non-standard yeast to make the beer. I am going to use the EC-1118 Champagne yeast.
Ingredients —
- 3.75lbs Lager LME
- 1lbs of demerara sugar
- 0.5lbs of dextrose sugar
- 0.5lbs of Special B Malt
- 1/2tsp of yeast nutrient @ 5min
- Appollo Hops @ 60min
- Amarillo Hops @ 40min
- Amarillo Hops @ 20min
Procedure —
- Steep the Special B grain for 30 minutes at 80c in 0.5 gallons of water
- While this is happening, bring 2.5 gallons of water to boil
- Add the grain tea, sugars and extracts to the kettle and mix together
- Separate out 0.5 gallons of the wort into another clean pot (this will be added later)
- Bring to a boil again and add the hops at the appropriate times (60min, 40min and 20min)
- At 30 minutes start to bring the separated wort to a boil
- At 20 minutes, just after adding the last hop addition add the now boiling, separate wort to the main brew kettle.
- Add the yeast nutrient, flameout and cool in an ice bath to ~40c
- Add 3 gallons of cold water to the primary fermentor
- Add the cooled wort to the partial filled fermentor, bring the total volume to 5 gallons. Mix.
- Take your temperature and gravity readings (24c, 1.040)
- Rehydrate your yeast in boiled and cooled water (I added a small amount of wort to the water so the yeast had some sugars to eat)
- Once the yeast is active, add them to the room temperature wort and close her up! Your done!
If you have read any of my previous brews, you will notice I am doing a couple things differently. The first is I am starting to add my sugars just before boil, mixing and separating out around 0.5 gallons to be add later. I am doing this for 2 reasons; First is that I want to do everything I can to avoid a boil-over, without losing out on as large of a boil volume as I can fit in my 3 gallon brew kettle. Secondly during the main boil you lose nearly one gallon of volume just due to evaporation. Adding this additional volume near the end of the boil should give you better hop utilization… Should is the key word here.
EC-1118 is a strong fermenting yeast, that adds very little character to its must or wort. It is also supposed to produce nearly no krausen (big foamy head during fermentation that makes a mess of my basement) during fermentation. Hopefully it will produce as good of beer as it does wines and ciders, but I guess I will find out in around a month.
Total cost of this batch was around $35. Original gravity was 1.040, exactly what I was calculating with BeerSmith. Planning to keep it in its primary for 3 weeks, then secondary for another 3 weeks giving the EC-1118 plenty of time to eat up as much sugar as possible.
Home Brew – Hard Lemonade update
Posted by bradinator in Experiments, Home Brewing, Photography on September 29, 2010
My hard lemonade has been fermenting for quite some time now and according to the recipe it is well past its required time for bottling. I decided to siphon off a glass, straight from the fermenter (of course I sanitized the wine-thief with Starsan prior) for sampling.
I took a gravity reading, which was 0.996 (a massive improvement from the 1.040 it was stuck at for nearly 2 weeks), placing it at around 5.7% ABV and 160kcal a pint.
The flavour is dry and sour, leaving it mildly unpalatable at this stage. I am not overly worried as it is very easy to back-sweeten an overly dry cider. Some examples would be an ounce of 7-up or pineapple juice added to each glass to brighten the overall flavour.
I will probably bottle it this weekend, though its obvious that there is still much life left in the yeast as fermentation bubbles are still present.
Home Brew – It’s alive!
Posted by bradinator in Experiments, Home Brewing on September 12, 2010
When I got up this morning I found that the Hard Lemonade was bubbling away. This is a very good, very relieving sight to see as it means that it will not be going down the drain.
I will probably just leaving it in the fermenter for 30 days before moving it again or even taking another gravity reading. I don’t want to jinx it!
And the answer is yes, it can be fermented.
Home Brew – Hard Lemonade is doomed
Posted by bradinator in Experiments, Home Brewing on September 11, 2010
Apparently I was wrong. It cannot be fermented.
In a last desperate attempt to salvage my Hard Lemonade I moved it back into a glass carboy (easier to monitor if its fermenting through glass) and I am planning to pick up another pack of EC-1118 wine yeast and re-pitch. I also placed a light beside it to give some ambient heat which will also help rejuvenate the yeast.
Failing that, this home brew is toilet bound.
On a side note the Mead-Beer-Thing is has been fermenting vigorously since its creation. Whether or not it will be drinkable may not be known for nearly a year, as meads benefit greatly from extended bottle conditioning.