Home Brewing

[biometrics]

@biometrics Not Star San, but the same thing imho
View attachment 7609

I haven't even used my Y-Clean yet, still using the Iodophor sanitiser.

 

[satanboy]

 

[Snyper564]

Leffe blonde clone 6.5 percent turned out great!

Also did Palmers fighting urukai barleywine about 10 percent just in time to age for Christmas. Bottling this weekend.

@biometrics why not try kveik? All my beers have gone super well absolutely no issues. Fermenting at 34deg. But can do lower to 20deg as well. You can brew and bottle within 7 days

 

[biometrics]

@GreGorGy what do I need to get to start kegging rather than bottling, it's so much work. Costs?

 

[GreGorGy]

@GreGorGy what do I need to get to start kegging rather than bottling, it's so much work. Costs?

OK - the basics first. You need a keg. Anything under 20L is a waste of time and money. The rand difference between 10s and 20s is minuscule and you can always put a 10L brew into a 20. You can't the other way around. And a 30L keg is the same so my advice is to get a 30. Right now, all you can get is G-spear kegs, which means you need to buy a G-type coupler. You also have to unlock the spear. But that costs nothihng. You will need fittings and pipes. Gas and beer. And at one end of those lines, you will need a tap. The other end needs gas. And that gets complex:

(a) 30L keg (1800)
(b) G Coupler (1000)
(c) Fittings and pipes (1000)
(d) Tap (700 upwards)
(e) Gas (god help us but 800)

Minimum cost is 5500. And these are rough estimates from my own experiences. BUT you will stop washing bottles. And it will be worth it in the medium run.

(e) Gas god help us: Guinness on tap is elusive. Nobody has it. Unfortunately, it is just Guinness on tap that uses nitro. My setup is nitro and it costs more. For the 800, you will be into C02 ad the respective tap. Nitro costs 700 for the tank but R4/day rental. And the tap is R900+. And all it will do is stouts and bitter or dark ales. Which is where my tastes lie, so that was my first setup. You can do CO2 for less.

I was telling one of my staff earlier tonight that his dad (who brews) must move away from bottles into kegs. Initial outlay is hard but not washing bottles is fantastic.

 

[biometrics]

OK - the basics first. You need a keg. Anything under 20L is a waste of time and money. The rand difference between 10s and 20s is minuscule and you can always put a 10L brew into a 20. You can't the other way around. And a 30L keg is the same so my advice is to get a 30. Right now, all you can get is G-spear kegs, which means you need to buy a G-type coupler. You also have to unlock the spear. But that costs nothihng. You will need fittings and pipes. Gas and beer. And at one end of those lines, you will need a tap. The other end needs gas. And that gets complex:

(a) 30L keg (1800)
(b) G Coupler (1000)
(c) Fittings and pipes (1000)
(d) Tap (700 upwards)
(e) Gas (god help us but 800)

Minimum cost is 5500. And these are rough estimates from my own experiences. BUT you will stop washing bottles. And it will be worth it in the medium run.

(e) Gas god help us: Guinness on tap is elusive. Nobody has it. Unfortunately, it is just Guinness on tap that uses nitro. My setup is nitro and it costs more. For the 800, you will be into C02 ad the respective tap. Nitro costs 700 for the tank but R4/day rental. And the tap is R900+. And all it will do is stouts and bitter or dark ales. Which is where my tastes lie, so that was my first setup. You can do CO2 for less.

I was telling one of my staff earlier tonight that his dad (who brews) must move away from bottles into kegs. Initial outlay is hard but not washing bottles is fantastic.

Need to digest that. I don't mind the expense. I'll recoup it over time. Thanks.

 

[biometrics]

OK - the basics first. You need a keg. Anything under 20L is a waste of time and money. The rand difference between 10s and 20s is minuscule and you can always put a 10L brew into a 20. You can't the other way around. And a 30L keg is the same so my advice is to get a 30. Right now, all you can get is G-spear kegs, which means you need to buy a G-type coupler. You also have to unlock the spear. But that costs nothihng. You will need fittings and pipes. Gas and beer. And at one end of those lines, you will need a tap. The other end needs gas. And that gets complex:

(a) 30L keg (1800)
(b) G Coupler (1000)
(c) Fittings and pipes (1000)
(d) Tap (700 upwards)
(e) Gas (god help us but 800)

Minimum cost is 5500. And these are rough estimates from my own experiences. BUT you will stop washing bottles. And it will be worth it in the medium run.

(e) Gas god help us: Guinness on tap is elusive. Nobody has it. Unfortunately, it is just Guinness on tap that uses nitro. My setup is nitro and it costs more. For the 800, you will be into C02 ad the respective tap. Nitro costs 700 for the tank but R4/day rental. And the tap is R900+. And all it will do is stouts and bitter or dark ales. Which is where my tastes lie, so that was my first setup. You can do CO2 for less.

I was telling one of my staff earlier tonight that his dad (who brews) must move away from bottles into kegs. Initial outlay is hard but not washing bottles is fantastic.

Who did you buy it from?

 

[GreGorGy]

Who did you buy it from?

That's where it gets tricky. I had to shop around. My first keg, which was a corny 20L, the tap and all the fittings came from BrewKegTap. Later stuff was from beerplus and yeahbrew.

And I forgot the gas regulator. Here's a sample shopping cart from beerplus, noting four things: the last item - the adaptor - must be the correct size to go from the tap to the beerline on a JG connector. The check valve is on the gas line to prevent beer going up into the gas regulator. The hand valve is extremely useful for cutting beer supply to the tap if you need, for example, to clean the tap. Last thing is this excludes gasline as they are out of stock but you would also need at least a meter of that:

 

[GreGorGy]

The above is a cart for a CO2 tap. A nitro tap costs a bit more but beerplus does not have. The regulator will also need an adaptor for nitro. The gases themselves come from MyGas (www.mygas.co.za).

 

[biometrics]

@GreGorGy do you basically pour your beer from the FV directly into the keg, hook it all up and you're ready to go? What about cooling, I have a bar fridge, wonder if I can place the keg in there, mmm. And how do you clean the keg and line?

 

[GreGorGy]

@GreGorGy do you basically pour your beer from the FV directly into the keg, hook it all up and you're ready to go? What about cooling, I have a bar fridge, wonder if I can place the keg in there, mmm. And how do you clean the keg and line?

After fermentation completes, I transfer it to a clean FV or HDPE 10L bottles with a tap. These I put into the fridge to cold crash and get the rest of the crap to the bottom. After a day or two in the fridge I decant those into the kegs. First, I gas the keg enough to get the oxygen out. Then I take a tube the 10L or GV's tap that is long enough to reach the bottom of the keg. I release the pressure and remove the spear* and then drop that line to the bottom and fill her up. Obviously if I use two or three 10L bottles, that means changing while filling. No big deal. Once transferred, I put the coupler on and equalise the pressure. My son likes to move the kegs around about to get more gas absorption. After a couple of days, the keg has absorbed enough gas to start pouring although the longer the better.

My kegs can fit in my chest freezer which is the plan soon. Currently, they sit in a bucket of ice on drinking days.

 

[GreGorGy]

For cleaning, I got a kilo of sodium percarbonate that I run through the lines between uses. I also use that mix or the normal sterilising solution to clean the kegs. No soaps of the sunlight type are used.

You get those 5L pumps for gardening to which some sellers have added a little bit of beer line and a straight JG fitting. This allows you to connect the pump to the beer line to the coupler's gas input and through the keg. I use this as well.

 

[GreGorGy]

*The Spear: so, if you have a corny keg, all you do is unclip the top seal and drop the tube to the bottom and fill. But corny kegs are currently like hen's teeth so you would have to get the coupled keg. G is the standard used by SAB but you need not commit to that. The bonus if you do is that you can, if you are self-loathing, hook up a Black Label keg and truly fuck yourself up.

The spear needs to be removed from the keg but it has a little safety notch to prevent the entire head construction from shooting up into your face if you accidentally unscrew it. One needs to remove this safety feature and there are videos on youtube explaining how. I did this one:

 

[GreGorGy]

Today has become a brew day: I have to do 30L of the bitter ale. I really have no choice. And I need to get my stout recipe right so we're starting with a 10L stout. I only have about 4L left of kegged beer. The situation is dire.

 

[Snyper564]

Just finished bottling the fighting urakai barleywine!
From 1094 to 1014 its a 10.5% full bodied beast. Ended with 23 bottles and they all being stored till Christmas

Kveik Ragnarok tore through this in 2 weeks!

 

[GreGorGy]

That's quite strong. And two weeks is quite long for that yeast so that tells me it had a lot of work to do. Wow. The stuff really is impressive. Today's stout was pitched with a third generation ragnarok. The ale will get that too a little later. It is on the mash.

 

[[)roi(]]

Brewed 80L on Wednesday... busy with another 40L today.
Need to brew quite a bit more before I'm off on my work trips in October / November; estimate I need ~30 crates in total to hold everyone over until I return in December. Fortunately friends will be helping to get this all bottled before I leave... whew I really need to consider buying a 100L brew kettle at some point.

My trip has been delayed a little re uncertainty re US travel. Either way it's been a busy time, both work wise, farming and brewing.

I wrapped up the remainder of the big batch brewing and with free time re delay I decided to experiment a little:

• Brewed a Hefeweizen using nutty wheat flour instead of wheat malt (my wheat malt was finished) -- Success... a delicious banana bomb hefeweizen (i.e. a good substitute).
• Brewed a ginger beer using ginger concentrate (containing non fermentable sugars); fermented a cane sugar wash to 7% ABV using an ale yeast; diluted to 5.5% ABV, added concentrate and priming sugar -- Success... a tasty 6% ABV / effervescent ginger beer with same sweetness / bite as store bought stoney ginger beer.
• Brewed a lemonade beer using lemonade concentrate (containing non fermentable sugars); similar to ginger fermented a cane sugar wash to 7% ABV using an ale yeast; diluted to 5.5%, added concentrate, squeezed lemon juice and priming sugar -- Success... a tasty 6% ABV mojito style effervescent drink that just needs a sprig of mint.
• Brewed a molasses sugar wash of 7% ABV using an ale yeast; freeze distilled it to ~43% ABV -- Mmmmhh in short... it's delicious dark rum with a serious kicker; it warms your soul all the way down.

 

[Snyper564]

That's quite strong. And two weeks is quite long for that yeast so that tells me it had a lot of work to do. Wow. The stuff really is impressive. Today's stout was pitched with a third generation ragnarok. The ale will get that too a little later. It is on the mash.

The yeast is a beast. I. Must tell you the porter that is now 3 months old with Ragnarok was sooop good. It was good to start off with its now just sublime!

 

[Snyper564]

My trip has been delayed a little re uncertainty re US travel. Either way it's been a busy time, both work wise, farming and brewing.

I wrapped up the remainder of the big batch brewing and with free time re delay I decided to experiment a little:

• Brewed a Hefeweizen using nutty wheat flour instead of wheat malt (my wheat malt was finished) -- Success... a delicious banana bomb hefeweizen (i.e. a good substitute).
• Brewed a ginger beer using ginger concentrate (containing non fermentable sugars); fermented a cane sugar wash to 7% ABV using an ale yeast; diluted to 5.5% ABV, added concentrate and priming sugar -- Success... a tasty 6% ABV / effervescent ginger beer with same sweetness / bite as store bought stoney ginger beer.
• Brewed a lemonade beer using lemonade concentrate (containing non fermentable sugars); similar to ginger fermented a cane sugar wash to 7% ABV using an ale yeast; diluted to 5.5%, added concentrate, squeezed lemon juice and priming sugar -- Success... a tasty 6% ABV mojito style effervescent drink that just needs a sprig of mint.
• Brewed a molasses sugar wash of 7% ABV using an ale yeast; freeze distilled it to ~43% ABV -- Mmmmhh in short... it's delicious dark rum with a serious kicker; it warms your soul all the way down.

Why not add kveik to the mix these things are beasts!

 

[[)roi(]]

Why not add kveik to the mix these things are beasts!

I'll get there in time... not now as I still have a lot of yeast to use up >1kg.

Plus with the warmer weather my brews aren't running that slow anyway; bottle on 6th day; ready for drinking on 9th day. Kveik is probably only going to shave off 2 to 3 days, and it's not that much of urgency considering that I'm pretty well stocked up at most times.
At least the warmer weather is also really great for fruity esters e.g. banana bombs (with Hefeweizen).