My new hobby..... Homebrewing!

[DrewKaree]

Drew: How are you going to fit an airlock to your bucket for the secondary?

Here's a pic of essentially the same method I've got:



The bucket on the left has a grommet instead of a stopper (or bung), but the idea is the exact same.  Drill a hole, throw a rubber grommet or stopper in there with the properly sized hole for your airlock, and stick your airlock in the grommet/stopper. 

A stopper is recommended for primary fermentation (so if pressure builds up, it can push out the whole works), a grommet is said to "work just fine" for secondary fermentation but is NOT recommended for primary fermentation (in a bucket).  If the airlock comes out, the 3-piece is easier to sanitize due to its ability to be broken down into the 3 separate parts and then cleaned. 

Drew, that book I mentioned is called "How To Brew" by John J. Palmer.  It is a really good book, more technical (the appendixes, "Using Hydrometers," "Brewing Metallurgy," "Building Wort Chillers," and "Building A Mash/Lauter Tun," are worth the price alone) and actually probably a better manual than the Joy of Homebrewing, although I like both.

I've gotta take a look at that again.  I looked through the online version and either I just am having a complete brain fart, or I didn't put two and two together about what I was actually looking at

For those of you interested, here's the online book: http://www.howtobrew.com/  I like his style of writing a lot better - the Joy book comes off at times like it was written by a hippy, and although I get what he's trying to do throughout the book (relax, don't worry, have a homebrew), it gets annoying.  I dunno why, but some folks seem to darn near HATE the guy too! 

I was considering building my own wort chiller and waited.  Copper shot up in the 2 weeks I was considering what to do (prices for a premade one was darn near the same price for the copper tubing!), and prices went up AGAIN!  When I originally looked at the tubing, it was $43, and now it's $58 for the same exact thing.  I may just buy one   I saw someone who hooked in a pump to make a whirlpool wort chiller, but when I priced out the pump he used, even from e-bay, the thing was around $100!

I AM interested in mead, and I've had 2 infused vodka's percolating for quite a while now, so the wait isn't an issue with me at all.  If it's worth it, I can deal with that wait

[KenToad]

Are you talking about a single-coil, dual-coil, or a more complex type of wort chiller?  I have a pretty small single-coil and it works pretty well, so you don't need anything too fancy, IMO.

I had forgotten about the online version of "How To Brew."  Thanks for posting the link.  I believe he had originally done the book in an online only format and then it was so popular that it was picked up by a publisher, but I could be remembering wrongly.   

You can do an airlock in the primary.  Just don't fill the bucket up past 5 gallons.  If you have problems, just fill to 4.5 gallons or so.  You're going to have to add a bit of water after you rack anyway and it doesn't make a big difference.  I can see that being a problem specifically if you brew all-grain batches with a full boil since you may have to put all the wort in there and it could be over 5 gallons.

Ok, I will reveal my recipe for mead, which placed 3rd in our local wine and mead contest. 

1 gallon honey, much cheaper and better locally, IMO
1 gallon cider
2 lbs. raisins
water to fill to 5 gallons

I read in an old-time brewing book that I inherited from my grandfather that you should never boil honey.  The flavor is very delicate and sensitive to heat.  The raisins are there to feed the yeast, since grapes/raisins have the perfect blend of nutrients for brewing and I hate the idea of yeast nutrient and other additives.  The cider is optional, but I always seem to do this recipe in the fall, when the local cider production is in full swing.  It's amazing how well the cider flavor blends with the honey.

First boil a couple of gallons of water, then turn off the heat.  Wait a few minutes.  Stir in the raisins.  Wait until the pot is touchable and add the honey.  The water should be just warm enough to make the honey easily soluble.  Wait another 20 minutes and pour it into your bucket and add 1 gallon of cider and/or water to fill to 4.5 gallons.  Fill up to 5 gallons later after racking.  Five gallons fills around 25 wine bottles, if I remember correctly. 

You will need to rack after a few weeks to get it off the lees and then rack again in a month, rack every few months thereafter until it has a tiny layer of yeast on the bottom and you can clearly see a candle flame through the carboy filled with mead, probably after one year.  (Another reason to have at least one glass carboy, to admire, judge your beer/wine. )

[DrewKaree]

Are you talking about a single-coil, dual-coil, or a more complex type of wort chiller?  I have a pretty small single-coil and it works pretty well, so you don't need anything too fancy, IMO.

Lost the bookmark, but found it again.  Here's the exact idea I was gonna do, although I was first gonna build the chiller and see how it works.  Gonna use a touch larger diameter - not the smallest stuff, but the next step up....I think 3/8"?  Here's the link:

http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php

Yeah, I think that's how Palmer's book made it to print.  I always forget to look for it when I stop in B&N to see what differences there are between the different editions (online is 1st edition only, but print is up to 3rd or mebbe more)

There's several good places I can find cider around here, as well as honey, so I'm thinking I need to give your mead a shot, thanks for the recipe!  Have you tried (or considered) dried cranberries instead of raisins?  I only ask because I'll be headed up to Door County over the summer, which is where I'll prolly pick up some cider, and cranberries are like weeds up there evidently

[divemaster127]

Well I'm getting into brewing pretty quick, I purchased a hybrid beer/wine deluxe kit, local same price as northernbrewing.com.  I'm going to start with a beer mix & work my way up...I have 2 questions...where is a good place to get a wine kit...& I was told you really only need a wort chiller if you are doing 10 galloons of beer or more, other than that just use a sink full of ice...
dm
also my local brewing store, just a wine & beer class once a month I'm going to hit those before striking out on my own...

[KenToad]

Hey Drew,

The reason I use raisins is mainly because I read in a brewing book that they will provide the yeast with the necessary nutrients to overcome the slightly antibiotic environment that the honey creates.  Most modern mead recipes assume that you will boil the water and honey for fifteen minutes and that you will be using yeast nutrient instead of raisins because the yeast nutrient is tasteless and that boiling the honey and water for a few minutes will help the mead to clear faster.  You probably figured out from some of my other posts that I would rather limit my reliance upon manufactured things like yeast nutrient, so, yeah, you could either use cranberries in addition to the raisins or you could do a combination of yeast nutrient and cranberries or you could just try the cranberries and see if you get a stuck fermentation or not. 

That chiller looks very complicated compared to the one I have.  Mine is a simple copper coil that I dip in the hot wort and connect to any faucet and just turn on the cold water.  Basically the cold water just runs through the copper tubing that is immersed in the wort.  The water from the faucet comes into the copper tubing cold and exits into the sink boiling hot for the first few seconds, then it quickly goes from hot to warm.  It's best to stir the wort at the same time and it takes between 5 and 7 minutes to bring the wort down to a temperature that will not further cook the flavor out of the hops, which is the real danger in not cooling down your wort fast enough, in addition to the very slim possibility that your wort will get infected with wild yeast and that that strain will be able to overwhelm the yeast that you throw in there.  The cool thing about this chiller is that it requires no equipment besides a nearby faucet, which I connect to the chiller using a hose from a washing machine secured to the faucet with an adaptor and secured to the end of the thin copper tubing with a hose clamp.  The other bonus is that it can just be rinsed off after each use, since I always dip it in the wort during the last 10 minutes of the boil so that it gets sterilized before I stop the boil and turn on the faucet.

Hey, Divemaster, congratulations on getting started.  A wort chiller is a good investment after you're comfortable with the basics, as you'll see that the sink full of ice thing is just a relative PITA.  By the way, another tip is to set your oven to 150 degrees and put your pot with the grains in there if you are steeping some grains for half an hour.  That way you can go have a beer or play a game of track and field instead of watching the thermometer.

[DrewKaree]

That chiller looks very complicated compared to the one I have.  Mine is a simple copper coil that I dip in the hot wort and connect to any faucet and just turn on the cold water.  Basically the cold water just runs through the copper tubing that is immersed in the wort.  The water from the faucet comes into the copper tubing cold and exits into the sink boiling hot for the first few seconds, then it quickly goes from hot to warm.  It's best to stir the wort at the same time and it takes between 5 and 7 minutes to bring the wort down to a temperature that will not further cook the flavor out of the hops, which is the real danger in not cooling down your wort fast enough, in addition to the very slim possibility that your wort will get infected with wild yeast and that that strain will be able to overwhelm the yeast that you throw in there. 

That chiller is and isn't complicated - that guy just seems able to turn simple multiplication into quantum physics

He quite obviously seems to be a tinkerer, and I can see he's thrown some stuff in there that seems unnecessary.  Basically, all that glorified contraption breaks down to is this:  A regular old immersion chiller and a brewpot with a spigot on it.  Add a hose to the spigot, a pump to draw the wort out, and a kludgy piece of copper tubing to circulate the wort.

When you said to stir the wort, that's all that guy is really doing, only he's doing it with "toys", and somewhat standardizing the process by letting the pump "stir" the wort at a constant pace, and doing so at a pace that allows a faster drop in temperature.

Many setups I've come across seem like they're built by guys who like the tinkering aspect just as much (if not more) than the actual making of the beer!  That's one of 'em.  The plus for his setup (to him) seems to be the ability to settle out more crap and to drop to fermentation temps in 1-3 minutes.  I dunno if the ice buckets are vital, but at the very least I can see the value in adding the circulation the pump provides.