Homebrew Wednesday #9: Smoked Wheat All-Grain

It's been more than a year now since I first got into brewing and so far I've successfully brewed a lager, a wheat, an IPA, and a bitter. However all of these tasty beverages have a common denominator in that they were all kits. That is, all of these beers were made with cans of malt extract and most of the hard work had already been done for me. While there is still brewer's caution to be maintained while making beer this way it still has an overarching theme of simplicity.

Enter, my girlfriend.

Sue witnessed the beginning of my time as a brewer and correctly assumed that I was always interested in exploring other avenues of brewing tasty things to drink. I also have the penchant for constantly talking about things that interest me. For Christmas she got me a one gallon beer kit from the Brooklyn Brew Shop (BBS), a small homebrew start-up company. The kit consisted of a bag of grain, hops, and yeast; all the things I would need to do a mini-batch of all-grain beer. At this point I'd become pretty comfortable with kit brewing and this awesome gift hurtled into my comfort zone like an exciting cyclone of novelty steeped in mysterious, mushy passion.

Or something.

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Homebrew Wednesday #8: Pineapple Wine

Back in October I was at work and one of my CT's was asking me about my brewing adventures. Of course I was more than happy to fill her in on the variety of wines and beers I had already brewed and wanted to brew in the future. She suggested pineapple.

I agreed.

I found the perfect juice at Jason's, an upscale supermarket in the basement of Chung You Department Store. It came in juice boxes of one liter each, just what I needed, so I grabbed four of 'em and high tailed it back to my place. The boxes reminded me of the BIOES juice that I'd used before and I guess I should have checked for fruit pulp/silt after my adventures with my mango wine. I would reccommend doing this if you are brewing with 100% juice as this could mean there is still some particulate matter in the container.

The recipe:

  • 4L Prince Pineapple Juice
  • 1 cup white table sugar
  • 1.5 sachet of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
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Homebrew Wednesday #7: Mango Update!

Hey, chums. Remember my Mango Adventure? Since my primary vessel was so sludgy and pulpy and just plain strange looking, I thought it was time to rack the mango-mystery into a secondary vessel and try to get it away from such heavy amounts of particulate matter and try to make it at least look drinkable.

And the pulpy stuff was weird looking, did I mention that?

Anyway, I stripped off the ass-load of tape I put around the stopper to hold it in place and sanitized one of my lengths of tube to use as a siphon. It was weird pushing through that heavy layer of pulp, and the more liquid I siphoned out the smaller the space between the head-pulp and the bottom-of-the-jar pulp got. I racked off nearly three liters of wine and filled the secondary vessel, which is a slighter smaller bottle. I thought that was a pretty good amount considering how much liquid I almost certainly lost to the pulp-raft.

Haha, PULP RAFT!

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Homebrew Wednesday #6: The Mango (mis?)Adventure

I spent a day a few weeks ago home sick with a cold and after spending pretty much the entire day in front of the computer, in bed, or on the couch, I wanted to do something. I'd taken a packet of my champagne yeast out of the fridge a few days before, so I thought I'd use it.

My last two batches of wine had been relatively common juices, apple and an apple-peach-passionfruit blend, and I was always on the hunt for something new. Hence, why I was walking through the juice aisle at Carrefoure, again, and I happened to see BIOES 100% Mango Juice. Carrying enough back to make a batch wouldn't be easy as I have no storage space on my motorcycle, but then I'd never seen mango before and I thought I should get it in case it disappeared.

I probably stood in that aisle for a full five minutes debating on whether I should buy it or not. In the end, my curiosity won out and I grabbed four 1 liter boxes of the stuff and jammed them in my bag.

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Homebrew Wednesday #4 Coopers English Bitter

The Coopers English Bitter I just brewed is the third and final beer that I brought back to Taiwan from my trip to Singapore. I have been steadily working my way through my IPA supply and I'm sad to see that I only have five bottles left. But, I have shared this one a lot more than my other beers in part because I've had more occasions to do so, and also because  I'm proudest of this one; it's the clearest, cleanest beer, tastiest beer I've brewed yet.

Not that I'm bragging. (I am).

Anyway, I was doing some math the other day and it occurred to me that I didn't have to wait until my IPA was entirely gone to brew my next batch of beer. In the past I've had to wait because I only had enough gear to bottle and drink one brew at a time. But over the last few months I've been steadily collecting Grolsch swingtop bottles and I've got about 35 of them now. Score! Cheers to Uzo in downtown Taichung for setting aside a whole bunch and donating them to my brewing adventures.

The recipe:

  • 1.7kg can Coopers English Bitter 
  • 500g Coopers Light Dry Malt
  • 1 tsp Wyeast nutrient blend

For the EB I made a fresh batch of sanitizer because I'm super paranoid about sanitation and  put on some of my favorite tunes and got everything ready to go.

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Homebrew Wednesday #3: Weisswine Batch 2

While enjoying my Coopers IPA I got the itch to brew something, again. I was already stocked up on beer so I thought I'd make some more Weisswine, and experiment a bit more this time.

Sue and I made a trip to Costco and I bought 14 liters of juice to ferment into alcohol-filled-tasty-goodness; 8 liters of Treetop apple juice and about 7 liters of Kirkland apple peach passionfruit. I grabbed the apple because I'd wanted to make something hard-apple since I saw a recipe for Apfelwein floating around on a few forums. Once I saw the APPF juice Sue said that it sounded tasty as well, so I bought both.

The recipe:

Hard Apple

  • 4 liters of Treetop apple juice
  • 2 cups white table sugar
  • 1 cup boiled raisin nutrients
  • 1/2 sachet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

APPF

  • 2.87 liters of apple peach passionfruit juice
  • 700 ml of Treetop apple juice
  • 1 cup boiled raisin nutrients
  • the other 1/2 of a sachet of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

I went with different juices for these because the BIOES juice I used last time was ok, but not that great, and these are sold in bulk. I also wanted to make something that actually tasted good. I added a bunch of sugar to each one to up my ABV, but I varied the amount slightly to see how it affects the taste. More importantly, this time I had proper yeast! Bread yeast did the trick just fine last time but a lot of the off flavors and dryness were probably primarily due to that as well as the high fermentation temperature. Bread yeast is not made for making booze.

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Home Brew Wednesday #2: Inmate Wine

Happy home brew Wednesday. Let's get right into it, eh?

After I'd brewed two beers with my Coopers Kit, I felt hungry for some more brewing experiences, and did some homework. That, friends, is how I stumbled upon Inmate Brew.

Inmate Brew itself is notorious throughout countless correctional institutions across the United States, and abroad I'm sure. It is also called pruno, which is not what I made, as that is made with bread as a yeast substitute or relies on rotting fruit for fermentation. Yum. Obviously I have a touch more freedom with my materials as I'm not a convicted felon doing five-to-ten in Leavenworth.

At least, not yet.

Tehee!

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Home Brew Wednesday #1: Coopers IPA

After I brewed my last batch of Coopers Wheat, I ran out of Carb drops. Two beers worth of tasty homebrew fix-ins in the fridge and no way to carbonate them. Sigh. Good thing that in June I took a three week sabbatical back to the states for my pal's wedding. Amidst chugging as much tasty microbrew as I could get my hands on and thickening my waistline on some good ol' American cuisine, I ordered eight bags of the Coopers Carbonation Drops. I figured that was enough for a couple beers and some other adventures as well.

Then, two days after I got back from the states I got all my gear out of the closet and brewed my Coopers IPA. I was feeling much more confident this time around having two other successful batches under my belt and I was excited to make a darker beer after making the Lager and the Wheat.

The recipe: 

  • 1 can Coopers IPA ME
  • 500g light dry malt
  • 300g dextrose
  • 1/2 a tablespoon (or so) of Wyeast nutrient

This time around I changed a few things and even though it was only my third beer I felt the itch to start experimenting.

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Homebrew: Coopers Wheat Beer

 

It didn't take me long to drink up all of the Coopers Lager that I brewed for my first batch and the more empty bottles I had, the more I wanted to brew another beer. Of course, getting my ingredients was an ever present problem and I had no wish to kick out a ton of money and have some goodies shipped from the Coopers office in Adelaide to my house in Taichung. Luckily, Chinese New Year solved my problem.

As a side note, for those of you who aren't so familiar with Chinese culture, when the lunar year ends in January of February there is a big celebration that you can read all about here. Mostly for foreign teachers like me it means that we have a week off of work and it's the perfect time for travel.

I went to Singapore.

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