A Bad Beer Thread

[John Coloccia]

FWIW, I hate fruity drinks myself...despise them. That said, I really don't mind a nice blueberry ale from Maine. It's not anything I'd ever seek out and buy, or even anything I'd ever order at a bar, but if I find one in a cooler at a BBQ when I'm up in New Hampshire, I'll surely try one. It's one of those unexpected flavors that really go well together, IMHO.

[daniel lane]

Shawn, you just need the right gateway IPA. I used to dislike IPAs as well, but then I had just the right one...now I'll drink just about any.

Heh. I'm one of those people that says that people who don't like cats just haven't met the right cat, but I can say definitively that isn't true about IPAs. I'm sure that you are correct for most people, Jason, but I wanted to share what I call "a tequila moment" with IPA that has kept me off it forever: When I was in grad school, I volunteered at a local microbrewery - I helped run the bottler and stacked cases, got paid in beer and the ability to order brewing items through them. One day, someone hopped the IPA but didn't record it on the clipboard; sure 'nuff, later someone came buy and hopped it again. Wound up with something like 160+ IBU. Of course, they couldn't sell it, so we all got (corny) kegs of the stuff if we wanted it. I was able to drink about half the keg before I had to give up, and ever since, the grassy/hoppy flavor just puts me off. I'm probably limited to something like 60 IBU, these days.


daniel

P.S. "Tequila moment" doesn't mean I got sick drinking too much beer, but the my reaction to hops is the same. I had lots of friends that drank too much tequila and wouldn't touch the stuff for years afterwards, so that's where it came from.

[Ryan Mooney]

One thing for the less beer-nerdy folks to note on this conversation is be careful how deep you decide to go.

Its easy to learn things you didn't know you didn't like until you learn to taste them. Taste is a pretty complex thing and sometimes once you've isolated a flavor its hard to un-taste it. One of the major commercial beers (intentionally unnamed) has a distinctive "green apple" flavor, it was an acquaintances favorite beer until I made an off handed comment about "how do you like that green apple flavor", after that he couldn't untaste it and the beer was basically ruined for him forever (ok I didn't feel THAT bad about it ).

Having said that, if you ever get a chance to take a sensory perception workshop it is totally worth it just to learn how much you don't know about what you know.

Did anyone ask you to be the brewmaster for a brew pub?

Yes, although I admit I've only brewed on systems above 2bbl a couple of times and only with the resident brewer calling the shots. I can say that you likely made a smart choice in sticking with the day job though.

Most of my freinds outside of work are either currently or previously professional brewers or work in related industries. They are definitely some of the hardest working folks I know and the pay is generally not nearly as good as you might hope for. One head (only) brewer I know at a 7bbl brewpub still does drywall on the side (partially because he needs the extra money, but he also noted that its not nearly as hard of work so its kind of a nice break during the slow season ).

Still a plausible dream? Perhaps, but with a good dose of reality.

Most of the new material forms of ingredients like pelleted hops are to address different issues such as convenience or shelf life (not taste). <snip> With greater exposure to air in pelletizing, some taste is lost. Leaf hops taste better but are much more sensitive to heat and oxygen exposure. They should be refrigerated at all times.

The whole vs pellet discussion is complicated because while you definitely loose some aroma/flavor on pelletization they are more stable over time so depending on how your leaf hops were stored/managed/sourced it can end up either/or depending. Also on the commercial scale you often have to deal with what you can get a contract for (if you can get a contract and aren't begging on the spot market) nowadays. That all largely explains some of the rather shall we say "interesting" beers that have come out in some markets as folks struggle to get somewhat appropriate hops. Living just down the road from Yakima where the majority of the US hop product comes from we're pretty lucky so our club buys in bulk at harvest time and then we divy it up and the store them vacuum sealed and in the freezer. So I completely agree that FRESH and properly stored whole hops are better, but pellets hold a bit better so sometimes the scales can tip a bit in the other direction.

I also like to experiment with some weirder hops (some of the polish ones for instance are interesting) that are only really available in pellets which is too bad since my system works so much better with whole hops (my kettle doesn't whorlpool very well for a couple of reasons and my hopback setup is .. meh).

Filtering out the various residue from the grain, hops and proteins is not fun and most homebrewers aren't particularly good at it. It shows in the lack of clarity of their beers. For styles such as a Wit, the lack of clarity gets them poor marks in competition.

Generally I find the easiest place to combat chill haze is as early as possible in the process. Mostly a vigourous boil and a fast chill are my main weapons (some high protein beers are more intransigent and a bit of irish moss helps there).

If others are having issues some basics on resolving the problem are here: https://byo.com/stories/item/486-conquer-chill-haze.

OTOH unless you're entering competitions its mostly an aesthetic issue so its not something to get overly stressed about for a beginner. Excessive yeast sludge in the bottle is a different issue and one that can/should be fixed though.

I only know a couple of breweries under ~30bbl that actually filter - usually with a centrifugal system, that's a big investment though and most rely on similar techniques to what I do at the home scale (usually once they add a bottling line is when they start filtering - or shortly thereafter once some problems start to show up).

Do you actually run through a pressure filter? That's commitment

I'm guessing you also counter pressure fill for bottling?

I also probably wouldn't call out wit as a clear beer
http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style16.php
"The beer will be very cloudy from starch haze and/or yeast, which gives it a milky, whitish-yellow appearance."
I actually intentionally add haze to my wit with the addition of a couple tbsp of bread flour slurry late in the boil (which idea I got from an article on Pierre Celis).

Additionally, If you start with dry yeast you have a much more limited selection of yeasts. Dry yeasts are more shelf-life friendly and they are selected for that attribute, not taste. Moreover, most do not prepare dry yeast properly and end up under-inoculating the wort with yeast.

Agreed its not for all beers and not all dry yeast is recommended. There are some really good dry yeasts out there now though, the fermentis products are generally fantastic and properly used I'm quite convinced that they are just as good as comparable wet yeasts (we've done same wort multiple yeast blind taste tests in my club so I have a reasonable degree of confidence). Can I get a good dry yeast for a Belgian Quad? No.. but I've placed well in large competitions with WB-06 for a wit (its actually one of the cleaner wheat yeasts I've used) and similarly with US-05 for pale ale/IPA (can throw some peach flavor if brewed at the same temp as say 1056 but clean when cooler), S-04 for english milds (although I prefer some of the other english strains for some beers) and surprisingly the W-34/70lager is surprisingly ok for some lagers (never expected to see a viable dry lager yeast at all - it does like a real starter though). Some of the Lallemand products are also good enough to use. I say this having good friends who work at a wet yeast lab who'd probably stab me for being a traitor

I've also had the "you should bloom your yeast" argument a number of times (I think the yeast being weak/stressed probably generally counts more against you in that case than absolute cell count but they both contribute). However I'm unsure if its more of a problem than leaving a smack pack in the car or vial though which I've also seen with depressing regularity.

At the very least I encourage folks to keep a couple of dry yeasts on hand as an emergency "omg its been a day with no bubbles" fix - and yes that shouldn't happen either with properly started yeast.. but.. (and as I'm sure you know getting a lot of folks to do starters is more challenging than it should be. I mean heck if they won't take 2 minutes to sprinkle the dry yeast on some warm water with a pinch of Go-Ferm.. and stir it once.. sigh).

My point on the bags is that the water temperature in the center of the bag will not be the same as that of the water outside of the bag. This is especially true when you get beyond five gallon batches. Additionally, you are extracting more of the sugars from some grains but not others in the bag, leaching more proteins out that later have to be removed.

Its been a while but I don't remember it being a LOT harder to stir in and break up the lumps/mix with a bag than in the mash tun. The bag does get in the way a little but you generally have a bit looser mash as well so it seemed to work out mostly (efficiency of course drops from the lower mash density).

I don't have a mash pre-mixer to get a perfect blend into my mash tun although that would be cool The point to point variation in mash temp the half dozen mash tuns I've measured with an instant read thermometer was surprising, which is why I mostly rely on doing the math for input water temp to water/grain volume and system loss to point at a target rather than direct read nowadays. It seems to stabilize after 5-6 minutes but without a pre-mixer its hard to get super consistent up front.

Personally I'm pretty sensitive to the tannins pulled out when you over extract, but since BIAB is basically close to batch sparging I wouldn't expect that to be a huge issue (the lower mash density could perhaps contribute a smidge, but above about ~1.8P/1.007G tannin extraction isn't a huge issue since the osmotic pressure is enough to keep it in the husk).

I don't know of a good way to remove a lot of tannins once they're in (gelatin and/or polyclare pull some out, but if its significant they aren't a lot of help)? Mostly I'm just careful to not oversparge which generally keeps the issue below my flavor threshold.

Doing a protein rest would indeed be harder to hit temp on (I don't bother with most beers anyway, but for some styles it does matter). You could remove the proteins after with a protease like brewers clarex/clariferm (white labs sells clariferm) - which would mostly solve the clarity/chill haze problem (interestingly enough its made using the same Aspergillus oryzae that is used to convert rice starch for sake - at one temperature range it produces amalyse that converts starch and at another it produces protease that converts proteins - thus its also used for making soy sauce and traditional miso, amazingly cool stuff).

One of the results of this lack of temperature control is inconsistency from batch to batch.

Yep, that's one of the appealing features of upgrading to something like an eHERMS system. Its one of those "I should take the plunge but.." things . I can hit within a degree or so pretty consistently (once stabilized) but its still been a bit of a challenge to do so with a regular mash tun just because of the environmental variance (careful math works but..).

Getting a GOOD thermometer helps a lot - after killing lomls thermapen (it didn't like the moisture DOH! that was an expensive mistake!) I ended up getting one of these: http://thermoworks.com/products/low_...ml#MoreInfoTab which has a nice long reach and good accuracy/fast read. Although it only specs +-1.8F over its whole range on the website within the mash temp range its a bit tighter and ends up being less than +-0.5F. I have a hard time getting much more accurate than that because of variations in temp throughout the vessel so its been close enough for me.

Unfortunately at the homebrew scale its also hard to get ingredient consistency (especially in the more complex base grains like floor malts, or the english 50-60 crystals, etc.. which are still worth it imho because they're so much more tasty) so I end up with measurable variation from bag-bag (or for things like english crystal lb to lb) of grain (not enough to bother me personally, but I don't do a whole lot of competitions either).

I am not promoting that people shouldn't home brew, but only that there are ways to enhance the qualities of your brew.

I think we're in violent agreement there! I'm more saying that you can still make pretty consistent and quite decent beer with the basic methods, at least for the simpler/more common beers. Will it be award winning? maybe not (although winning contests is at least partially a volume game).

Once they're hooked of course is the time to start working on upgrading the system (its not a slippery slope at all, y'all come on in the water is fine ).

Contrary to other all-grain home brewers, I tend to use more or completely specialty grains rather than simple sugaring grains (2 row or 6 row plain barley). It is more expensive....

Basically the same theory here, I think this is becoming more common as folks start realizing the difference it makes. At large commercial scale the cost difference can be significant. At the homebrew scale we're generally talking about a few bucks per batch and the quality difference is indeed compelling. Switching from extract to all grain basically makes up the cost difference anyway with the extra bonus of more options

We're in a very fortunate time in homebrewing (and pro-brewing for that matter) history with a basically unprecedented availability of a range of high quality ingredients and equipment.

[Richard N Elliott]

Really interesting Ryan! Thanks!

I have in my bucket list the desire to home brew my favorite liquid (Beer, not just a breakfast food anymore ). As this thread progressed, I decided that rather than brewing batch after batch of this and that, I would concentrate on trying to duplicate (or surpass for my taste) Guinness for a stout and Foster's for a lager. This thread has given me direction!

[Ryan Mooney]

I would concentrate on trying to duplicate (or surpass for my taste) Guinness for a stout and Foster's for a lager. This thread has given me direction!

That's a good strategy to start with because you have fewer variables to worry about.

I might advocate against starting with a lager, they're a lot harder to get right than an ale (and are fussier about temperature control/other details). Maybe a gold or a blonde ale instead (similar light character/body but less difficult to do).

My generic advice to beginners is to:

• Watch your sanitation cleanliness matters and is job #1.
• Get as good and as fresh of ingredients as you can. If there is a local shop that's decent make friends there, most shops are really friendly and can be really helpful.
• Make some easier beers of medium strength: pale ale, mild, stout, porter, blonde (not a lager or a strong beer like a barley wine). Don't get to stressed if it's not exactly like you had hoped at first, that will come with time.
• Once you've done a couple compare them to a commercial baseline and see what you like more our less about yours and then start adjusting (it's nice if you have a more experienced friend or can take a sample to the homebrew shop to get ideas on what to adjust next).
• Finally in the immortal words of Charlie, don't worry and have a homebrew!

[Joe Mioux]

interesting thread.

to the OP. wheat beers

[Tim Morton]

I've been brewing since 1984 and win awards to this day. Did anyone ask you to be the brewmaster for a brew pub? (Admittedly I didn't think I was ready for that scale and made a better living doing architecture). I didn't say you couldn't make good beers from grain bags or extract / grain mixes. I did and still can. Others can and do as well. But the limitations of stale or limited choices in a kit is just that, a limitation. You can taste the differences in using say Cascade hops vs say Goldings as the bittering hops even if you get the same IBU's. Most of the new material forms of ingredients like pelleted hops are to address different issues such as convenience or shelf life (not taste). Pellets don't taste as good but are definitely more convenient. With greater exposure to air in pelletizing, some taste is lost. Leaf hops taste better but are much more sensitive to heat and oxygen exposure. They should be refrigerated at all times. Filtering out the various residue from the grain, hops and proteins is not fun and most homebrewers aren't particularly good at it. It shows in the lack of clarity of their beers. For styles such as a Wit, the lack of clarity gets them poor marks in competition. Many home brewers introduce oxygen after fermentation which can create skunky esters in the beer. Dry hopping with pellets is just wrong.

Additionally, If you start with dry yeast you have a much more limited selection of yeasts. Dry yeasts are more shelf-life friendly and they are selected for that attribute, not taste. Moreover, most do not prepare dry yeast properly and end up under-inoculating the wort with yeast. This often produces unpleasant esters. You will taste it in the finished beer.

My point on the bags is that the water temperature in the center of the bag will not be the same as that of the water outside of the bag. This is especially true when you get beyond five gallon batches. Additionally, you are extracting more of the sugars from some grains but not others in the bag, leaching more proteins out that later have to be removed. If / when you swish the bag around (which I have seen many a homebrewer do), your water temperature changes due to exposure to the air. When this happens the enzymes do not produce the sugar profile you are seeking. The enzymes on the crushed (not chopped) malted barley are very temperature sensitive with a range of +/- 2 degrees F between activating different enzymes. One of the results of this lack of temperature control is inconsistency from batch to batch. I have done that in the past and then experienced the differences from batch to batch on the same recipe. When you do things right, and with precision, you gain control of a complicated, multi-variable system.

I am not promoting that people shouldn't home brew, but only that there are ways to enhance the qualities of your brew. There is a step up in the the quality of your brewing process when you go all grain with a proper mash / sparge setup. Getting the mix of sugars that will ferment or non-ferment materially changes the flavor profile. Contrary to other all-grain home brewers, I tend to use more or completely specialty grains rather than simple sugaring grains (2 row or 6 row plain barley). It is more expensive, but I think one can taste the difference. It really isn't that difficult to buy / build a proper sparge set-up for 5-6 gallon batches. Most all the materials store inside the larger vessels. Admittedly, I tend to value high precision in most things. I am also largely a neander in woodworking and I think that extends to brewing. Making alcohol is easy, making "beer" is somewhat hard, making good beer is hard, and making consistent good beer is harder still. But it ultimately is the goal. I offer my advice freely. No one has to take it.

As to the kits, having watched them being assembled at various places, I'll stand by my opinion.

Shawn...i have a decent home kegerator, and am loving some of the craft beer selections i have been able to find here in VT. But its a bit of a PIA tracking down good beers, and its a bit more expensive buying than i was hoping it would be. Around $245 for a half barrel...$135 for a 1/4, and $85 for a 1/6 plus a $50 deposit on the keg.

So being the diy type i have been toying with the idea of brewing and kegging my own beer and I was wondering if you would be able to point me in a direction to research and then ultimately purchase supplies.

[Jason Roehl]

Shawn...i have a decent home kegerator, and am loving some of the craft beer selections i have been able to find here in VT. But its a bit of a PIA tracking down good beers, and its a bit more expensive buying than i was hoping it would be. Around $245 for a half barrel...$135 for a 1/4, and $85 for a 1/6 plus a $50 deposit on the keg.

So being the diy type i have been toying with the idea of brewing and kegging my own beer and I was wondering if you would be able to point me in a direction to research and then ultimately purchase supplies.

This isn't to discourage you from embarking on homebrewing, Tim, but you MIGHT save money by homebrewing over buying from a brewery, considering the cost of equipment and ingredients. If you attach almost any value to your time, however, you definitely won't save money. Again, that's not to discourage, just to inform. It's a hobby like any other--you can do it simply and cheaply with so-so results, or you can put a lot of time, effort and money into it with (possibly) much better results. Only you can decide where your enjoyment is maximized on that spectrum.

I can buy a 5-gallon keg of high-quality craft beer from a local brewery for $55 (I supply the keg), or one of their "premium" beers for $65. It's not hard to have $30+ in ingredients for that size of batch if I'm homebrewing. Start to finish, I'd say I probably end up with 6-8 total man-hours into a 5-gallon batch, too. And for a brewing/kegging setup, you're talking over $500 in equipment from startup. That number goes much higher if you want to brew 10-gallon batches or larger, as the equipment gets expensive quickly when you're talking larger volumes.

[Kent A Bathurst]

......... There are all sorts of Belgian beers that have fruit flavors in them..........

Late to the thread.

Hoooo-BOY!! There are some doggone legitimate experts here. Good for you guys - I cannot add any guidance. However:

1] I will never - NEVER - again drink anything with the words "Belgium" and "beer" on the label. God Save Us All from that fruity dreck.
2] Me - I likes IPA - some of it, some of it not. Depends.
3] Interesting read. Very. Nice work, comrades.
4] Gimme a heads up when we get to a thread on Italian Super-Tuscan wine. I'll be ready to rock 'n' roll.


OH - BTW - The 3 - 4 trips I have made to Great Britain................man-o-man-o-man. The stuff they pull in the pubs is unparalleled in my many decades gulping beer/ale/lager/bitters - whatever you want to call it. Nothing even close to comparable here in the Colonies. Worth the plane fare just for a week of time in legitimate pubs.

Regards,

Kent

[Tim Morton]

Not sure i can see $500 in start up since i already have the kegerator. I know i will probably need a new coupler, unless the corny kegs for for home brew have a sankey coupler on them?

I know there will be brewing and cleaning equipment to buy, and the labor is fine...i think i can dedicate a weekend or two every couple of months to making beer, and i have a basement that is relatively cool and somewhat what temperature stable.

[Vince Shriver]

While serving at DaNang Air Base ('66-67), whoever was in charge of buying beer ordered a huge quantity of "rice beer" (Crown by name). It was horrible and nobody bought it. The powers that be eventually offer it at "two for one" (which was kind of laughable since a can of beer was only 15 cents to begin with) - and still nobody bought it. Eventually they pronounced that until the Crown beer inventory was depleted, there would be no other beer for sale. After 2 weeks of no beer sales, they brought back American beer and the Crown beer could be had free for the asking. Even then is was a rare occasion to see someone with a can of Crown in his hand. After a month or so it just disappeared.