First for my (stuck) plain sugar wash with dry baker's yeast.

>>2808815
there's one up on /ck/ as well which has been up surprisingly long. on that board they usually 404 within 48 hours
>>>/ck/20538552

>>2809147
i'm just going to repeat it here, tomato paste my man.

>>2809326
ah, that'd explain why no one made a thread. I didn't even think to check /ck/ since like you said the threads there rarely last long

>>2809326
>tomato paste my man
kek I know, I'm the leaf paste guy, it's just another one gallon test as a control. I'll be trying various food waste products soon like papaya peels, the tomato paste will have to wait for now.

>>2808815
What does the season matter if you're using concentrate?

>>2809807
it's the season for making and drinking it

>>2809147
i too have tried this multiple times, and its always worked out eventually (just takes longer..like 3 weeks of hot heat vs 3-4 days)

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i know i can substitute acid blend for lemon and tannin for hibiscus or black tea...
BUT HOW MUCH? HEEELP!

>>2811163
too much panic, forgot to include the equivalent of "brewer's yeast" for yeast nutrient... how much i can substitute?

>>2811163
typically for tannins people will just do one cup of plain black tea
unless you need the acid up front to lower the ph, you can just do that by taste after fermentation. but usually one lemon
live yeast isn't a replacement for yeast nutrient, but if you take yeast and boil it in water for a bit to kill it, you use 3 times as much of that as you would use fermaid o. so if you'd use 1tsp fermaid o, you take 3tsp of like baking yeast and boil it in some water. odd that the recipe isn't more specific since you wouldn't want to use the same amount of dap as you would fermaid o

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>itt

>>2811343
>Making wine and mead aren't brewing
Nobody cares

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>>2811343
Of all the flavors in life, you choose sour?

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>>2811397
>>2811402
what the fuck are you mead and winefags diy'ing? you're circlejerking about lemonade recipes go to >>>/ck/

>>2811343
you've done this multiple times, including in threads where over half the discussion is about beer brewing. I have a feeling you don't brew at all and you just like to be angry

>>2811422
been doing a 2L canned pineapple experiment without adding anything additional to see if and to what degree it ferments on its own
think i used around 350g/2L with 400g of sugar. ten days in the SG is around 1,045, which is nothing to write home about but not bad either
not great not terrible

>>2811422
This entire thread is /ck/ and only exists here because it's a slow board.
>Boo Hoo I cook my wort before fermentation so that makes me superior

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>>2811199
my sincere gratitude for you

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ruined my brew bag by buring holes in it, how hard would it be to make something like this for mashing grains?
my boiler is a bit smaller only making 20L at a time

>>2811566
that depends, can you weld stainless?

gonna try my first grain beer recipe soon
any recommendations for a smithwicks clone?

cheap black tea (lipton) + cheap apple juice (food club or worse) = good cider
this is what I drink instead of buying alcohol

>>2812091
i still buy beer because it's too much of a hassle to /diy/ but wine is dead easy and on par with commercial wines so that i /diy/ myself
so if i want a buzz i chug some glorified sugar wine while sipping from a trappist

>>2812190
beer is fun to diy, though it does require a few hours of dedication

>>2812229
my parents used to brew beer on above amateur level and commercially sold, mom recently told the stories how it went and i thought to myself "yeah fuck that i'll stick to wine"
you can get very good quality beer for a relatively cheap here so it's not worth my time and effort trying to compete with that, in my opinion ofc

>>2812190
>>2812233
The Fuckers That Be nearly doubled the price of alcohol here last year for public health reasons so it's far cheaper to home brew than buy. For example a 500ml can of absolute gut rot is like €2 here, a 700ml bottle of vodka €21.
Burgerbros, never give up your guns

>>2812260
lel where tf do you even live, some nordic no fun allowed hellhole?
here it's still around €1 for half a liter can of 8,5% that makes you wish you were dead the next morning, and €14 for a bottle of cheap vodka (which is still expensive)
western europe btw

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>>2812266
Ireland, pic related. Gotta pay for the imported 3rd worlders somehow I guess

Does anyone have a recipe for making sparkling sweet mead? I've found some recipes online but I'd like to see what you guys know.

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>>2812272
>h*ineken
>b*d w*isser
>€3,4/L unbeatable price
baka it's another gorta mór

¿Maybe related...?

I fit a 2Kg Co2 bottle to my Aarke Caronator 3 fizzy water machine, they usually work off 400g bottles.

After use my nozzle still lets Co2 thru, I think maybe the big bottle is at too high a PSA?
Any ideas on what to do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkCo8ieddvg

>>2812260
they've done the same across canada. can't even get shitty contractor buckets for ghetto pruno making on the cheap either because wine kit stores took off in response to increased tariffs on booze.

>>2812233
beer is a pain in the ass but you can do sparkling wine. i made a sparkling pineapple-pear-ginger cider once, it was great

>recently into beekeeping
>sitting on 36kg of honey after first small harvest
making some mead i guess
never done it before
anyone add hops to their mead?
is it worth putting it in a cask for a year before bottling?

>>2812650
video won't be out for like 2-3 months I think, but man made mead is doing a test with like 50 different hopped meads. a lot of people like hopped mead, and as far as I know they tend to dry hop them, and I think I heard the hop flavor lessons with age
how big of a barrel? if it's one of those small home size ones, a year would probably be too much because there's more surface area than on a proper 60 gallon barrel

>>2812721
i see
im growing two pretty old and local variants of hops that ill try using
was looking at a 30 liter barrel or thereabout, dont intend (currently) to make much more than that every year
thanks, i might watch that video guy unless he is obnoxious of course

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>>2811566
Duuude. Just today i created this baby from an 11 liter aluminium pot i bought used for 10 bucks.
Used 2mm drill bits to drill 600 holes into it.
But sanding down the metal shavings was a BITCH.
Next time ill either make fewer holes or cut out a large section of the pot and use nuts&bolts to secure stainless steel mesh over the cut out section.
In any case I'm excited to see if it fits the 3kg of grain needed for my 15L batch.

>>2811625
He needs no such knowledge

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Am i genius or retarded?
>buy 20L pressure cooker as my pot for mashing
>when the wort is done i just close the lid, put on the airlock and let the pot cool down overnight.
>next morning i open the pot briefly to add the yeast and pop the pot into a wine fridge (temp controllable between 12 and 18 C)
The cooking pot IS the fermentation vessel. And it cost 60 eurobucks from an Indian store.

I'm thinking of somehow drilling a hole in the lid and adding a beer-post with a floating tube to the pressure cooker. Exciting!!

>>2813203
interested to see how well this works, might just go with a cheap mesh basket from china though the idea is to keep the grains off the bottom of my boiler, circulation of the water while mashing is a bonus
>>2813207
you keep all the grains in there when you boil and ferment it?

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>>2813413
>the idea is to keep the grains off the bottom of my boiler
There *are* cheapo ways to arrange this. Like adding feet to the inner pot. See picrel.
For me they won't be necessary because the handles of the pot holding the grains are wider than the radius of boiler.

>you keep all the grains in there when you boil and ferment it?
Ah no. The first time i used a cotton bag for keeping the grains ( it sucked )
The second time i used a sieve ( rice cooker insert) that i got from Amazon. It worked well but could only hold 1.5kg of grain
The third time I'll be using my DIY sieve.

>>2813502

Yeah, no cotton bag. You want cheesecloth. Don't boil them, only steep

>>2812650
You can add whatever you like. Try looking up "mead competition recipes" or similar, that should give you plenty of inspiration.

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Thoughts?

>>2813207
no chill with hoppy beers is gonna make them bitter as fuck since they'll stay hot for hours just fyi. people do similar things with 19L kegs all the time so it definitely works.

>>2816350
When you say "no chill" do you mean the part right after the boil, after i take the hops out?
My beer did come out pretty bitter... Dang !!!
So that's what caused it huh?

God friggin damn it.
I thought the whole cooling process afterwards was there just to save time until you can add the yeast.

>>2816350
In any case, thank you for the valuable information!

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>>2808815
I've been making sugar wash and pseudo-wine from apple juice, tomato juice and sweet onions sauce. Just chucked everything in a 10L flask or bottle and then put on the airlock or slightly loose cap.
Completed a 10L batch based on apple juice, sugar, water and baker's yeast, and a slightly later batch based on lemon juice is still brewing. The apple stuff I transfered into liter bottles and made sure nothing was going to explode by opening them daily and checking for hiss.
All at room temp.
I'm happy with the results. The apple liquid benefits from slight sweetening and between 10% and 40% dilution by initial volume.

What's the first next thing to vary or add? And any ideas on what to call the stuff I made?

I should make kilju again. That stuff is nice and it helps with shitting in the morning

>>2816419
"Kilju", thank you that sounds much better than "sugar wash". Now for how to name my "juice kilju".

>>2816442
mix that stuff with koolaid or some other stuff. Drink it all.
drink a hot cup of coffee in the morning and have the best shit ever

>>2816451
Oh, I also made it with coffee already. Just cooled down coffee, bunch of sugar, a bit of yeast, all in a slightly open thermos for about two weeks.
Really excellent, tasted like coffee wine, or perhaps a little bit more pungent.
Flavored syrup or concentrated juice is what I have, I'll try that thank you.

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>>2808815
Did someone say Skittles & Habanero closet mead? TWU toobs!

>>2816277
what's the idea behind the glass?

>>2817057
Surface area for condensation. I thought about using other materials but broken glass is stable, non-porous and cheap. It's a little heavy, though, so I might use aluminum scrap instead. Some plastics might work at those temperatures too. It's all very conceptual right now so we'll see.

Anyone grown hops from rhizomes?
buying from hop farms seems kinda expensive compared to hobbyists selling on ebay etc but I don't want to get something that isn't viable.

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>>2817163
We grow Centennial, Chinook, Cascade, and Mt Hood. Takes a few years for them to produce a lot but all depends on where you live how viable they'll be... zones 3-8 I think is where they grow best. Buy rhizomes from a hopyard unless you know what to look for

>>2816387
Chill to at least 170°F to stop isomerization then you can let it cool the rest of the way overnight

>>2817104
don't you want the condensation to happen in the coil?

>>2817381
It should be too hot for alcohol to fully condense on the glass chunks but not for water not to, so the vapor that reaches the copper tube is more concentrated. It's the same idea as in a proper fractionating column but less fancy.

Also it helps cool down things a bit so the fan won't struggle too much, specially now that it's hotter.

>>2817397
i see. i don't know much about stills
seems bulky though so i'm not sure about the effectiveness of the glass and steel is also a couple of factors less thermally conductive than copper
a double coil, one going up for the water vapour and one going down for the cope juice, would that be crazy?

>>2816277
Get ceramic beads instead, same concept as glass but much easier to use

>>2809147
Check your pH.

>>2812650
>is it worth putting it in a cask for a year before bottling?
I have some 3+ year old mead that seems to keep getting better with age, it's amazing the difference in flavours.
Coffee mead and tea mead.

What does a dry mead taste like?
I've drunk various white wines, red wines and sake

>>2818094
>a double coil, one going up for the water vapour and one going down for the cope juice, would that be crazy?
Yeah I've seen some people do it this way and really it works fine, but I figured the only thing that matters at that stage is surface area for condensation to occur, thermal conductivity is not crucial there since we want it relatively hot for alcohol vapor to pass through, so a bunch of crap of whatever material should also work.
>>2819628
>Get ceramic beads instead, same concept as glass but much easier to use
I'm thinking floor tiles cut into long strips and bundled together, but separated by tiny ceramic beads to prevent unwanted clogging by the water drops.

On the other hand instead of condensing the alcohol on the inside of a copper coil I'm now considering doing it on the outside and run the air or water coolant inside with an aquarium pump. This has a lot of benefits: not only is there more surface area on the outside of a tube than on the inside, but it also doesn't have to be in the shape of a coil, so I can run a vertical zig-zag that allows the condensing alcohol drops to run down freely into the receptacle, and the tube can be much thinner since condensation happens outside. It's easier to clean too. The whole thing can then simply be encased inside PVC piping or some other material to contain the alcohol vapor (maybe a fancy glass tube for the part that contains the copper tube, if I can get my hands on one that is) with the cherry on top being that it doesn't need to be as hermetically sealed as the usual copper coil system.

The paint bucket is just one I found that conveniently fits over my pot that I believe can withstand the heat up there. Heck it could even double as the fermenter too if conditioned it right, who knows?

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>>2819852
Forgot pic of updated draft.

>>2819852
>PVC
Have you cross referenced the chemicals you're producing with a compatibility chart for PVC? Acetone and ethanol specifically: https://www.calpaclab.com/pvc-polyvinyl-chloride-chemical-compatibility-chart/

Also PVC can't get hot

>>2819869
Yeah I was just thinking about that, ChatGPT suggests PTFE or PFA instead but I'll have to do some more research.

>>2819871
Stainless steel or copper. I'm not sure what your prompt was but you'll be hard pressed to find 3" or 4" PTFE/PFA pipe and all the supporting fittings for your condenser

>>2819852
>but I figured the only thing that matters at that stage is surface area for condensation to occur, thermal conductivity is not crucial there since we want it relatively hot for alcohol vapor to pass through, so a bunch of crap of whatever material should also work
brother you need quite a bit of heat to turn water into water vapor, so you also need to get rid of a lot of heat to turn that vapor back into a liquid.
you're using active cooling to condense the alcohol which is correct, but somehow the water will condense by itself? not going to happen. maybe at the very inside surface of your paint bucket but your cut floor tiles to me seem decorative as they're not being cooled in any reasonable way
as for your alcohol condenser, you're overthinking it imo

>>2819881
>Stainless steel or copper
Well, since my design would hardly go above ambient pressure that would be extreme overkill. I can just coat the inside of some cardboard tubes with epoxy or silicone and have zero problems with it (as long as the coating is food grade and thermally stable, of course). The fittings can be proper steel ones.
>>2819892
Fractional distillation is a nuanced process, and my sad stump of a fractionating "column" is an insult to professional ones, but I don't have a lot of overhead space in my kitchen stove so this is better than nothing. You can check out Eric's excellent video on this topic if you want: youtu.be/oBHIc6LwH6o
>as for your alcohol condenser, you're overthinking it imo
Maybe, but I'm just spitballing ideas atm so it's fine. The time to actually work on this stuff is still a few days off.

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>>2819922
i've half watched it. from my understanding if you turn off the reflux cooling at the top that column is borderline useless, he even explicitely said it at around 16m, the vapours get condensed and sent back into the reflux column. if you don't have any cooling there it's just going straight into the (secondary? main? last?) condenser where the ethanol gets turned into liquid
you don't seem to have any active cooling, which is what i'm trying to say. from your first sketch this is what the temperature profile roughly would look like but it applies to your second itteration as well
i don't know much about stills but i do know some basic thermodynamics. i'd just go for an air cooled coil instead of trying to be fancy. if that would be sufficient that's another story but /diy/ waterproof copperwork i'm not comfortable with that

tl;dr i believe it's fundamentally flawed but correct me if i'm wrong

>>2819922
>cardboard and epoxy
C'mon man. I've seen some nigger-rigged stills but this is just niggardly

>>2819932
>paint bucket
>broken glass
>floor tiles
>aquarium pump
what sort of fucking crack moonshine are you trying to make dude

>>2819944
i'm responding to >>2816277 >>2819853, highlighting that he's trying to build a condenser without any cooling

>>2819948
In his defense, the first iteration was a fan and second flowing water through the copper tubing

>>2819960
sure, i've also said there is in theory nothing wrong with his actual condenser, just that his reflux design is fundanmentally flawed; he expects water to condense without getting rid of any heat, that's not how it works
if you make them tall and thin then sure just regular convection might do the trick but some big dome like shape, just no. glass or copper or whatever on the inside isn't going to make much difference

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>>2819932
Well, my guess is you're completely right, but if anything, I could just send the cooling tube over to the bucket and ditch the floor tiles (pic related). That way, I get active cooling on both sides, with the one on the bucket being the warmer one. I'll still try it without active cooling, though, just to see if there's a notable difference on the end result.
>>2819943
>>2819944
I'm not saying I'm dreaming of turning this into a product I can sell, and that I'm trying to cut production costs at any point I can to increase profit margins and become filthy rich, I'm not saying that, but I would like to gift some of these to friends and family once I have a decent enough design which doesn't break the bank for me. I feel like having this discussion here has been extremely helpful for achieving this goal, so thank you guys.
>cardboard and epoxy
I personally don't see a problem with it, I'm just guiding the fumes along so they come into contact with the cooling tube, there's no need for a tight control of pressure or leaks, or so I hope. However, if it proves to be as niggardly as you believe it is then I'll default to proper steel pipes as I previously said.

How long does it take to learn to home brew?
I'm interested in making beer, wine, fruit wine, mead, etc
My motivations for home brew is to make interesting recipes particularly historical ones and I also want to learn a craft as an amateur, particularly one that has been so important throughout human history as brewing has
How long did it take you to progress beyond making hooch tier alcohol to something that was a decent quality?
Which type do you recommend I start with?

>>2820038
Btw one thing that particularly excites me is making bochet

>>2820038
Start with a simple mead. It's honey, water and yeast. Have a small taste every couple of days to get an idea of what fermentation does. All your brews will be good, because you will learn something each time.

>>2820040
Ok
I think I'll go with this recipe
1.5 kg of honey
1 gallon carboy
Lalvin 1118
I think I need some nutrient
Should I backsweeten for my first brew?

Are cider kits ok?

>>2820038
very easy, instead of the usual first brew attempt with a cheap can/pouch and kilo of sugar go get a fresh wort which is pre-made and only requires some yeast to ferment so you can't can't fuck it up
>>2820078
yeah, use dextrose and wine yeast imo
any fruit juice will work too

Any recommendations for anise flavoured alcohol? Is it possible to get those flavours without working with distilled liquors?
I used to chew on Liquorice root, drink Liquorice tea and love Ouzo

>>2820046
Lalvin EC-1118 is a good choice, I use that as well. It can take 2-3 days before you start seeing a lot of bubbles.

Try playing around with this calculator https://gotmead.com/blog/the-mead-calculator/ to get an idea of what that sugar/water ratio will produce.

If you're gonna backsweeten or leave in some sugar, then look up methods to stop the fermentation (kill the yeast). This could be pasteurisation, racking between containers (this requires a lot of time) or using something like "stabivit Vinoferm". Also make sure to get a hydrometer, so you have some idea of what is going on with the sugar from start to finish.

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In sweden you can buy a complete wine making kit for like $100 that gives you 22 liters of pretty good wine.

When you have the kit you only need to buy the grape juice concentrate kit that is like $40.

have you got something similar in your country?

>>2820626
>$100
seems like an utter scam lmao. they sell these kinds of buckets in any hardware store for like €10, the tube you'll find there as well, airlocks are dirt cheap and a hydrometer isn't a must, but also very cheap if you want one.
i nicked my equipment from my parents and grandparents so this cost was reduced to €0. ask around with friends and family if they have carboys laying around they're not using anymore
>grape juice concentrate kit that is like $40.
surely this isn't way overpriced to keep milking you after they sold you a plastic bucket for €50

>>2819995
no clue to what degree this is going to work but at least you're not bending the laws of thermodynamics anymore

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>>2820626
$100 seems average. Here it'd be $60 for the juice and bucket
>>2820637
Assuming you don't have family who have extras of this stuff already, you're looking at around $40 for everything you mentioned

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>>2819995
Or you could just buy the chinesium Vevor for $72

>>2820652
My rebel phase is over, don't worry.
>>2820795
I love it when DIY tells me not to DIY.
Yeah man I already have a proper still, but thanks for the suggestion.

>>2820797
You were contemplating using PVC and epoxy for something that needs to be able to withstand high temperatures so yeah, maybe gift the Vevor to your friends and family

>>2820799
Noted.

I'm a bit confused
I buy a cider kit and it comes with a packet of apple concentrate
I buy a beer kit and it comes with a packet of wort
Do actual brewing companies ever order these kinds of products in or are they doing it for themselves?

>>2821001
lol they do it for themselves
I recently made apple cider with only organic store apple juice, sugar, and baker's yeast and it's great
The tricky part is obtaining a plastic bucket and putting a water lock on it and (if you like) getting a hydrometer

>>2821006
or "plastic bucket", I use big glass flasks I got from a yard sale off a hobbyist winemaker. use whatever material won't foul up your brew and that you're comfortable with.

>>2821001
they do it themselves. for beer they'll use malted grain. I'm pretty sure most cider makers will juice apples so they can control the blend, but if a beer brewery has one cider they make, they're probably buying industrial concentrate and using that

>>2820793
>you don't have family
everyone has a grandparent. i have a memory of 8 yo me looking at the slow bubbling of an airlock, i can still watch it all day
perhaps the curse and blessing of being the offspring of heavy drinkers
my late grandparens' basement is like a small brewery. and i thought my parents were bad. found the basic powders as well; nutrients, tannins, acid, cleaning acid, and some pectinase (empty)
my mom's aunt died of alcoholism. ah well i'm not here for a long time but for a good time

>>2821001
Those kits exist so that the shop selling them makes money come father's day or Christmas. They're meant for people who don't have any brewing equipment or experience who are willing to pay an insane markup just to say they brewed their own beer one time. It's cheaper and better in the long run if you just buy a basic brewing setup (BIAB rig & fermenter) and buy whole malt & hops.

Anons I don't want to get into water treatment autism but I have a concern that many of my batches come out tasting quite similar. I'm uncertain if it's my water (filtered well water from a spring source, not connected to any municipal treated water line) profile or the fact that I've been using US-05 for my past 3 batches.
The resulting taste after fermenting and conditioning is VERY dry, even in lower ABV batches. As in the hop and malt flavours take a backseat to an almost overwhelming dryness. My latest batch was just under 6% and the alcohol flavour was quite noticeable. Is this because of the yeast or my water chemistry?

>>2821209
Brewing water chemistry really isn't that difficult, but you can try using RO water as a test. Do you ferment in plastic? Could be an infection or oxygen leak

>>2816414
the tomato juice they sell in the local aldi is some bio bollocks at €2/L, like the greedy jew i am i just use tomato paste instead
a lot of pulp but it werks. also the brand of bread yeast they sell here must be relatively good as it ferments 230g/l of sugar dry in only 2 weeks
around 13%. depends on the season ofc but the lil niggas are quite competent. not that i would recommend bread yeast but it gets the job done

>>2821791
Yeah I ferment in plastic. Does oxygen exposure really impart dryness? I thought it merely increased risk of bacterial infection.

>>2821926
O2 exposure during fermentation can reduce the hoppiness, make beer taste like pennies, or in a worst case scenario result in infection. If you're fermenting in plastic you could also have bacteria hidden in scratches if you're not careful during cleaning. Before this started happening did you make a sour?

Something that can also reduce flavor is aeration during mashing; it reduces the shelf life and makes your beer taste like cardboard after a while. What's the rest of your brewing setup and a typical brewday entail?

>>2821941
Nope, never made a sour before
>Something that can also reduce flavor is aeration during mashing
I BIAB and try to circulate the wort through the bag with a plastic stirring paddle and also use the smaller end of the paddle to move the grain around in the bag. Does that count as aeration?
>What's the rest of your brewing setup and a typical brewday entail?
My previous brew setup was a BIAB process using a giant paella cauldron (25L capacity) to brew 10-12L batches. I'd mash for about an hour at 65C on my kitchen stove, then take the pot outside and bring it to a boil over a charcoal grill (electric stovetop wasn't powerful enough to bring the wort to a boil) and add hops, boiling for an hour.
Wort is then left in a plastic fermenter that I leave uncovered until the temperature drops a bit, then sealed until it reaches pitching temperature and I pitch my yeast. I do have a bad habit of opening the container to check on the process every couple of days which I know I shouldn't do.
I have a new setup now that my wife's cousins bought me a 45L stock pot that I'm gonna use on a large outdoor butane burner so I'll be able to get much better temperature control and be able to bring the wort to boil for a long amount of time.

>>2822030
Oh yeah I remember you from a previous thread didn't the old homeowner leave that pialla thing behind?

As far as hot side aeration goes just try to keep splashing to a minimum when taking the bag out and you should be good.

Your setup sounds pretty typical and plenty of great beer has been brewed this way. Have you changed anything in your process the last 3 brews? I'd say try making a pils or something light (so you don't have to worry about salts) with RO water and see if you notice a difference, if still the same get a new bucket

Any Australians here? Any recommendations for a good beer kit or wort?
Stouts are my favourite beer but I'm fine with any kind of beer

>>2819995
perhaps i was slightly hiding my power level, i have a master in ME but being a muh education twat is something i try to avoid as i get older
btw nothing more cancerous than a phase change. the temperature remains constant but the convection coefficients (yes, plural) are all over the place. there was a project where i just shifted the burden onto someone else (i'll do the vanilla heat exchanger instead haha) and his experiences he described as "challenging". certainly not an idiot that one, but glad he did it so i didn't have to. if you put a gun to my head i'd just pretend it's all in the gas phase and suddenly condenses when it comes out. calculating convection coefficients there are a bunch of formula out there and they all have different interpretations
the other day someone around here called me incapable of calculating heat exchangers and i was genuinely insulted
anyway, just some niche knowledge on my part i'm not absolutely sure about. how this helps your case dunno, the rabbit hole goes very deep
this blog is alcohol induced

>>2822327
also quite a lot of projects that were solved by copying the previous year's project 1:1 but they most likely got it from the year before them. a friend of mine also asked for my pdf i did myself so i suppose in some cases i'm an OG. it was kind of botched so it probably dind't end up online. something about mosfets and FFT and its harmonics. if i go full retard or don't know i'll admit it but it's something my youthfull arrogant me wasn't capable of

>>2822327
>>2822334
Hey I'm an ME dropout so I've long surrender myself to the fact that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but that's not stopping me from having a lot of fun with this! The design has changed a lot and I'd show you but I've made people here cringe too much already. Once I get a working prototype I'll come back to haunt this thread.

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I need a couple elements like pic rel, any idea where I can get them cheaper than the link below? I need short stubby ones just like that.

https://ebrewsupply.com/products/1600w-120v-tri-clover-compatible-brewing-element

I drink maybe 4-5 beers a week but I've really been thinking about brewing beers for the fun of it

>>2822643
Oh yeah, also been looking at all grain brewing as well
It's retarded but fuck I can't help but be attracted to it

Can anyone tell if barley varieties normally grown for animal feed can reasonably be used for brewing? It's not that malted barley is expensive but it would just be interesting to try and brew beer from the barley we grow

>>2822669
Barley grown for food can surely be used, but it still needs to be malted first.

>>2822688
Of course, just wondering how large the differences are really. Makes sense to optimize the variety if you are producing millions of liters.

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>>2822521
Amazon has Dernord foldovers for half the price, they work great but you'll need 2 for a good boil if you're going 120V

>>2822724
Animal feed is just lower grade. Still food safe, but malting barley has some strict requirements on kernel size and such; anything that falls through the sieve would go for other things such as feed

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>>2822644
Speaking of which anyone else notice how fucking retarded the price of silicone tubing is lately? I paid $10 for this shit 2 years ago, now it's $30???

>>2822741
They may have stricter requirements and unfit barley might get used as feed instead but there are a lot of varieties of barley like any grain and the different varieties have different purposes. The ones for animal feed prioritize protein while malt varieties go for starch

>>2822507
i don't like it when others blog but yet here i am ranting about certain projects. btw this was a course in a specialisation of a specialisation, but the chemist branch was also there. apparently they also need thermodynamics and heat exchangers. i dare to say i'm more capable in this subject than 99,9%+ of the population but even me (yes i know how that sounds) isn't comfortable putting numbers on this, that's why i only gave general advice. like i said i shoved that one "group" project into someone else's shoes (2 tasks and 4 people, we split it 2-2 but i did everying on the other task myself for what i will explain), never asked for his digital copy and i don't have a paper version of it either. usually we have an understanding "you didn't do anything last time so now you can do all the work" and some reports i wrote entirely by myself but that was the first and only time i worked together with him. not even a bad or incompetent guy (you can smell it when someone doesn't know what is going on), but i usually worked together with the same person over and over again because you get an idea over time how good they are and you exchange the workload between projects
/more blogging. i'm not that drunk yet
but yeah this case is either overdesigning everything so you don't fill the room with alcohol vapors or resorting to coding. doing this with pen and paper, yeah dunno
EES btw absolutely sucks, it diverges all the fucking time, everyone was bitching about it and someone just said 'yeah i built in a loop to avoid this". i just put the initial numbers within 5% of the expected range and then it worked but fuck. of this i have a digital copy because i did it all by myself but it's just numbers and 2 lines that go up
engineering shenanigans lol. interesting and answers to a lot of your kiddy question but sometimes it's a pain

>>2822507
oh btw you're open to constructive criticism instead of doubling down so i don't think you're stupid. i've seen stupid here but you're not it
/diy/ can be a very mixed bag

>>2822768
More often than not though you're getting a malting variety that's not passed the qualifications. Almost no one plants feed varieties explicitly; something like 60-70% of barley planted in the US is for malting

>>2822796
We grow a feed variety that is optimized for protein. We have grown a malting variety before though. I am not an american, no doubt things vary quite a bit

>>2822812
Now that we can make plastic from it maybe different varieties other than malting ones will take off, but feed here in the US is mostly corn and onions

>>2822819
söy*, goddamn they've expanded the filter

>>2822819
so y has been filtered for quite a while

>>2822868
Obviously, but now s-0-y is filtered as well

>>2822740
That's what I ordered, but they are too long. I can't fit two of them in my 10gal kettle simultaneously. I'd rather not order from Unibrau, as it's nearly 3x the cost, but if I can't find anything else I will.

>>2822644
>>2822643
I drink about the same, maybe look into 2.5gal batches. I brew for friends too, they just pay the materials bill (which ends up being chicken feed, so it gets my feed cost down).

>>2823189
You could use a pull through tool and silver solder to add another bullhead so you can have them vertically stacked https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/ptbulkhead_tool15tc.htm

>>2823251
doesn't work for my application, but thanks for the thought

>>2823190
How do you the mashing?
Is it possible to get a decent mash from a pot on the stove-top?

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>>2823449
Dernord has 1500w elements that are slightly smaller than what you're looking at (165mm vs your 167mm one)

>>2823484
Use whatever brew calculator of your choice to figure out the strike water temp, dough in, cover it in blankets. You shouldn't even really need to turn the stove on while you're mashing if your insulation is good enough

>>2823484
I do BIAB like normal, in a Unibrau 10g. You can 100% get a great mash from a pot on the stove.

>>2823484
If it's one of those ceramic/glass tops it will be difficult & nearly impossible to bring to a boil. Induction would probably allow for decent temperature control & boil temps (never tried it) but if you have a gas stove that's ideal. Mashing is one thing but you really need to bring that sucker to a boil in order to extract the hop acids.

If you want good temperature control you could invest in a portable butane/propane camp stove thing. I made the switch recently and have improved my mashing efficiency greatly.

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Why Does It Not Ferment???
I can't just yeast + boiled rice and get rice wine???
It smells sour by now and it never really did start bubbling.

>>2825811
You have to mash it with barley so that the barley's enzymes can break down the indigestible starches from the rice into sugars. You can try adding amylase enzyme to your fermentor; my experience has been this will make it taste like a vacuum cleaner but it's about the only thing you can do at this point

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>>2825842
Ah shit, so I'm making spitwine...

>>2825844
If you wait long enough bacteria will do something, maybe even ferment it

>>2825855
yeah but they have to turn most of the sugar into alcohol, "something fermentation" isn't quite enough

>>2825857
Well then go to a homebrew store and get the enzyme

>>2825860
it's called saliva anon, saliva has amylase
and mine has yeast too lmao

>>2825811
are you trying to make sake or something else? for sake you need to get amazake first or make it yourself with koji rice

>>2825866
I'm trying to turn rice into 5% vol or more alcohol, I don't know all the details yet. I just read that malted barley has a lot of amylases and I can make that, but also that heating the starches + amylase + water is what catalyzes the conversion of starches into sugars, so I'm of a mind to just add saliva and heat the mixture to ~32C somehow

>>2825866
I mean I've only made mead from juices so far. I thought the starches would break down fast enough in water after boiling but clearly they don't.

>>2825811
you need to do more than just heat the grains to convert the starch to sugar
our spit does have the enzyme, yeah, so you could chew the cooked rice, spit it out and then ferment that if you don't mind the slight grossness of it
you could also buy koji or chinese yeast balls in order to introduce a food safe mold that will break down the starches into sugars, that's how asian rice wines are made
there is a magic chinese yeast that does that but it works with raw rice, and apparently all grains. angel yellow label yeast. you can get a 500g brick on amazon for 25 bucks. if you want to see it in action watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmvaVWaFFUM
or you could buy malted rice or attempt to malt it yourself to go the beer route. you'd have to bring it up to a specific temp and leave it there for 30 minutes to an hour, probably around 150f but rice might be a bit different idk. that's obviously more involved, but if spit and mold gross you out, that's your option

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>>2825876
>magic chink yeast

>>2825876
>buying yeasts, molds etc
I'm out of budget w.r.t. buying and importing microbes so I'm angling to cultivate my own, I'm working on a scoby and after that I'd be interested in multiplying and long-term storing yeast, or catching wild yeasts. But koji sounds like it'd be pretty difficult to catch or cultivate in Europe. Spit doesn't gross me out I just had a faint hope of only going that route when I've the time to do a traditional Japanese recipe.
I just can't do the chewing part rn bc the rice is already gross, it's sat in its bulb for over a month.

>malt
I'd be willing to seek out wild grains and such to get the right microbes, I can find wild barley easily and have the stuff to malt it at home, I've a hotplate with both temp and "aggression" setting (it tweaks some response curve to work with vessels with large heat capacity / slow propagation from plate to temp measurement rod).

>>2825877
the magic part is from people pitching it into normal temp water and it still works just fine
>>2825880
oh yeah, definitely don't try salvaging a batch that's sat around for a month with no alcohol fermentation and has gone sour. that's a write-off
there's lots of information online about malting rice since it's one of the go to grains for celiac suffering beer enjoyers who can't have normal beer

>>2825883
The magic part is from retards buying this chink mystery garbage at 500% markup when you can buy straight up alpha amylase that will last you years for $6

>>2825880
Crisp or Rahr will send you free samples of malt if you ask them. You'll always need it for every batch though, alpha amylase/beta glucanase can't be cultivated easily

>>2825918
I'm in the EU, but you're right maybe there's a local brewer that would be willing to give me samples.
I think I can grow the barley myself, and I live close enough to farmlands to find it "in the wild".

>>2825919
Crisp is in the UK, I thought Rahr was too but apparently they're here in the US. Anyways you got the idea

>>2825919
Malted barley grain is cheap as shit, you can get a 1kg bag from a homebrew site for like 99 cent depending on the variety
Even if you "find" or grow barley yourself you still have to malt it to make it fermentable and then you have to kiln it before crushing the grains and then mashing. It's a more complicated process than just "steeping starchy cereals in hot water"

Sake seems like a lot of fun
Should I buy koji seeds or dry koji? Is EC1118 ok?
Only problem seems to be the issue of picking out the right rice

should i get into making cider if i have no experience homebrewing

>>2825989
jesus anon haven't you read the discussion? you need a bit more than regular yeast to ferment rice
btw the same goes for potatoes and corn.

>>2825863
that would be very oldschool but if you do try it i'm curious to what degree that worked out.
it sounds disgusting even to me but they did that for 1000s of years. i think that's how the egyptians back then made beer as well, chewing on grain and spitting it out

>>2826009
sure, why not. it's extremely easy. apple wine from cheap store bought juice is how i started

>>2826019
>you need a bit more than regular yeast to ferment rice
Yeah I know

>>2826009
it's one of the easier things to make, with a few caveats. just taking a gallon of cheap filtered apple juice and throwing in yeast will work, but you'll probably be disappointed by the flavor compared to commercial ciders. it needs to be carbonated, and it really should age about 3 months. store bought juice also benefits from some added acidity, so some lemon juice or citric or malic acid if you happen to have those on hand will make it taste quite a bit better
if you want a cheap way to carbonate, you can save up plastic soda bottles and caps (from milder things like sprite or soda water). after fermentation is finished, add some sugar to your cider (use a priming sugar calculator to find out how much), then bottle them, squeeze out the air, and cap them. leave them at room temp for a couple weeks to let the yeast convert the new sugar into co2, chill, and enjoy. saving beer bottles and using a crown capper isn't expensive, but you might want to go as cheaply as possible for your first batch
fruit wines and noncarbonated meads are easier, but being higher abv they benefit from even more aging which could be annoying for a newbie

>>2826009
Yes, it's a good, cheap and quick way to practice with proper sanitation, storage and fermentation in general before trying something a lot more labour, time and cost intensive like all grain beer, wine or even mead brewing.
Check store-brand apple juices (read the labels) and look for one that has zero added preservatives or sweeteners, and preferably without added vitamins or from concentrate. I was able to find one from a local chain that had nothing added for 89 cent a liter and practiced making a few gallon batches of cider before moving on to all grain brewing. It will actually yield something drinkable after about a week vs mead which takes months of ageing before it stops tasting like gone-off white wine. You can also practice bottle conditioning and carbonating too.

>>2825989
I would really recommend the book Koji alchemy by Jeremy Umansky (its on libgen but no pictures sadly) for any sort of koji stuff though its not sake exclusive, buying dry koji will be much simpler as for making the koji rice you need to grow the mold aspergillus oryzae on rice which you need some chamber that can hold humidity and a way to keep the rice hot while fermenting (seed heating mat + bucket of water with an aquarium heater under the rice is the way i've done it), you can buy the spores online from a store like fermentationculture.eu

>>2826009
>>2826104
Whole Foods has the apple juice in 1 gallon glass bottles. A little expensive but then you get a free fermentor. Hit it with some pectin to get rid of the cloudiness

>>2825919
>>2825956
Making pale malt is pretty straightforward and you can do it with an oven, but another advantage of buying it (aside from price) is you can look up diastatic power in the analysis sheet so you know how much malt you'll need to properly convert the rice. This is useful if you want to repeat your recipe predictably or tune it

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>>2825844

So, i was in my garden and ate a bit of lovage and it reminded me a bit of hops. Has anyone tried replacing some portion of hops with lovage or some other bitter herb? Could be interesting

>>2826518
I've tried spruce tips by adapting https://blog.bsghandcraft.com/homebrewing-with-bsg-spruce-tip-ale-recipe, even brewed it under the tree they came from as a domination move. Didn't turn out that good though it still needed some hops

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>>2826541
>as a domination move. Didn't turn out that good
gajin piggu instant karma !!!

>>2826019
i've decided to revive the rice.

>>2825876
Hope one anon will brew spit mashed old stale bread (kvass) fermented with body yeast.

>>2826562
>i've decided to revive the rice.
how did it taste?

>>2827291
>chewing moldy rice
No. Spit and swivel. And I've put it out in the sun, for heat.
The smell of puke is slowly being replaced by a sweet odor.

Fucking $60 for grain, hops, and yeast because Northern Brewer ran out all the shops in a 100 mile radius and then closed their brick and mortar last year