Homebrew general.Post you brews, recipes, ideas and problemsold 'un >>2921463
>>2959721Its been 2 weeks since bottling, and I don't think I can wait another two like I planned.
I'm going to keg my beer for the first time this month, is there any benefit to keg conditioning with priming sugar vs just force carbing it? How long do you usually force carb a keg?
I make moonshine, corn liquor in my house. I have a 5 gallon still. When everything goes well I produce about 1 liter of 110 Pf in a week. Things rarely go that well. I don’t really drink anymore, I give it away to friends and family and have a swig with them when they come by to refill their jug. I use corn, sugar yeast and water. I’ve been thinking about trying whisky but haven’t worked up the gumption yet to try a batch or two.
>>2962834It's something I've always wanted to try but what are some cool ways to really really make sure you don't go blind? I get paid to look at things so it'd be the end of me.
>>2962846methanol is vastly overhyped. dont ferment wood or anything with too much pectin (blackberries are really the only things to worry about)the reason people went blind in the prohibition days is because they mixed their moonshine with industrial alcohol that contained methanol, the shine didnt have any before it was added. also methanol poisoning only became a meme during prohibition, you would struggle to find a case where alcohol made someone literally blind (they used "blind" metaphorically, for example when you hook up with a 4 you were "blind" in that moment) in the several thousand years prior. tldr make sure you dont ferment wood and dont accidently add any methanol and youll be fine
>>2962891You're a good man. I'm getting a still in the new year. It's funny I drink potin and tapetusa and the fellers that made that are a lot less cautious than me.
I ended up going with option 2, jack on top. It seemed like that was overwhelmingly the most common based off pictures on the internet. I found a few instances of option 3 (jack on bottom) and none of option 1 (jack to the side). It worked great, I got a gallon and a half from maybe 3 gallons of honeycrisp. I put the apples in whole but they had frozen on the tree so they were pretty soft.I used the stainless steel steamer pot not a plastic bucket as anon had suggested. I guess buckets must work fine as I saw a lot of that on the internet but I was worried it would crack from the pressure. I used 2x6 instead of 2x4 like I had planned, and I'm glad I did since it was making some kinda scary creaking noises.
>>2962927Looks very based and no bs-pilled
>>2962927Thought you were supposed to crush apples before pressing them, maybe it doesn't matter for small batches/small apples
>>2962941You are supposed to grind them into smaller chunks, but I don't have a grinder. Maybe that'll be next year's project. Freezing does a lot of the same thing though, since it sort of crushes them from the inside out. I don't think I would've got much more by breaking them up, they were really dry and light when they came out.
>>2962834My last batch was a decent rye.Mash was 90% rye, about a fifth of that was double peated. Remainder was a barley oat mix.Had been planning to make more to fill a small barrel but my still self destructed.Ended up mixing it with a batch of vodka and aging for 6 months in oak.It's kind of bland for a sipping rye but is a decent mixer.Something that worked well was switching to that chinese angel yeast. Has a koji mold mixed with the yeast so no need for complex mashing. Can just pitch it straight into the cooked grain.
What place am I least likely to get screwed buying small amounts of co2, does it matter if I get the stuff they power paintball guns with?
bump
>>2963711Get a 2kg cannister to avoid getting ripped off in the long run. Those tiny cartridges are only good for tiny 2-5L kegs and soda stream cannisters cost almost as much as a normal cannister but aren't refillable, and are made by israel
>>2962946I've done a test pressing thawed frozen apples whole vs grinding, grinding still substantially increases yield.Frozen and thawed apples also yielded more juice than fresh apples, but specific gravity of the juice was the same (given the same type of apples from the same tree).
>>2962627just go buy some beer from the store
Got a batch of to be apple cider fermenting. Just put it together yesterday and the bubbling is already super active.
Forgot the pic
>>2962927btw, I mentioned about a book with a DIY cider press and here it is: from a book called “Real Cidermaking on a small scale” by Pooley and Lomax.
>>2964591
>>2964592
>>2964593I know you’ve already made it but just in case you wanted to improve it or if anyone else was interested. Although if you want to buy a press I’d recommend a stainless steel one rather than wooden.
>>2963896Good to know, I will try to build one before next season. I hadn't really planned on making cider this year but then I saw all those apples still on the tree and didn't want them to go to waste.>>2964591Thanks for posting these. Honestly pretty similar construction to what I came up with, except using a lead screw instead of jack. I had done a lot of thinking about lead screws, but it's a specialty part while bottle jacks are great because you can get them anywhere for cheap. I thought maybe I could modify a scaffold jack but that's more work and more expense. I already had the jack, and it was formerly useless because it was too tall to fit under the car I intended to use it for.Also I wanted the food contact parts to be metal so it'd be easy to clean, hence the steamer.>>2964297Nice, did you add yeast or use the wild yeast? I was going to count on wild yeast but after a few days I still didn't see bubbles so I added champagne yeast to kick it off.
>>2964672I put in a little bit of champagne yeast in there so that I could get something with a bit higher alcohol content. The wild yeast is kinda doing some stuff - I see some larger floaters and the likes.
