Homebrew Beer Howto

Dub13

These Trinity lads disagree...

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/tcd-scientists-toast-beer-breakthrough-3234099.html

TCD scientists toast beer breakthrough

IT is a mouth-watering discovery that will delight beer drinkers everywhere.

Trinity College Dublin scientists have come up with a way to extend the shelf-life of beer in plastic bottles.

Existing plastic bottles have a relatively short shelf life because they let the air in and the bubbles out -- meaning plastic-bottled beer left on the shelf too long would quickly lose its taste and fizz.

But the Trinity scientists have developed a material which, when added to plastic bottles, will encapsulate that all-important flavour sensation for much longer.

It's all thanks to nanoscience that allowed the creation of the super-light material that keeps the oxygen out and the carbon dioxide in.

As well as increasing the shelf-life of beer, less material is required in production, reducing cost and environmental impact.

The breakthrough has led to a partnership with one of the world's largest brewing companies, SABMiller.

The cutting-edge research was conducted by Professor Jonathan Coleman and his team at CRANN, the Science Foundation Ireland nanoscience institute at TCD.

SABmiller has pledged an investment supporting the research for the next two years.

Nanotechnology is the science of things measured in the nanoscale -- a nanometre is 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The TCD team uses nano-sheets of the chemical compound boron nitride, each about 50,000 times thinner than one human hair.

When mixed with plastic, these nano-sheets result in a material that is extremely impervious to gas molecules.

Dr Diarmuid O'Brien, executive director at CRANN said: "Companies worldwide, like SABMiller, are taking notice. We are delighted to partner on this exciting project and look forward to its results."

- Katherine Donnelly

Irish Independent

Krusty_Clown

The article is referring to 'off the shelf' commercial plastic bottles (e.g. soft drink bottles), rather than Cooper ox-bar bottles (the comparison is probably with clear soft drink plastic bottles). But if you're in doubt, I'll take your Coopers bottles off your hands. What time suits?

rollout

I'm new to this world of homebrewing and have been looking over plenty of websites and recipes.

Plenty call for a DME and steeping grains. That's all grand but i've seen some that have a DME and a grain like Maris Otter. I understood that MO is a base malt and the DME would be the equivalent of base malts.

Is there a benefit in having a DME and a base malt?

mayto

rollout wrote: »

I'm new to this world of homebrewing and have been looking over plenty of websites and recipes.

Plenty call for a DME and steeping grains. That's all grand but i've seen some that have a DME and a grain like Maris Otter. I understood that MO is a base malt and the DME would be the equivalent of base malts.

Is there a benefit in having a DME and a base malt?

Dried malt extract or spraymalt is produced by drying out the malt sugars from the liquid wort which are got by mashing a basemalt like Maris Otter. You can make extract beers with dme meaning you do not need to mash a basemalt as it basically has been done for you. You normally "mash" a basemalt by steeping it in about 2.5L of water per Kg of malt at 67C for 60 minutes. The resulting sweet wort is then rinsed from the grains.

antodeco

Hi folks, can anyone recommend a good sanitizer to use? I know Miltons is really good, but its someway expensive! I am using DWP at the minute, but I cant seem to find any in any shops.

Khannie

lots of water, thin bleach and vinegar can be used to make your own cheapo sanitiser. I've been using it since I started with great success. If you search for vinegar in this forum you should find the recipe. I use: 3L water, 1 dessert spoon bleach (mix in), 1 dessert spoon vinegar (mix in previous mix). That's a little stronger than is necessary, but it's convenient and means I don't have to do a heap of measuring.

tteknulp

[Quote=antodeco; starsan is way to go ,a bit expensive but lasts ages ,1.5ml to one litre water ,its in half litre bottle 30sec contact ,no rinse so easy ,never let me down
Really speeds up bottling

battser

BeerNut wrote: »

Amazon links no worky.

This is what I started with and I still use pretty much all of it. I've added a boiler and chiller, and I see that can now be included as a whole extract starter kit.

And start collecting bottles now, if you haven't already

I am going to buy my first kit and looking at your first link I think it sounds perfect so thanks for that mate. Also wondering do people find any particular bottle better than another say? I plan on buying 12 of the swing top grolsch as I read these would be a very good bottle for your home brew.

And what are the nicest kits as far as taste goes. Coopers, St peters etc...

BeerNut

battser wrote: »

I plan on buying 12 of the swing top grolsch as I read these would be a very good bottle for your home brew.

Brown swingtops are definitely the way to go.

battser wrote: »

And what are the nicest kits as far as taste goes. Coopers, St peters etc...

The two can kits are higher quality, so St Peter's and Woodforde's, for instance. Woodforde's Wherry is a particularly good one in my experience.

Shiny

BeerNut wrote: »

Brown swingtops are definitely the way to go.

As someone who has a lot of grolsch swingtops I have to +1 this.

They are smaller in volume but wider in diameter than brown bottles so they don't fit into standard boxes correctly which is annoying. They have grolsch plastered all over them so that rules them out for most competitions.

Other than that they are fine but if I was starting again I wouldn't get them.

oblivious

Shiny wrote: »

As someone who has a lot of grolsch swingtops I have to +1 this.

Other than that they are fine but if I was starting again I wouldn't get them.

But are they not green glass?

Saruman

They are and as such, a no no for beer as far as I'm concerned.

Whisko

Nothing wrong with Green Glass.

It aint that hard to keep bottles out of direct sunlight. I use clear bottles all the time and have never had a problem.

The Mulk

I have 4 x 25l Plastic water bottles(similar to Tipperary dispenser bottles etc.) to give away.

2 have handles, 2 don't.

Collection in Baggot St.Upper or Celbridge

PM me if interested

Saruman

Whisko wrote: »

Nothing wrong with Green Glass.

It aint that hard to keep bottles out of direct sunlight. I use clear bottles all the time and have never had a problem.

Light of any kind is the problem, not direct sunlight. Artificial light included.
If you are careful then they will work fine but brown bottles (even swingtops) are probably easier to get hold of than green or clear glass so why bother?

Shiny

oblivious wrote: »

But are they not green glass?

I always keep mine in boxes which are in a dark cold closet. They never see any form of light until I'm getting a beer. I was assuming that most people stored their beer bottles in boxes/crates which would shield the sides of the bottles from light at the very least.

rubadub

Whisko wrote: »

I use clear bottles all the time and have never had a problem.

Have you ever recognised the problem in commercial bottles? i.e. would you be able to detect it at all, and know what to look for?

I ask since I expect many people think the skunky off tastes are just what beer sometimes tastes like. One rumoured reason for the lime/lemon tradition in corona is to mask the seemingly accepted off tastes. I remember getting a really bad batch of heinekens and commenting on it, and the other 2 guys with me drinking the same stuff just thought this was normal.

Whisko

Saruman wrote: »

Light of any kind is the problem, not direct sunlight. Artificial light included.
If you are careful then they will work fine but brown bottles (even swingtops) are probably easier to get hold of than green or clear glass so why bother?

I use standard 2litre pet bottles for pure convenience. These taste identical to the same batches where i have used a few glass bottled so I don't believe there's anything wrong these.

My beer is kept in complete darkness between bottling and drinking. I knew light was bad but I always assumed direct sunlight was the real killer.

I brew all grain, not a fan of the kits. The only off flavours I've ever had have been in kit beers, I always found them to have an unavoidable homebrew twang.

this twang is not in the fresh hopped all grain brews so I always assumed it was a problem with the prehopped extract. Might be wrong, any suggestion in how I can remove this twang? I've recently got decent temperature control during the fermentation so might try another kit.

Is this taste actually avoidable in kit beer?

bit drunk now on a nice ipa! Good thing I'm off work tomorrow!

I'm brewing up my first lager to winter tomorrow in a cold conservatory. Hope it goes well.

BeerNut

Whisko wrote: »

Is this taste actually avoidable in kit beer?

Not in my experience, but it can be masked. It's less prominent in dark and heavy stouts, and dry-hopping can help cover it too.

phunks

Making a batch of the coopers European Lager Kit at the moment however the fermenter is a little colder than I would like its about 3 weeks in and the temperature is usually around the 10/12 degrees mark. Will this affect my beer? or will be a case of it just needing more time to ferment?

oblivious

phunks wrote: »

Making a batch of the coopers European Lager Kit at the moment however the fermenter is a little colder than I would like its about 3 weeks in and the temperature is usually around the 10/12 degrees mark. Will this affect my beer? or will be a case of it just needing more time to ferment?

10c is classic lager fermentation

Sky King

A lot of kit lagers use ale yeast though don't they? Suggesting a warmer fermentation temp?

oblivious

Sky King wrote: »

A lot of kit lagers use ale yeast though don't they? Suggesting a warmer fermentation temp?

True, i had forgotten that. Something like Nottingham can do around 15c

ian_m

Could somebody please recommend a siphon for beer. I am currently filling my bottles using a 'little bottler' directly from the fermenting bucket. I want to be able to move from bottle to bottle instead of lifting each bottle up to the tap.

I want to get a bottling stick. Do most siphons have a standard fit that will match a bottling stick?

I currently ferment in a 25 litre bucket.

BeerNut

ian_m wrote: »

Could somebody please recommend a siphon for beer.

I use one of these.

ian_m wrote: »

I want to get a bottling stick.

You already have one, attached to your tap.

So, my autosiphon is fine as-is for racking. Then for bottling I slot in some ordinary beer line which came with my original simple siphon and then slot the bottling stick from a Little Bottler on the end of that.

ian_m

Would this attach ok to the bottling stick I wonder?

tteknulp

ian_m wrote: »

i will fit on end if red rubber tubing ,i have done before

howamidifferent

Quick question and I apologise that I havent read the 106 pages of this thread.
Thinking of trying this but just a quick question first.
At what kind of temperature does the mix have to be kept at while in the fermenting bucket and afterwards while bottled before being put to fridge to chill and enjoy? Not sure if my place is suitable for this or not.

BeerNut

18C is ideal. Anywhere from 16 to 22C is fine. Room temperature, basically. Temperatures higher than this can cause problems; lower ones are easier to deal with and are much less likely to cause problems.

KAGY

ian_m wrote: »

Could somebody please recommend a siphon for beer. I am currently filling my bottles using a 'little bottler' directly from the fermenting bucket. I want to be able to move from bottle to bottle instead of lifting each bottle up to the tap.

I want to get a bottling stick. Do most siphons have a standard fit that will match a bottling stick?

I currently ferment in a 25 litre bucket.

I've attached a hose between the tap and bottling wand, much quicker as I can have 15 or so bottles lined up on the floor. Cost a few euro in hbw