Brewing Beer

Belgium brewery experiments with brewing beer under full moon:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_belgium_beer;_ylt=AjY.V89phe888G8.fXIqwNSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNrdWtyM2NrBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTAwOTI0L3VzX2JlbGdpdW1fYmVlcgRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzEwBHBvcwM3BHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDYmVsZ2l1bWV4cGVy

hehehehe yeppers! i know all about full moon brewing! been doing that quite a bit actually!
one of the 200+ year old recipes from the old coven calls for one particular brew to be brewed only on full moons and preferable in the autumn.

Rudas Starblaze wrote:

holy shite!! the 5 gallon one would be AWESOME! and $100!!! bloody hell!!!
im gonna have to show this link to Blakus!!

actually that's a $100 extra as the 5 gallon one would cost $169. if you'll notice there the +100.

well that sucks ass!!
guess i will have to stick with the idea i came up with a while back now.

update on my chocolate amber ale:

just bottled it. the sample was pretty good. should have some carbonation going here in a day or two.

well, the kegging was a success!
had to beat the shit outta the old refridgerator to get the shelves out though.

so last night we brewed again!

i decided to make my red ale since it turns out pretty awesome every time ive made it.

Blakus made a chocolate/cocoa and vanilla coffee stout that smelled incredible while we were brewing it so it should turn out awesome.

JT is making a coopers stout and adding in some baking chocolate bars. melted down of course. should be interesting on how it turns out as well.

fuck me, i just looked back through this thread and realized i didnt say anything about how my oatmeal stout turned out.....

anyway, well, the 3rd attempt still didnt turn out as an oatmeal stout............

BUT!!!!

it tasted EXACTLY like guinness stout on tap!! slightly higher ABV, but still!!

of course, because of that, we've drank it all already. i cleaned and sanitized the keg out about an hour and half ago.

so i was sitting out by the fire i started earlier and tranced off into another state of mind, and like in my sleep when i come up with most of our recipes, i came up with a couple ways to perfect some of the recipes we already have.
these should be beyond awesome.

well, my re-tweeked version of a lite beer is now in fermentation.
this is a 1 of 2 batch. i bought 2 sets of identical ingredients and will be brewing the 2 of 2 either tonight (friday) or saturday. but more than likely, tonight/friday.
and hopefully, this will be the final, stamped, good-to-go lite beer we've been working on.

Blakus is gonna brew a tweeked version of my honey ale. which should turn out even better than my original.

JT is brewing a coopers dark lager but is tweeking it into a doublebock which should turn out pretty good. hes been asking me for ages about the difference between a dark, a doublebock, a porter, and a stout. now that ive told him, hes gonna do it! and ironically, peiced together his own "recipe" so to speak. so im looking forward to trying it!

ive successfully make a great traditional lite beer!
it is 5.5% ABV
it is the lowest alcohol content beer ive brewed yet,
the reason i call it a traditional lite (or "Trad-Lite" as its named) is because its more like the older style light beers that didnt have the pasturization, complete filtering, etc etc that makes the macrobrewery beers taste like water.

well, tomorrow will be brewsday! i hope anyway.
going on an ingredents run tomorrow and hopefully Blakus can make 2 batches and i can make 2 batches.
Blakus is gonna improve upon his vanilla/chocolate stout and also make a regular chocolate stout.
i am planning on brewing a pumpkin spice ale and a... surprise brew. an idea i came up with last night for a recipe.

as it is winter time, i decided to convert a room just off of my bottling/kegging kitchen into my cold storage and keg room.

yes, i have taps running from said room through the door to serve cold delicious beer without having to use a keggerator or whatnot!
in fact, plans are to overly insulate this room and turn it into a summer time cold room to match what im doing now.

tomorrow night will be brewsday for me. i was planning on simply doing a cheap all extract quick batch to hold me over for a week or so until we can get the bulk ingredients ordered, but i have changed my mind. im gonna go ahead and do the usual of creating my own recipe.

in other news, ive thought of a way to make a mash tun and a lauter tun for around $20 to $30. which is great because most people usually spend hundreds of $$$ on making these things. the design will be quite unique. are i smart? i are smart! :nayh:

oops (not opps), i forgot tell everyone what i made.

anyway, i made my red ale again. basically an all grain batch this time since i used 8lbs of grains and only a 3lbs bag of amber DME.
they didnt have the bittering hops i wanted to use so i had to make a substitution. it wont be quite as bitter as i like my reds to be.
it took me a little over 5 hours to brew this batch. still sucks that Blakus and JT werent here to watch since neither of them have ever done anything like this. hell, my brother that taught me how to brew has never even done a batch like this. but then again, he now calls me for brewing advice.

ETA: in other news, i guess im gonna have to put mead on my upcoming brewing adventures since one of my aunts has insisted that i make her some. ive never done a mead before though. hell, i dont even think ive ever drank a mead before!

clearly everyone has been outta the loop cause i havent been here, but!!!!
im still brewing!
Blakus and i have both still have some pumpkin spice ales on tap.
later today/this evening, we're planning on brewing some stouts.
hes either going to do a cremebrulee (sp) stout or a mocha coffee stout.
im planning on my tried and true chocolate stout that everyones thats tried it, LOVES!
anyway, thats the latest plans all! slainte!

if youre ever interested, check out my fellow brewing friend CraigTube on youtube. hes got loads of vids plus hes about as down to earth as you can get.

its getting closer to brew:30 folks!

cool. almost forgot. what is the shelf life for beer. or is it like mead and wine. the longer the better.

for homebrew and microbrew beer, its like mead and wine.
you can age it for months before bottling or kegging it.
the higher alpha acidity hops you use for bittering the longer it can age, typically.

for the macrobrew beers, due to all the shit they put into it, doesnt keep for very long.
they dont use much for hops which is a natural preservative.
the fresher, the better for those types.

k, so if you read my post up yonder in the members area, youre probly checking this out too. lol

anyway, as ive obviously gotten the down stairs kitchen remodeled, which most of you knew was my bottleing and kegging kitchen.... i now have the upstairs kitchen ALL TO MY ONESY!! ive already brought up my bottleing table and have been slowly converting the upstairs kitchen into my brewing, bottleing/kegging kitchen, and since this kitchen is quite large, i am also going to build a fermentation chamber over in the corner *points back and to my right* lol.

i thought about converting my old bedroom into the fermentation chamber, but i think it might be best kept as a bedroom. by besty and co-brewer has his old fridge that the fridge itself doesnt keep too cool but the freezer part works great, which i am going to dismantel the whole thing and mount the freezer parts into the fermentation chamber for temperature control. dont worry, i have a temp controller for the whole thing so its all good plus i haz ideas to go along with all of it so i can mount the beer taps on the chamber as well. needless to say, i will be making the entire fermentation chamber big enough for my 6 foot 210lbs ass to actually walk into!!

as for brewing, im back to working on my "traditional lite" recipe. i think this is like my 4th or 5th attemp at making a brew thats visually appealing to this redneck, lite beer, drinking area of the world i live in. my previous attempts succeeded in the visual catagory, but the hop flavor and strength was a bit too much for most people. this current "trad-lite" thats currently still in primary fermentation (although its finished fermenting) i think will be a winner to the "public".

this version of the "trad-lite" should end up being around 4% to 4.5% which is typical for a macrobrew standard beer that a person would find at the store. i cut back on the hops big time for this one as well. i have a few lite beer drinking, redneck, guinea pigs lined up for taste trials to see how they rate this recipe. if it flies with them....... then..... ill finally have something to start people off with!

also in the brewing news, i have 2 local fellas in this area who are very interested in me teaching them how to brew!

oh, and i forgot to mention that not only do we make beer and mead, i also started making wine as well.
oh, oh, oh, and..... there are plans to start distilling as well! i dunno when yet though. but sometime in the up coming future.
if all goes as "planned", we'll be one of the very, very, very select few that do it all!

Sounds like you are kegging along. I miss the brew. That last batch you brought me I drank on New Years Eve was pretty good. I got sloshed on that and some Heineken. I still don't remember anything after midnight.

well, we haven't got as far along as I would like, but ive made several small investments towards the brewing side of things. and ive been looking into licenses for everything. im tired of being small time.

BTW what is the name of the company?