this is the first year in a while that I haven't bought a sixer of hopslam. $18/6 just isn't worth it. Instead, I head down to the bar with a few neighbors and figure i'll have one or 2 there to get my fix for the year. Closed out my tab a few hours later having spent double for 7 12-oz drafts

If you're doing a ~5g batch, one dry yeast pack will be ok. You'll be slightly short, but no biggie. If you don't have control over your fermentation temps, that'll impact your beer way more than a slight underpitch.

There's a serious amount of hops in that beer, especially if you're not using an iso-extract for bittering. All that hop mass means you're not going to be able to drain as much clean wort from your kettle as you would from a beer with, say, 1oz of hops total. That goes double if you're using leaf hops. I lose about .5g of wort for every 5oz of leaf hops I use, in general. Your number will likely vary. In any case, in order to get 5-5.5g in the fermentor, you need to collect more wort at the start to offset what the hops will absorb. Hence the 8g preboil. If you're OK with knocking out less wort, that's ok, just roll with whatever your pot will hold. If you really want that much wort but don't have a pot big enough, you can split the boil into two pots. You'll want to try to keep the amount of wort in each even, and then split your hop additions evenly as well. In any case, your beer will be fine, even if you can't split it.

Also, I'd add the dextrose right at the end. All you need to do is get it dissolved and sanitized, so no need to boil it for any length of time.

Thanks, RDH. Very helpful.

I think I'll aim for 6-gal wort and figure out how to get it into one or two 5-gal fermenters and see what happens.

First time posting ITT. I was fortunate enough to get some Victory Brewing dirt wolf DIPA, it always seems to sell out before i can get my hands on some out here. I must say, it was a very well made DIPA. Nice citrus/grapefruit taste and aroma...and found it to be quite balanced with the malt backbone, which made it an easy drink. Hid the ABV well.

been sipping a Victory variety pack. Headwaters pale ale, HopDevil, Golden Monkey, prima pils

all good for about ~16 for the 12. not a huge pilsner seeker but the prima pils is quite refreshing and the other three are solid choices to. not extravagant but decently priced

I get tropical dankness with some orange from the combination. My wife who usually is not a fan of the smell of hoppy beers loved how it smelled. Not a great description, but never good at those. I've done ~3 beers with Pacifica and I found that I get a very sweet orange flavor from them. You can tell the beer is dry, but has this lingering sweetness from the hops.

I like prima a good bit. Made the mistake once of buying a sixtel of it. Found out I did not like it as an everyday drinker.

Thanks for that update lacticacid, sounds like a cool beer.

I joined a homebrew club recently. Not sure if every club is fun, but I'd definitely recommend trying it out. The one I go to (twice now, and a tour with the group in between meetings) has been excellent. Basically spending 3-4 hours drinking homebrews and commercial beers with other brewers, eating food and listening to guest speakers (like local brewers) talk about how they got started/answering questions. Really casual, no fees to join, nice people, interesting beers and tons of knowledge about brewing. There are a few top of their class sort of brewers in the club as well (professional and homebrew contest guys).

I keep wanting to get to one of the local homebrew club meetings, but always manage to be burned by work or have something else when they have meetings.

Only time I get real feedback is when I have people over for Poker, two of the guys are homebrewers. But with kids and work poker and thus feedback is rare.

Brewed a Farmhouse Mild recently that was a hit at poker. 5lbs Marris Otter, 1.5lbs Flaked Oats, 1lb Rye, 12oz Chocolate Rye, 8oz Crystal 60, 8oz Special B, 4 oz aromatic. A little over hopped with 2 oz EKG FWH and 2 oz Flame Out for 6 gallons. Pitched the WLP Flemish Ale yeast and some dregs and it never got sour just a little funky. Oak aged with some Brett Trois in the oak. 3.5% which was a good ABV to be able to drink a good bit but still be functional.

On the 3.5% front, I'd like to brew some low ABV stuff for the spring/summer.

Some of the parks in the mountains only allow 3.2% or less ABV beer. Not that it seems super enforced (I saw plenty of people drinking PBRs while hiking... assuming that's not 3.2% lol), but it would be cool to get some steel containers and bottle carbonate in there with some 3.2% session IPA type beer. I'd only like 24 ounces or so anyways when hiking or mountain biking... a nice refreshing drink with a snack or lunch and functional to get back.

Sort of like Founders All Day IPA (one of my favs) except that beer is like 4.8%.

Maybe some northern brown's too.. but probably hop it up a bit, I'm no master brewer, don't want to waste a batch with unbalanced 3% ABV and regret not hopping it up to cover my flaws

Was down in Austin this weekend (and San Antonio), particularly enjoyed Adelbert's Dancing Monks Dubbel. Had plenty of good but not great beers too. Didn't get to really dive into a lot of the local breweries (Sunday night and Monday are terrible times to visit breweries in Austin, and in many other places too).

Had Brooklyn's sorachi pale or ipa, didn't like that at all. Everything else I drank was good (pecan porter, ipas, double ipas, a dunkel that was like 8%... heh).

ChiRy,

When in doubt about something I haven't really done before, can't go wrong with Brewing Classic Styles. Check out the milds/bitters and consider amping up aroma or adding dryhop additions and maybe dropping a little crystal if you want to USA USA.

Personally, a Belgian table pale or baby saison sounds like it would be fantastic for spring hikes, but I also don't hike, so what do I know.

I tend to use BCS for most of my first attempts at beers. My farmhouse mild is based off his mild recipe, but subbing special B for the English crystal 120/150. I e-mailed Jamil for his grammarye recipe and its my new house beer, brewed it 3 times now and it is simple grist but complex enough in flavor. 80% Pale Ale 11% Rye Malt and 9% Crystal 40 for 1.047. Could probably cut the base down a bit and just have some rye and crystal for a nice session beer if 4.7% is too high. Hopping is high at 4.6oz for 6 gallons with 2oz at flame out and 2oz dry hopping, but one could cut back the bittering a bit if lowering it down to 3.5%. At that I'd probably do 20ibus but dry.

I'm in Portland for the first time and am going out to some beer bars tonight. I've heard that both the beer bar scene, but more importantly the microbrew/craft beer scene, is about as good as anywhere else in the country. What should I be on the lookout for?

I don't know Portland, never been, but a buddy of mine moved out there 2 years ago to open a food truck. His truck is called "The Italian Market" they specialize in South Philly style sandwiches and other food. I've had his food before, its very good.

The plus here is that their truck is always parked at Belmont Station, which from what I am told is a great beer spot.

Go check it out, ask for Andrew, tell him Ed sent you.

hopefully you get to this while still in portland.

Here is a list of top-tier places to hit up:

Cascade
Deschutes
Apex Bar
Bailey's tap room
the Commons (just be aware that they aren't open that often)
Green Dragon


Here is a post of mine from last year that should give you a good rundown of where to go

Hunahpu's Day sounds like it was an absolute ****show. It reminded me of the Three Floyds Anniversary Party I went to, where I basically waited in the ticket line for 4 hours. Not good times.

Anyway, I was recently wandering around the beer store when the salesman asked if I needed help. I wasn't sure what I felt like, so I asked for a suggestion. He offered this beer:
Orthodox Winter IPA

which I had never heard of. He said it was a nice malty IPA, which sounded good to me. Anyway, I pour it and it has the appearance of a porter/stout:


And tasted like a hoppy porter - not remotely like an IPA. It wasn't exactly bad, but when you're expecting something like Dreadnaught, it doesn't fit the bill at all.

In better news, I also got a 4-pack of fresh Hop JuJu from Fat Head's (makers of Headhunter IPA). Pretty good stuff.

Have any of the homebrewers here tried out anything from The Yeast Bay? I have beers fermenting with their Wallonian Farmhouse, all 3 Brett blends, Vermont Ale and Funktown Pale Ale as we speak. Early reports are really good, especially the Brett blends.

I am actually going to be beta testing new strains for them over the next few months, if interested in hearing about them check out my blog.

http://riverwards.blogspot.com/

Didnt get this post in time but thank you anyway, and I ended up going to Bailey's Tap Room while I was there, quite nice little place with a pretty diverse selection. Shockingly not overpriced. Portland in general was an amazing city and every restaurant I went to had several local craft beers on tap.

Oh, story that happened the other day that's tangentially beer-related:

At a sit-down burger place with communal tables/benches. A young couple gets seated next to me and the guy asks if they have any gluten free beer. They have Omission, which he turned down, and the server said they had Stella's new cider and she thought that was gluten free. He hems and haws, and she goes to find out, and he ends up getting the cider.

Then he orders his burger, and asks for a wheat bun.

lol, wow. That definitely gets filed under: **** you can't make up.

Had this the other night:



Holy **** those things went don't smooth as **** It's a 7.5% ABV IPA. It's very citrusy but not tangy at all. At first I was like this smells a bit flowers just cut but once I got over it was game on.

Big Texas Beer Fest tomorrow in Dallas. Anyone going? Would be cool to meet up.

Just got a six pack of Stone's Go To IPA. Sets the bar for the new session IPA class. Really nice aroma and taste. Nice tropical fruits. Super drinkable. 4.5%.

Planning the beer for my brothers wedding. This will be the IPA representation for sure.

Edit: since it is a June wedding little summin summin may make an appearance.

Experienced wild/sour brewers out there:

I brewed a Flander's Red this weekend. ~11.5g of 1.060 wort into two carboys, 5.5g got a 215B cell starter of WLP090, 6g got a single vial of WLP665. Both carboys got about 60s of O2 and into the ferm chamber set at ~64dF (18.5dC). The San Diego yeast took off like a rocket and I pitched a single vial of WLP665 into that this morning, at ~36 hours after knockout. There's absolutely no signs of life in the carboy that just got the sour blend at ~48 hours after knockout.

I'm guessing the sacc. part of the blend is way under 100B cells, so I'm not surprised it doesn't look like a typical fermentation. But I've never done a sour so I also don't know what to look for, really. Does a bacterial fermentation look anything like a sacc. fermentation? Surely the mid-60's isn't too cold, right? Tonight I'll probably go ahead and bump the temperature up to around 68dF just because all my bugs are in at this point and the San Diego yeast has gotten through lag/growth phases.

The initial fermentation will look no different than any other primary fermentation, like you said there is a Sacch strain in that blend to take care of primary so no reason for it to be different. Things will change weeks/months/years down the road.

All that being said, 64f is too cold for that blend and I would imagine is mostly the culprit (plus low Sacch cell counts but more so the temp). White Labs suggests 68-80f for the blend, I always pitch cool then ramp the beer up even in a sour beer. I would warm it up to at least 70f, give it a good shake and you'll probably see activity in ~12 hours.

I dont know what the sacch strain is in that blend but I would imagine its Belgian which is why it would need a warmer temp.