Man, that six pack of New Albion Ale lasted a long time – three weeks somehow.
Ok – clearly we got three videos out of one sitting but I think it made sense to break up the time into these three different posts since we had three distinct topics.
This time around, we ask if you have any homebrewing experiments you’d like us to conduct.
We have conducted experiments in the past around priming sugar and yeast strains. Soon, we’ll have some information about how to treat your water for better beers.
But is there something you’d always like to test out and haven’t had the time to do so? Let us know. You can email us (see our Contact page) or you can leave a comment below.
I will get us started:
I’d like to do a Hot Side Aeration experiment where you essential brew the same beer three times, one being as careful as you can transferring the hot wort around, the second one would be to abuse the wort as much as possible to aerate it as much as possible, and the third one would be done as normal. After the 3 beers were ready to drink and had aged in the same conditions for some period of time (months), it would be interesting if you could taste a difference.
Don’t be shy – submit your homebrewing experiment ideas today.
AOk
I have one in progress. Grain and hopbills exactly the same. On fermented on lager yeast @ 48, one on saison yeast @ 88.
John
AOk – that sounds great. Maybe you can discuss the findings here?
Christopher
My first all grain was pretty much a disaster. I tried brewing a scottish 70 shilling. I was kind of winging it and ended up going way over on gravity. 8 gallons when I wanted 5. So I ended up with a scottish 50 shilling that had an OG of only 1.024. I ended up dumping two gallons and fermeting six. Instead of dumping it all I took two gallons an bottled them as is. Blended another two gallons with a gallon of dry irish stout I had going as an extract batch at the same time, and did an ice beer with the other two gallons.
The 50 shilling as is was actually really good, as was the blend. The ice beer? Not so much. It just tasted wrong. I guess there is a reason they only really ice higher gravity beers. Lessons? Blending is good and that you can make a really low gravity beer that still has a lot of favor. It was really good last summer when I was working on building my hop deck.
John
Hi Christopher,
Would you try an ice beer experiment again?
Jason Nelms
I have a 50l Braumeister. One technique for brewing higher gravity beers such as Double IPA’s and Barleywines is to Mash 24g of grain, remove the grain, reload the malt pipe and mash again with the wort left from the previous grain. I would like to see how effective this is using a traditional BIAB method.
So, load a bag, steep in fresh water, remove bag and steep another bag of fresh grain in the wort left by the previous bag then boil as normal.
John
Ok Jason – that’s an interesting one.
Sean
After trying a couple of different techniques to create a Nutella beer, I would like to see an experiement based on adding a ‘nut’ flavor to a beer. I have added toasted hazelnuts during the last 10 of the boil, and in the secondary. I also want to experiment with during the mash, and creating my own extracts, possibly adding during different time of the boil as other alternatives. And while I did hazelnuts, pecans or almonds or other nuts might be interesting for the experiment.
brewella deville
I bottled up a case of porter a while ago, and put the few ounces I had left in a bottle and intentionally did everything we’re not supposed to do, like aerating the heck out of it and leaving at least three inches of head space before capping it to bottle condition for a six weeks. I opened it up along with one of the other proper bottles and couldn’t tell the difference between them.
I also spent an inordinate amount of time roasting and peeling chestnuts to put into the boil for a nut brown ale, and couldn’t even taste them in the end.
John
Great submission.
John
Hi brewella,
I am putting them on the list – HSA experiment and nut beer experiment.
SeñorBrew™
I propose that you determine the effects of music on fermentation. Supposedly, plants grow better with music, I wonder if it effects yeast as well. I suggest Led Zeppelin.
John
Love it – Added to the list!