/diy/ - Do It Yourself

[Ribbons !36LF.2XSZI No.625683]

greetings /diy/

I'm a relatively new homebrewer (~5 beers brewed, all extract brews made following recipes), and I've got a couple of questions that I'm hoping someone with some more experience answer for me.

1. where do you typically get your recipes? I've used beerrecipes.org for my recipes recently, but have had better success with recipes quickly jotted down by the kind folks at my local home brew shop

2. what literature would you recommend to someone interested in learning more about homebrew/brewing in general? I've just about gotten through Matthew Schaefer's Illustrated Guide to Brewing Beer, and I've learned a ton.

3. Does anyone here have experience building their own mashtun? I'd like to progress from extract brewing into partial mash and all-grain brewing with decent efficiency, so I'm probably going to attempt to create a false bottom mash tun out of a cooler.

4. I'm hoping start brewing a stout in the next week or so and I'm hoping to add coffee and chocolate to it. At what point in the process is the best time to add these ingredients? I've read conflicting sources saying that you should add chocolate/coffee while boiling, and others after you take it off the heat.

5. last one -- what is the best way to turn brewing into a career? is becoming an advanced homebrewer enough to land you a job in a brewery? is it possible to become a cellarman (without brewing experience) and work your way up? or are you limited by education? I've looked into brewing certification programs... are these taken seriously in the brewing world? some more so than others?

any and all relevant answers/discussion is appreciated. trolls will be asked to shotgun tall cans of bud ice

[Anonymous No.625767]

Bumping this so we can have a homebrew thread. Lets see if someone more wants, I have nothing to share.

[Anonymous No.625776]

Bump

[Anonymous No.625779]

1 - I get all-grain recipes from homebrewtalk's recipe database and then use Brewtoad to help adapt them to my system (which usually means adding more grains to reach the same OG because my efficency is bad).
2 - http://www.howtobrew.com
3 - Yeah I made one out of a rubbermaid 10gal water cooler. I followed this: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-10-gallon-rubbermaid-mlt-conversion-23008/
That's an old thread though, buying all the parts new cost me more like $80-90. And I never found that damn stainless fender washer.
4 - I would guess the last 5 minutes of the boil, but check a recipe. It sounds like it would be easy to overpower the beer by boiling coffee.

[Anonymous No.625784]

>>625683
>what is the best way to turn brewing into a career?

Knowing someone in the brewing industry.
Being an engineer in a relevant field.
Being a biological chemist.

Homebrewing doesn't really give you any of the skills necessary for commercial industry. After all, they aren't just going to hire you and let you create new beers, nor build a system from scratch.

[Ribbons !36LF.2XSZI No.626176]

>>625779
thanks for the recommendations. I'm going to swing by the store with a stout recipe I found from homebrewtalk that I'll post below.

yeast: nottingham's
batch size: 5 gal
boiling time: 60 min

7lb dark malt extract
3/4 lb roasted barley steeped at 160F for 20 min
1 oz chinook hops 60 min
1 tsp irish moss
1 lb espresso coffee at flame out

I'm considering adding 1/2 lb black patent malt, and maybe a lb or so of chocolate malt. thoughts?

>>625784
at this point I'm just trying to break into the industry. what sort of minimum experience would you recommend for an "entry level" brewing job? it isn't realistic for me to go back to school right now, but I'd consider it in the future if I needed to

[Anonymous No.626225]

>>625683
5:
Apply at a small local brewery for voluntary work. Tell them you're a home brewer and you want to gain experience in the professional brewing business.

I'm from the Netherlands and I knew 2 brewers (who work at small breweries), who both followed a study to do so. It's not just about the brewing also about hygiene etc.

[Anonymous No.626591]

>>626176
1lb of chocolate malt sounds like a lot. I'd say maybe do like 1/2lb of each of your specialty grains so ~1.5lb total? I'm no expert though, I just never see a 5gal recipe call for a whole pound of chocolate malt, usually its like 2-8oz.

1lb of coffee sounds like a lot too! But I've never used coffee so maybe that's typical. Might want to double-check that recipe with another one that use coffee though.

[Ribbons !36LF.2XSZI No.626601]

>>626591
I ended up not getting chocolate malt, just a half pound of black patent malt and a half pound of roasted barley.

As far as the coffee, recipes vary from 2 tsp to 1 lb that I've found... I'm going to brew this weekend so I'll probably end up using 6-8oz.


The recipe calls for 1oz chinook and the package my hops came in was 2oz -- should I just use it all? Maybe add the second oz later in the boil for aroma? Or whats the best way to store the hops (freezer?)? I probably won't brew again for another month or so.

[Anonymous No.626609]

>>625767

it's me again.
I forgot that I have a couple of infographics about this.

[Anonymous No.626610]

>>626609

that's all folks

[Anonymous No.626722]

>>626601
Go with what the recipe suggests. Stouts typically don't have much of any hop aroma. I think if you put the hops in a ziploc in the freezer they should last. They might lose some aroma, so maybe use them as bittering hops in your next beer.

[Anonymous No.627149]

1. i get my recipes from a book called brewing classic styles. written by two dudes jamil zainisheff (sp) and john palmer.

2.you should also read how to brew by palmer.

3 I built my own mash tun from a cooler. it isnt great. It leaks a bit and the hardware was pretty expensive. just buy one from a homebrew supply store. make sure you go 10 gallon instead of 5 as I cant do beers with an OG much higher than 1.060 in my 5 gallon

4 add the coffee when you bottle. at same time you add priming sugar. if you heat the coffee its going to start tasting old likes its been left in the pot too long. I used 4 oz cold steeped in a liter (quart?) of water and you cant really taste the coffee that strongly
there are also coffee malts you can use that'll give the flavour without actually putting coffee in. black prinz comes to mind

glfh

[Anonymous No.627222]

>>625683
1. Well first off my own imagination, secondly friends, thirdly online and then from books.

2. Don't know of any english ones, sorry.

3. Building your own mashtun is REALLY easy. There are a million guides online on how to do it.

4. I like to add cold brewed coffee from my favourite coffee shop during secondary. Tends to give a more subtle coffee flavour.

5. Knowing some people goes a long way. Also getting some medals at homebrewing competitions will also help out. My advice though is that you make sure that you know what you're getting into, working at a brewery means you're going to be spending 98% of your time cleaning equipment and 2% of it actually brewing.

Personally I think the ideal job in brewing is like Greg Koch or Mikkel from Mikkeller. Where you just write recipes all day and don't have to do any of the actual work (because it fucking sucks).

[Anonymous No.628827]

>>625683

1) Your LHBS should have plenty of packaged kits for most beers you could come up with.

2) This is pretty much THE book: http://www.amazon.com/How-Brew-Everything-Right-First/dp/0937381888/

3) Try BIAB first.

4) Just made one. The wort was practically full-strength coffee. Plus had coffee additions in the fermenter. I think the cocoa nibs went in with 10m remaining. BYO has a Founder's Breakfast clone recipe you should look at.

5) No idea.