One of our fellow brewers wrote in awhile ago asking for a printable Brew In A Bag (BIAB) checklist, similar to the current All Grain Printable Checklist, but tailored to BIAB.
Here it is:
BIAB Brew Day Checklist – Printable list of steps for brewing using the BIAB method.
For more information on what BIAB is all about:
The other day I realized, my home brew bottles are naked! They don’t have fancy labels like all those commercial beers do… I hope they don’t feel embarrassed when I take them to a friend’s house. I’m lazy and just write one or two identifying letters on the cap with a sharpie. H = Hefe, PA = Pale Ale, S = stout, etc… It’s ghetto but it works.
Why I don’t normally label:
A) Labels take time to make.
B) Since I re-use my bottles, that means eventually having to peel off the label. With a standard label, that requires warm water, soap, a scrubber, and some elbow grease. What a pain!
The solution I would need for it to make sense to label my home brew more often:
A good looking label that goes on and stays on, but then easily peels off and can be reused multiple times. Here comes BeerClings to the rescue! The owner of Beer Clings contacted us about their product and sent us a free sample to play with. Pretty neat idea, and it really makes that naked home brew bottle look ready for a night on the town. The label stays on great – even weeks later! It peels off easy, and goes back onto the original sheet with out a problem.
The makers of the Beer Cling are well aware they need to come out with lots more templates, and allow brewers design their own logos.
There are two aspects to labeling:
One is the aesthetic component. Home brewers are proud of their beer (at least the good batches). Decorating the bottle with a label is a nice touch. We’ve tested doing wax seals on the caps, that is fun but a bit of work. BeerClings helps to address this, and once they get more patterns to choose from, for only $5 per sheet, I think they will be in a great niche.
The second component to labeling is record keeping. Knowing what is in the bottle is good. Especially if you are taking it to a club and passing it around. Knowing the IBU, SRM, ABV, OG/FG, style, and who brewed it is even better! This goes for Kegging beer too! I use post it notes to keep track of which keg is which, again the bare minimum. It would be nice to have the ABV and IBU on a label posted right on the keg (or by the tap).
How we are going to support labeling:
Here at Brewer’s Friend, we are looking into supporting label making in some fashion. There is a thread in the forum going on about labeling. There are several links in there and ideas from fellow brewers on how they label their bottles.
At the very least, the recipe editor should have a button to generate text from the recipe that can be copied and pasted into Word or Open Office. It would be nice to include the recipe name, style, and stats like IBU, SRM, ABV, etc. I just ordered a set of Avery removable labels to play with. That would be best of both worlds – the ability to print whatever you want on the label, and the ability to remove it easily when the bottle is empty.
One last thing I thought was cool, BeerClings also makes these wooden prohibition style crates (I want one):
Post by Brewer Larry
We just launched a bunch of features! We are proud to say that many of the updates in this release came directly from topics in the feature request forum. In addition, we made a nice improvement to the brew feature so it reports Pre-Boil Efficiency in addition to Brew House Efficiency. We also made some major headway towards our first mobile release and group brewing feature (not ready yet). We also did some bug fixes and back end work to keep the system running smoothly.
Recipe Editor:
Brew Sessions
Yeast List
Thoughts on Efficiency:
We have been doing a lot of research on the meaning of efficiency in brewing. Deep thinking, the kind that keeps you up at night. The kind that that gives you dreams like flying on kettle lids through skies filled with clouds of steaming wort, swimming in a giant sized mashed tun, and coding equations from inside a grain husk.
Brewer’s Friend uses Brew House Efficiency (as defined here) in the recipe editor. This can be thought of as ‘to the fermentor’ efficiency. All losses that do not make it into the fermentor are counted against this measure. This is good because it provides a realistic picture of your entire system’s performance, which is what you need to know to brew repeatable batches! If your friend tells you they get 85% efficiency – ask them which type of efficiency. That is probably their conversion efficiency or their lauter efficiency, but not their efficiency to the fermentor. Repeatable efficiency is what really matters. Please be aware that recipes with more hops than normal will cause greater hops absorption losses, thus lowering Brew House Efficiency by ~1%.
As part of this release, we have just introduced a new efficiency measure: ‘Pre-Boil Efficiency’ – the percentage of total available sugars that made it into the kettle. It can also be thought of as lauter efficiency. Volume losses from mash tun dead space and grain absorption count against this measure. Those of you who have been diligently making ‘Pre-Boil Gravity’ log entries will automatically see this figure computed on your existing brew sessions. This number is generally 8-10% higher than Brew House Efficiency, since it does not count trub losses and kettle dead space.
We are working on adding ‘conversion efficiency’ in the near future, which looks only at the efficiency of the extract in the mash tun, before any draining takes place. This number is always the highest.
Well, that’s all for now. Happy brewing!
The 2012 hops harvest is complete! Everything is packaged and dried.
The process is to first harvest the hops by hand picking. You can cut the vines down, but this year I decided to leave them up and use a small step ladder to reach the higher cones. My advice is to only harvest one variety at a time and keep track of where each variety is in the picking / drying / packing process.
Then you want to let the hops dry for about 48 hours, until they are no longer moist to the touch. I weighed a few of the samples before and after. There was about a 50% reduction in weight. This runs counter to the advice of using 4-7 times the normal amount when brewing a fresh hop beer…
The false bottom came in handy for the smaller crops:
When they are dry, weigh them out for packaging. One of my recipes calls for 2 oz of Chinook, so I weighed out that amount for that particular bag.
A vacuum sealer is a wonderful tool for this process.
I then label the bag, and put them in the freezer.
The inventory feature at the site helps me keep track of what I have. I wonder if I will ever get around to using that 2010 Willamette??
Here is the breakdown of what I got, and the order harvested in. It seems like Kent Goldings is always latest in the season to harvest.
Post by Larry
Yes, that’s right! Chain mail has a practical use in the brewery!
In addition to brewing, I enjoy cooking. In fact, I see brewing as an extension (a BIG one!) of my cooking. Early this year, one of my favorite cooking magazines – Cook’s Illustrated – reviewed a cleaner for cast iron. It’s called the CM Scrubber, and the CM stands for chain mail! It had been recommended by a few readers and the magazine’s editors decided to evaluate it. They liked it very much, and I ordered one immediately. After a bit of a wait (each is made in the US by hand, plus their orders exploded after the article) it arrived in the mail. Here’s what it looks like:
We’re a mostly cast iron cookware house. It’s heavy but the even heating can’t be beat! I’ve been using it frequently on our cast iron. Knappmade, the manufacturer of CM Scrubber, mentioned it also works well on stainless steel cookware. I began using it for that purpose and was equally happy with the results.
Recently I was washing my “well worn” stainless brew pot after a brew session. I had a moment of inspiration and decided to try the CM Scrubber and Bar Keeper’s Friend and see if they could shine my brew pot up a bit. If you haven’t seen it before, here’s what the label looks like:
A bit of history about this humble brew pot – I bought it used from a Craigslist ad. It had been well used by other brewers by the time I purchased it. There were dings and scratches when I bought it, and original owners of the pot used a “turkey fryer” type propane burner which leaves stains of its own. I’ve had it for 3 years and use it on the stovetop about twice a month. Bottom line: well used with battle scars to prove it!
While I keep my equipment clean, I’m not obsessive about hot side brewing stuff looking absolutely perfect – a different story on cold side. I only spent no more than 5 minutes scrubbing on the bottom panel, absolutely less than 10 for the whole pot.
Here’s the “before” – I chose the bottom of the pot to photograph because it was the most stained compared to the inside.
Using Bar Keeper’s Friend is easy, it sprinkles out like Clorox or Bon Ami that are packaged similarly. It’s a slightly cakey white powder. You add a bit of water and you scrub. Here’s the start of cleaning with the cleaner sparingly sprinkled on with just enough water to dissolve it. You can see some undissolved cleaner caked up on the lower right of the pot:
So, I scrubbed the bottom. I used some elbow grease, but not much is needed. As with my cookware, the CM Scrubber does most of the work. I used the last few minutes to scrub the inside out using the same process.
Here’s the “after” – much improved!
The inside of the pot was much improved as well! Based on the result I’ve now added a quick CM Scrubber and Bar Keeper’s Friend pot cleaning step to my routine. If you’re interested in learning more about the CM Scrubber, here’s a link to their website: https://www.cmscrubber.com/
Post By Brewer kcpup
I wanted to follow up with some tasting notes on this recipe and blog post. Here’s a photo of a pint – note that the head had fallen in the time it took to pour from my keezer, bring the glass up from the basement, set it down, and snap a photo.
Appearance – Pours a deep, orangy golden color with a fluffy two finger head and respectable retention. Head retention, however is not like a Hefe. Hazy as a wheat beer should be.
Aroma – First impression is a distinct fruity, floral aroma – not from hops, but from the chamomile. Deeply fragrant, with a nod to a malty wheat background. If you hate chamomile you’d get turned off, fast! No detectible hop presence. Overwhelmingly chamomile. I used a clean American yeast (Pacman), so I don’t detect any yeast character in the nose. Not much honey in the nose, but I wonder if some of the powerful aroma is the honey in the background that isn’t distinctly detectable.
Taste – Rich flavor. A blast of chamomile! You can taste the wheat beer character behind the chamomile and honey. There is some honey character as you get past the initial blast of chamomile. Pacman is a high attenuator, and my FG was lower than the recipe specified – more of the honey was fermented out. Despite the pleasant dry finish, this is a flavor powerhouse. Serious character – this beer has a definite point of view. If you like chamomile, it is an easy drinking, highly flavorful beer.
Mouthfeel – I carbed to 2.5 volumes and that was sufficient. Mouthfeel is medium – not light and airy, but not heavy, either.
Drinkability & Notes – This beer was warmly received by craft and non-craft beer drinkers alike. Most of the keg was consumed at a big party. People were stopping me and saying how great the beer was. The non-craft beer drinkers guzzled this. I didn’t specify what herbs, etc were used in the beer. Most people who tasted it were completely uneducated on what beer it was and so forth, and it was widely accepted. That said, I was disappointed there was not more honey flavor. I think that was primarily due to using Pacman, which is an aggressive attenuator. When brewing this again, I plan to use a yeast with lower attenuation to see if I can nurse out more honey character in flavor and aroma. I will brew this again, although this recipe will not unseat Belgian Wit as the number one wheat beer in the house. Overall I’m satisfied – I wanted a different wheat beer for a while, and this did fit the bill and turned out to be a good party beer.
Post by Brewer kcpup
The wheels of Washington’s political bureaucracy have turned. With only 12k of the 25k signatures needed on the formal petition, the White House released the beer recipes to the public. These are very straight forward extract batches that can be done with a basic brew kit on your stove at home.
We loaded them into Brewer’s Friend:
There were a couple minor details to fill in, such as the bittering hops used in the Porter recipe, or what type of Crystal malt is used in the Honey Ale. Even so, this will get you pretty close to the results. It is likely they didn’t use Brewer’s Friend to track the brew, so maybe they don’t know either!
For a refreshing twist on home brew, try something called a shandy – beer mixed with lemonade, ginger ale, etc.
It has been a blistering summer where we live. I was over at a friend’s house recently. She pulled out a Leinenkugel Summer Shandy out of the fridge and poured me one. It was pretty good – not great – but good. Later that weekend, our next door neighbor handed me a homemade shandy with Boulevard Wheat and lemonade. Much better! Still a bit sweet, but much better.
I had a keg of wheat beer in the keezer and I had promised to bring some homebrew to a party. Inspired by these weekend quaffs, I set out to craft some homebrew shandy using a wheat beer as a base. (In this case, it was a hefe-like wheat beer.) Here’s a link to the recipe, but I used 2 row instead of pilsner…that’s why I say it was hefe-like…
Often shandys are made with wheat beer. Radlers are made with lager. Not a hard and fast rule, but typically the case. Different countries have different traditions of mixing other liquids/juice with beer. Here’s a link to an interesting article about these traditions and other beer cocktails.
Ok, back to the story…
I’d recommend you start with some lemonade you like. We have a Trader Joe’s around the corner, so we drink a fair amount of their lemonade you get in the frozen section. The price is right and it’s tart and tasty. Don’t skimp too much here…it will be a significant contribution to the flavor.
There are two basic “dials” you’ll be adjusting to get your shandy where you want it:
1. The flavor of the lemonade (how concentrated you mix it)
2. The proportion of beer to lemonade
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the first “dial.” This is largely a matter of taste – we typically make ours a bit more concentrated than the instructions on the Trader Joe’s frozen lemonade can. If you try my steps below and you’re still not thrilled, remember that you can modify the lemon flavor with a more/less concentrated lemonade.
I recommend that you work in small quantities to get your desired flavor profile identified. Here’s what I used to dial in my shandy:
After mixing up my lemonade, I began by testing with 1 ounce of beer and then X ounce (or fraction) of lemonade. By using small quantities, I could make up samples quickly, not fill myself up, and most importantly not waste homebrew!
I’d recommend starting at a 1:1 ratio (half beer, half lemonade). Many people like it around that proportion. For this batch of shandy, we preferred a 2:1 ratio (beer to lemonade). We liked it more “beery” than “lemonadey” in flavor. My guess is that when I make it again, I’d likely use this same process. Depending on the batch of homebrew and the batch lemonade the proportions would change.
Here’s a shot of my homebrew shandy:
On to packing for the party – I put the shandy in 64 ounce soda pop PET bottles. Twenty-one (21) ounces was about ⅓ of that measure, so I put that amount of lemonade in the bottle, then filled the beer in on top of it. That mixed the two together nicely. It made it easy to transport, cool, and serve at the party. People who don’t typically like beer liked the shandy. They went through about 3 gallons during the evening. Next time you want to try something different, try your homebrew in a shandy or radler. Cheers!
In case you are curious about why we went with an annual subscription fee, and why we think it works better, this post should clear up some details.
You may be on the fence like this fellow brewer who wrote in (edited and anonymized):
Its hard to justify $10 a year when I can just buy an application for $28 or use a free website. Your site definitely has more features than others (I would miss the batch scaling capability), but I most likely will go with the $28 option unless I’m missing something.
Here’s our honest answer:
Quite right, pricing is a challenging issue. We had to come up with something reasonable for the pricing and your feedback is appreciated. That said, at $28 for a lifetime, we’d go out of business in a hurry! Hosting, maintenance, support all add up. Home Brew Talk asks $25 per year, and $125 for a lifetime last time I checked, so as for an online community we are well aligned there.
Maybe we could come up with a free forever edition that was somehow plastered with ads or nerfed in some other way? It may come to that, but for now we have solid traction, sales at a very healthy conversion rate, and a decent growth rate.
The cloud based aspect is probably the biggest benefit. If you use a smart phone or tablet, you can get on the site with that device and it works reasonably well (not quite a native experience but we are working towards that). BF works on Mac, PC, Linux, just about anything with a modern browser and an internet connection.
Consider that Windows8 is going to hose a lot of application developers. In a year or two other software makers could be in a position where they have to re-write a lot of code, and force their users to upgrade. Though it looks like $28 once, it is actually $28 every few years (this is true of all software, our model is just putting that up front). Since BF is browser based, you have nothing to worry about in terms of technology shifting under your feet, and you get the upgrades automatically. In fact, we have ZERO incentive to hold back features so you buy again. Instead, we have every incentive to make you delighted every time you visit!
As for free sites, you get what you pay for in terms of service, backups, and attention to detail. We take pride in responding to user requests and we improve the site all the time based on user feedback. Check out the forum to see our progress there. We are also professionals, so that is something else to consider. At the end of the day, we’d love to have you as a customer. At $17.99 for 2 years, that ends up being a fraction of the price of a single batch, and solves the problem of organizing the details in one, easy to use spot.
Earlier this year, a fellow named Brian reached out to us for a collaboration project. He’s a very cool guy, an award winning brewer, and happens to be the owner of The Brew Mentor, a home brew store in Mentor, Ohio. Brian had an idea that makes brewing easier for extract brewers who are pressed for time. The idea of a 15 minute boil is not new, but Brian has some twists on it and designed several recipes that fit best with the process. We brewed around the same time, sampled our beers over the phone, and compared notes.
The idea is simple: get the best beer possible with only a 15 minute boil. This saves 45 minutes on brew day, and can cut the entire process to under an hour and a half. With a good chiller and refrigerated top off water, Brian got a 2.5 gallon batch done in 67 minutes:
9:17- start, water from tap @ 78°
9:21- water temp @ 155°
9:36- steeping water down to 144° secondary wort almost boiling
9:38- pull grains, combine worts
9:40- add immersion chiller
9:45- boil starts 10:01- boil finished
10:07- wort cooled to 95°
10:18- finished in fermentor with yeast pitched
We did two different recipes. The first, dubbed Easy Blonde is a light sweet blonde ale that uses Amarillo – prefect for summer. The second is Pale Face, a smooth caramely beer with an amazing Simcoe aroma and flavor. We can confidently say that both brews turned out great! In fact, Pale Face won silver in a home brew competition! Don’t expect to impress your hop head friends with these beers. They are not bitter by any means, but in my opinion qualify as crowd pleasers.
This class of recipe is prefect for on the go people to brew up one evening a couple weeks before a tail-gater. Football season is here!!!
What we learned:
What we remembered:
I’ve never been so pressed for time when brewing. Ever time I turned around it was time to do something else. I’ve gotten accustomed to that nice slowdown period between the first hop addition at 60 minutes and the next (usually at 30 minutes or later).
To make up for the painful reduction in IBU levels, Brian is also working on an all grain, 90 minute boil American IPA called Bitch Slap. At 125 IBUs and 9% ABV, that should compensate nicely for all the light beer we made lately!
For more tradeoffs in home brewing, remember when it comes to better, faster, and cheaper beer: Pick two and you’ll be fine!
