Could be a good skillset for when the apocalypse happens. People are still going to want beer, and you could barter it for things you need. All you need is a field of barley and some hop vines.
Actually hop vines could be quite profitable now, I'm paying £5 (about $8) for 100g.

 

Could be a good skillset for when the apocalypse happens. People are still going to want beer, and you could barter it for things you need. All you need is a field of barley and some hop vines.
Actually hop vines could be quite profitable now, I'm paying £5 (about $8) for 100g.

Lol, ok I'll take the bait. I've thought of that. I think I'll keep it in the realm of hobby though. There will be more valuable goods, like food.

I'm having a hard cider tight now. I was wondering if the process is any different. Just put apple juice in a fermenter with yeast and wait a bit?

 

I've not made any, but I think hard cider (or cider as we call it) is pretty easy apart from crushing and pressing the apples. If you buy cider (we call it apple juice) it might have preservatives in it which will stop the yeast from working.
Freshly pressed apples have their own yeast on the skins, like grapes, so you can let that do its stuff or pasteurize and add yeast.
I think the flavour depends a lot on the type of apple. Most of the commercial cider we get over here is perfectly clear, sweet and tastes pretty nasty to me. There is a fad of serving it with ice cubes which I presume is to get it so cold you can't taste it. I've had some excellent cider, it's just a shame it's hard to get.

 

Speaking of touch screen computers and beer, how about this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6a8Eimr-fm0

 

I've not made any, but I think hard cider (or cider as we call it) is pretty easy apart from crushing and pressing the apples. If you buy cider (we call it apple juice) it might have preservatives in it which will stop the yeast from working.
Freshly pressed apples have their own yeast on the skins, like grapes, so you can let that do its stuff or pasteurize and add yeast.
I think the flavour depends a lot on the type of apple. Most of the commercial cider we get over here is perfectly clear, sweet and tastes pretty nasty to me. There is a fad of serving it with ice cubes which I presume is to get it so cold you can't taste it. I've had some excellent cider, it's just a shame it's hard to get.

Theres a difference between cider and apple juice, filtering. Apple juice starts as cider and is filtered to allow it to be stored without it fermenting.

 

I'm making some strong cherry mead. I was walking through the vitamins the other day and saw "brewers yeast" supplement. It struck me as curious and I bought some to see if it was really suitable as brewing yeast since it was about 10000X cheaper than the little packets they sell for brewing. I took it to a newly opened local home brew supply place, and they were having a demonstration day. They were showing how to make mead, and I tasted some. Delicious! Tastes like wine, but less dry, sweeter, and 20% alcohol. So I bought some ingredients to make some. We'll see in 3 weeks.

 

I don't think the "brewer's yeast" supplement is suitable for actual brewing. I don't think it's activated.

 

I don't think the "brewer's yeast" supplement is suitable for actual brewing. I don't think it's activated.

The guy at the brewers supply had never heard of a "brewers years" dietary supplement, but he said that he wouldn't try it because it had other stuff in it. Not sure what 'activated' means, but after looking that up, I plan to try it anyways, or not (with a small batch).

 

Worth a try on a tiny batch I suppose, but if it's a beer yeast it will die at under 8% alcohol (that's ABV so 16% proof). It's probably not going to give the best flavour either, but could be interesting.
As a quick initial test, put a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of water at around 30C with a tablet and see if you get any yeast foam on the top after half an hour or so.
I've tried a few for beer and now use Safbrew WB-06 dry wheat beer yeast for everything. It gives the beer an interesting flavour that I like and settles out better than anything else I've tried, not much good for a strong mead though.
I've made mead before using EC1118 up to about 15% ABV. Takes a very long time to ferment (around 3 months) although apparently you can speed it up by adding the honey in stages as it ferments. It really benefits from being stored at least another 6 months after bottling, it tastes a bit harsh but mellows out with age.

 

Worth a try on a tiny batch I suppose, but if it's a beer yeast it will die at under 8% alcohol (that's ABV so 16% proof). It's probably not going to give the best flavour either, but could be interesting.
As a quick initial test, put a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of water at around 30C with a tablet and see if you get any yeast foam on the top after half an hour or so.
I've tried a few for beer and now use Safbrew WB-06 dry wheat beer yeast for everything. It gives the beer an interesting flavour that I like and settles out better than anything else I've tried, not much good for a strong mead though.
I've made mead before using EC1118 up to about 15% ABV. Takes a very long time to ferment (around 3 months) although apparently you can speed it up by adding the honey in stages as it ferments. It really benefits from being stored at least another 6 months after bottling, it tastes a bit harsh but mellows out with age.

Interesting. The EC1118 is the exact yeast that I used. It's what the brewers supply recommended, and what they used in their own mead. They said their mead took 3 weeks and that it was 20% alcohol (40 proof) and I believe it. The small sample cup I drank gave me the effect of a shot of hard liquor. They also added yeast twice.
What temperature do you ferment at? I read that the cooler the environment, the longer fermentation takes. In my house last winter we kept the temp around 60F and it took my beer forever to ferment.

 

Around 65F. Fruit and grape wines that I made took 2-3 weeks, but all my meads took 2-3 months to stop bubbling and I probably made about half a dozen batches.

 

Markd77, I have a question for you.

This came up in a homebrewing forum, I was questioning why we Americans use some german words for parts of the process, specifically these:
Krausen - a thick layer of foam that forms on top of beer while fermenting
Vorlauf - to drain water from the mash and put it back in, repeatedly,until it runs clear.

then this came up:

The US's brewing industry has strong German roots, i.e. Augustus Busch, not to mention that Wisconsin (home of Miller) is an area that a lot of German immigrants came to when they hit America.

The reason that we never created English words for these processes is that we already had Germans here brewing beer, so we simply appropriated those words and use them today as if they're our own.

What I would be interested in, though, is what words the English use for these processes over in the UK? They have their own brewing traditions that undoubtedly didn't come from Germany. Do they use the German terms or do they have their own?

So, what do you call these things?

 

I'd call them foam and recirculating, but that's probably not right.
I'll be bottling 40 pints of oatmeal stout tonight.

 

99 bottles of beer,an old American saying,is stout a beer or ale ,whats the differents.

Mark the brew master.

 

A stout is a black or almost black beer. I think ale usually means a pale or brown beer that isn't lager.

 

99 bottles of beer,an old American saying,is stout a beer or ale ,whats the differents.

Mark the brew master.

Stout is what you get from drinking too much beer or ale..

 

I would love to home brew, but where I live, if you try to drill for water, it comes up beer. Water is in short supply, however BEER and SNOW is not!!!

 

I thought Miller was owned by Kraft foods inc, who in turn was owned by a S. African holding company. Like Bank of America.

 

I made beer in Iraq because it was hard, and dangerous, to smuggle liquor in (though we did it.) It's not hard to do, but it's also not worth it. It takes a long time, and it doesn't really taste that great.

 

If it doesn't taste good then you were doing it wrong. I make beers using pretty much the same methods as a microbrewery and the results are excellent. In most cases they taste better than beer at the pub or bottled beer. It takes me about six hours to get a batch into the fermenter although around half of that I can do other things. It costs me around 15 pence a pint compared to around £2 to buy decent bottled beer and I can make the beers how I like them.