It’s that time again. What’s everyone brewing? It’s May so depending on where you live there might be some interesting herbs available right about now.
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We’ve got tired of just fermenting standard wort with different yeast strains for comparison, and we are starting full-sized batches of proper styled beer split and inoculated with very similar yet distinct yeast from the same class. The first in line are Belgian wits. Weather permitting it’ll be outdoor brews! Hopefully this would be fun experience, will try to post inspirational results here.
And spruce tips are coming soon as well, but not yet. There is ground elder everywhere, but I’m reluctant to give it a try in brewing, need to learn to ferment it with lactic first and see if it is any good to my taste.
Yesterday we’ve tasted small batches of… some weird yeast caught in some local beer in UK bar, it certainly looks right under microscope, counts to proper population with more or less typical dynamics… and then fails to change the gravity, yet produces quite distinct flavor. 1040 OG beer starters end up too sweet and disgusting, of course, so we’ve tried instead kombucha-style mix of pale wort and tea, to 1010 OG, sterile, of course. The gravity did not change again, but the flavor! It was not quite like kombucha, but along the lines, and definitely the tea flavor was more distinct that in reference non-inoculated sample, that tasted disgustingly sweet and stale. And somehow this “monoculture combucha” hits in the head. What a weird mutant. Something to research now. Maybe we have a 0% beer magic in our hands?
Cool adventures there! Respect for brewing for science on behalf of all Alzymologist clients!
could be a Pichia strain?
Could be, the world is wide, though, and I’ll wait till we have more knowledge about it to place a name. Which does not stop me from culinary experimentation!
Last weekend I brewed some NEIPAish beer (pretty rare for me to make anything resembling an IPA but my sister and family are coming for a visit and they’re hop heads) using azacca and strata hops, ten gallons of that so I’ll put it in two kegs and dry hop them each differently, I haven’t decided on what so any suggestions are welcome. Fermented with Ebbegarden kveik.
I also brewed a hoppy grape ale, loads of Hallertauer Blanc at the end of boil and then fermented with Lallemand/Escarpment Pomona yeast and added moscato wine pomace to the primary ferment. I pressed the beer off the pomace a couple days ago as it seemed like fermentation was slowing down. I like to press these beers off the pomace while there is still yeast activity so that the yeast will take up any oxygen introduced by pressing.
We are heading into autumn, I’m thinking of going both a feijoa and a persimmon mead. I also have some honeys ready for mead; a Bochet (anout 12kg), another 35kg of clover honey, about 10kg of reject manuka from cleaning out the filters, and some 30kg of medium pasture (again from cleaning filters)
I currently have these meads going:
- ginger and clover honey
- rewarewa
- manuka
A fellow beekeeper!
Bochet
TIL proper name for that thing when someone new to the art is being told to “boil your honey really well or mead will spoil”!
How are things done there on the other side of the world? Do you move your bees to fields with these flowers, or is it just arbitrary seasonal labeling that does not really mean you are really collecting that flower dominantly?
Would you want to try my bee sensors that listen to the bees every hour?
How are things done there on the other side of the world? Do you move your bees to fields with these flowers
Rewarewa is a early bush/forest crop that we move the hives to, then they get moved off to Manuka
Flying hives into Manuka: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE9yuSvimw0&ab_channel=SamS
TIL proper name for that thing
I’m making this, again from waste honey. I would’nt subject good honey to this treatment
I was just thinking of caramelizing very small fraction of honey for flavor this year out of curiosity, but with my small production it will have to be good honey probably, I’m not at scale where waste appears yet. Although there is a risk to suddenly inhetit an empire from my neighbor.
Currently cold crashing a Grodziskie. Next up is a Hüll Melon Kölsch.
I haven’t really messed with adding herbs in my beer. Though, I did harvest some spruce tips that I’ll keep frozen and use for a Celebration-inspired pale ale.
Someday I’m gonna do a spruce tip Sahti but I missed the window. I’ve been busy, and I’ve got a backlog of beer. Either it’s too much or too little somehow.
