Fermented from persimmons or flavored with persimmons?
We had a persimmon tree in our backyard growing up. I loved those things, and you can’t get ’em in stores. (And the variety that we had was inedible until ripe and unshippably soft once edible.)
Those would be the Hachiya persimmons (aka acorns) which is what I have. They taste like you’re sucking on a tea bag until they become jelly.
And in this case, I aged the cordial on persimmon puree.
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Happy Thanksgiving! We spend the holiday with close friends, and I always make a special batch for the celebration. This year’s brew is an oak-aged imperial red IPA, inspired by “Happy Days,” one of my favorite beers from Claremont Craft Ales. I call my version Live Oak Canyon Ale, with all of the details on my blog. Because it’s a 9% abv beer, I “only” made 2.5 gallons, but that’s plenty to enjoy with friends over two or three days.
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I would dearly love to be able to post images, but the process escapes me. I’ve been told to read-up on how it’s done on this site, but my one attempt was an abysmal failure. Never bothered to try again. I’m on other sites where it’s really easy. T’ain’t for me on this site…
You can paste images directly into the text box when you’re writing your post.
Happy thanksgiving as well
Getting near the end of my American Bitter on my Southern spouts
BTW using Discourse to access the AHA makes things very simple
Any size limits? I’m on one that limits images to 480 pixels in both vertical and horizontal orientations.
My first-ever shot at posting an image after the redesign of the site:
My 12-gallon, food-grade feed bucket. Depth of the wort is 13½ inches at nine gallons. Maximum depth, to account for the protrusion of the lid into the bucket, is eighteen inches. That’s a headspace of 25 percent.
The one-inch hole for the transfer valve is drilled to forfeit one gallon of dead yeast and any other trash that finds its way to the bottom during the nineteen days of fermentation. I don’t anticipate the dead yeast to become thick enough to get up to the lower periphery of the transfer valve. I expect to open the valve and drain clear beer into enough one-liter bottles to get down to six or seven gallons of trub-free deliciousness and plop-in the appropriate number of carbo drops, after which I will drain the remainder into my bottling bucket and proceed from that point.
The six-gallon mark is at 9½ inches, allowing you to bottle all five gallons of a five-gallon batch should you up the recipe to produce six gallons. The levels were empirically-determined. Nine gallons is a lot of water to throw down the sink.
Now look at this one. I got to wonderin’ just how accurate are the markings on these buckets we use. Another five gallons of water down the drain revealed that the markings are about half an inch too low. The red marks are mine.
It’s 4.25 inches from the verified five-gallon mark to the lip of the bucket, which should contain any foam-up during fermentation. I have the bucket marked to do fermentation on one side, and marked again to do bottling 180 degrees from the fermentation hole. The fermentation hole is placed higher than the bottling hole to account for the dead yeast. The bottling hole is plugged with a transfer valve during fermentation, and vice versa. I have enough buckets that I can have several brews going simultaneously. That’s why each bucket is drilled for either segment of the process.
My apologies for posting in what has to be the incorrect category. Would the mods please move my posts to the appropriate category? Thank you…
Looks great! Cheers!
Here’s a bucket that was advertised to be ten gallons. I think it’s a little less than that. I post-up this image so as to have the members see the headspaces with which I’m dealing in these buckets. Five gallons gives us 9" over 17 inches, for a 47% headspace. No worries about the krausen making its way into the airlock. Six gallons (in order to bottle five) gives us 11" over 17, for a 35% headspace. Seven gallons gives us 13" over 17, for a 23% headspace. That’s probably as far as I’ll ever go. A post was recently made by one with oodles more experience than me that 25 to 30 percent headspace is the limit to not violate the sanctity of the airlock. 6.5 gallons would be around 12" high, leaving us with right near 30% headspace.
6.5 gallons to be fermented would require 8.58 pounds of malt syrup to get to 1.32 pounds per gallon. mr. beer’s 2.87-pound cans produce 2.125 gallons of beer per can, which is 1.35 pounds of malt syrup per gallon. Their 1.87-pound cans also produce 2.125 gallons of beer, which is 0.88 pounds per gallon of malt syrup. I looked and looked at 0.88 versus 1.35 and saw that 1.32 is exactly 1.5X of 0.88-- close enough to 1.35 to use that dilution as my new standard. My previous standard was 1.25 pounds per gallon.
Because mr, beer’s cans come in only two sizes (save for the Cooper’s products that come from Australia), I can make a 0.88 beer (Standard) into a 1.32 beer (Craft) by varying the total amount of liquid to be fermented.
Example: To make seven gallons using mr. beer’s 2.87-pound cans, I’d need 3.2 cans to get a 1.32 dilution. I’m not going to fool-around and try to pour-off two-tenths of a can. Much easier to use three cans (a total of 8.61 pounds) at 1.32 dilution, which requires a total fermentable volume of 6.52 gallons. To round that off to 6.5 gallons would be just fine; gives us a 1.325 dilution. This is why I have these buckets of volumes greater than 5.0 gallons and 6.5 gallons: I can’t vary the volume of the malt syrup, but I can sure as helsinki vary the total volume of liquid to be fermented. I’m an extract brewer and will be until the world stops rotating on its axis. No need to calculate hops or none of that other stuff that all-grain brewers do.
I’m also thinking about combining two different syrups, such as 2.87 pounds of Northwest Pale Ale with 1.87 pounds of American Ale. That’s 4.74 pounds of syrup at 1.32 = 3.6 gallons total fermentable volume. 0.6 gallons is 77 ounces, which is easy to measure; won’t round-off such an easy number. 4.74 pounds at an easy 3.5 gallons is 1.35, which is exactly mr. beer’s Craft-level dilution.
This method works with any mass of malt syrup you might have. Just add-up the weights of your malt, divide by your preferred dilution and that’s how many gallons of total fermentable volume you’ll have. So simple that even a truckdriver loser like me, with two college degrees, can figger it out.
Returning to American porter…this one is a clone-ish version of Black Butte Porter. Wonderfully tasty, and exactly what I want/need around this time of year. Details at my blog.
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Nice! Cheers!
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English IPA
Escarpment English II
1.068 OG 1.015 FG
about 60 IBU
86% maris otter
7% light DME
3% 90L crystal
4% Attempted candi sugar about this colour: #662200
and no its not clouydy at all, its just not a great pic. its very clear.
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Tonight to celebrate Christmas Eve, we tapped the keg for a Belgian-inspired holiday ale, based on a recipe by Gordon Strong (“Winter in Antwerp”). Delicious, and worth the wait!
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The last bottle of the batch I brewed with my wife’s sourdough culture. Bottled on 25 June. Definitely got more Brett-y gueuze-y / farmhouse-y with time … and very very carbonated.
Edit: Prof. Google suggests that Brettanomyces spp. are not commonly found in sourdough cultures; so whatever I’m picking up just be from some other wild yeast or bacteria.
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Just tapped my Oatmeal Stout
Smooth as silk with a nice caramel flavor. Experience has shown as this beer ages the caramel goes away as the beer dries out. It’s like having two or more beers in a single keg
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This summer, I brewed a blonde ale and German pils when visiting my dad. For Christmas, he sent a bottle of each for me to sample! (I live far from where I grew up, so it’s rare that I get to enjoy our collaborative brewing efforts). Dad is the person who got me into brewing, and he’s probably the person I talk homebrewing with most frequently. As we all get older, I’m more conscious of the fact that these collaborative brewing days won’t last forever, so I’m grateful for each one.
One of Dad’s challenges has been head retention – having these latest samples, I think undercarbonation is a major factor, as a result of the bottling process (he force carbonates everything in a keg, and then bottles from there). Sampling these helped to highlight that factor; I often forget that carbonation is a key point in head formation and retention.
Recipes and notes are on my blog.
Andy’s Pilsner (above)
Citra Blonde Ale (above)
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Enjoy those moments! My dad has been gone for 15 years my mom 31 years. Still miss both of them
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