Shiner Bock clone, mash pH deep dive and more

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Find Recipes Start your free trial Brew Day Bulletin Dear Homebrewer, Take a deep dive into mash pH [Free], and two pros share tips on brewing session beers [Digital Members]. Gordon Strong's German Helles Exportbier [Digital Members] is bolder than your typical lawnmower beer, but it is meant to reward a hard day's work.  Mr. Wizard troubleshoots a hazy blueberry Weizen [Free] by taking a lesson from winemaking, and he explains how to calculate the dosage rate of priming sugar when priming a keg with sugar [Digital Members] Shiner Bock won gold at the 2012 GABF and silver in the 2017 GABF in the American-Style Amber Lager category. See if you can match Spoetzl's brewing prowess with this Shiner Bock clone recipe [Free]. This DIY keg level sensor provides a new way to measure beer volume [Digital Members]. Then, we built this fermentation cabinet [Free] for free. Cheers! Brad Ring Publisher Read & Brew: Free Content For All Recipe Spoetzl Brewery: Shiner Bock clone Shiner Bock continues to ring up awards for it's classic Shiner Bock, having won gold at the 2012 GABF and silver in the 2017 GABF in the American-Style Amber Lager category. See if you can match Spoetzl's brewing prowess. (5 gallons/19 L, all-grain) OG = 1.043 FG 1.010 IBU = 17 SRM = 16 ABV = 4.3% Ingredients 3 lbs. (1.36 kg) 6-row pale malt 3 lbs. (1.36 kg) Vienna malt (4 °L) 2.66 lbs. (1.21 kg) corn grits Read more Article Sorting the Facts: A deep dive into mash pH Current homebrewing lore has it that ideal mash pH is in the range of 5.2–5.6. This simple fact is, in fact, not at all simple. It is thus worth a deep dive into two questions: What exactly do these numbers mean, and what is their scientific basis? I'll answer these questions by addressing four interrelated topics: (i) Standard practice when reporting measured pH values, (ii) The shift in pH when wort is cooled from mash temperature (MT) to room temperature (RT), (iii) The automatic temperature compensation (ATC) feature of a pH meter, and (iv) Most importantly, the goals of a successful mash. Read more Miss In-Person Homebrew Events This Past Year? We Did Too! Join BYO in Denver, Colorado this November 4-6, 2021 for small-class, hands-on, in-person homebrewing workshops. Choose from over one dozen full-day classes taught by homebrewing's top experts. Ask Mr. Wizard Blueberry Additions and Fruit Haze Q I recently made a blueberry Weizen. After a bit of research, we decided to add the blueberries to the secondary fermenter. We defrosted them, ran them through a blender, then poured the crushed berries into the secondary. The resulting brew is nicely bluish-purple, tastes nicely of the blueberries, and is a very refreshing beer. I like it a lot. The issue is that the beer is very cloudy, millions of tiny particles of blueberries in the liquid, in spite of draining the berries through a muslin bag to get out the solids. I suspect the particles I see are too tiny to be caught in the bag. We added Irish moss during the boil, but wonder if there's something we should do next time for a clearer result. A I think the problem with this beer is that you placed your blueberries into a blender. By doing this you broke down insoluble compounds in the blueberry skins into millions of tiny bits that have a density not much greater than beer. The result is fairly stable, hazy emulsion that is difficult to filter and not effectively removed by straining or fining (Irish moss helps with wort clarity in the kettle, but has no effect on ingredients added after the boil).   Read More Project Fermentation Cabinet How can I make my homebrew better? That was and still is the #1 question for most homebrewers. Temperature control during the fermentation is very important but it was difficult for me to control. Cooling was my problem, so I came up with this fermentation conditioner idea. I decided to take an old dehumidifier and donate it to a better cause. The only tricky challenge was reworking the Freon coil without damaging it. After that I could insert the coil into an insulated box with a gasketed door. I also needed a fan to blow air over the coil to keep the coil from icing and improve the air circulation in the chamber.  Read More For Digital Members Only Members get access to thousands of recipes, all new BYO issues and more. Try membership risk free for 14 days.* Brew Better. Try Membership, Free!* Recipe Gordon Strong's German Helles Exportbier This beer is bolder than your typical lawnmower beer, but it is meant to reward a hard day's work. So go cross something off your to-do list, then grab a cold one, like life was meant to be. (5 gallons/19 L, all-grain) OG = 1.053 FG = 1.011 IBU = 27 SRM = 5 ABV = 5.5% Ingredients 9.5 lbs. (4.3 kg) Pilsner malt 12 oz. (340 g) Vienna malt 6 oz. (170 g) Munich malt   Read more Article Brewing Session Beers: Tips from the Pros A great session beer (one that comes in at or below about 5% ABV) is ideal for afternoons in the summer sun and events when you want to have a few beers without getting inebriated. While brewing a beer low in ABV isn't hard, brewing one with the flavor and mouthfeel that resembles a higher-alcohol beer takes great skill and planning in the recipe design. Take the advice of these two pros into your next brew day and you'll be rewarded with a perfect beer to enjoy after finishing your weekend to-do list. Read more Ask Mr. Wizard Priming A Keg With Sugar Q When using priming sugar in a keg, as opposed to bottles, do you need to reduce the amount of sugar? Some blogs suggest by one third. A This is one of those rules of thumb that always makes me scratch my head. Bottle, keg, and tank- conditioned beers all contain carbon dioxide from a combination of the CO2 remaining in beer following fermentation plus the CO2 derived from secondary fermentation. Assuming that bottles, casks, and tanks all scale up proportionally, the vessel size in which beer carbonates has no effect on carbonation level when the same priming rate is used. For example, 10 grams of dextrose added to 1 liter of beer will always yield about 4.9 grams of carbon dioxide per liter beer when fully fermented during secondary.   Read more Project Keg Level Sensor: A new way to measure beer volume About two years ago, I decided it's time to get back into homebrewing. Let's clarify that one of the primary motivators for me to stop brewing about 10 years ago was all the time that I had to set aside for washing and sanitizing bottles. This time was going to be different. After convincing my wife to move the kitchen table outside to make room for a kegerator, I knew I had the green light. Read more *Free Trial Terms and Conditions: For new members and subscribers only. Limit one per customer. Additional auto-renewal terms apply. See product checkout page for details.  Copyright © 2021 Brew Your Own, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from Brew Your Own Our mailing address is: Brew Your Own 5515 Main St Manchester Center, VT 05255 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.