ottawa foodies

So, my husband is trying his hand at making beer. It's pretty good, even the ones he admits he messed up. But it's still not quite right.

For example, we LOVE Beau's Lug Tread. When I taste our home brew, in addition to the beer taste, I can taste a sweetness and yeast. When I taste the Lug Tread it tastes dry to me. And awesome of course. No idea if I'm using the right descriptor there when I say dry, but it doesn't have that sweetness to it that the home-brew does.

He tried lowering the amount of sugar, but it just made a beer that was less bubbly, the sweet yeasty flavour was still there.

Can anyone point us in the right direction with either suggestions or websites?

Haying season will be upon us before we know it, and we'll need our beer!

I found this page of tips . . .

www.jovialmonk.com.au

You could also try fermenting at a lower temperature, but longer.

Water . . . don't use hard water.

Less sucrose use another form of sugar.

Back in the day when Molson Dry was all the rage, home brewers tried to recreate the "dry" taste with a secondary addition of sugar. The reasoning was that with Molson Dry being 5.5%, the extra .5 came from extra sugar. My thought is that while sweet will give your mouth a dry sensation, Beau's dryness is probably due to the bitterness from the hop(s) they use.

I'll check out the website. Thanks, Francis. I'll see what temperature he's fermenting at, and we do have hard water.

He was using corn sugar, but I think has switched to malting sugar.

Tree Pug, I'm not a fan of hoppy beers, but maybe we can adjust it a bit more to create dryness without hoppy-ness. The Molson Dry secondary ferment is interesting. I don't do it often, but sometimes I'll give my water kefir a secondary ferment and it makes it taste dry. Maybe the same with beer.

Dry means more of the sugars were converted to fermentable sugars, and fermented out. So there is less residual sugar (and more alcohol).

If hubby is doing this from canned beer kits he really does not have effective means to manage this. You can experiment with putting enzymes like beano in your beer which converts higher-order sugars to lower-order, but really the way this is controlled by real brewers is during the mash (a step already done for you when you use canned beer kits)

Try the Festa Brew kits from Defalco or from Magnotta in the east end (Magnotta makes them). In particular the Blonde Lager is relatively dry. You still don't control this step, but they are better quality.

If you want to get into full mashing send me a private message. You guys should come to Big Brew which is father's day weekend outside of Merrickville. Hubby will get a great chance to see lots of different all-grain beer systems in action, and to try lots of home made beer. Take a tent and stay the weekend.

Good work OG's hubby!

Though he will want to make the switch to all grain ASAP for full control. Takes more time but worth every minute.

One thing a homebrewer never wants to hear.....he may want to lager that beer for a couple months to clarify it and let that yeast settle out. I have lagered beer for 6 months and it was a totally different beer. Smooth, crisp and clean.

Keep in mind I am the guy who drinks his 3.5% beers right out of the primary cause it cannot get any fresher :)

Beaus is a lagered ale - a kolsch. This style of beer takes a lot of time and precise temp control. As zym mentioned, its difficult to control variables such as dryness with extract/kits because the recipe is predetermined. However, producing a dry beer is not difficult with all grain. It's counter intuitive but adding sugar to your wort (all grain) will produce a dryer beer since it provides more fermentable sugars for the yeast to convert. Many commercial IPA's have large sugar additions to the grain bill as heavily hopped beers benefit from additional dryness.

Do not hesitate to brew all grain. Sure you have to pay more attention to detail and a bit more equipment is necessary but the control and freedom you have with recipes and the final product is worth it.

Excellent information! Thanks, everyone!

Yesterday, after I read over the link Francis gave, and thought over the information from Zym and Tree Pug, hubby and I also figured out that Beau's is a kolsch style lagered ale, that it's time to step up our game a bit with ingredients

It was reassuring that our limited knowledge and google searching resulted in us coming to similar conclusions that krusty and Stewtine posted!

We probably can't do a lagered ale this time of year, but we'll aim to try it later this fall or winter. We for sure will be going to the grain, rather than the kits. Then, we'll get into the longer aging/kegging/lagering. One baby beer step at a time.

And sent you a PM about Big Brew, Zym.

Honestly ... even if you don't wish to stay the night... go to BSB.

You will learn more and see more opinions / methods / ingredients / equipment in a single day than you will ever get online or in books within a week or even a months worth of time.

You will meet guys that are control freaks with every last gizmo on the planet to control everything in order to ensure their beer is great.

You'll also meet some at the other end of the spectrum who brew by using handfuls of this and that over an open fire! (both methods can turn out really great beer!)

Then there are a whole lot of people in the middle who will be making and showing off damn tasty beer!
Using a multitude of methods and styles.

Can't recommend it enough... best to go with a friend the first time though - it's a pretty big event and it's easy to be overwhelmed unless you are pretty outgoing.

BSB == "Big Strange Brew" or "Big Brew"

:-)

It seems I may actually know MichaelGA

I can't wait to check it out, and to reap the benefits of my husband making better home-brew. ;-)

BSB is close enough to our home, that we could almost walk. Well, we could certainly walk to our friends farm just down the road from it. :-)

Thanks for the info, Zym.

Wow! Went to BSB late yesterday afternoon with hubby. And I can't begin to say how glad I am we did! Thanks so much for the invite, Zymurgist. I learned more about beer in the first few minutes than I ever could have imagined.

I am 100% sure our homebrew efforts are going to produce much better beer now. I also know that now I will be far better equipped to choose a beer from the LCBO when I'm there.

And the people? Amazing! So kind, friendly, an welcoming. Met some other farmers, and of course, lots of beer lovers. :-)

There were times that some of the beer brewing conversation went over my head, and a few times it went WAY over my head! But, as I said, we learned so much in such a short time, that I know that the beer being made at our place is about to get much better!

Glad you had a good time organicgirl, and sorry we did not get to meet. I only went out for about 3 hours starting at 11am.

Here is a video of the nifty ad-hoc wood-fired stove / pizza oven that one of the brewers threw together for the weekend ...

So thanks to this thread over the summer DH invested in some Festa kits, and a keg. Thus far, the beer has been MUCH more enjoyable, so gratitude for those suggestions! Days that we're baling hay we always have help now. ;-)

What seems to be inconsistent with his beer making efforts now is the carbonation. The beer tastes good, but it seems like most times, it's almost flat, and DH has to keep blasting it with the CO2.

Any suggestions? I'm assuming we're missing a step or doing something wrong.

I doubt it but you could have a leak.

My normal procedure would be after filling the keg pressurize it at 30psi while burping it ~6-8 times. I leave it for a day or two and then lower the psi to 10 which would be my serving pressure. Also if you have multiple kegs on the line I would cut them off while you carb to avoid inconsistencies. I haven't kegged at this sea level in a while so my #'s may be off. I know the same system used different specs when I was in Victoria, quite a bit closer to sea level.

Yup, could have a leak for sure if you have to keep blasting it.

Or it was never fully carbed in the first place and you only think it was because of CO2 in the headspace. That will cause a big head of foam that does not last. Eventualy the headspace dissolves into the keg and the beer is slightly more carbonated but won't be as initially foamy.

How are you carbonating?

OG if DH et el were to ever become members of Lanarks Unbelievably Sexy Homebrewers, it would be expected that beer be appreciated without much carbonation!

There are a tonne of tutorials on beer cabonation techniques. Also g**gle CO2 beer chart table and it will tell you what PSI at what ambient temp. Chances are if it is carbed for a day or two then goes flat, you have a leak in your dispensing setup.

I do not make beer, or anything with alcohol that you drink....yet.

But if people are saying "less sugar" can you use Stevia in making beer?
It does come in a leaf and is considered a natural ingredient.

I do some baking and candy making and some people used to think some of my suggestions were "strange" but now I actually see quite a few sugar-free items with stevia.

I had suggested to a few people that you could get sugar-free chocolate made with stevia and also soda and people just look at me strangely.
Those ingredients are not that popular around here-exept for the stevia soda.

But if stevia is used in ginger soda,cola and rootbeer I think it should work for beer.

I wouldn't think Stevia would work for beer nor would you want it in your beer. The making of alcohol requires a ferment able sugar and I don't think Stevia is in that cat agony as an artificial sweetener. And sweeteners taste horrible 😀

Actually stevia is a natural sweetener derived from the stevia plant.

I stand corrected. What I should have said was that Stevia is a non fermentable sugar and not an artificial sweetener. I find any non fermentable sugars in my beer very off putting.

Thanks for the info,I did not know this at all.

I guess stevia is better for things other than beer!

you can finally get stevia in yogurt now in Canada. It had been available in US earlier. Activia and Source are 2 that comes to mind.

But you can already get stevia and plain yogurt here-I would just mix my own if I really want some. But I guess this is more convenient if it is premade...