What’s New?

Screen Shot 2015-08-05 at 5.45.52 PMSo you started brewing awhile ago, and you’ve gotten pretty good at it. You’ve brewed some ales, and some more ales. You’ve added more hops, and even more hops, to some of your beers and they were great. But maybe you’ve been noticing a certain sameness creeping into your brewdays and want to try something new — but what is there?

For intermediate brewers, there are a ton of “new” things you can try. Few of these are new to brewing as a whole, but most are underappreciated in the homebrewing community and mostly attempted only by advanced homebrewers. If you’re looking to try something new to you, consider the following options. [Read more…]

Brew 15 Gallons (57 L), Fast

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A diagram of the method. (Click to enlarge.)

If you have a 5.0-gallon (19-L) brewery, but want to generate 15 gallons (57 L) of beer quickly — perhaps for a party — here’s one way to do it. Normally, this would require three separate brew days. However, with the method I described here, you can do it in two brew days — and only have to make one yeast starter.

The drawbacks are that the two brew days need to be back to back, all 15 gallons (57 L) will be of the same kind of beer, and the beer can’t be over 13 °Plato (OG 1.052). Also, you will want to consume the beer fairly quickly (within a couple months), as it will go stale faster than normal homebrew. This method is best for generating 15 gallons (57 L) of beer for a party.

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BWJ Q and A (Dilute the “Super Saison”?)

The Question

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For no apparent reason, here’s a picture of a cat.

My name’s Michael. I’m a homebrewer originally from Austin but living far, far away. I hear you a bunch on Basic Brewing Radio and I read your article “Expand Your Output” and I had a quick question for the expert in diluting high gravity beers.

I brew BIAB and I made a “super saison” and I didn’t get too much wort (only 13 L) because I made a smaller beer out of the second runnings.

I pitched a healthy amount of WLP565 (farmed from a previous batch) and fermented fairly warm until it attenuated the crap out of this beer, with apparent ABV of over 11%. (OG 1.091. FG 1.006.)

I’d like to boil my priming sugar in 3 L of water, so I can bring my ABV down to the target 9%.

The beer has ~50 IBUs and will need at least 3 months of conditioning.

Will I ruin this beer by diluting it?

— Michael Maze

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