Fermencap - S: Review

Tired of always watching the pot while you brew your beer so you don't have any boil overs? Tired of attaching a blow off tube to your fermenter just in case if it blows its top? Well, Ben's Homebrew now has a new product called Fermcap-S. Fermcap-S is an anti foaming liquid that you add directly to your brew kettle or to your fermenter in order to prevent boil overs.

I'll be honest, I was a bit skeptical when I used this stuff. I wasn't sure if it was going to work. So I brewed up a batch of beer and just to try out Fermcap-S, I decided to make sure I had a decent foam going for a boil over. I added 2 drops per gallon of wort and immediately all of the foam subsided. I was amazed at this stuff.

One other great thing about fermcap-s is that you can now collect 7 gallons of wort in a 7.5 gallon brewing kettle. Why, because you don't have to worry about it foaming up and boiling over. You can squeeze more wort into your kettle for the boil. It's awesome. And, you don't have to worry about watching it at all.

Fermcap-S also works the same way in the fermenter. Add 1-2 drops per gallon of wort, pitch your yeast and fermcap-s will hold the krausen (foam) to a 1/2 inch. That's pretty freakin' sweet if you ask me.

And if you're at all worried about fermcap-s causing issues with head retention in the final product of your beer, then don't sweat it. After primary fermentation finishes, fermcap-s drops out of solution to the bottom of the fermenter, so you can just rack right off of it.

If you don't have fermcap-s then I recommend you get some and try it out. One vial lasts a long time and you're never going to have to worry about boil overs or blow offs with your beer. I'm definitely going to be using it with every beer that I brew. No more worries for me. And that's what I'm talking about.

P.S. I'll be demonstrating how it works in an upcoming video. Then you'll get to SEE what I'm talking about!

Happy 2010!

Well, after a 3 month long hiatus from blogging, I just wanted to let everyone know that Homebrew Junkie is back! So all you homebrew junkies, don't fret. I have plans for new videos and new blogs. This year I'll be focusing more on using liquid yeast and reviewing liquid yeast. On top of that I'll be writing and doing a video on How to Make a Starter for your liquid yeast. We'll be doing some other crazy stuff like smoking malt and chipotle's for a chipotle smoked porter. I'll also be building and video taping how to build a hop trellis. I moved and need to build a new set up for the hops.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone that there will be new things this year and if you have any other suggestions as to what you'd like video taped or blogged about, please feel free to leave those suggestions in the comment area.

Thanks. I can't wait. It's going to be an exciting year. I hope you all will join me!

Citra Whole Leaf Hops - Review

Citra Whole leaf hops are a brand new hop that's just recently reached the homebrewing world. Citra hops are grown by Sierra Nevada brewing company and have been used in their Torpedo Extra IPA. The only thing known about Citra Hops is that they contribute a pineapple, mango and citrus flavor. Very unique and very interesting.

Just the other day I brewed up an IPA using nothing but Citra hops and when it's kegged and ready I'll be sure to report back and post my results on the hops. If you're interested in purchasing some Citra Hops you can do so right here at the low price of $2 an ounce: Ben's Homebrew
Get them while they last. And before I go here's my recipe for citra hops.

Citra Hop IPA

3 lbs golden light DME (60 min boil)
3 lbs golden light DME (15 min boil)
1 lb Local Honey (flame out)
1 lb 40L crystal malt
1 oz Citra First Wort Hop
2 oz Citra 20 min
2 oz Citra 10 min
1 oz Citra Dry Hop
2 pkgs US-05 Fermentis Ale Yeast

Pretty simple. We'll see how she shines!

Revision: 10-29-09

Kegged it up and force carbed it. It was super fresh. These are my notes: Big pineapple, piney aroma with a touch of onion. Lots of front-forward pineapple flavor, rounds out to piney flavor and leaves a touch of onion in the back end of the finish. Interesting. It's almost like a mix of amarillo, simcoe and summit all in one.

A week has gone by and the onion flavor is gone. I have to say that this is one of the most interesting hops I've ever brewed with. This simple recipe could probably win a medal because the flavor in this beer completely blows away any other kind of IPA I've ever had. It's so unique. I gave a pint to my sister and she said, with no hesistation: "Wow, this is good." And it is good. The flavor blows away any 60 min IPA.

If you haven't tried Citra hops, give them a shot as a single addition to really understand how they work. It's freakin' awesome.

Five Star: Star San - Review

Star san, star san, star san . . . .you are my one and only friend! Ha! That's great. Seriously, though, Star san is my go-to sanitizer when it comes to sanitizing my homebrewing or wine making products and here are a few reasons why.

One of the greatest things about Star san is that it only requires a 30 second contact time in order to sanitize. The FDA requires a 2 minute contact time for any kind of sanitizer, so that's how many sanitizers are listed. However, Five Star has done their own testing and using the appropriate amount of star san per water, it yielded a 30 second contact time.

So what does that mean? Well, it means that you can actually put Star San in a spray bottle and spot sanitize equipment as you need to when you're homebrewing or making wine. I have a bottle on hand at all times. If I need to stir something up I spray the spoon down, wait 30 seconds and then stir it up. It's great for spot sanitizing wine thiefs, hydrometers, test jars . . .pretty much anything.

On top of having a 30 second contact time, the foam (and DON'T FEAR THE FOAM) will break down in wort and aid as a yeast nutrient. Can't beat that. One thing to mention, well, I already did, is that Star San foams a lot. I mean A LOT. Don't fear it. It's good for everything. The best part is that the foam acts as a barrier from other bacteria getting into carboys or buckets because when you rack over to a carboy the foam stays on top of the beer/wort/wine.

Another great thing about Star san is that when you're done using it as a sanitizer you can actually water your plants with it. It has a lot of phosphorous that's a great nutrient for plants.

On top of that, one sure sign to know that your star san has gone bad is that it will actually get cloudy. How's that for notification.

These are just a few reasons why I've switched to Star San. It's a great sanitizer and the only one I use now. A little goes a long way.

Infected Beer: Habenero Amber

Here are a few images of my latest experiment. I didn't intend for this batch to be infected, but something happened and I don't know if it came from the actual peppers or from poor sanitation or what, but, it's infected. At this point in time I'm going to ride it out for about 8 months and see how it comes along. With more time the heat will subside and I may end up with a damned good hot and sour beer. It should be pretty interesting. There's no way I'm dumping this batch. I'll see what happens.

But for all of those who have a nasty white film on the top of their fermenter and it looks like this (yeah, pics aren't that great, but you can obviously see there is infection there) then the beer is infected. Ride it out, dump it or add some campden tablets to kill off the infection and keg it up and drink it fast if you want to save it.

9-15-09 Update:

Ok, I pulled a sample of this stuff. Everything smelled fine. I couldn't smell anything funky or sour to it. I took a hydrometer reading and it's final gravity is deadpanned at 1.000. I know US-05 is not this aggressive with its attenuation so something chewed at the other sugars and dropped it that low. Surprisingly, there was no sour or funky taste to it at all. There was definitely heat to the beer but it wasn't a "burn-your-freakin'-face-off" heat. It's not a session beer but I could see someone easily sampling two pints of this stuff.

I'm really stumped as to what is infecting it. It hasn't really formed an more film on the top so it's not growing a pellicle. I'll be kegging it up soon and drinking it.

So, for anyone who is interested in doing some kind of spicy pepper beer, two habenaros did the trick for me.

How to Brew All-Grain Beer - Part 2

In this second part of the series I'll discuss how to batch sparge, how to fly sparge, at what rate you need to collect your wort with fly sparging. I'll also point out what gravity you need to watch for when collecting your final runnings of your all grain batch of beer. We'll also take a little detour from the all grain brewing session and check out some yummy cascade hops.

How to Brew All-Grain Beer - Part 1

In this series I'll walk you through how easy it is to brew all grain beer. I'll be discussing water to grain ratio, mashing in . . at what temperature. I discuss my type of manifold and mash tun for all grain brewing. Check it out.