We’re so excited for you to join us for yet another fun-filled episode of our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
On Today’s Show:
We take a question from a listener who is ready to start allgrain brewing and wants to know which false bottom to get OR if they should just make their own. We recommended this one (it’s usually low in stock and gets sold as soon as we stock them!): https://homebrewsupply.com/stainless-steel-domed-false-bottom-12/
Then, we discuss a question submitted that asked why fruity notes might appear in a kolsch but not until weeks after kegging it. Having some subtle fruity notes in your kolsch is super normal but James had some ideas on how to minimize it if that’s not a desired flavor you’re going for. The kolsch kit mentioned in this question is: https://www.kegconnection.com/brians-kolsch-kolsch-cup-2021-grand-champion-recipe/
Then, we get a funny question from a guy who loves to brew but his girlfriend can’t stand the smell. While we can’t relate to that, we did our best to offer some good (and some truly awful) advice for our friend.
We wrapped up this week’s show with a question about keeping beer lines as cool as possible, specifically in a tower installation scenario. Todd had some solid advice and also mentioned utilizing this: https://www.kegconnection.com/beer-tower-cooler-kit/
We want to hear from you!
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
We’re so excited to have you back for another fun-filled episode of our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
On Today’s Show:
We start our show with a question from a listener who’s local homebrew supply shop, unfortunately, had to close their doors and he wants to know what to look for when ordering from an online retailer. Spoiler alert: we’re very biased about Kegconnection.com and HomebrewSupply.com!
Then, we discuss what we might do if we found ourselves in the same position as a community member who was given a large amount of “mystery” hops. He has no idea how to identify them and he doesn’t want them to go to waste. What would you do in his situation?
After that, we took a question that posed an odd scenario: if you had to choose between having “good” water versus having temperature controlled fermentation – which would you choose?
Finally, we wrap up this week’s show with a text message submission asking about using sanke kegs instead of corny kegs for kegging homebrewed beer.
We want to hear from you!
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
We’re so excited to have you here for another fun-filled episode of our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
Welcome back to our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
On Today’s Show:
Todd and James were nice enough to join me to take your questions because Lord knows I can’t do this show on my own! Specifically, I get called out for still having breakfast stout on tap (don’t judge me – I’m trying to make it last!). We also talk about what size kettle you should have if you’re trying to brew specific gallon amounts of beer. Then, we talk about the need (or lack thereof) to replace heating elements on your electric brewing system. We close our the Q&A section with a listener who received a Blichmann Beer Gun and wants to know if he should use it for filling his growlers as well as bottles.
We want to hear from you!
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
Imagine yourself sitting outside by a fire on a cool, brisk evening sipping a beer. For me, the perfect beer for such an evening would be a bourbon barrel aged stout. The months, and sometimes years that the beer ages in that barrel are truly a testament to the patience of the brewer. For a brief, very brief period I contemplated buying a barrel and trying to replicate some of my favorites at home. Unfortunately, I am a very impatient brewer and I really do not have a temperature-controlled space to store a barrel of beer. Seriously, why wait several months for something when I can find a shortcut?
Your favorite local brewery has painstakingly brewed their beer and fermented it before transferring it to a used bourbon barrel, more than likely several barrels. It then sits and soaks in all the glorious bourbon flavoring for about nine months to a year. All the while the brewers periodically check and taste the beer to see when it has aged to their satisfaction. The question is now, how can we replicate that taste at home with limited space and time?
Before we begin, we need to decide what flavors are we trying to achieve? Do we want to strictly get the bourbon flavor to accent our base beer? Or are we looking for the bourbon and the wood flavors to meld with our base beer? There are a variety of methods to achieve your desired goal. Some require a little extra time and space, while others add very little or no time to the process before you can sit in front of a fire and sip your masterpiece.
Let’s start with the ambitious option. There are some distilleries that use small five gallon barrels in which they age their bourbon, and you can find some of those used barrels for sale, anywhere from around $100 to $175. It is important to get a recently “dumped” barrel as the oak staves are still wet and the barrel will hold your precious beer inside, vice leaking out all over your storage room. Since the majority of Homebrewers brew five gallon batches, these are perfect for the overachievers among us. The smaller size of the barrel shortens the aging process as there is a higher percentage of the beer in contact with the barrel. You need to taste it as it ages to be sure that you know when it is done. It is much easier to let it sit for a little while longer than it is to get the flavor out once it is there. This option will add a month or more to your process, so plan accordingly.
The next option is for those that want some bourbon flavor as well as some additional flavors from the wood itself. You can buy oak staves, spirals, cubes, chips, or even powder, of course to be bourbon accurate, I should specify that you look for American Oak. Since we are Homebrewers and the TTB is not looking over our shoulder to be sure that we are using the correct oak, we can use whatever we want. Simply soak your oak in bourbon for a few days to a week to allow the oak to soak up the bourbon. I usually add enough bourbon to a quart jar to cover the oak, the amount will vary depending on your choice of oak. After the oak has soaked in the bourbon, drain off the bourbon and add the oak to your fermented beer in your fermenter. Alternatively, you can add the oak and the bourbon to your fermenter to get a stronger bourbon flavor. How long you leave the oak in your fermenter is based solely on your own personal taste. If you leave the wood too long in your fermenter it will overpower all of the other flavors and aromas in your finished beer. I suggest checking it after a week to see if the flavor and aroma is where you want it.
The last option is the ultimate “cheat”. Denny Conn, a Governing Committee member of the American Homebrewers Association, has subscribed to the idea of adding the bourbon at bottling or kegging. His opinion is based on what we discussed earlier. What flavor or aromas are we trying to achieve? If we simply want bourbon flavor then why not add it at the end? There is no extra time or space needed. If you read the blogs and forums, watch YouTube, listen to podcasts, or talk to your homebrewing friends, you will likely get a hundred different opinions on the amount of bourbon to add. Just like the aging in a barrel or on oak, once it is in there, you cannot take it out.
One easy way, albeit a bit longer method of deciding how much bourbon to add is to brew a batch of the base beer and try adding different amounts of bourbon to a pint of your beer. Once you are satisfied with the bourbon levels in that serving, it goes back to elementary school math, although you may want to check your math sober. In a standard five gallon batch there are approximately 53 twelve ounce servings of beer, depending on how closely you hit your target volumes. Simply multiply the amount of bourbon you added to your beer to get your desired flavor by 53. For example, if your taste test revealed that you prefer .5 ozs of bourbon per serving, multiply 53 times .5 and you will get 26.5ozs of bourbon to add to your beer at bottling or kegging. Now you know that when you brew the base beer again, you will add the bourbon directly to your bottling bucket or your keg when you transfer your beer.
The following is a beer that I brewed last year that turned out excellent and would be a great addition to your lineup for the upcoming cold winter months. Due to my aforementioned impatience, I added one cup, eight ozs of bourbon and two ozs of pure vanilla extract at kegging. I went with eight ozs of bourbon because I wanted some subtle bourbon character but I did not want it to be at the forefront of the flavor.
We are very excited to welcome you back to our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
On Today’s Show:
I know I said “Happy HomebrewCon” at the top, even though this is NOT our HomebrewCon presentation, but I mentioned it because HomebrewCon is going on RIGHT NOW as you’re reading this… or, if you’re late to this episode, it already happened and we probably had a blast and totally didn’t mess up our presentation or do a bad job at all, right?!
If you don’t know what HomebrewCon is, the best way to describe it is “an awesome 3 days of informational seminars, fun hang outs, and growing as a homebrewer”. Go over the HomebrewCon.org right now and sign up to join the fun.
Free 1lb bag of Brew Clean powdered cleaner Free metal tintacker bar sign for the Brautag Free Brautag baseball cap
We want to hear from you!
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
We hope that you’re doing well and we’re very excited to welcome you back to our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
On Today’s Show:
Todd and James join me this week to tackle your awesome homebrewing questions. We recorded from the brew room at HQ because James was having a brew day on our new Brautag system! It’s now available at Kegconnection.com (CLICK HERE) and we couldn’t be more excited. Also – we still have 4 passes to HomebrewCon Online to giveaway and you can enter for your chance to win by clicking HERE. Drawing will be on Monday, June 14th.
Also – if you’re listening to this episode and wondering “I follow them on Instagram and I didn’t see anything about blending beers this week” it’s because Todd and I drank too much before we remembered that we didn’t blend any beers last night. We’ll get to it another time, especially since I’ll be up at HQ ALL NEXT WEEK as we prepare for our HomebrewCon Online 2021 seminar on brewing on a HERMS system.
We want to hear from you!
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
We hope you’re doing well and we’re excited to welcome you back to our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
On Today’s Show:
It’s been a while so I am super stoked to welcome back Homebrew Supply’s Director of Operations, Mr. Ladik Joe Ermis! Joe is an incredibly under-utilized resource, mainly because he’s SO BUSY managing the day-to-day production operations for Kegconnection LLC. I begged him for an hour of his time and, lucky for all of us, he was able to join me this week and tackle your questions.
We want to hear from you!
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
We hope you’re doing well and we welcome you back to our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
On Today’s Show:
Todd and James are back on to help me take your questions and get thru another fun-filled episode of our show. Thank God too because the questions we have for this week pretty much require the expertise of Todd & James so I’m thankful that 1) Todd was feeling up to doing the show and 2) That James was available because I rely on that guy’s wisdom SO MUCH for this show.
We want to hear from you!
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
Let us know what you think and enjoy the show!
cheers,
joshua
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This show is brought to you by TinTackers.com! They make and sell incredibly cool metal signs, stickers, serving trays, and more all from your favorite craft breweries. They even made our awesome metal sign! Go to TinTackers.com today and use our promo code HOMEBREWER to save $10 off your first order of $30 or more.
Become a Patron! Reminder that these episodes are ultimately made possible because of YOUR support. Consider becoming a member of our newly launched Patreon page and receive perks such as merch, exclusive group access and content, recipes, and some tiers even get monthly recipe kits mailed to you! https://www.patreon.com/HomebrewHappyHour
We hope it was great and we welcome you back to our Homebrew Happy Hour podcast… the podcast where we answer all of your home brewing questions and discuss anything related to craft beer!
A SUBTLE REMINDER:
If you appreciate the things we do here at Homebrew Happy Hour, consider joining our Trub Club! Not only will you be supporting our efforts, but you’ll also receive exclusive perks such as HUGE discounts on HomebrewSupply.com and Kegconnection.com, welcome packs with our merch, discounts to BrewersFriend.com, and lots more! Click the link and join today — https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=21132635
On Today’s Show:
I gave Todd and James a break since Todd is out of town for a medical procedure and James works so hard – they both deserved the week off. However, I was thrilled to welcome my friends Tyler & Laurie from the Brew’d Up podcast on the show. We’ve had Tyler on before and it was great catching up with her as well as meeting Laurie and learning more about what they’re brewing, how they’re brewing it, and all about their podcast.
We want to hear from you!
If you have a question that you’d like us to discuss on a future episode, please click on the “Submit a Question” link at the top of our website or you can now call in your questions via our questions hotline @ 325-305-6107 and leave your message after the beep. This is a friendly reminder that, if we choose your question for a future episode, we give you a $25 gift card to that episode’s sponsor!
Let us know what you think and enjoy the show!
cheers,
joshua
————————–
This show is brought to you by TinTackers.com! They make and sell incredibly cool metal signs, stickers, serving trays, and more all from your favorite craft breweries. They even made our awesome metal sign! Go to TinTackers.com today and use our promo code HOMEBREWER to save $10 off your first order of $30 or more.
Become a Patron! Reminder that these episodes are ultimately made possible because of YOUR support. Consider becoming a member of our newly launched Patreon page and receive perks such as merch, exclusive group access and content, recipes, and some tiers even get monthly recipe kits mailed to you! https://www.patreon.com/HomebrewHappyHour
Now all that is left to do is light a fire, lean back, stare at the stars and sip your brew. 
