Brewers Friend - software evaluation

I think I'm fairly typical in my recipe design / brewday in that I create recipes using one of the standard software packages...print or scribble some notes on paper, then use my phone and various timers while brewing. These folks at Brewers Friend have a nice package that lets you integrate the whole process.

Go to brewers friend and sign up.  Its free, but you need to register to take advantage of most of the cool features.

The recipe page, shown above, needs no real explanation.  It's drop dead simple to use.  Just design your beer like you would using any software and save the recipe. 

Now's when it gets cool.

First off, click the "my recipes" tab and then pick "edit" for your recipe.  Click the "share" tab.  You get a link you can send your friends and they can use your recipe, too!

Here's mine for a Pliny style thing I brewed over BrewDay




Ok...not cool enough for you?  Try this:  click on the "my brewing" tab.

There's your beer, with all the "stuff" you'd normally scribble for a brewing session...open it....mash schedules, hop additions, etc.  Even some tips / checkoff items for the stuff that I, anyway, have screwed up too often (close the spigots on the mash tun, stuff like that).



Still not cool enough?  Ok...I can understand that....you can do all that with your pencil and paper...get a checkoff sheet, add in your own timings and hop additions...so let's go for really mondo cool -> click the "brew timer" tab.

There's your recipe, converted into a brewsession, with the checkoff sheet, AND the timers for the mash, etc built in.

Work through your schedule, check things off, start the timers when you come to them...all on your phone.

Truly...I'm impressed.  The recipe formulation is solid, the share recipe is nice, the check off sheets, the built in sessions with timers....  Your whole brewing day in one, integrated piece of software.  Very nice.  Kudos to the programmers and kudos to thinking through the process.

I urge you to try it.  It's free, so you've got nothing to lose.

(also...a given, but just to be clear, there's no renumeration, etc passing hands here...I just wandered across these folks and really like the package).

RyePA

A nice brew.

Mash @ 154

• 1 T Gypsum
• 4 # Golden Promise
• 5 # 2 Row Pale
• .5 # Wheat
• 2 # Rye

Boil

• 1.0 oz Northern Brewer - first wort
• 1.0 # cane sugar - 30 min
• 0.5 oz Northern Brewer - 15 min
• 1 T Black Peppercorns - 5 min

Cool and pitch 1 sachet hydrated SafAle S-05
Rack to secondary and dry hop w/ 1 oz Willamette

OG 1.064
FG 1.009

appearance is a bit cloudy, tastes great...will try again with more rye

My cup runneth over

This is my BrewDay pliny AFTER the cleanup.

Shoulda used a blowoff.

Spent Grains

Spent grains are outstanding for baking. 

I can't give you a hard and fast recipe because I'm not that kind of breadmaker...but what I can do is to give you some guidelines.

I start with about 1 part spent grains to 2 parts bread flour, salt and yeast as usual, and then add a little more flour or water to get the "normal" consistency.

Mix or knead as you would any bread.  Let rise, punch down, form loaves, yadda, yadda, yadda as you would any bread...bake at 375 for 50 minutes or so.

Works great for pizza dough, too.

Same ratios, same concepts, etc.  But before you put on toppings, slip it into a 475 degree oven for a couple minutes...just long enough so the top firms up and won't soak up so much tomato sauce.

Pull out of the oven...tomato sauce, cheese, toppings, etc....then 475 until it's perfect.

Even Rox likes barley grain pizza.

BrewDay 2012

BrewDay 2012 has come and gone.

As Grant shows, above, there's always time to take your eye off your HLT and pour a cold one.


Grant's mashing BIAB Honey Brown lager.  Greg went with Three Hearted Ale, also BIAB.  Jed, a RyePA, all grain batch sparge and I did a kind of a pliny thing, batch sparge.

I demonstrated, conclusively (again!), no matter what you do, 9 ounces of hops in the boil does not go well with a plate chiller.  Hopblocker, whirlpool, whatever....9 ounces of pellets and a plate chiller are not going to get along.

We sampled the Dragon Milk (all three styles), Summer Ale, Bitter Bastards, a Choco-Porter, a breakfast stout, a Golden Nugget, a Pumpkin Ale, 3 different Ciders, a Strawberry wine and a Maple Nut Brown.

The carnivores attending had pulled pork, they seemed to like it and that's probably enough said about that.

Good times.

Squeak Mead

Slammed into the primary when my granddaughter was born...bottled a year later....put back until she turns 21.

• 10 pounds of honey
• 6 gallons of filtered water
• 1 teaspoon yeast energizer
• 1 sachet Lalvin D47

Original Gravity 1.060
Final Gravity 0.995

Racked to secondary after 3 months and dry hopped with 2 ounces of mulling spices from the Spice House in Chicago.

1/4 cup of cane sugar during bottling for a lighly sparkling end product.

Taste, while bottling was good but pretty darn intense.  I can only assume 20 years in the bottle will mellow it some.

So check back in 20 years and we'll see!

Carboy cleaning

I think we all use the same tricks to clean carboys.  A little soapy water, a dishrag stuffed down the bung and agitate the hell out of it.  Take a carboy brush to the more stubborn parts, swirl and curse, swirl and curse...

Some krausen just seems to stick to the top of the carboy, no matter what you do.

Now's the time for power tools.

You assemble your parts...a steel rod, a green scrubby pad and a hunk of sugru.

Sugru the scrubby pad to the steel rod and wait 24 hours for the whole thing to cure.

1 scrubby pad, sugrued to a 1/4 inch steel rod and rolled up will just fit in the mouthpiece of a carboy.

Chuck the other end into your cordless drill and watch that krausen disappear.

Now look at that shiny clean carboy! 

Power tools!  Sugru!  What's not to love about that?