February 20, 2020 Episode

Today we are talking to gold medal winner and BJCP Judge Ryan Pachmayer. Ryan is an avid brewer of big beers and we dive into his tips tricks, and techniques on brewing better big beers.

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Show Transcript (A.I. Created it will have errors)

Colter Wilson: Personally, I tend to not brew a lot of big beers. I think the main reason for me is that I don’t like to bottle and having a 12% Russian Imperial stout on tap would take me forever to get through. But Ryan pack Meyer is a home brewer that it’s found a love for big beers and he’s really good at brewing them.

So we’re going to talk to him today about brewing big beers on homebrewing. DIY.

The, welcome back to homebrewing DIY, the show that takes on the do it yourself aspect to homebrewing gadgets, contraptions and parts. This podcast covers it all. Today we’re talking with Ryan pack Meyer. He’s a very avid brewer of big beers. And he’s really good at making them. So we’re going to go through his history, how he learned how to Homebrew and some tips and tricks on making really great big beers.

But first I’d like to thank all of our patrons over a Patrion. Your support is what helps to keep this show coming to you week after week. I also want to thank clay. He’s one of our sustaining. Patrion supporters and he actually came up to one of our Homebrew clubs this week and spent time with everybody that, uh, I drink a lot of beer with and had a really great time.

So clay, thanks for coming up. And once again, also clay, thank you very much for your support. You can support the show by heading over to patrion.com forward slash homebrewing DIY. Any amount helps and it helps keep this show coming to you week after week. Another way to help is you can always review us.

You can review us on Apple pod, chaser.com or Stitcher, head over to your favorite podcast app if they’ll let you write us a review, do it. It helps other people find this show. The last way you can help support the show is to head over to homebrewing diy.beer there you’ll find banners from our sponsors, brew father and adventures in homebrewing.

Click on those banners and it lets them know that we sent you and they support the show. In turn, you can also find the show on social media. We’re on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just look for the handle at homebrewing. DIY, all one word. Now let’s dive into a bit about my brewing experiences this week.

I finally got the chance to keg the 20 gallons of beer that I made with my boss at work. And, uh, it was a good time. He came over, he brought a couple of kegs and we set up shop in my kitchen and we sat around and kicked some beers. Well, one of the cool things was that when we were doing the, the brewing and I had to get set up, we had a problem with one of his car boys and.

It’s kind of funny. He couldn’t find a bung to go into the top. So I had to bust out one of my old carboys to use cause I did have the ability to do that. Well, as we got the beer out of the car, boy, I actually busted out one of my scrubber duckies that, uh, I got from our fine sponsor and I actually used it.

On my carb. Wait, and I have to say that I am real, not just not joking around. I’m very, very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the cleaning I got with my scrubber. Duckies it was something that, uh, I’m a little blown away. It worked really well. I had zero issues. The magnets were super strong and it busted through a really, really thick.

Beefy Krusen on this car. Boy, funny thing about that is that that carboy because we had so little Headspace, I didn’t put a blow off tube and I should always know better to use a blow off too because. Of course the one time I don’t, it decides to explode. I got yeast all over the ceiling of, of my basement, and I have to say this 20 gallon batch has been really nothing but problems.

I melted my fermentor, I had a blow off the hit. The roof of my basement is a, I’m actually kinda glad these beers are done, but uh, had a, had a glass of my red ale just yesterday tasted great. And so in the end, I think it was worth it. Well, let’s dive into our show. Today. We’re going to talk to Ryan pack Meyer, and we’re going to dive into big

beers.

I’d like to welcome Ryan to the show. Let’s just jump right into our first question. Ryan, when did you start homebrewing?

Ryan Pachmayer: So I started brewing about 14 years ago with my friend clay, uh, back in Chicago. We really got into brewing because we wanted to brew stouts and they weren’t super accessible back then.

Um, regular stuff on the shelf that we would drink would be like the, um, the lion stout, um, rogue Shakespeare stout. Um. Beamish Young’s double chocolate stout, stuff like that. Um, every once in awhile, the two closest breweries to our, uh, our homes were a philosopher station and three Floyds. Every once in awhile they would have like an Imperial stout release that we really, really enjoyed.

Um, but it wasn’t like it is today. It was a few and far between, um, especially around where we lived. So we decided to get into brewing because we wanted to brew some of those beers and also because we kind of wanted to experiment and do different things that, um. We didn’t regularly get to see a early stouts were not great.

We did not have temperature control. Um, so they were a little too estery. I mean, we drank them and I’d say most of them came out fine. They didn’t get infected, but, um, they weren’t as clean as the commercial examples that we really enjoyed. Um. You know, when you, when you first met in 70, 75 degrees, um, it’s a lot harder to get a really clean profile and allow the chocolate and roasted and coffee, all that sort of flavor and a stout shine.

Um, so we struggled a little bit early on. Uh, the Homebrew shop closest to us was about 30 minutes away, did not help either. Uh, we were newbies, didn’t know that much. Uh, but looking back at one of the early recipes we made. They had about 10 malts at this home brew shop. Um, it was like a wine, more more of a wine focused shop.

And anytime we came with a recipe, they’d have to sub something and they didn’t do phone orders. So you’d come in with, you know, your recipe. And one time they subbed. I think we wanted Maris solder, or it was either a Marisol, Derrick golden promise. And, uh. It was just a, you know, an English stout recipe that we had and they subbed it for crystal.

So, uh, our beer came out to I think 2% alcohol. It was probably, uh, you know, Munich or Amber malt that gave it the little bit of alcohol that it had. Um, but I remember back then we were so frustrated cause we didn’t know what happened. But, uh, you live and learn, um, early books that kind of inspired us where, uh.

Randy Mosher is radical Brewin for sure. Uh, Jameel’s clone book, uh, John Palmer’s how to brew. But radical Bruin was really the focal point for experiments with us. We really like to experiment. Um, even before we were. You know, good enough to experiment. I’d say successfully all the time. Um, we do a bunch of pepper beers, Earl gray, tea, beers, coffee beers.

Um, we even did a couple of, uh, weed marijuana beers, uh, early on as well. But, uh, there’s stouts that really got us in there.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. The, that’s one of the cool things about living in Colorado is you could totally knock out a weed beer and not get in trouble unless you’re a commercial brewery. Cause then that’s federally illegal.

Just kind of one of those weird things. My next question though is white big beers, you tend to make a lot of them. Why’d you get into that?

Ryan Pachmayer: So, yeah, I guess I’m kind of known as one of the big beer brewer type people at the beer club. Um, it’s really a few things. Number one, I just really like big beers, stouts, Belgians, barley, wines.

Um, you know, I really like the flavor profile of those beers. Uh, it’s really nice to just sit there with a snifter and sip and smell those big beers, um, slowly for a few hours. Uh, I just, I really enjoy it. Um, second thing is I do brew plenty of lower alcohol beers, uh, but I just don’t usually bring him to the beer club because I don’t usually bottle them.

And. It’s, it’s difficult, at least in my experience to, um, take a low alcohol beer and, you know, put it in a little glass container or something off the tap and bring it in and have it really. Be the same kind of beer that it is if you take it off tap at your house or, uh, or if it is at a bar, it’s, they’re just a little, they’re kind of delicate in my opinion.

Um, so if I’m not battling, you know, a lower IPA or, you know, a lager or something like that, I’m usually not bringing it into the beer club just because I’d rather, I’d rather people drink the beer at its best, um, and not sacrifice the quality. So I usually bring my bottled beers, which are usually the biggest beers that I brew.

Um, but. You know, I do brew a lot of big beers and the reason why brew a lot of big beers is, um, I mean, it’s cost efficient compared to, you know, you’re talking about $20 bottles of barrel aged Imperial stout that you’re buying at the store. Um, or if you really want something sought after on the secondary market, it could be hundreds of dollars.

And I don’t really want to spend that money regularly. I mean, I’ll, I’ll spend $20 on a bottle of beer I’ve spent more before, but I like to. Make all sorts of different big beers and um, it’s much nicer to collaborate with people and split five gallons. Um, take two and a half yourself. You know, you can drink a gallon or two in the first year.

You can save a couple of bottles for aging. You’re not gonna feel like crap if you drink it four years later and Oh no, the last four bottles are past their peak. You didn’t just spend 80 bucks on those four bottles. So, um, costs cost definitely comes into that.

Colter Wilson: Well, when you started brewing, how did you start with your equipment set up and what is your equipment look like today?

Ryan Pachmayer: So I started with just a stove, top pot and cooler. Um, it was always all green. We never did extract. When I started, we read in, I don’t know, one of the books that you probably the Palmer book, if I recall, um, that all grain gave you a lot more control of your recipes. And you know, we didn’t really know what that meant, but it sounded good to us.

So we ended up starting. With the pot in the cooler and all green. In hindsight, we probably should have started extract just to learn the basics more. But you know, you get excited when you get into things and you just kinda jump in from there. We graduated to kind of a three tier classic three tier keg system, converted kegs, um, just gravity from the liquor tank to the mash tun and then into the boil kettle and then into the fermenter.

Um, nowadays I have a robo brew. Um, I love it for convenience. Um. But I brew with a lot of different people and I use a lot of their systems as well. Um, so the robo brews nice because we can use it as a supplementary system. Um, you know, a brewing with a friend. We can brew a second or third beer over there.

I can bring it places very easily. Um, I can brew indoors in the winter. Um, very convenient. And then if I just want to be on my own, I can do that as well in the comfort of my own home and the robo guru, it’s pretty simple. Um, I’ve had a mash and oil before. I’ve had, I’ve borrowed a grandfather from a friend for a long time while he’s out of the country.

Um, any of those systems I think are, uh, definitely good systems that I would recommend

Colter Wilson: when you’re fermenting. What kind of equipment are you using there?

Ryan Pachmayer: As far as for mending, I mostly use stainless steel. I’ve got some of the lower end, uh, anvil old models, SSB tech. I don’t spend a ton of money on that stuff.

Um, some of them are Christmas gifts. Some of them I just buy when they go in that super clearance. Black Friday’s the great time. Homebrew finds.com has the best deals around the web. Uh, it’s probably the best time to buy things on average. Uh, I have a, um. Drop freezer. Um, it can house two fermentation vessels at once or multiple kegs if I was doing some sort of keg storage like lager, longterm lager in storage.

Um, so I would attempt controlling their controls. Fermentation. Um, I have a seven tap beer system I just put together. Uh, so it’s an old bike bar fridge. Um, the kind of. The kind of fridge unit you’d see at a bar. It has a compartment on the left side that you can store bottles in, and then it can hold about seven kegs, one tank, and then it has a hole going to the outside where you can have another CO2 tank.

So, um, it’s got plenty of stuff. My uncle helped me build the, uh, the tap system. And so did my friend, uh, Adam Drager professional brewer. Um, he’s. The very, very good, uh, engineer and just an all around builder of things. So he gave me a lot of technical advice cause I’d never built a tap system. And my uncle, uh, did some welding and helped me put together some of the, uh, intricate pieces.

Um, sevens a lot. But since the system, I’d had the bar fridge for like a decade and, uh, they could hold that much. And, you know, I could toss some carbonated water kombucha on as well. I don’t have to have seven beer taps, so I figured why not? Uh. Why not go max capacity on it.

Colter Wilson: Well, you talk a lot about doing collaboration with friends and people in the club.

Why don’t you talk about how you collaborate with others?

Ryan Pachmayer: Yeah, I do collaborate with a lot of other homebrewers. Um, I’m into beer clubs. Uh, crock keg ran out club. Um, it’s a long standing North side of a Denver Metro area club. I think it’s 20 plus years now. 20. Probably 24 to 25 years they’ve been around.

And then I’m also a member of the mash paddlers, obviously with you. Um, that’s a five or six or seven year old club. Um, so I meet a lot of brewers in those clubs and just from conversation, um, we find, you know, we might want to brew the same type of beer. Um, last year, Andrew Voss, who I brew with sometimes as well, he hosted a big brew day for our club and, um.

Evan and I from Evan from the podcast and from the club, we decided to make a mushroom beer, a Brown ale. I light English Brown ale with some morale and oyster mushrooms that I’d forged. Um, you know, ovens into foraging mushrooms. I’m into 4g mushrooms. We’re both like. Light English beers, especially Brown ales.

And so we paired the two. It came out great. Um, but that’s, that’s just an example of the kind of collaboration that, um, it really interests me. Um, I like finding people with common interests and collaborating. Um, it’s a little more fun in the brew day and it’s just fun to try to achieve something like that.

Um, probably over the half the beers I make are with my friend Nathan and we both like big beers. We make a lot of big beers together. Um. I mean we like all styles, so it’s, it’s usually us just exchanging a few emails and saying, Hey, what do you think about these eight beers? And then we pick one or two for the next brew day.

Um, and that’s really nice cause we split five gallon batches and I really love trying new beers. I really love tweaking old beers. And. If you’re brewing the same beer over and over and you’re brewing 10 gallons of it, you don’t have the opportunity to change things that often because it takes you a while to go through 10 gallons.

So we just make five gallon batches. We split it. We each have two and a half. Um, and you can get through two and a half gallons yourself. Some friends, it’s very easy to get through it. Um, so we’re brewing a lot. Uh. It’s really appealing. The recipe formulation part is really appealing to me. I really like designing new recipes, drinking the beer afterwards, taking notes, bringing it to other people whose pallets I respect, um, finding out what they think and just, you know, digging into it and then improving it.

The next time. Uh, there was a, uh, an article on beer and brewing, um. Recently from drew Beechum about the, uh, Avec ball, the best wishes beer from DuPont. It’s there. SA strong, super stays on their winter, stays on. Um, it’s always been one of my favorite beers. I know Nathan loves it and we’ve, uh, we’ve been trying to clone it three times now.

And so it was, uh, it was fun to read your beach, him talk about his struggles and cloning that beer. Cause, uh, I think we’ve ended up with a pretty good beer the third time, but it’s still not, uh. I shouldn’t say clone. We’re trying to make something in the same spirit of it, but, um, very difficult. But these are the things that you can attempt when you’re brewing two and a half gallon or you’re getting two and half gallons out of each batch.

Um, you can just Bru Bru Bru, uh, learn more things, try new beers. Uh, it’s a lot of fun. I much prefer it. I understand and I appreciate and respect the people that make 10, 20 gallon batches. They know what they want. They put it in their CAG, they have it on tap. That’s their purpose. Um. But for me, I really liked the recipe formulation, the experimentation, um, the tweaking to try new things.

It’s all, uh, that, that’s what really drives me these days.

Colter Wilson: I think when we talk about brewing the types of beers that you do, I think malts a very important factor in that. How do you choose your malts and what kind of malts are you using?

Ryan Pachmayer: So my favorite malts, um, I guess we start with baseballs. Um. I mean, I used to row a lot, but my favorite malts would probably be a Pilsner wise.

I really liked the best Heidelberg Pilsner. It’s a lighter Pilsner malt. Um, then the slightly lighter than their regular best multiples in there. Um, I liked that a lot. Um, the wireman bark Pilsner is really cool. I always like Maris Hodder and golden promise. Um. We’ve had that. We’ve had some good luck with Pearl mall as well.

I’ve really liked Pearl mall. Um, we started buying it for a heady topper clone years ago, and we’ve used it in barley wines and several other beers, and we’ve just really liked the character of the apparel malt. Um, so those are, those are probably my favorite base malts. Um. In the stouts. I really liked the different chocolate malts.

Um, just, I like adding three or four different chocolate malts a lot of times for complexity in the stats. And then sometimes, uh, I really like using Karratha, uh, instead of, uh, instead of like black mall. Um, you get a lot less astringency. In the beer. When I started first started making stats over a decade ago, I’d use blackmail, you know, the classic stout recipes and too much black mall.

I much prefer a, the craft in those, uh, in those beers. Um, I mean, I don’t know. Those are probably my favorite malts in general. Brand-wise I really like a wireman Simpsons. Um, Chris Thomas faucet. Those are all good, but there’s not really a, I don’t think there’s a brand I really hate. Um. I try to use appropriate models for the style and Bruin for the most part.

Um, so in an English, you know, English, barley, wine, I’m not going to use like a breeze. Crystal malt. I’m usually using a Simpson’s crystal. Um, actually I have a bunch of Simpsons crystals, so I usually use that. And I really liked the flavor of Simpsons in particular. Um, I’m really excited to try some of the local monsters though.

Um, there’s. At least three or four local, small monsters in Colorado. I’ve heard everything from this is the greatest malt ever from people that use it too. I didn’t like it at all. So, um, I would like to experiment with it at sometime. At some point. I’d really like to try that. And a grade malt that everyone up in the Northwest talks about.

Um, I think they’re like, outside of bend. Um, I’ve heard brewers, I know up there and talk about it. I’ve heard homebrewers. It’s got a great reputation for being pretty high quality malt. Um, so. Next time I make it up there. Hopefully I’ll be driving and I can pick up a sack or two and bring it back and play around with it.

Uh, but it’s, it’s really neat. I forgot the website. I saw it at Homebrew con a few years ago, but there’s a website with all the . Local monsters in the country, and it’s really popped up, uh, sort of similar to the way that hops have grown and, uh, just many different qualities you can buy from many different places in the last like five or 10 years.

Um, I remember Simcoe used to be like a rare hop. Now there’s like, you know, a really good Homebrew shop could have over a hundred. Different hops, which is cool. And now you’re starting to see different monsters. So I’m really curious and interested to try the different monsters. They’re all over the U S you know, dozens and dozens of them.

And it would be neat to really explore that the way that, um, you kind of, I’ve kind of explored hops over the last five or 10 years and many people have,

Colter Wilson: well since we talked about malt, what kind of yeast are you using

Ryan Pachmayer: yeast wise? Um, you know, USO five is probably. The strain I use most frequently. Um, our crop club has a dry yeast bank, so we buy a dry yeast in bulk.

And then, um, the club pays for that with the, you know, money in the club finances. And then, uh, the brewers just, uh, pay that cost and that reimburses. And then, uh, we buy more dry used to, we run out. So we have all sorts of dry use. And I love dry yeast. It’s very reliable. And, um. High quality these days. Uh, but USO five is probably the thing that is most, um, use that for big stouts.

Um, use it for plenty of IPS and later American beers. Um, you can even make pseudo loggers with it by, for many at lower and cause it’s pretty clean. Um, bake loggers, I should say. Uh, but for actual lagers, 34 70 is what I use the most. Um, the West of funder East. It’s clean, it works, it’s reliable. It’s nice.

Um. I really love the DuPont, as I mentioned before, DuPont. Um, their strain is amazing. They’re Saison strain. Um, so I love that. I haven’t had problems with it. Like, uh, some people have reported it getting stuck, but I think I just for a minute, pretty high. Um. You can ferment it. I mean, from the nineties before, I, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that, but you know, I’ve read that deposit goes in the eighties and nineties, but I think mid to upper seventies is perfectly fine with that yeast.

Uh, it throws off so many cool flavors. Um, that one. Um, I also use a WPS zero nine nine super high gravity. I like that for super huge stouts. Um. You know, our 20% style that I’ve made, I’ve won a few awards at different 20% stouts and w L P zero nine nine. It’s always been used for those, um, easier either as the primary style or, um.

I mean, one method is to use USO five, make a 13% stout or a beer that you think old Kodo about 13%. And then on like day two, if fermentation, you just pitch a massive pitch of P zero nine, nine, the super high gravity and you start feeding the beer DME and sugar, um, DME because it leaves a little more residual, uh, leaves a little more residual sugar for body unfermentable sugar.

So you’re not drying the beer out completely. So, um. On the one, uh, the one big stout that we, we, uh, place pretty well on. Um, we made a 13% stout, USF big pitch of that, and I think between day two and day three, a massive hitch of zero nine and nine, um, and then about 2% ABV, potential worth of DME, um, and sugar staggered in, uh, four different additions.

So it went DME. Waited a couple of days, sugar, wait a couple of days, sugar, uh, wait a few more days and then DME again. And we got, you know, about 20% alcohol, maybe slightly North of 20%. Um, I’ve seen breweries get to 21, maybe a little higher, 22 with that strain. Um, you know, we don’t have a use lab and, you know, we’re just, we’re not winging it, but, you know, we don’t have the control that a brewery has or the experience.

So, um, we’ve gotten to around 20. Maybe slightly North. Um, and it creates a really cool, super big stout that kind of drinks like a port in some ways. Um, the first time we made it, we almost dumped it after six months. Um, we honestly would probably just lazy. That’s why we didn’t, and we just let it sit there.

And after a year it was slightly drinkable again, probably would’ve dumped it if we weren’t lazy. And, uh. A year and a half or two years, it’s like, Oh, wow, this is starting to taste kind of good. Um, after three years, really thought it was divine, entered it into a big beers competition. I believe it was.

Yeah. Big beers up in Breckenridge and, uh, scored like a 46 and a 50, um, from two professional brewers that were judges. Um, so it was, uh, it was really neat. Uh, definitely the highest score I’ve gotten on the beer. Um, so with those big beers, you gotta be patient. Um. But it’s a really neat way to make something that I’m honestly, it’s hard to find on the shelf.

Black Tuesdays, one of the most popular 20% beers. It’s made a very similar way, but people don’t generally make those kind of beers and release those kind of beers regularly. So, uh, it’s pretty cool to make a batch of that every once in a while.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of like big beer techniques, do you have any really cool tips on brewing big beers?

Ryan Pachmayer: So tips for a. Making big beers. Um, first of all, pick a reliable recipe. Um, I would just suggest finding something reliable online. Um, find a beer that you like, maybe even ideally a beer that you can get. You know, if you like Belgians, if you like Shanae blue, you can buy, she may blue at the store. There’s a good, uh, similar, not direct clone, but a very similar recipe to may blue, which is a great Belgian, dark strong.

Um. Online, you can find that recipe. Say with stouts, you find a stout recipe like, um, or an English, barley, wine, whatever big beer you’re making, find something you can get, I would say, so that you can compare afterwards. Um. If you really want to experiment and you want to get something that is not available in the market, that’s fine.

But I would try to find a recipe, a reliable recipe online before you go about making a recipe from scratch. Um, it’s, it’s hard to understand all the components. I, I. Certainly don’t understand all the components that go into a, you know, what, if you use this crystal malt versus crystal mall, a darker one versus a lighter one, or, you know, Amber mall versus, you know, pale mall versus mayor solder.

You know, there’s a lot of things that you can consider, um. How combinations and all sorts of things. So take, I think you should do self your favor, get yourself a headstart and take a reliable clone recipe you can find online. Um, and go for there for your first big beer. Um, the, the big, the really big thing is the pitch in a feast.

Um. Whenever there’s a problem, it’s quite frequently not pitching enough yeast. So use a reliable calculator. Brewers friend is usually what I use. I know beer Smith has a calculator. Uh, but I, I found beer Smith’s calculator. Um. Can under, under sell the money East, you really, really should use at times.

Um, so at least on the dryU side, um, but use a reliable calculator such as brewers friend, you can use it for liquid or dry yeast. You can’t really over pitch at the Homebrew scale within reason. So err on the side of. Too much yeast. If it says, you know, you need 600 billion cells, don’t pitch 500 target 700 make sure your East package is fresh.

If it’s a few months old, make sure you put that information in the calculator so you know how many viable yeast cells you have. You know, if you have a liquid. Package that’s six months old. It probably doesn’t have 100 billion use cells anymore. It’s going to be less than that. So make sure you do that.

UCL East calculator, if you have to make a multistep starter for liquid yeast, it’s perfectly fine. Go ahead and do that. Or you can buy, you know, you can buy bricks of dry yeast in bulk to save money, but pitch, pitch enough yeast. It’s very, very important. Um, oxygen is pretty important. A big beers. Um, hit hit the a word with some oxygen.

After you’ve crashed and you put it in the fermentor and you pitch in the East there, uh, you know, make sure you have oxygen and wore it to pitch that Easton too. And if it’s a really big beer, you can also hit it with some yeast after about 18 hours. Um, it’s a tip I picked up from that yeast book from, uh, Chris white and Jamil.

Um, after about. 18 hours, you hit it with a second, a little blast of oxygen, um, after the yeast cells and multiply just to really give them a little more energy. Um, fermentation control is the other big thing that you see, um, problems with when you have big problems with beers. Um, it’s yeast and fermentation control sometimes both.

Um, I hear it all the time. People will say, my basement’s 65 degrees, therefore I just. Put the beer in my primary pitch of the East and my beers from many at 65. Um, you know, with a light beer, you can sometimes get away with that 65 externally is really during peak fermentation. Could be 68 or 69 or 70, and yeah, sure.

Your ale probably be just fine at 70, 68, 70 degrees. Um, not as clean as if it was at 65, but internal temperature that high. You’d probably going to be okay. But when you’re making a big beer, the internal temperature, you know, the fermentation can be more vigorous. You’re pitching enough yeast. It could be 10 degrees or more in order to keep a beer at 67 degrees.

I’ve had my, uh, ambient temperature of my fermentation fridge in the mid to upper fifties before. So just because your basement 65 doesn’t mean you can ferment a beer, um, at the right temperature. If you make a stout at 65 degree ambient in your basement. Day three, you know, peak fermentation, it’s going vigorously.

If you actually check the internal temperature of your beer, it’s probably 75 plus degrees at that point. And at 75 degrees in a stout, you’re going to get a lot of fruity esters and it’s not going to be a clean stout. It’s going to get in the way of all the good flavors that you want in a stout. Um. You know, and same for any of the styles except for Belgian beers.

Um, any big beer probably isn’t going to benefit from, it’s probably gonna detract quite a bit if you’re fermenting over 70 degrees in the primary and the internal temperature. Um, another thing is even if say your basement 58 and you say, great, cool. So during peak fermentation, my Bureau will be 65, 68 degrees.

That’s perfect. They don’t know that’s a good temperature for a lot of big beers. Uh, the problem is after a few days, the. Peak fermentation, it settled down. It’s not as vigorous. And then the fermentation still going, but now your beer is dropped down to maybe 60 degrees internal, and you can have a hard time finishing up the last few gravity points when you’re only at 60 degrees on a lot of those alias.

Um, so ideally you want a temperature controlled place to do this. Um, you know, they have glycol and stuff these days, but just the. An old freezer, you can buy a freezer on Craigslist for 50 bucks. Get one of those. Um, you can buy a temp control thing for 20, 30 bucks. You can build one for like 10 bucks these days.

I think even get one of those. And for under 75 bucks, you’ve now made your beer. You have complete control over your beers. You can, uh, you can either get the little inlet, um, I forgot the name of what those are and your fermenter or, uh, you can just tape the probe to the side. And that does a pretty good job to be honest.

Um. So ideally, say you take an English part of the line, you’re making a 10% English part of the wine. You know, maybe you want it at 66 degrees. Primary fermentation temperature to keep it at 66. Your fridge is going to go down into the fifties for a little bit to keep it at 66 once a lot of the, uh, you know, sugars have been eaten up by the yeast and primary and the vigorous peak fermentation has subsided a bit.

It’ll probably be in the low to mid sixties in order to keep that 66 degree temperature. And then you check gravity after a few weeks and maybe you need a few more points and you bump it up to 68 or 70 just for that last few percentage points, and now you fully fermented and attenuated your beer and then you can cold crash it, get it down to 32 degrees, let it clear up, settle, bam.

You’ve got yourself a a, you know. Well, fermented big beer. Um, and give it time. Three to four weeks on the primary yeast is not a big deal. The earlier stuff I read was always talking about, uh, auto Silas, the yeast, if you keep it on the East too long, you get off flavors from dead yeast. Um, I think that’s more of a concern for commercial breweries.

Um. I’ve heard because of the pressure of the bigger fermentors. I’ve had big beers on yeast for months in the primary before. I’m just either forgetting about something or it didn’t finish up and every pitched, and I’ve never had off flavors from it. Um, yeah. I’m a judge. I’ve hang out with plenty of people that are beer judges, be JCP, judges, uh, pro brewers that have great pallets.

And believe me, I’ve never had a beer that suffers from that. Floor, and I’ve had beers on a big East cakes for months, so I would not worry about three, four, or five weeks, uh, in the primary for these big beers and always take a final gravity. Uh. Do not package remove category beer until, you know, it is finished.

For many that’s burned me plenty of times. Uh, a beer tasted fine to me. Great. Put it in the CAG, um, or let’s bottle it. You know, I’ve had, I’ve had it happen with a few big Belgian beers before. Uh, you make a big, dark, strong or quad and it tastes great. It’s been three weeks. Uh, beers, beer should be done. I don’t see any activity.

Um, you know, all of a sudden you bottle it and if you’re bottling it, you know, the Belgian standard for high carbonation, and I’m, I’m. Often, you know, three and a half, four volumes, and you have residual sugar in those, in that beer. All of a sudden you’re three and a half to four volumes is going up even higher.

And you’ve got, uh, you know, explosive bottles pop a cork and it just blows up and your beers ruined because of the yeast is just thrown throughout the whole beer. The half beer that you have left will be mostly, you know, just full of yeast. So don’t make that mistake. It’s a costly mistake that you don’t, uh.

Want to make, learn from my mistakes and others.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. Those are really great tips. If you were to drink some big commercial beers, what kind of commercial beers do you like?

Ryan Pachmayer: Well, my favorite beers out there commercially. Um, right now, I mean, Oh man, there’s so many. So many good beers right now, and to go to a lot of beer fests.

I go to the rare beers, a big beers in Brackenridge El Ray. Ray’s is a Denver invitation all up in Greeley. Um, great American beer Fest. There’s just so many great beers right now, but I’m really like the big stouts from side project. They’re derivation series. Um. A couple of their beers in their derivation series, which I think is on like 13 beers now are just phenomenal.

Um, Corey King is the brewer there and he did a, uh, an awesome, uh, video tutorial over an hour on beer and brewing.com recently. Um, it’s worth it. Sign up free trial, but I think it’s like 10 or 20 bucks a month that’s worth it to. Um, and you just tells you all about how he makes his stouts. Um. It’s really recipe formulation from everything he does.

I mean, it just tells you exactly how he does it, and it’s awesome. Um, so check that out. That’s really inspirational because I love those beers. Um, on that note, some of the other big stouts, um, Kane, New Jersey, uh, I believe they’re from, they’re awesome. Um, biologic in California. Um, those guys make killer stuff.

Um, free month’s always fun. Uh, brew 3000 is really cool. Had that recently. Big Barlage, barley wine. Uh, I’ve had that a few times this year and really enjoyed it. Uh, locally. Um, well works is great. Their Medi no chaser is probably my favorite. Stout’s in state. Um, IPA wise, I really like ’em. Outer ranges.

Nice. They’re up in Frisco. There are a lot of fun. Um, some of the East coast IPA is really fun as well. The tree house, um, my friend Jeff used to go and work in Boston and he’d bring back Trillium like every other week. So we drink a lot of Trillium. That stuff is good. Uh, but there’s, there’s too many people making great IPS these days, and the new England stuff is fun when it’s done well.

Um, and it’s, doesn’t have too much of that hop sweetness when it has that really great flavor. Um. And the really soft mouthfeel. I really love some of those doing . Um, traditional, I shouldn’t say traditional, but um, I should say non new England IPA is, but, um, I guess your take on sort of a modern West coast, but not really that pioneer all the time.

Um, Conrad and Cannonball locally make amazing. IPA is a, I love, love to drink. Um, uh, beer style lager house is probably the place I go to most. Uh, just cause they make phenomenal. German style beer, and they also have a wrestling once a month, entertainment, wrestling like that, WWE style stuff from a, from a local troop.

Um, so it’s cool to drink, you know, sit there drinking, uh, leaders of a Helis while you’re inside watching people that, you know, do back flips off a top rope. It’s pretty, yeah, it’s pretty hard to be a liberality is a cool place to that’s, um, in North Denver as well, and they do the Udon beers or whatever.

Uh, I don’t know how to say it properly, but. Beers that are also familiar with grape. Um, they’re still beers cause there are at least 51% grain, but they ferment with different grapes and it’s really cool and stuff that they’re doing and they have good food there as well. Um. But yeah, I don’t know. Those are, those are some of the places that come to mind when I think about what I, uh, what I really like.

Uh, Blackberry farms is one I really, really like as well. Uh, some of my favorite saisons state side, probably Blackberry farms. Um, I think they mostly use the DuPont strain or their house strain is similar to it, but they make a really, really cool stouts or really cool saisons. In the same vein as a DuPont sort of, I love those farmhouse, uh, funky saisons I’m speaking of funk, actual funk costs, our breweries as well.

Um, you know, Casey’s always a, uh, a good place in state to go for, for great, uh, sour beer.

Colter Wilson: Well, what is it you’re currently brewing.

Ryan Pachmayer: Um, well, not when I’m brewing now, but when I just brewed, um, it made an American Amber and a Belgian blonde, um, with my friend Nathan the other day. And then, uh, I separately at the same time made a, uh, a pseudo logger that’s kind of referenced in earlier.

It was a . It was a, uh, it was two row and sort of the American hops that you would probably use in a lager. A lot of times that I had on hand, at least, uh, will Amet and I think Vanguard is what I had. And then, uh, use USO five and just been for many in the mid sixties. Um, so it’d be interesting to see how that comes out.

Um, it’s, it’s not, it’s not a lager, it’s just going to be a light ale. It’s probably more like a blonde ale, but, um. I just wanted to see how clean that use might go at that temperature and, uh, just keep it really simple and just see what kind of a beer come up with at the very least, should be a nice drinkable light beer to have on tap at some point.

Um. We’ve got some stuff that’s going to put it on the tap soon. I’m a German or a traditional German Pilsner that I made. I love, uh, I love pilsners. Um, I’m trying to make a beer similar to that. A route hospital’s near that black forest brewery in Germany. Uh, their Pilsner is really nice and it’s not something that I get locally, uh, locally.

You know, I drink beer spirits that pill’s near a lot. The slow pour pills there. It’s a great, great pills near people. Pills from Firestone is a hobby. Bill’s near. Um, I like that as well, but I can get those, so I don’t really want to brew what I can get locally fresh. Um. However, that black forest beer doesn’t come over here that often, and it’s like 15 bucks a six pack.

So, uh, I decided to try to really make a beer similar to that, and that’s what the best Heidelberg, the lighter Pilsner mall, um, tech nigger and Hartel hops, uh, 37, 40 East snap mash and low and slow lawyering, 50 degrees for a couple of weeks. And, uh, slowly lowering it down. And then. 32 degrees for a few more weeks.

And, um, just really clean, really clear, really Chris, uh, fully attenuated, nice, uh, smooth beer. So that’ll be tapped soon and I can’t wait cause I, I really love a good Pilsner. Um, English pale is carbonating right now. It should be ready in a day or two. I made that with, uh, Andrew Voss, um, English pale, except we used his hops.

Um. I forget which ones we used. It might’ve been the knee. I don’t know if it’s a new Mexican-ness or not, but, um, what have been hell holler town. I don’t know. But, uh, it’s an English pale with his hops. Um, and that, that, uh, really curious to try that. And then I have a, my Bach coming up with also with Andrew Voss.

We brewed in December. Um. That I tried recently, uh, would probably keg it in a week or two. It’s tasting excellent. So I’m very excited for the, my Bach. Um, next thing I’m going to brew as a English probably line a big thick, chewy English, barley wine. So we have an English barley wine that we put any third use bourbon barrel that we have.

And the bourbon barrel is still giving off plenty of wood and bourbon. Um, it came from a local distillery. It’s a 15 gallon. But it’s, I mean, third use, the first use, we went eight months, second use, we went about eight months. So 16 months worth of beer in a 15 gallon barrel. Um, usually it’s stripped out all that bourbon, but this, this, a distillery only puts their a, I shouldn’t even call it bourbon, I guess it’s, I don’t think it’s bourbon.

So just whiskey. Um, they only put it in there for. Eight months, and then they turn it over. Um, so it’s, it’s really fast and it means the barrels super boozy. Um, it’s really good, but it’s super boozy. So you can’t put beer in there as long. I’d probably, in hindsight, I probably would have went a little less on the first use for the big stout and then a, a lot less than the second use, which was like a Firestone anniversary type blend of barley wines and quad and, uh, and stouts as well.

But, uh, the second, yeah, the second use was way too boozy. So anyways, I’m English, probably ones in the third use and the alcohol and the barrel just ended out too much. So it’s a good beer, but the body’s too thin. We didn’t build a big enough beer for how much booze and Oak was left in that barrel. So I want to make a big, thick English, barley wine and then blend it with, uh, what’s in that barrel at 50 50.

And I think that should, uh. Get us to where we’re, we want to be with a beer that, uh, we’ll be half barrel aged and half not, and it should have the right amount of body, the right amount of booze. Um, so I do that a lot. Uh, I like blending things to taste even when using stuff like vanilla beans or coconut or not really cocoa nibs, cause I’ve never really gone overboard on that.

But if you’re using vanilla beans, you can go overboard. Same with coconut. So I like splitting the a batch in half a lot of times, you know, doing it proactively. And then, uh, going ahead and, uh, just dousing the first half with the, uh, coconut or vanilla and being aggressive, um, that cause if you overdo it, you can just blend back some of the base.

And if you don’t overdo it and you get a really good character, then you can do something else with the other half or just to keep the other half straight. Um, so I really like blending. Um, I wish I had more capacity, you know, on a professional level. You know, people have all sorts of barrels that can choose and taste and blend too.

And that’s, that’s really neat to me. Um, you know, jealous in that way on the holder scale. It’s usually like, you know, at most I’ll have two barrels. I can blend with, um, put different recipes into, you know, several different recipes into one barrel, but usually don’t have many to choose from. Um, one other, speaking of blending, one other cool thing, my friend Brian has a, uh,

A wild ale, a peach wild ale that is a little too acidic, um, but it tastes really nice, has a lot of flavor. And I have some, a wild peach wine that it has some wild yeast in it. And, um, it’s not bad. It has a good peach flavor, but it’s a little thin and it doesn’t have the depth. So we were blending that last night actually.

Um, he was over here and we were blending that. Um, so we’re going to combine those things and I guess what’s likely to be a wine, because it looks like a bee. Two parts. Why peach wine to one part of his a peach beer. But we’re going to go ahead and do that, and we might split half of it off and even put some, uh, like Tahitian vanilla beans, something a little lighter.

And, um, with the peach, kind of like a little vanilla peach thing going on, uh, for some of that beer. But I’m going to do that soon. I just gotta order some vanilla beans and, uh, that’ll be the next project, uh, as well. Um. So I think that’s, that’s mostly what’s, what’s been going on and what’s in the pipeline pipeline.

Um, I’ll probably make some more loggers as well and, uh, do for a big stout pretty soon too.

Colter Wilson: I also know that you like to do other things than beer. Why don’t you get into a bit of those other projects?

Ryan Pachmayer: Yeah. Other than beer, I do plenty of other things. I’m a bit port wine for several years. I think my oldest vintage is 2017 for port wine.

Um. Made a few kits and then, uh, with my friend Nathan. And then every year we buy a grape juice from California. And now our third friend Justin’s in on it. And we, uh, we fermented out and fortify it and, uh, you know, make port wine once a year that way. But I’ve made a, some stuff on my own from, I like to forge, uh, ingredients.

Um, and. Cherries. I’ve done peaches, all sorts of different things. I find locally, last year wasn’t a good year for fruit. I just got a bunch of a joke. Cherries and different types of, uh, I think just a couple of different types of cherries, a couple of choke cherry trees, uh, for cherry wine. But the year before, there was tons of good stuff.

Um, so there are a lot of that. Um, I like port wine, so we do port wine and also ages pretty well. Um, for the wine. I usually just, uh. I either juice it or I freeze it, freeze the, uh, I used to juice it and now I actually freeze the fruit, uh, for a couple of days. Take it out, thought, chop it up, throw it in the fermenter.

Um, and then I usually put boiling sugar water over it, um, to packing the pasteurize it, sanitize that wild yeast. And then I let it cool overnight. And then I pitched my, uh, East Energizer and my, my wine yeast. And, uh, you know. Go through with a fermentation there to, uh, you know, acidify the different ways.

There’s, you know, different things you do along the way to, uh, to dial it into where you want it. But, um, yeah, that’s how I’m making my port wine now for the most part. And then you fortify it, either fortify it when it reaches a certain final gravity. So if you want it to end at like 1.035, you just fortify it then, or you, um.

Or you fortify it, uh, and back. So we didn’t after. So you let it ferment all the way out and say you get to say 14% alcohol, great. Maybe you want it to be 18% for your port wine. So you had enough, uh, Brandy or ever clear vodka or some sort of mix of those into it to raise it to about 18%. Um, and then you would add sugar, tobacco, sweet knit, um, to whatever tastes usually between 1.03 and 1.05, depending on how sweet you want your port.

And also, you know, what kind of fruit or what kind of grapes are using. Um, but the fruit stuff is really interesting. I’ve done all sorts of different ones from strawberry to Blackberry to mixed berries. Um. Apple port was kind of cool or done some Apple port. It’s a little hot still. It’s like two years old, but Apple port is pretty cool.

It’s got some good flavors. So port wine is one thing. I do ciders again, good Apple years. Two years ago, a friend set me up with a group of people that had never really brewed anything and they really wanted to, uh, make cider. Um, they had a lot of experience, like grow. They were like farmers. Um. You know, one of them runs a CSA, a friend of mine, uh, now I stay.

Now a friend of mine who was introduced to me then. So my friend introduced me to them and I’d made cider a few times. And there is, he called me the cider expert, which was a quite the oversell. So we picked a. I think we had over a thousand pounds of apples between like 20 people, 30 people, something like that.

And we just had this big production, two full days of chopping apples and grinding them and pressing them and, you know, preparing the cider. And a lot of it did not turn out very well because, uh, too much of the batch of apples we had were a little, a little too green. They weren’t ready yet. Um, one of our friends was moving and.

We just, we needed to pick the Apple sooner than we should have in hindsight. Um, so there’s a little bit too much of that, like bitter green Apple flavor and a lot of them, some of them turned out great. But, um, for the most part. The bulk of it was just average. Okay. Cider. Um, so next time we do that, we’ll make sure to get super ripe apples.

Let me probably pick it off of like 20 plus trees. Locally. It was, it was a big ordeal. So we, uh, you live and learn and you get better, especially when you’re new to things. Uh, besides the, I have a distilled stuff at friend’s houses before. Um, that’s, that’s pretty fun. Nothing major. Um. It made me before as well.

Uh, I do like Mead. I wouldn’t mind making a batch or two a year just to have some meat around every once in awhile. Um, but meat is really cool. I have not done Saki. Um. But, uh, it’s, it’s something that I might be interested in. And then Jesus, another thing that people do, cheese and kombucha. And those are two things that, uh, I would like to get into at some point in 2020.

Colter Wilson: Are there any other burry resources out there for our listeners

Ryan Pachmayer: as far as homebrewing resources go? Um, as I mentioned before, earlier, um, beer and brewing.com is great. Um. The video series on making the big new style, Imperial stouts, the chocolate on chocolate, smooth, awesome stouts, thick stouts. Um, Corey King from side project has the video on their, behind their pay wall.

Definitely worth it. Um, if you want to make good, authentic German lagers, um. Bill and Ashley did a series on there, did a video on there on telling you exactly how they make their awesome loggers from beer stat. And so you can learn everything about making German lagers on there if you want to make good new England juicy style IPA is, um, Neil Fisher from WildWorks.

They’re fantastic, juicy bits. A recipe and technique is on there as well. So, um, that website is fantastic, is probably now my favorite place for it. Uh, that kind of thing. Uh, for new Bruins. Uh, techniques and recipes. Their podcast is great. Obviously Jamie does an awesome job and then their content and their website is great.

Um, I like the online, I like the, uh, forum wires. I like the American homebrewers association website a little bit better than Homebrew talk. I find that Homebrew talk is, um. Well, we’re talk is great. It’s big. There’s a lot of good resources there, but I just consistently see people respond in an authoritative way, um, with information that’s just blatantly false.

Um, and that’s the kind of stuff that if you’re reading a forum and trying to learn, you need to be able to take someone’s, you know, if someone says they’re certain of something, you need, be able to take their word. And when people are recommending all sorts of, uh, bad practices or just things that aren’t going to work or just false, um.

It just calls into question some of the content on the site. The American homebrewers, I find a that forum a lot more. There’s some, there’s some really visible people that know a lot on there that posts on there. You know, people like Gordon strong or Denny con. But also just the things that I do know that I can verify that I see posted there.

You know, I see that coming up a lot. So, um. When I’m looking into new ideas, it’s, that’s one of the forms that I’ll go to and I’m not going to necessarily base a new technique or an idea or advice off of just one single post or source. Um, but that site would come into play, um, pretty, pretty well. Um, besides that, um, you know, as IMG, the American homebrewers association magazine is great.

It’s always been great. Um, Buio has gotten a lot better over the years. There’s to find a lot more. Issues, I would say with BYO, a lot of errors at find are just things that are, weren’t, didn’t seem like good advice, um, and BYO. But BYO seems to be getting a lot better the last few years. So BYO isn’t bad at all.

Um, talking to your local brewers, if you’d like the beer that people make. Um, most brewers are very open about how they make things. Um, almost never do I get. I can’t tell you that. I don’t want to tell you that. Um, you know, people are in the brewing industry. People are like almost an open book. You know, I’m sure people have their secrets and things they don’t want to tell you about, but when you’re asking them a question, the Homebrew scale, they almost always will, uh, oblige.

Um, the, for me, back in the day, uh, Matt van , he was a great, uh, he was a local brewery at Flossmore station making awesome beer. Um. And him and his assistant, Andrew, uh, they would be happy to share any recipe of any beer they made. I would, you know, I just ask and they would give me the seven barrel version and it just break it down into a Homebrew.

And, uh, you know, I could brew a similar beer to what they were making if I wanted to. Uh, which is awesome. It’s so cool that those brewers, uh, were just so open about it. I’m really so passionate about their profession, but these days, you know, same thing, you can. Email a brewery, even if it’s not a local brewery, a brewery like email, and they’ll often tell you things you can get information off their website.

Um, I piece together my a roundhouse clone, a Pilsner clone, basically just from information online. Um, you know, to take the German brewing practices that I learned and then combine it with the recipe information and the gravity information that you already, I already have. Um. And then the water profile information that I could find online as well.

So all that combined, and you know, it’s all there for you. Um, books, there’s too many to name. There’s so many, so many good books out there. I’d probably have over 20 brewing books and I consider them all, um. They’re all great to reference for certain things. This, the series, the East, the water, the malt series.

That’s a great, great series. Um, the ones I mentioned earlier. Good. Uh, Dave carpenter’s logger book is fantastic. If you want to brew lagers, know about loggers, that book is a phenomenal resource. Um, so go for that. Um, I recently got a dark lagers book, the, uh, Thomas wireman, uh, Horst, uh. Jordan Bush, I think is his name.

I can’t, sorry, I can’t, don’t remember the pronunciation, but it’s a dark lager book and that is a fantastic book as well. Uh, it’s all about dark lagers. Um, otherwise I really like Gordon Strong’s books, especially as second book, the, uh, advanced home brewing or something like that. Um, I really love the way Gordon strong, uh, writes his recipes.

He’ll write you a recipe. He’ll tell you a little bit about the beer. It’ll give you the main stats of the beer, the IB use, whatever the SRM, the alcohol. Then he’ll give you the Greenville and the hops, and then he tells you, uh, like sort of like recipe variations. Um, so if you decided to experiment a little bit, you know, he might suggest switching a hop or adding a little bit more crystal mall or taking away crystal mall and adding some more dark malts or changing the base, um, or adding a fruit.

So it’s pretty cool. You have a recipe, you have the story on it, you have all the parameters, and then he kind of gives you an idea of how you might want to vary it if you wanted to go in a different direction. Um, and he also tells you about why he did it the way he did it, whether it was, you know, he used Maris auto because he had some extra Marisol around hand or because he wanted, you know, a certain, you know, nutty note in the beer.

Uh, but yeah, I found his recipes to be really reliable as well. And I based, uh, plenty of beers that I’ve made on some of his recipes, uh, before. So that Gordon strong advanced homebrewing book is, is great as well. Um, I think that’s probably, those are the main resources that I would recommend. Um, there are some good breweries that have recipes out there that publish full recipes.

Avery has them on their website. Um, BrewDog is posted like every single recipe they’ve ever made. Um, and actually one of the, uh. Big Imperial stouts. I made it one of the 20 percenters. I made this one I made by a man with my friend Mike, and we, um, froze, freeze to still the, shouldn’t they call it distilling cause it’s not freeze concentrated the beer from a roughly 13% to 20%.

It was based on a BrewDog recipe called Tokyo, their big Imperial stout. It’s a fairly simple malt bill. A simple recipe. So we made a beer similar to that, and then a freeze concentrated to about 20% and it took gold in the experimental category at big beers. Um, I think it’s 2017 maybe. So that was a.

That was pretty neat as well. But yeah, all sorts of resources out there. Um, Bell’s, I think has a lot of the recipes out there as well. So, um, especially these days, you’re just not hurting and great resources. Um, there’s some great brewing blogs out there. Um, the mad Fairman dation guy, Mike, was it Mike?

His name is, he has a great blog. Um. It’s mostly your previous resource because now he has a professional brewery with Scott Janesh, Janice, who also, uh, has an awesome blog of resources and a great book. Um, if you want to mess, especially with hoppy, IPA type beers, if you want to mess around with those beers, um, his book takes sort of a science, data-driven approach to it.

Um, dot com is a great one as well. Um, for me is almost. Inspirational than anything else. Like you just read experiments and ideas. And the comments are probably the most, uh, interesting comments on like any, um, you know, beer publication or beer website out there. Um, cause there’s a lot of dedicated brewers that, um.

Decided to reply to all these experiments and they talk about, Oh, maybe the experiment could have been better this way. Or they ask questions or they say, I’ve done something similar. So you get a lot of good discussion in those comments. So it’s not just the experiments. Um, and then they have a recipe section, which is cool.

They have a podcast, which I haven’t listened to yet, but, um. Podcast seems great as well. Um, so that’s, that’s an, that’s a cool resource as well. Um, but yeah, a lot of resources for the newer brewer. Um, and you can learn about just about anything these days.

Colter Wilson: Well, Ryan, I’d like to thank you for coming on the show.

I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about brewing big beers and, uh, we’ll have you back again some other time.

I’d like to think, Ryan, for coming on today’s show. It was really great conversation and I learned a ton about

brewing big beers.

Colter Wilson: You can also find us on social media. We’re on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Always look for us at homebrewing, DIY, all one word. That’s it for this week. We’ll see you next week on Hungary.

DIY.

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