Brewing with your own Wort

[Kaisersose]

Hi Guys,

I hope today finds you all well. I'm a long time home brewer looking to downgrade my home brewery operation. At the moment I brew all grain with a Braumeister 20L. I'm seriously considering purchasing a Beerdroid and scaling my operation back to 10L due to the variety of beer I like to consume and the time it takes to put down a batch of all grain. I've been involved in a long term fight with my all grain friends that with the standard of todays extracts and speciality grain it is entirely possible to brew just as good of a quality beer through extract brewing than it is with all grain. In fact most commercial breweries do this already. My question is this, has anyone used anything other than brew prints to brew in the beer droid? Is it possible to brew extract cans in the beerdroid or something like a full wort kit in the beer droid? A yes to any of these question would all but make up my mind.

Kind Regards

Dave

[Beard Droid]

Hi Kaisersose,

I am also a long time All Grain brewer and can vouch for the quality of the beer from my BeerDroid. You're right about the quality of malt extract, it has definitely increased markedly over the years, also because BrewArt uses dry malt it doesn't oxidise and change colour. The BrewArt Brew Prints are great quality and really convenient if you want to make a great tasting quick beer, but the beauty of the BeerDroid is that you can add any type of wort to it and it will still work fine and hold temp and run fermentation tests.

There are heaps of people on this forum using extract cans, and fresh wort kits with great success.

Cheers 

[MattS]

Hi Kaisersose ,

I actually make some small batch all grain worts and ferment them in my BeerDroid rather than my conical. I've had nothing but success with this method. I've also done half kits of ginger beer in the BeerDroid - just saved the other half to brew later.

So yes, they are multi-purpose.

Cheers

[Kaisersose]

Hi Fellas,

Thanks for the information. I've finally taken the plunge and brought a Droid. I purchased a couple of Brewprints swell (Tall Tale Pale & Aztec Cerveza) The Tall Tale I plan on trying as is just to get the experience of a Brewprint. The Aztec I plan on adding Lemongrass to. I had a similar Lemongrass Lager at a local craft brewery and thought a lighter lager would suite the Lemongrass. I'm not sure how I'm going go about doing this at the moment, I thought bruising and steeping the Lemongrass in 500ml of boiling water might be the way to go. That way I could using the water to sterilise the Lemongrass and add it as I would a dry hop addition. I'll keep you posted on hoe this turns out.

Thanks again for the information

[Captain 3 Droids]

On 01/12/2018 at 7:24 AM, Kaisersose said:

Hi Fellas,

Thanks for the information. I've finally taken the plunge and brought a Droid. I purchased a couple of Brewprints swell (Tall Tale Pale & Aztec Cerveza) The Tall Tale I plan on trying as is just to get the experience of a Brewprint. The Aztec I plan on adding Lemongrass to. I had a similar Lemongrass Lager at a local craft brewery and thought a lighter lager would suite the Lemongrass. I'm not sure how I'm going go about doing this at the moment, I thought bruising and steeping the Lemongrass in 500ml of boiling water might be the way to go. That way I could using the water to sterilise the Lemongrass and add it as I would a dry hop addition. I'll keep you posted on hoe this turns out.

Thanks again for the information

How did it turn out and how is your droid going?

[Kaisersose]

On 3/5/2019 at 4:57 PM, Barrelboy said:

How did it turn out and how is your droid going?

Hey Barrelboy,

Sorry for the lateness of my response. Brewdroid is going great! Although I'm getting the dreaded tap issue that most people seem to be experiencing here where the rubber seal on the removable tap is beginning to perish. The Lemongrass Lager turned out to be amazing. Even the wife liked it and she's not a beer drinker! I ended up adding lemongrass essential oil to the Aztec Cerveza kit and it has been one of my best brews yet, all grain brews included. I've posted the recipe on the forum. My only compliant with the whole system is the use of the liquid hops. They add a funny metallic taste to the brew that seems to disappear with time (about a month conditioning) but I've changed to using hop teas instead. I use the Westcoast IPA and Mountain Range IPA as a malt base and add hop teas from there. I'm finding they give a good level of bitterness and I can tailor the hops to my liking. Currently got a NEIPA on the go using the Westcoast IPA as a base. I added lactose and hopped with Azecca, Eldorado, Citra, Mosaic and Galaxy. Reduced some Passionfruit pulp and Pineapple Juice and strained that into the brew droid on day 4 of fermentation. I let it sit for an additional 4 days once EOF was reached to allow for any extra fermentation the juice might have created. All in all I'm pretty happy with it. I want to give a couple of the Coopers Craft series brews a go to see what I get, but my plan is to put a couple of 10 litre all grain brews through after the NEIPA is finished. If they turn out OK it's going to be used for recipe testing. I'm hoping that I can brew pilot 10 litre batches to test before taking the plunge and upscaling to 21 litres. I'm currently kegging into 4 x 10 litre iKegger kegs which is a breeze.

Kind Regards

Kaisersose

[Captain 3 Droids]

Great stuff Kaisersose, your certainly making some good brews. These droids are just great for brewing control, experimentation and producing high quality craft beer. I have 2 iKegger 10l (mainly use to mature and do keg to keg transfers), 6 ball lock 9.5/10l and 4 ball lock 12l. Like you I do hop teas for the wort and dry hop with a hop bag. Works well. Currently have Cooper English Bitter (23l) in the traditional 30l barrel. English bitter is my go to general ale and a Hoppy Pale Ale in the droid.

Keep on brewing and experimenting, cheers.