Greeting from Cascades Brewer and welcome to Cascades Homebrew. It is March 2021 and I am kicking off this new site so I can capture some of my thoughts, ideas, processes, and thoughts on brewing beer. The overall slant of the sight will be towards intermediate to advanced homebrewers that are interested in understanding how to build better beers with simple equipment and simple processes.
The Future of Cascades Brewer
Some ideas that I have kicking around:
- Investigative Brewing – focused brewing to test out ingredients, processes and ingredients
- Equipment: the equipment needed
- Process: how to integrate Investigative Brewing into your flow
- Ideas: ideas and different “variables” to investigate
- Results
- Yeast Experiments
- Grain Experiments
- Hop Evaluation
- Grain Evaluation
- etc.
- Stovetop BIAB Brewing (2.5 gallon all-grain brewing)
- 5 Gal BIAB: A great step up or introduction to all-grain brewing
- Other brewing processes and tips like
- Understanding Water Chemistry
- Harvesting and Reusing Yeast
- Making Yeast Starters
- Closed Transfers/Closed Side Oxidation
- Building Styles: An alternative to published recipes. Steps to understand your target beer style with ideas how to build a recipe that matches your tastes, system and process
Feature Image by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
I like your idea for 2 1/2 gal batch size. I run this size mainly because I can no longer throw around 5 gal. carboys. You do mention many more reasons why this batch size makes sense. Don’t forget to include something for us extract users. We are brewers to.
Thanks for the comment Dennis. Extract brewing adds a lot of flexibility on batch size. I can whip out a 1 gallon extract brew (with a short boil) in maybe an hour. Extract with a concentrated boiling makes 5 gallon batches easier. While I am an all-grain brewer at heart, I respect anybody making beer from 1 gal extract to 20 barrel all grain.
I’m about to embark on an experiment to produce a shelf-stable Talla/Tella (ጠላ), a close relative of beer that’s unique to the Ethiopian highlands. I have been researching the web for small batch all-grain brew recipes and wondering if the one gallon recipes I have seen so far would be the way to go. That was until I came across your site discussing the 2.5 gallon option. Wow, It’s by far the best documentation and most appropriate for my planned experiment during the merry month of my after my return to Northern California.
You might know this already but just FYI, some of the key differences between brewing beer and talla are: the use of gesho instead of hops (I grow my own gesho), boiling the wort, using wild yeast for fermentation and the absence of chemical sanitizers. The dependence on wild yeast and the total absence of sanitizers alone is bound take any brewing process down the road of uncertainty and an exercise in futility each and every time. I plan to keep the gesho and work on incorporating/tweaking the other modern brewing practices.
Bravo for documenting and sharing your extensive knowledge on this subject – I already ordered “How to brew” by John Palmer.
Cheers,
Menkir.
I am glad you have gotten use from my content. I had never heard of Tella/Talla, but it sounds like an interesting drink.