SpiderShoeCult

Does anyone else get the annoying bug wherein when warping to the freighter, you end up in the module that contains the portal, but somehow that entire place (which in my case contains a planetary scanner, some fleet command posts and a galactic trade terminal) becomes offset by a little bit in relation to the rest of the base, which means corridors no longer link and it's just a wall inside the module, and doors become just a tiny bit separated so that you to jump over a handrail to exit unto the external walkway?

Has anyone been able to track this to some cause? I've had it happen almost every warp while being in a certain system, while for others I've gone 2 weeks without any such incident.

Hey, folks.

So, we're up to 1.6k subscribers now (yay!). Thank you to everyone for making this possible!

So, it's probably time to add a couple more moderators.

We seem to be a pretty chill bunch so far, so do reach out if this is something that you're interested in.

A 7.5% ABV malt-forward beer, fermented with a kveik blend. Notes of bread crust, sugar plum, pear, nutmeg shine through on a malty base.

Malt:

Maris Otter 1 kg

Light Munich 4 kg

Chocolate Rye 0.2 kg

Cara Rye 0.3 kg

Crystal 150 0.3 kg

Oak smoked wheat 0.2 kg

extra: Table sugar 0.4 kg

Mash:

in @ 42 C

60' @ 63 C

20' @ 72 C

out @ 78 C

Hops:

Northern Brewer 30g @ 60'

Saaz 15g @ 10'

H. Mittelfrüh 15g @ 10'

Yeast: Eitrheim Kveik

OG: 1.075 FG: 1.019

Boil volume - 23L. Bottled & kegged - 17.5L ( 1L trub loss). Kegged and bottled half and half. Bottled beer is rounder somehow (probably residual yeast activity?).

Edit: Light Munich, not dark. Notes just said 'Munich' - d'oh.

A while ago I managed to find a webshop selling koji spores and figured 'hell, why not?'.

I've seeded some rice successfully and made 2 batches of miso - one with chickpeas and another with plain old beans. Loved the results.

Then I was inspired by the veggie charcuterie I've seen Sandor Katz's book (I think it was there?) and thought I could maybe use it to make fake dry-sausages out of slabs of cooked seitan seeded with the koji spores. Success was limited since I did not get a full cover on the bits before the thing started sporulating, so I placed it in a dehydrator. Nevertheless, it was a fairly tasty addition to stir-fries, albeit a bit tough.

Anybody ever done funky things with koji? Looking for some weird new ideas to try out.

Greetings! Here's my attempt at creating an introduction to beer brewing. Please feel free to point out errors, inaccuracies, missing info, or anything you feel should be different.

Disclaimer: written under the influence of homebrew

Ingredients

• Yeast

In its most basic form, alcoholic fermentation is just yeasts chomping away at sugars to generate alcohol and carbon dioxide, giving our favourite beverage the buzz and fizz we enjoy. Depending on yeast strain and conditions (temperature, OG - that is initial or original gravity of the wort, nutrient availability), it may be more or less potent (in terms of alcohol tolerance) or yield more or less flavour compounds. Yeast suppliers usually give datasheets with temperature ranges and alcohol tolerances for yeasts.

• Malt

Malt is just grain that has been coerced into sprouting then dried. This unlocks enzymes within the grain that cut up complex sugars (starch) stored inside the grain into simpler sugars that the seedling would use as its initial energy stores. The drying conditions of the malt are what give us the large selection we have today. Do note, however, that the darker the malt, the less enzymatic activity it has.

• Hops

The main preservative in beer - hops inhibit lactobacilli that turn beer sour and give it the aroma we all know and love. Hops are defined by their alpha-acid content, which turn into beta-acids (that give beer its hop bitter taste) during boiling. The time of addition for hops is key for this, as longer boiling yields more beta-acids but loses flavour from the hops - hence, bittering hops are boiled for longer, aroma hops are boiled for less or not at all - added at whirlpool or used to dry-hop. Hops are also sensitive to oxidation, so they're stored in the freezer and sold in vacuum-sealed bags. There is a plethora of hops available from any self-respecting homebrew store and hop pellets (ground up and compressed hop flowers) are by far the most common form.

• Water

Without going into much detail, brewing water should not be overlooked. The ionic content of water does influence your beer quite a lot (for instance due to pH or presence / absence of magnesium ions that may bring out hop bitterness). Historically, brewing water has been tied to specific styles (like dry irish stout in Dublin, IPAs in Burton-on-trent or pilsners in Pilsen). Water used for brewing must, however, be chlorine-free, in order to avoid unpleasant flavours. This can be accomplished by using 1-2 campden tablets to 20L (~5 gal) water or filtering your water throught activated charcoal before use.

Process

0. Sanitizing

The most important step in brewing - sanitizing stuff. Everything that does not get heated to at least pasteurization temperatures (~71 C or 161 F) needs to be sanitized. Everything that touches the wort after it's cooled or fermented beer needs to be sanitized. This cannot be stressed enough. Using StarSan diluted to its specification for about 30 seconds usually does the job. If something was sanitized and it touches something that was not, it needs to be sanitized again. Seriously, don't take this step lightly.

1. Mashing

Involves keeping your mash (the mixture of crushed, malted grains and water) at a specific temperature for a specific amount of time in order to transform the starch in the grains into simpler sugars that yeasts can digest. Some usual conditions would be 63-66 C (145-150 F) for one hour - these give a good balance of body and fermentability. More advanced brewers (or those posessing more advanced equipment) may do step mashes. The temperatures are selected in order to favour different enzymes present in the malt. A mash-out step is usually just heating the mash to 78 C (172 F) - this preserves just a bit of enzymatic activity - alpha-amylase (the one responsible for body) stops working around this temperature.

Regarding water:grain ratio, I personally use around 6 kg (12 lbs) to 23 L water (6 gal).

At the end of mashing, the liquid has to be separated from the solids by either transferring through a sieve (mash tun to boil kettle) or removing the solids (like the case for brew-in-a-bag or all-in-one systems - Braumeister, Grainfather).

2. Sparging

Sparging involves pouring water heated to the mash-out temperature over the spent grain in order to extract any lingering bit of sweetness that did not make it to the boil kettle. (I have no idea how you would do this when using brew-in-a-bag, though - edit: apparently you don't, problem solved :) ).

(Extract brewers will usually skip the steps above and just dissolve the extract in water then proceed to the boil)

3. Boiling

The purpose of boiling is two-fold. First, to remove dimethylsulfide, or DMS, a compound obtained during mashing that has a vegetable-like flavour usually undesireable in beer. The other purpose is to extract compounds from hops and convert them from alpha- (aromatic) to beta-acids (bitter) to provide bitterness, aroma, and preservative qualities to the beer. (It also concentrates the wort.)

Boiling usually takes 1 hour (as that is the amount of time that usually removes all the DMS). The boil can be longer if one wishes to concentrate the wort further.

Timing and quantities of hop additions are very important to the final hop flavour profile of the beer. The more hops are boiled, the more aroma they lose and the more they impart bitterness to your beer.

4. Chilling, transfer to fermenter and pitching yeast

Once the wort is done boiling, it is cooled (usually by applying cold water through a cooling implement - jacket or wort chiller), transferred to the fermenter and the yeast is added (or pitched). The simplest way of doing this is to add the dry yeast directly over the wort. Everything that touches wort after chilling must be sanitized (refer to step 0) - this includes the outside of the yeast packet before opening it.

Gravity readings (OG, original gravity) are taken of the cooled wort using a densimeter or refractometer.

5. Fermentation

The fermenter is placed in conditions adequate for the beer style being prepared and the yeast being used (lagers in cold conditions, ales a bit warmer, saisons or kveik yeasts in even warmer conditions) - check the yeast for information on temperatures, fitted with an airlock. When the airlock no longer significantly bubbles (or better yet, the gravity of the wort is where one would expect it to be based on recipe), fermentation is done. I just eyeball it and when I get 1-2 air bubbles / minute in the airlock, I declare it done. YMMV.

6. Bottling or kegging

Refer to step 0. Yes, sanitize all bottles. Sanitize that keg. Sanitize your hands and the racking cane. Then sanitize your hands again. Are your hands sanitary? Better do it again, just to make sure.

In order to get carbonation in the finished product, table sugar can be added based on style and carbonation preferences to the finished beer before bottling. The yeast left over in the solution will take care of the rest. A good starting point would be 4-5 g/L of table sugar (or 0.5 to 0.66 oz/gal). I usually add it as syrup made by dissolving the sugar in water, boiling, cooling (covered - refer to step 0) and mixing the whole sugar with the whole batch of beer. Then transfer to bottles or keg, and wait 1-2 weeks. Chill, and serve.

If kegging, you can also force carbonate by adding beer and pressurizing with carbon dioxide for about a week or so.

7. Cleaning

Cleaning and sanitizing are the most important steps in brewing. Clean equipment is easier to sanitize. Sanitized equipment is less likely to give you any contamination. While contamination can just sour your beer, it may also cause exploding bottles.

Some great advice from the comments:

On sanitation and RDWHAHB

Feedback is welcome, and will edit this post as required. Cheers!

So a while ago I stumbled upon some red yeast rice at my local asian store and fell down a rabbit hole started by the linked post (there is another - 159 page - post on those forums dedicated to rice wine - enter at your own peril).

I've managed to create about 2 very small batches of rice wine.

For the first batch I used red yeast rice for saccharification and some brewer's yeast for fermentation - results were good, out of about 3.5 kg cooked rice I got maybe 1 L of wine, slightly cloudy.

Second time I got the same quantities roughly but used red yeast rice for saccharification plus chinese yeast balls for saccharification plus fermentation. Wine was a bit tastier this time and I think the aspect was a bit better - clearer.

For both batches I filled a Kilner jar (3L) fitted with an airlock on a silicone cap and topped up with rice as it liquified (couldn't get the whole amount in there to start with). Mostly eyeballed the quantities. Straining out the solids proved to be very difficult as it turns into a slurry - think stuck mash, but worse.

Finished them off by pasteurizing - I stored them in roughly 300 mL jars - in a pot of water and heating to 70 C. I did notice that the liquid becomes a bit clearer after pasteurization (possibly residual enzymatic activity?).

Overall the drink was very pleasant, slightly fruity but also bread-crust-y. The process however, especially the straining, is very labor intensive and I would love to hear some ideas on improvement.

Hey, everyone! Figured I'd fire up a homebrewing community and see if there's any takers.

I know you're out there, just as I was out there lurking on other similar sites. :D

Come here and brag with your latest creation. I'll start, just brewed an unexpected wee heavy using Eitrhem kveik.

Cheers!

edit: typo