/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>12037144
Can confirm that professional winos make the big $$$.

Do you make any natural wines? I don't really have a taste for most wine but a good natural wine is so delicious and complex and some remind me a great sour beer.

>>12037120
Sorry to hear that anon, sounds like you are making the right move getting out of that place. I feel like your experience is unfortunately too common in the industry. Like I mentioned earlier, the huge mass of people who think brewing is a "fun" job and will work for free or nearly no pay drive down the overall value and pay of other brewers in the industry.

I know I am lucky to make the wage I do, but it wasn't always that way for me. My first year doing packaging and cellar work I was making $13/hr, and I would pick up shifts at the taproom sometimes were I would make more than a whole weeks worth of production wages in one nights tips. Even when I first started actually brewing professionally, I made considerably less than I do now. Only by making myself an essential part of the production team and throwing my weight around did I get up to the pay I currently get. I still get no health benefits but all the free beer I want, which is really ironic in my opinion.

Good luck to you in the future wherever your career may take you, and don't forget that just because your not doing it professionally, doesn't mean you can't still brew great beer. I feel like I enjoyed homebrewing so much more when i didn't also brew at work all day.

>>12036960
Forgot my name but it was me here. Also >>12036718 dont forget to remove all stems and seeds and possibly cores from apples so your not making any methanol (bad poison not good poison)

Pic is a fouder. They are basically giant barrels/wooden tanks that come in many shapes and sizes. Typically used for mass aging or fermenting a whole bunch of sour/mixed fermentation beers at once. The benefit of a fouder over barrels is that because all of the beer is being aged/fermented in one vessel, the entire batch will have much more consistency than using multiple smaller wine-style barrels. I think they are very sexy and I would love to play around with one at work but they are usually crazy expensive to buy and ship.

>>12035335
I've seen bartenders at the taproom do it, but personally I dont really like to blend finished beer because I know someone worked hard to ensure that beer tastes the way it does. Of course there is the popular British "Snakebite" of 1/2 a mild flavored lager and 1/2 hard cider but be careful because these are notoriously easy to drink. Also the well known "black and tan" of 1/2 stout and half pale ale. Generally I think it's like cocktails, you want things with complementary flavors or something strongly flavored mixed with something lighter and refreshing to mellow it out a bit.

>>12035298
https://wineandhop.com/blogs/news/make-tepache-at-home

I only made it once but it turned out pretty good. However I make ginger bug/ginger beer a lot and its really a similar method. Tips are you must use filtered water and organic pineapple to be sure you dont kill the yeast. Palm sugar and or dark brown sugar is needed to provide nutrients for the yeast/bugs, white sugar wont work well. Gently wipe off any dirt on the skin of pineapple before with a damp cloth but do not wash the pineapple skin. Fill up the container almost all the way and use a pickle weight or a sanitized stone to ensure none of the pineapple floats or you WILL get mold. White foam is ok and you can skim it off with a sanitized spoon but if you get fuzzies or mold or dont see any fermentation within 24-48 hrs or it doesn't look or smell good, throw the whole thing out, rigoursly clean and sanitize and start over. Remember the golden rule of ferments: "when in doubt, throw it out ". The longer you let it ferment the more alcoholic and sour it gets, but it quickly will turn to vinegar if you let it go to long. Pineapple vinegar is delicious though.

>>12035059
No, I havent seen that happen yet. What did happen once was one of the other brewers messed up on a batch of one of our core beers in such a way that it tasted ok but was out of spec for the style. It just sat in the cellar for a while and over the next few months we blended a little of it in future batches of the same beer in order to get rid of it. We did a few triangle and difference test with our tasting panel and their was no discernible difference. I still felt kinda shitty about it though.

>>12034516
Guiness and Newcastle are ok. Shock top and blue moon are garbage imo. Budweiser (not bud lite) is fine too. Sapporo and kirin are pretty refreshing and light. Overall, macro breweries are amazing at consistency. Budweiser will taste exactly the same no matter where or when you buy it, and that is technically very difficult to do and impressive when you consider that they have multiple facilities all over the world with different water, variations in raw materials ect. Honestly I think the major weakness with craft beer overall is lack of consistency and the importance of quality control, and that is something we could learn from the big guys.

>>12034376
Cool, anything fun you put out lately? What sort of beers do you make at your place?

>>12034007
"Sensory Evaluation of Food: Statistical Methods and Procedures" by Michael Omahony. Also "Sensory Evaluation of Food: Principles and Practices" by Hildegard. Flavor blindness and super tasting is 100% a real and commonly occurring thing and the only way to protect against it is use large panels of tasters

>>12033363
"Scientific Principles of Malting & Brewing" by Charles Bamforth. "Technology Brewing and Malting" by Wolfgang Kunze. Look for most recent/ 6th edition. Tons of others are great too check out titles here: https://my.mbaa.com/MBAAStore
Or here: http://my.asbcnet.org/asbcstore..

>>12033627
Yes it is very important to have good sensory skills and a good understanding of statistics/sensory science. You can train yourself and others with flavor kits that you can purchase that contain pills with concentrated chemicals that compose common off flavors that you can dose in beer. I think it is more important to have a well-trained panel or group of people rather than just yourself because one persons observations dont mean much stats wise and you can be blind to flavors or aromas. I would say it is most important to understand what causes particular flavors and aromas chemically/process wise than to actually be able to identify them.

>>12031799
How many bbl you do last year?

>>12031799
CA. Dont want to say more than that on here.

>>12029985
Pumpernickel would probably be great. Avoid the rye bread with carraway seeds in unless you like that flavor. The bread is mostly for flavor so you can use any kind you like mostly as long as you think it will taste good.

>>12029851
I dont make many pitches because I dont see the value of giving the brewery the opportunity to profit off of my ideas without any benefit to me. If I want to express myself creatively I do it through the mixed fermentation sours coming out of the barrel room, because nobody else understands how tkk or wants to deal with it but me and the batches are much smaller so I can do pretty much whatever I want without needing approval.

Most of the time pitches are rejected for logistical reasons like using too many or too expensive ingredients that are not part of our normal supply and thus cant be used in a different beer. Or its because there are equipment/process limitations that make it not feasible.

The owner frequently pushes through any ideas he wants has though, and he has no idea how to actually brew. Usually results in production having to jump through hoops to accommodate his ideas even if they cause problems.

>>12027678
Pretty much use this method: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/the-tsars-kvass/..

Changes I do is cut the amount of malt in half, because I think 4% abv is too much for kvass, I prefer around 2%. I also omit the hops and grains of paradise. You must use a good crusty high quality rye bread or it will taste bland. For the soured portion you can add probiotic that contains only lactobacillus like swanson's tablets or good belly straight shot instead of the uncrushed malt for a more predictable and cleaner flavor. Yeast can be a neutral ale yeast like US05 or bakers yeast can also work.

>>12027630
Most recently was a pilsner, have to make one every two weeks. If I want to make a new beer I have to pitch the idea to the head brewer, owner and the production manager. If it's something that's gonna be bottled or canned, It has to be approved at least 3 months before so we can get the label artwork and TTB approval.

>>12028480
Yeah, the werid white film will dissolve in the beer if you mix it around. It's just a film made by brett to limit oxygen. I think the pic is a sour beer with some fruit floating around in there.

>>12029367
Best thing to do is find recipes you already know work and try to tweak one or two ingredients. Then you get an idea of what different ingredients will do and how to use them with your system. Dont change to many things at once or you wont know what effect each change has. Use brewing software like beersmith or brewers friend if you dont want to or dont know how to do the mathematical calculations involved.

>>12027449
Not great really. Growth in craft beer sales has been shrinking year over year for the past 3 years, but more and more breweries are opening every day. The beer market cannot support the insane amount of growth the industry has seen I the last 20 years. There are so many regional breweries competing for the same customer base.

Currently the only way to stay relevant is staying ahead of the trends in beer, even when they seem stupid. However those types of sales tend to be fleeting and new fads and styles pop up.

The overhead on starting a brewery is very high due to permits, licensing, equipment costs ect. Owners who think it would be fun to own a brewery but know nothing about it are really common, and they can burn a lot of employees when they realize they are tons of debt and are not going to be profitable for the next few years, so they close down within 5 years of opening. I see it all the time in the industry.

In my opinion, the smaller local places that are in tune with their communities and pander to local consumer base will survive, as will the giant craft brands like Sierra Nevada and Deschutes. It's the medium sized breweries that will struggle and start closing down more and more over the next ten years.

Enjoy some pellicle porn.

>>12026212
If you want to get into distilling, you might be better off with an engineering or chemical engineering program. Distilling is basically applied physical chemistry.

>>12026890
You are right in that theoretically anyone could work at a brewery, but the reality is that the brewing industry is composed of all most all white men. It is very cliquish and nepotism is rampant.

Most breweries have really small staff, and for entry level positions they will hire their friend's kid, or their neighbor or someone that seems like they would want to hang out with over someone they dont know. They will justify this as to wanting to hire people who fit their "company culture". This perpetuates the stereotype of all brewers looking like bearded hipster white dudes.

When they breweries get bigger however, they dont realize that they are under way more scrutiny and are expected to follow the fair hiring practices of other industries, resulting in some of the recent scandals seen in the industry with Founders and Melvin ect.

Overall the lack of diversity in the brewing industry causes people to think they can fix the problem by opening "minority only" breweries or creating "diversity only" internships that also end up gate keeping white people out of the industry.

The end result for both groups is people who love beer and might advance or be very successful in the industry never make it in and overall the industry misses out on talent.

>>12026648
Not really a fan of beers like this. They are usually super unbalanced (lots of hot, solvent flavors from the alcohol or way too sweet from all the extra sugar) and hard to drink in larger amounts than a taster due to the abv or the taste. Also they are usually crazy expensive. Personally I'd rather drink whiskey than a 15% beer.

>>12026667
I checked out those accounts briefly and I do think diversity is a major issue in the industry that needs to be addressed. However the tone of those accounts seems kind of angry/divisive. I'm not sure that kind of attitude is conducive to solving the problem.

>>12026127
disregard this, I suck cock

>>12026121
Also making your own vinegar from fruit, wine or beer is super easy and is a great trick to add flavor to cooking with little work.

I'm going out for a few hours and will be away from the thread, but if its still up later I will return.