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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
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Reishi stout / chaga saison 1
#18285308 - 05/18/13 08:13 PM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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Alright, here it is, it had to be done. And done it will be, tomorrow.
So, I want to brew a Reishi beer, to get some of those elusive "3rd tier" reishi medicinals only achievable by fermentation. Also I just love making weird beers. So here's what I'm going with, comments/suggestions welcome.
1.3 gallon batch - (hopefully enough after racking to bottle one for early testing and 2ndary a full gallon for a few months)
3lbs extra light DME 3oz Roasted barley 2oz Crystal 150L 1oz black patent
.5oz cascade hops, 40 min boil. (the only reason I'm including hops at all is the ONLY beer I've ever had go sour was the one I tried without hops, as I just discovered the other night. You don't fully appreciate hops until you try a brew without them)
1oz (or maybe 2?) dried Reishi. Decocted on the side in about a 1/2gallon of water for 2hrs.
1.102 OG 1.027 FG (expected) for a 9.7%abv beer
If there's any beer that could withstand the bitterness of 1-2oz Reishi in a 1 gallon batch, it's a 9.7% russian imperial stout that finishes high at 1.027. Your taste buds can't tell the difference after 100 IBU's anyway so what the hell?
I'll post results
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
Edited by Forrester (12/30/13 10:42 PM)
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hcrider

Registered: 06/09/05
Posts: 920
Loc: Fishbowl
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Good luck! I've been wanting to try this. Good to make the brews more medicinal than they are:)
guess we will find out how it works in a month or so.
What are some other weird beers you have made?
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
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Re: Reishi stout [Re: hcrider]
#18285369 - 05/18/13 08:31 PM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
hcrider said: What are some other weird beers you have made?
I tried a root beer stout once, (actually a Gruit, as it had no hops). Used some Sarsaparilla root, licorice root, and mugwort. Oh and some sassafras, somewhere... The mugwort didn't quite fill the job of hops though and it went horribly, horribly sour.
Find out we will though! I'm thinking the antibacterials in the Reishi alone would be enough to keep away infections, but I'm going with some hops anyway. So at the worst I'd say it would just be a little over-bitter. But honestly it's really hard to over-bitter a 9.7% sweet stout. I'll probably drink it if it's crappy anyway, just for the medicinals
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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hcrider

Registered: 06/09/05
Posts: 920
Loc: Fishbowl
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Oh yeah you would have to drink it haha.. I've never made a brew that wasn't ever drank, even tho they were all from kits. I'm looking at doing one right from scratch soon tho. Your other ones sound interesting, to bad it didn't turn out as pleased.
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


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Re: Reishi stout [Re: hcrider]
#18285454 - 05/18/13 08:55 PM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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You should definitely give it a go from scratch! There's more than a couple brewers around here, including myself, that could help you out with any questions/tips.
I'm thinking about giving the rootbeer stout another go, this time with a bit of hops and some fresher mugwort. I still think it could be awesome...
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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Oeric McKenna
LIFE CAPS


Registered: 06/15/12
Posts: 5,318
Loc: Babylon
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This is an awesome project dude. I probably would've been silly enough to go 5 gal. Hah
If you ever want to avoid hops, be extra clean and increase the gravity big time. There is one herb that blows hops away. Sage
The anti-bacterial/mold properties of sage are so great that if you put a leaf of it in wine, you can leave some in the bottle for months with no lid, and no mold will grow. Leave one next to it without sage and mold will grow all over. I discovered that by being lazy with spend bottles of dandelion wine many years ago . The ones without sage grew mold up out of the neck. The ones with smelled as fresh as the day I put them there.
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
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Yeah I would probably just do 5 gallons too but I'm far too beat to mess with all grain this weekend... I just wanted a nice simple no-thinking extract batch, and the cost of DME kinda kept me from buying more than one bag. If it's any good at all I'll do a full size batch next time.
I think in this one the Reishi itself will probably have enough anti-bacterials to keep it safe, but I'm not taking any chances. That gruit that went sour was a 9.7%er! I read that mugwort should work the same as hops, but I think the store-bought kind I used was probably old and stale and lost it's properties...
That's cool to know about sage though! I'm always trying to expand my herbal knowledge and use more of them in brewing. Can you use little enough that it doesn't overpower the flavor?
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Quote:
Oeric McKenna said: This is an awesome project dude. I probably would've been silly enough to go 5 gal. Hah
If you ever want to avoid hops, be extra clean and increase the gravity big time. There is one herb that blows hops away. Sage
The anti-bacterial/mold properties of sage are so great that if you put a leaf of it in wine, you can leave some in the bottle for months with no lid, and no mold will grow. Leave one next to it without sage and mold will grow all over. I discovered that by being lazy with spend bottles of dandelion wine many years ago . The ones without sage grew mold up out of the neck. The ones with smelled as fresh as the day I put them there.
New Riders of the Purple Sage. As fresh 40 years later as ever.
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
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Quote:
LunarEclipse said: New Riders of the Purple Sage. As fresh 40 years later as ever.
Nice! My daughter enjoyed dancing to that first song
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
Posts: 9,351
Loc: Northeast USA
Last seen: 24 days, 8 hours
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Well, I brewed her up today. Went with 1oz reishi and changed the crystal malt to 3oz of 60L, to make sure there's plenty of sweetness to balance all the bitter.
Hopefully it turns out good, but I'm drinking it either way
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Quote:
Forrester said:
Quote:
LunarEclipse said: New Riders of the Purple Sage. As fresh 40 years later as ever.
Nice! My daughter enjoyed dancing to that first song 
Aha. Now she will be forever young.
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Quote:
Forrester said: Well, I brewed her up today. Went with 1oz reishi and changed the crystal malt to 3oz of 60L, to make sure there's plenty of sweetness to balance all the bitter.
Hopefully it turns out good, but I'm drinking it either way 
Very nice.
I am officially out of home brew, and officially jonesing.
Reishi don't lose that number.
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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OICU812
NC Tree Farm owner


Registered: 11/06/11
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If you run it again, Forrester, try adding an ounce or two of chocolate malt and sub the Cascade for half Simcoe and half Amerillo hops.
I make an Inperial Porter that turns-out quite well. Here is the grain bill, might give you some ideas:
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00 Anticipated OG: 1.087
11.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.50 lbs. Brown Malt Great Britain 2.50 lbs. Munich Malt Germany 1.00 lbs. Crystal 150L Great Britain 0.50 lbs. Crystal 40L America 0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt America
Just My 2¢
-------------------- -------------- "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" --Benjamin Franklin "Those who give up liberty for security won't have, or deserve, either.". . . Benjamin Franklin ----> Read: The Fight of our Lives - Defeating the Ideological War Against the West - by Victor Davis Hanson
Edited by OICU812 (05/19/13 07:23 PM)
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


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Re: Reishi stout [Re: OICU812]
#18289246 - 05/19/13 07:26 PM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
OICU812 said: If you run it again, Forrester, try adding an ounce or two of chocolate malt and sub the Cascade for half Simcoe and half Amerillo hops.
Thanks for the input! Actually that's funny, I went back and forth on whether to include chocolate malt or not. My house russian imperial stout includes chocolate malt and I love it, but I kinda felt like it might be getting lost with all the roasted malt. So for this one I just decided to drop it and add more roasted, kind of as an experiment.
My house RIS, for 5g I use 8oz chocolate, 8oz roasted, 8oz crystal 60, and 8oz black patent. For the hops, last time I used Galena for bittering, and some Centennial and Northern Brewer @ 20 and 10 minutes.
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
Posts: 9,351
Loc: Northeast USA
Last seen: 24 days, 8 hours
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Re: Reishi stout [Re: OICU812]
#18289337 - 05/19/13 07:54 PM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
OICU812 said:
I make an Inperial Porter that turns-out quite well. Here is the grain bill, might give you some ideas:
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00 Anticipated OG: 1.087
11.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.50 lbs. Brown Malt Great Britain 2.50 lbs. Munich Malt Germany 1.00 lbs. Crystal 150L Great Britain 0.50 lbs. Crystal 40L America 0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt America
Saw you edited in a recipe! Aw man, that looks pretty interesting right there... I love me some munich just about any day. Had to actually look up brown malt, which seems to be a cross between 2-row and roasted but with qualities that can't be achieved with a combination of the two. 2 types of crystal and some chocolate? Sounds like a pretty complex porter... Add in the "imperial" and I'm pretty much sold Of course with the munich and brown malt it will have to be all grain, so I may have to bust out the mash tun sometime in the near future... Do you extended age this?
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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OICU812
NC Tree Farm owner


Registered: 11/06/11
Posts: 1,064
Loc: Foothills of NC
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
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Quote:
Forrester said:
Saw you edited in a recipe! Aw man, that looks pretty interesting right there... I love me some munich just about any day. Had to actually look up brown malt, which seems to be a cross between 2-row and roasted but with qualities that can't be achieved with a combination of the two. 2 types of crystal and some chocolate? Sounds like a pretty complex porter... Add in the "imperial" and I'm pretty much sold Of course with the munich and brown malt it will have to be all grain, so I may have to bust out the mash tun sometime in the near future... Do you extended age this?
Ever since I ran my first batch of all grain I have not gone back to using extract. The experience of the aroma coming off the steaming grain in the mash tun is what makes the effort of brewing worth my time.
I generally brew this Imperial Porter around this time of year so that I can have a well aged product for the fall. I make 10 gal. batches now (recipe was from back in the day) because it's just so damn hard to keep my hands off the stuff once it gets about a month or two old. I've even gone to the extent of bottling a few six packs after carbonation and hiding them from myself so that I would have some good porter for the holidays. I discovered six a while back that had a couple of years on them and they were superb!
I mash-in at around 152°F for 60 minutes and run the boil for about 90. The yeast I have listed is 1056 American/Chico Ale from White Labs, but I have used a bunch of different strains to experiment with the flavor profile.
I will sometimes put a different yeast in each carboy just to compare. I have even acquired a collection of 1 gal. glass jugs that I use for that same purpose. It's interesting to run a batch and split it into four or five different jugs and see how yeast or little additions of this or that can make a difference. I usually always run at least one five gal. carboy with the above yeast as a baseline and to make sure that I have a decent quantity of that old friend to enjoy just in case the experiments do not turn-out as expected.
I've also been thinking about using the spent grains in a few bags of substrate to see if any of the species of mushrooms care for it as a food source. We pretty well wash out the sugars, but the cellulose that remains would probably be similar to sawdust IMO.
-------------------- -------------- "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" --Benjamin Franklin "Those who give up liberty for security won't have, or deserve, either.". . . Benjamin Franklin ----> Read: The Fight of our Lives - Defeating the Ideological War Against the West - by Victor Davis Hanson
Edited by OICU812 (05/20/13 06:00 AM)
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
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Re: Reishi stout [Re: OICU812]
#18291545 - 05/20/13 08:22 AM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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That's awesome, I will have to give that one a try. I've got several of those 1 gallon jugs too, I just buy Carlo Rossi wine and use it for cooking so I can get the jars. They're great for yeast experimentation or trying different dry-hopping. It's amazing how much difference the yeast can make. I split a Belgian dark strong ale batch between WLP500 and 550, and the resulting beers were completely different, even though they're both Belgian strains.
I actually tried to use spent grains once, laid them out on a flat tray and let them dry. I guess they weren't completely dry when I put them in a bowl because it got completely run through with mold in only a couple days... I'd like to give it another try sometime though, I always feel guilty throwing them away.
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Quote:
Forrester said: That's awesome, I will have to give that one a try. I've got several of those 1 gallon jugs too, I just buy Carlo Rossi wine and use it for cooking so I can get the jars. They're great for yeast experimentation or trying different dry-hopping. It's amazing how much difference the yeast can make. I split a Belgian dark strong ale batch between WLP500 and 550, and the resulting beers were completely different, even though they're both Belgian strains.
I actually tried to use spent grains once, laid them out on a flat tray and let them dry. I guess they weren't completely dry when I put them in a bowl because it got completely run through with mold in only a couple days... I'd like to give it another try sometime though, I always feel guilty throwing them away.
Use your spent grains for composting. Worms love them.
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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snoot
look alive ∞



Registered: 01/30/05
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How does it taste?
If you ever need reishi mushrooms let me know as they are fruiting in abundance around me, I could grab 100s of lbs if I wanted to.
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∞ I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. - Simone de Beauvoir -
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


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Re: Reishi stout [Re: snoot]
#18380567 - 06/06/13 10:21 PM (10 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
snoot said: How does it taste?
If you ever need reishi mushrooms let me know as they are fruiting in abundance around me, I could grab 100s of lbs if I wanted to.
I keep seeing pictures of everyone's giant Reishi finds, I am so jealous!
It will be a little while before I know how this beer turned out. It's coming up on 3 weeks it's been in primary, so I might transfer to secondary this weekend. Anything that doesn't fit in the gallon secondary jug is going to be bottled and I'll probably give one of those a taste after a month in the bottle. The rest that's in secondary is going to age there for about 3 months at least, or as long as I can wait.
I'm thinking of trying a chaga beer, at a lower ABV so it's ready sooner and not so much waiting! Plus after trying chaga tea for the first time last weekend I think it would be awesome in a beer...
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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