We took our $1000 homebrew system to an actual $1,000,000 and made the same beer on each system. Can we brew a beer that matches the quality of a professional brewery?
That's what we aim to answer with this experiment. The kind folks down at the DSSOLVR brewery in Asheville, North Carolina were kind enough to let us crash a brew day and make a mess of their brew house with our shenanigans. We each brewed the same beer on our respective systems then regrouped 7 weeks later for a taste test.
Here's the recipe. We've scaled this down for a 5 gallon batch and we brewed it on Clawhammer's 10 gallon electric brewing system.
Beer Ingredients
- 7.45 gallons of water
- 9 lbs. 8 ounces RiverBend Chesapeake Pilsner Malt (US)
- 5 ounces Sterling Hops
- Yeast 1 package of German lager yeast - WLP830
Brewing Steps
- Add water to kettle and heast
- Mill grain
- Mash at 148 (60 minutes)
- Adjust to 5.20 pH after 10 minutes
- Pull grain after 60 minutes
- Adjust to 4.9 pH.
- Heat to a boil and boil for 75 minutes
- Add 0.31 oz Sterling at start of boil
- Add 0.31 oz Sterling with 40 minutes left
- Add 0.28 oz Sterling with 20 minutes left
- Add 1.09 oz Sterling with 5 minutes left
- Cut heat and chill to 165
- Add 3.00 oz Sterling and steep for 30 minutes
- Chill to 70F and transfer to pressure fermenter
- Add 1 package of White Labs WLP830 Yeast
- Ferment for 2 weeks at 15psi
- Rack to a fresh keg, chill, and serve
All in all both beers turned out great. Though, honestly, DSSOLVR's was better. We had a little mishap with our fermenter and ended up fermenting our yeast at room temperature with zero pressure. Whoopsie. The beers were very similar but ours was a bit more fruity.
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