Brewing the same beer on $1,500 vs. $150,000 equipment
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- I brewed the same Citra-Galaxy Hazy Double IPA (Snip Snap) on my old homebrewing setup and our new 10 bbl commercial brewhouse. Same ingredients, different scale! Includes blind tasting of the results, and a discussion of what 49 other people thought!
*Ensuing boil over
“Oh boy”
Spoken like a true home brewer 😂
This guy has a bright future ahead of him as a homebrewer
He should quit this pro brewer gig and start a blog or something
@@lcogan3 He could probably come up with a cool name, something like "The Crazy Brewerist"
Holy crap! It’s Jason!!
We Love you Jason 😍😍😍!!
Based on a true story....
Watching beer videos and see our good old reliable Jason as top comment! Love it :D Love your videos, always calming to watch.
Definitely the best homebrewing video on youtube. No one ever seems to have this extent of knowledge, and if they do, they never include tasting notes in the same video. Thank you.
If you have ever tried any snapwood cellars beer you’d understand. I’ve had the snip snap before and it’s very good. Y’all need to make your way to The Veil in Virginia.....they’re on some next level brewing..
Absolutely stumbled onto your channel by a YT recommendation in my feed. Was just at your taproom a few weeks ago, live up here in Eldersburg. Can't wait to come back! Thanks for your time. I know everyone is busy these days!
Cheers! Thanks for stopping by the brewery (and the RUclips channel).
It always makes me happy when brewing content gets a large number of views in a short time. There needs to be more brewing content on youtube in general
So glad to see this as a homebrewer myself. I need to make my way to see you guys as I am in Baltimore.
It's nice to know even pro brewers are still susceptible to an occasional boil over. Great video, cheers!
Something you only just touched on, is the professional equipment not only allows you to do more at a time (with smaller homebrew kits being just as good) is that the professional equipment does larger batches and does them more consistently. The equipment itself lends itself to better control and precision therefore more overall consistently. You touch on this several times in the video with temps, and temp control, as well as flame and burner control, and the ratios when scaled from small to large and large to small, in addition to the additives to the wort to balance Ph and the overall chemistry. Awesome Video. Not familiar with your brewery, but will be sure to check you guys out.
This is a very cool experiment, always wondered how well the homebrew scale beers match up, especially when done by a really good brewer.
Nice video, hope to see more, wish I could try the results
What a super presentation, what a fine Gentleman, I would drink in his Pub anytime. Well done Sir.
The best SEO i've ever seen, so glad the new brewery is doing well. I am still working my way though the mad ferm recipes!
Guess I better not show anyone this video. I won't be allowed to buy any new toys! Great video.
I just spent all day brewing and come home to watch a video on brewing.
sounds like a good day to me. Any day brewing is a good day.
@@talis84 Can't argue with that
And to this day, he is still swirling the glasses
Amazing video! Way to give the homebrew community what they want!
Nice vid, cool to see all the steps of the two systems. Thanks man!
Thanks, i learned alot. Your use of scientific methods with your resourceful understanding is awesome.
love the video and the comparison you did with the consumer, i like that you reach out to them to validate the great work you are doing. Keep up the videos for those of us who are not in the States and may never taste your beers.
Love what these guys are doing. As a home brewer they provide by far some of the best information(and insight) I’ve been able to get. Wishing them nothing but success in the future!
This might be the best homebrew video on youtube.
Possibly
Thanks for posting, really enjoyed watching this.
Nice job, so many brewers would wonder the same so thanks!
Great to see the similarity as an all grain home brewer myself. It just takes tasting and tweaking to get your home stuff as good as the commercial stuff. This was a great example of what's the diff and then it's up to us to tweak the taste difference if we care. I'm trying to get XPA, so love the hops. Thanks for the info on the hop diff on the brews. Will need to learn how to get the hop taste without the hop burn factor :)
Great to see a micro brewery do these comparisons and air them keep up the good work. Hopefully get there one day. Cheers from Australian homebrew in a homebrew club.
Great to see Cheers from John
Keep up the great videos just subscribed
HOW GREAT was the almost boil over!!!! Best part right there.....
Love the comparison. As a homebrewer I am always trying to improve so really appreciate you sharing your time and knowledge here. Cheers!
Well, I've had your commercial beers before and I can say I'm definitely a fan. I've never had your homebrews, but I've learned a lot from the blog.
Awesome experiment! Wish I could taste it! Thanks for making the vid!
Oh my that foam raising as the boil over is almost imminent had me on edge lol
Some serious kit there
Fun video - Cheers from Iceland!
Awesome video Mike. Loved hearing you pull out the flavors and share your expertise in beer tasting.
Fantastic video! This is something every homebrewer wonders about. Thank you!
This was a fascinating experiment! I've always wondered what the major differences were between commercial and home brewing. I love the idea that you did a blind taste test in the tasting room! Great video, I subbed!
Absolutely awesome video. Thanks for doing this! Hope to be getting over there to check you all out very soon!
"A good brewer can make great beer using tin cans and sauce pans", Master Brewer Jordan told me long ago.
that was my start aajjaja xD
Not tin cans, they leach bad stuff into everything. They're cancer
I'm unemployed and I have no equipment but I still make beer. Not sure anyone else would drink it though.. :)
Yet im here with a plastic bucket and made absolute garbage. At least i learnt :)
Kiss !
Ain't nothing better than simply.
Water quality & Fermentation temperature top 2 priority....
If your ever in Maryland you have to stop by here its between baltimore and dc. It's worth the drive! If you like zombie dust from 3 Floyd's you will like snip snap a lot. This brewery is newer and is ahead of most if not all of them in the baltimore area (diamond back brewery is great too) . You guys kick ass and I wish you were hiring for entry level positions to learn to brew or quality control so I could get my foot in the door.
Also I think you should partner up with Balitmore spirits company and buy some of their barrels that they have used for bourbon or something and create a beer w that
Excellent video, guys!!
Thanks for that. I have always wondered if I got the chance to brew on a pro system with my own beer recipes.
Cheers,
Chris
Mostly it's the same stuff in terms of chemistry and biology, just the physics (mostly thermodynamics) change. The adjustment hasn't been too bad once we got a handle on how much bitterness the whirlpool additions were providing, dialed in our efficiency, and got our mash-in process down.
I'm trying to figure out how I am going to do this. Always wanted to try my hand at beer. I've done wine before but wine is easy. Beer, you need to manage temperatures. From this vid it is basically boiling down the grain and hops, racking the liquid to a fermenter, add yeast, let cook until bubbles stop then bottle?
Malt extract is a good place to start with brewing. The extract contains the malt flavor and sugars, so you can skip right to the boil (skipping converting and extracting from grain). There are great recipe kits at homebrew stores. John Palmer's How to Brew is a great place to start if you are looking for a book. If you'd rather a video, my homebrew channel might help: ruclips.net/video/KxSpKOLK2AE/видео.html
I wish I had a brewery for a similar test :) Really good comparison, and, m a n, what a beautiful piece of equipment!
Hey guys! I'm loving your videos. I'm a super novice home brewer at the moment. Obviously cleaning and sanitizing is paramount. I'd love to see how you guys sanitize such a large setup like you have! Cheers!
Here's a post covering how we clean and sanitize a fermentor: www.themadfermentationist.com/2018/11/craft-cleaning-cylindroconical.html
I gotta say I have no clue why this recommended but man did I love it. I am also unsure what the intention of this video, but boy did it sell me on that beer. Now I really need to try it, hopefully, I can find some Sapwood Cellars bear at Wegmans.
Cheers, sadly you won't have much luck. Only a couple kegs of our beer a month make it out from our tasting room.
Sapwood Cellars well I hope you guys can grow bigger. I would love to try your beer. Currently living out in State College, PA so it’s not that far away from you guys. Worse comes to worst I’ll just have to have a little vacation out your way.
Also thank you so much for responding never expected it to happen. Wish you guys the best. You truly are living the American dream so I love getting to support the smaller players plus the quality is usually better. Out at Pittsburgh we got a lot of small breweries popping up and I definitely recommend you check out Voodoo Brewery if you also enjoy beer as much as myself. It might even inspire you to make some crazy addictive recipe or something.
Anyway good luck guys
Really great video
I’d like to see videos where non beer experts guess home brew vs commercial and see which they like better.
I'd be interested to see if bottle conditioning the home brew instead of force carbing it would have made a difference. Part 2??? Great video, by the way. I enjoyed it.
Brulosophy has performed experiments in that area: brulosophy.com/2018/03/12/the-impact-of-bottle-conditioning-on-new-england-ipa-exbeeriment-results/
As has already been said. Awesome content, keep it up :]
Nice experiment, thanks !
The poll should have informed the tasters that both brews used the same recipe, one was large batch, the other small batch
There is plenty of debate over the best way to run a blind tasting. I didn't want to bias people to look for something.
Love the comparison of the isomerization differences between commercial and homebrew. Would additional whirlpool hops make up for the difference?
At home I would add/move hops to 15-20 minutes left in the boil for additional bitterness.
did anyone else watch the almost boil over like a roller coaster? lol
I was yelling grab the spoon, grab the spoon! then he shuts the flame and it's all good.
Wondering on the next brew, try open fermentation on primary, (same homebrew setup) then seconday as usual. Nice job
To what benefit? I do everything I can to limit air contact with hoppy beers. I have open fermented saisons with good results.
Great, instructional video - Thanks for sharing!
From both your comments and those of the tasters, it sounds like packaging made the difference - not the brewing itself. And that can easily be fixed. Poor carbonation in the small batch was probably something you guys could have avoided, to eliminate what appears to have been a critical factor. And the hop burn... perhaps it was harder transferring super clean beer out of the FV since you dropped a pile of pellets in there with no containment (bag, etc.). Anyway, a very nice video! Thanks for creating it.
Yep, it's also just harder to "find the time" to get something done on a 5 gallons of beer when a 300 gallon batch takes a similar amount of effort and is so much more important.
Didn't know that Binging with Babish is making beer as well
Feels/Looks like his eccentric uncle/father
lol
Love the video! Looking forward to more content.
Hi Michael, enjoy this video and the view of your brewery. I like the system you have who is the maker in equipment?
Forgeworks for the hot-side, Apex for the cold.
Really liked this video. Keep making cool videos :)
This was really interesting. I wonder if there are adjustments one could make to a small batch recipe/process to compensate for some of the factors at play here.
At home I usually added a small hop addition at 15 minutes for more bitterness. The carbonation and hop burn would have been solved by a week in the keg (at home I used to just connect to serving pressure and let it sit cold for a week or two before tapping).
Awesome. Thanks for the info.
Kudos for undertaking this, I just wish you had carbed both equally. The lack of carbonation in one (and the lack of carbonic acid) would make it less bitter, less bright, and more "sweet".
Fascinating video. Makes me wonder how my sub $150 "kit" would stand up even to a $1500 setup? Must be doing something right though given that Three Notch'd have taken on a couple of projects based on my way of brewing.
My upgrades were more about ease of brewing (pump, no-sparge) and volume (10 gallon batches). I didn't think my beers were noticeably better than with my old cooler and plastic carboys. The ingredients and brewer are what make quality beer!
Great video. I love a micro brewery videos . Let’s spread the word on the microbreweries across “AMERICA “!!
Hi, just watched this video as a keen homebrewer in the UK. Appreciate it's a couple of years old, but I have a couple of questions please.
1. How did you package the beers, were they both kegged?
2. Are DIPAs as susceptible to Oxidising as NEIPAs, which is a real challenge on homebrew equipment? The colour of both your beers looked great.
Thanks in advance.
1. Both were kegged.
2. These are Double NEIPAs, so same issues! We've learned a lot of tricks over the last few years to keep our wort extra-pale. For example, adding acid to the boil to reduce Maillard reactions. Otherwise we do everything we can to limit oxidation post-fermentation!
Like this video. But as a bavarian beer brewer I ve some difficulties to understand why you are mixing hop pellets into cold beer, if I saw that right, it doesnt make sense to me because there is no isomerisation. Then the only advantage of whirlpool hoping is you get more of the oil (Aroma-hops) into your beer. I was supprised by the amount of malt you had to put in your homebrew setup, the heat takes it toll with such a small kettle. But I really enjoyed all the stuff you did take care!
The whirlpool addition happens in hot wort, just cooler than the boil. Isomerization still happens, just not as quickly as at the boil. The addition to the cold wort (dry hopping) is primarily for aroma. Hopping at this point still adds a minor amount of bitter compounds (e.g., un-isomerized alpha acids) but overall has the effect of reducing bitterness thanks to absorbing iso-alpha from the hot-side.
@@sapwoodcellars8378 ty for the fast reply! dry hopping sounds amazing, hope you will do more videos! brewing after purity law can be boring at times. Best thing i did recently was a wheat beer where I split the wheat and barley malt during mashing, so I can ve a much lower mashing temperatur at the start.
Sounds like a fun concept!
Dry hopping is rare in German brewing, but not unheard of (doesn't break the purity laws).
@@sapwoodcellars8378 It does break the purity law even hops in the whirlpool does. Although it's the law built on the purity law of 1516 (vorläufiges Biergesetz). We can just "break" it if we brew beer for the non german market.
That's surprising, I was under the impression the issue was only on ingredients, not timing of the additions.
where did you buy your diverter? cant find anything with the bigger hose.
The sparge rig was from Northern Brewer. They call it the "Imperial Sparge."
That "Oh, boy" is all of us, every batch.
Great video! The knowledge you guys bring to the table is awesome. My wife and I hope to follow in your footsteps and open a brewery within the next couple of years. Question that I'm not sure you can answer: What kind of yeast is your house yeast? Is it a blend? Are you able to share that info? Thanks in advance.
We use Manchester from RVA for this beer, but we use blends for several others.
Cool video!
I always remove the Trub and hops before cooling the wort. Is there an advantage in cooling directly? I would think that the harsh bitterness has it's origin in skipping whirlpool
Ease is the primary reason. Most of the hop material is left behind in the kettle after whirlpooling. The bitterness in the small scale batch ("hop burn") is from dry hopping. It has a different expression than the usual iso-alpha or tannic bitterness, back in the throat rather than on the tongue.
Loved every minute of this!!!!!!
Love this!
Great video. If I understood it correctly, you interrupted the fermentation to do the dry hop?
We do most of our dry hopping post-fermentation, but we'll sometimes add a dose towards the end of fermentation. You'll have to watch out for additional attenuation from hop creep if you add the hops with active yeast, but it helps to reduce the risks of oxidation.
@@sapwoodcellars8378 Thanks for the tip.
You should try 100$ kit same beer
Like the video, but in the future please increase and level your audio
Really nice! Mike could you please explain the procedure of rouse hops after DH?
We push CO2 through the racking arm for about 60 seconds once a day for two or three days. On the small scale I just give it the fermentor a gentle shake.
@@madfermentationist4470 at which pressure?
Mad Fermentationist when is it safe to keep shaking the fermenter? Do you do it recurringly?
@@Vallinotti Depends on the head-pressure of the tank and the height. Enough for CO2 to flow (but not much more than the minimum).
@@Phil_In_Colorado I usually wait after dry hopping for 12 hours (the hops should nucleates CO2 from the beer and help knock air out of the head space). After that you're safe as long as the fermentor is well sealed and no new air enters.
A homebrewer with larger pots and pans going back to smaller pots and pans to make malt liquor with.
Really nice video! I wonder how you deal with the waste and what's the impact on the environment.
The biggest "leftover" is the spent grain that has had most of the carbohydrates stripped out. We have a local farmer who comes and gets the grain to feed to his animals as it still has plenty of protein.
Hey man awesome video I really appreciate you doing something like this. This beer looks delicious and I'm going to give it a shot on my ebiab system. On the similar recipe you said you started with 12 gallons of water, if I'm doing half that volume and start with 6 gallons of water pre boil and halve everything else after I'm done, I'll end up with the 5gal of beer? Going to shoot for filling up a 5 gal corny. Thanks again man I wish you the best in your beer making.
I'd select water volumes based on your system. You'll have different losses than we do so there is no guarantee you'll get half the volume.
Jesus, i fricken love your videos
you can do closed transfer at home
Sure, but most homebrewers don't.
Sapwood Cellars sucks for them
So does this mean I can no longer use crappy equipment as an excuse? Damn!
Quick question: could you slightly alter the recipe of the small batch (or make some other adjustments) to compensate the differences with the big batch and get something even closer to it?
After all the challenge was to brew the same beer and not necessarily to use the same recipe.
Yes, that's really the art of scaling and knowing your system. Usually I'd move some of the whirlpool hops to ~15 minutes from the end of the boil for the small batch to increase utilization and thus bitterness. Otherwise I think it just need a week cold and on pressure.
Nice modern times hoodie!
Cheers! I consulted for them a couple years around when they opened as their "Flavor Developer." Helped to brew test batches and develop the original core beer recipes (Fortunate Islands, Black House etc.) and went out there to get their sour program kicked-off! Still can't believe how quickly they grew and how good the beers got after I left (ha)!
@@sapwoodcellars8378 oh wow that's awesome! Yeah it's crazy how much they've been able to grow and they keep getting better and better. I've pretty much been a fan of theirs since the beginning.
6:14 Here in Europe, that much US hops is worth about $60 and is enough for 100 gallons. :D
Why didn’t you mill the grain before you introduced it into the mash?
We buy pre-milled grain, just not enough space with our current layout for a mill room at the brewery.
What would be most helpful if you have more automation?
Automated cleaning would be the best thing I could think of!
Your little home brew rig is twice the size of mine. I'm a real microbrewer haha.
New to home brewing and looking to add recirculation to my mash...how did you maintain the mash temperature on a burner setup with continuous recirculation?
I usually just run the burner at the lowest heat it will go. Most of the starch conversion happens quickly so I wouldn't worry if you lose a few degrees over the course of the mash.
Расскажите в двух словах кто выйграл. Понял что сравнивает, но что лучше то?
Small suggestion, you should try and raise your DB for audio to about 18db. Probably a +10 here, do it for overall sound.
Awesome video, cheers for sharing. Will you be posting the Snip Snap recipe?
If you've seen my other NEIPA recipes there isn't anything too surprising, mostly American Pale and German Pils, plus flaked oats and chit malt to 1.085. A little bittering addition, then a big flame-out dose of inexpensive hops (6 oz in 5 gallons). Fermented with RVA Manchester (London III equivalent) then double dry hopped with equal amounts of Citra and Galaxy (about 12 oz total for a 5 gallon batch).
Do u give the recipe for the home system? I was trying to get my hands on a good recipe for a double ipa
The full recipe isn't out there, but here is one of the test batches for it (I'd add more malt to get into the mid 1.080s for a DIPA): www.themadfermentationist.com/2018/02/sapwood-cellars-cheater-hops-ne-dipa.html
@@sapwoodcellars8378 thank u
Brewing the same beer 1500 model?
Where did you source that pressurizable dry hopping canister you were using on the tank? Thanks!
Marks Mini Hop Doser: marksdmw.com/products/mini-dry-hop-cannon
Great content. Subscribed!
What was the respective OGs and FGs? I assume the pro equipment had better efficiencies, but by how much?
Both batches were nearly the same, 1.085 to 1.021. System efficiencies were similar as well, high-60s.
3:16 Yeah, baby. You like that, don’t you?
What about fermentation differences? Carboys in a walkin cooler versus glycol jacketed vermenters.
Certainly could lead to variability. At home I had a dedicated fridge and a temperature probe that could go into the thermowell in the BrewBucket. At the brewery we just let the small batches ferment at ambient.
does the homebrew vs the comercial brew change the abv at all?
Only if there was something more or less efficient about the process. Especially how much fermentable sugar you're able to extract from the grain. In that case more or less malt would fix the problem.
LOL @ 5:20, I started blowing on my computer screen out of habit!
So did you vorlauf or did recirc through the grain bed achieve that?
Also on an SS mash tun could you run a stir/hotplate combo with a huge stir bar underneath the false bottom? Cancer biologist getting into homebrewing here.
Recirculation is vorlauf, they mean the same thing. The stir-bar might stop the mash from burning, but wouldn't evenly distribute the heat through the mash.