DIY BrewHouse

10/09/2020

What a long, difficult, up and down past two weeks it has been. Was so good seeing you guys/gals last weekend for our closeout day at the store. Reaching over and switching off the "OPEN" sign for one last time was like being hit with a ton of bricks. That was a reality check and a meaningful moment. Ever heard the expression that your life passes before your eyes in the moments just before death? That was a surreal moment for me in the few minutes before turning off the open sign at DIY BrewHouse.

I personally appreciate each and every customer that walked through the front door; whether you were just passing by wondering what the sign on the building meant, or were an all in avid homebrewer. You were not just a customer or a potential customer....you were viewed as a friend. That's how I tried to run my business. Get to know you first, and then help you become better at your craft of fermentation. From beginner to advanced.

Although DIY BrewHouse is no longer open for business, my passion for homebrewing does not end here. Neither should yours. We share a common thread. For those of you reading this and wish to remain in contact, simply reply offline and I will share some personal contact info. I'm always open to answering emails, phone calls, etc with questions homebrewing related.

Cheers,
Kevin

10/03/2020

If you are coming to DIY today and cannot find a place to park.....we are slowly blocking some off in front of the store for you guys.

09/26/2020

Just over 4 years ago, Wendy and I took over ownership of DIY BrewHouse with intention of bringing to you our interpretation of the best damn homebrew shop. To steal from The Grateful Dead....what a long strange trip it's been.

During that time many friendships were forged, many good homebrews were made and shared. Knowledge was imparted to new customers coming into DIY knowing nothing about homebrewing that were skeptical with questions of "I can make good beer at home and you can teach me how?" Conversations with customers having intention of going pro one day and opening a brewery. Congrats to one customer that has indeed achieved that goal and another in planning phases!

All good things must come to an end in our cycle of life. That time has arrived for DIY BrewHouse. It's with a heavy heart that we make this official announcement. In keeping with the original DIY monthly customer homebrew share events, join us for one last event on Oct 3rd at the store. Ya'll know the drill. Bring it and share it. This one will be our last hoorah along with a blowout sale of what's left on our shelves.

You guys have become part of our lives for the past 4 years, and will continue in the future. The river of beer is wide and our paths will certainly crisscross in the future.

Cheers,
Kevin & Wendy

07/30/2020

Quick update on some DIY store hours. We are unfortunately closed today. Will be open tomorrow (Friday). And then closed for a weeklong vacation until Aug 11.

Cheers,
Kevin

05/29/2020

Come get your brewing supplies for the weekend! DIY will be closed on Saturday for a short day off.

04/06/2020

Hi gang! Hope that everyone is being safe during these crazy times we are living in. We are in this together, and we will get through it together.

In light of more mandatory non-essential business closures taking effect today at 5:00 PM, DIY BrewHouse will adhere to those guidelines. Our retail store will be closed to foot traffic inside in the store. However, curbside pickup is being allowed for retail stores while maintaining social distancing measures. We will be updating our store hours in the next day or so along with some procedures for curbside pickup. Check our page periodically.

Thank you so much for supporting DIY and other local small businesses! We could not do it without you guys.

Cheers,
Kevin

03/19/2020

DIY will be closed today (3/19). Unrelated to CV-19. We will be on normal hours for Friday and Saturday.

DIY is doing everything possible to keep our customers safe while still shopping at the store. Call in or email orders are encouraged during this time as well. Given enough heads up, we will have your order ready for pick up when you arrive.

Phone : (803) 466-6026
Email : [email protected]

Stay safe and brew on.

Cheers,
Kevin

02/28/2020

Earlier in the week, we kegged up a fruit wine. Not wanting to leave an empty carboy, we cleaned/sanitized it, and started another wine (plum wine). Couple days later our fermentation was sluggish at best. (We know why too). Had another package of yeast on hand, so pitched that one and within 4 hours our fermentation was rolling along.

As soon as I pitched the 2nd yeast pack, I thought to myself....I shouldn't have done that.

Here's a lengthy explanation why.

Initial yeast pitched was 71-B which is a very good fruit wine yeast that tends to enhance fruit aromatics compared to other wine yeasts. It has a medium alcohol tolerance of 12-13% ABV which was the target range for our wine (semi-sweet). Did not have another 71-B on hand, so I pitched some Premier Classique which also has about the same alcohol tolerance.

As beer brewers, we are accustomed to pitching more yeast when a fermentation is sluggish. WLP001 working slowly? Have a US-05 dry yeast on hand which is similar? No worries there, just pitch it. Brewers will often blend yeast strains during fermentation (white labs sells many blended strains) to achieve characteristics from each strain. However, ALL yeast have a competitive factor. Positive, sensitive, or neutral. Almost all yeast isolated for beer making are either sensitive or neutral, meaning they will coexist together. Most wine yeast are positive, meaning they have enzymes that will inhibit (kill) yeast that are sensitive. Neutral yeast do not have the killer enzyme nor are effected by the killer enzyme.

71-B is competitive sensitive. Premier Classique is competitive positive. Within hours after pitching Premier Classique, 71-B was wiped out. :-( It's not the end of the world for our plum wine, but it will not have the light aromatic character from 71-B that we were shooting for. Doh.

01/29/2020

Dry yeast strains seem to be gaining traction among homebrewers versus liquid yeast for a myriad of reasons. Dry strains are typically lower cost than liquid yeast, more stable, have a longer shelf life (when kept refrigerated), and a wider range of strains are now available compared to only 5 years ago. For example, Lallemand now has dry yeast strains suitable for styles of Belgian Wit, Kolsch, New England, and lacto sours.

Many customers at DIY have asked "should I rehydrate dry yeast prior to pitching?" Ideally, rehydration is beneficial to proper yeast health. However, careful procedures should be followed to avoid damaging the yeast. How to instructions can be readily found with a quick web search. Some tips/pointers that I have followed when rehydrating dry yeast...

- Use spring water or distilled water.

- Most common dry yeast pkgs (for beer) contain ~11 grams. 8 oz of water is sufficient for rehydrating a single yeast package of this size.

- Target water temperature of 95-105 dF. Yeast prefer warm temps when reconstituting their cell wall and preparing for metabolism, however, temps over 110 dF can be lethal to most beer yeast strains.

- Optional use of a rehydration nutrient (GoFerm) is suggested but not a necessity.

- After proper rehydration, allow the yeast slurry to come to equilibrium temp (within 10-15 dF) with the wort/must. E.g. incremental additions of your wort/must to the rehydrated yeast will equalize the temps.

- Pitch within 1 hour after rehydrating, otherwise the yeast will begin depleting their glycogen reserves in a survival mode.

- Use utmost sanitary practices when rehydrating yeast.

01/23/2020

Reminder that DIY will be having our homebrew beer / wine / mead tasting on this coming Saturday (Jan 25th) from 11am-2pm here at the store. Looks like will be a sunny day, albeit a little chilly. Come join us with your homebrewed products and share some camaraderie with fellow homebrewers.

As an added bonus, DIY will be setup brewing an American Porter getting started around mid-day. This is a perfect time for new and potential homebrewers to see the brewing process. We will be displaying an all-grain process of mashing and sparging using a traditional converted mash tun.

Help spread the word to friends that are toying with the idea of joining our hobby.

Cheers,
Kevin

12/23/2019

Wishing all DIY customers a very Merry Christmas! Store hours during the holiday season for this week.

Christmas Eve 10:00AM - 2:00PM
Christmas Day Closed

Cheers,
Kevin

12/06/2019

DIY will be closed on Saturday Dec 7 for Palmetto State Brewers Open homebrew competition. Apologies for any inconvenience. Come join us at Cottontown Brew Lab on Saturday if you wish to see the inner workings of a competition. Palmetto State Brewers and Cottontown collaboration beer will be on tap at the event. There will also be a charity raffle of awesome homebrewing related prizes held around 4pm that afternoon. $1 per ticket to enter the raffle with proceeds going to Homeward Bound Pet Rescue.

Cheers,
Kevin

07/26/2019

Another brew weekend is upon us, and thank goodness it's not going to be 100 dF outside. Let's have another name that style being brewed. This one will be for 15% off your next 5 gal extract or all-grain ingredient kit at DIY. Perhaps a much easier brew question since only the attempted style being brewed is required.

93% Munich 5L
4% Victory
2% Chocolate
1% BlackPrinz

21 IBU Hallertau

Anticipated OG 1.050
Anticipated FG 1.010

No hints on the yeast

Prost,
Kevin

07/14/2019

Brew day at home breaking in a new 10 gal Igloo cooler mash tun. Let's do another 25% discount deal on a 5 gal all-grain or extract ingredient kit for the first correct answer of the beer being cloned. Specific commercial beer name please.

Some specifics...

90% Pale Malt
5% Flaked Barley
2.5% Cara 120L
2.5% Roast Barley
30 IBU East Kent Golding

Cheers,
Kevin

07/13/2019

Organized by the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) in 2002, Mead Day was created to increase mead awareness and foster camaraderie among meadmakers. Homebrewers and meadmakers around the world are encouraged to invite friends and family to celebrate Mead Day by making a delicious batch of mead together!

This will be the 4th year that DIY has sponsored a local Mead Day event. Come join us at the store on August 3rd starting at 11am and learn the process of making mead at home. Justin Brooks will be giving a demonstration again this year of the process. As with years past, you can make a batch of mead alongside with Justin step by step.

I have invited a few local bee keepers to join us as well and maybe give a short presentation on stewardship of bee keeping and discuss the importance of honey bees in our ecological system. Perhaps one or more of them will commit to joining our event.

For those interested in making a mead at the event, Justin and I have been in conversation about buying a 5 gal bucket (~60 lbs) of local wildflower honey. With enough interest, we can make it happen. DIY has everything else available for making mead. As homebrewers, we already have equipment for fermentation. Perhaps for a first mead, you might consider making a smaller volume. Typical batch sizes would be 1 gal, 3 gal, and 5 gal as those are most common volume sizes of secondary glass/plastic vessels. Plan on 3 lbs honey per gal for a "standard" 10%-12% ABV mead.

Come join us on Aug 3rd. Bring your own homemade mead, wine, beer, cider, etc to share and sample along with fellow DIY customers. A few participants from previous Mead Day events at DIY will maybe bring some bottles of mead that were made back then.

Cheers, and hope to see many of you at the event!

07/02/2019

Just a few signs that you might be a homebrewer....

- Growlers drying in the kitchen sink dish rack
- Erlenmeyer flask on a striplate in the kitchen
- Kegs & carboys soaking with PBW in the bathroom whirlpool size tub
- Carboys of fermenting beer and wine in the spare bathroom tubs
- More than 1 fridge or chest freezer in the garage that are connected up to a temp controller
- Eyes rolling at you as if to "get this stuff out of my space"

Cheers. Welcome to homebrewing.

06/25/2019

Liquid yeast users, check out some of the Omega Yeast strains that we carry here at DIY. I have been personally impressed with their yeast viability and fermentation. Omega packages their yeast with cell counts for a typical 1.060 wort based on genetic strain, not a specific # of cells. I.e. an Omega brand yeast package may contain anywhere from 150-500 billion cells, depending on how many workers it will take to ferment out that 1.060 gravity wort.

I recently brewed and used an "out of date" Omega yeast by building it back up on a stirplate. As a side note, this was one of their Norwegian strains that can handle fermentation temps in the range of 70-95 dF, and I expected a good viability even from an "expired" yeast pack.

Attached is video of the fermentation 6 hours after pitching in the wort. These are amazing yeasts to say the least!

06/23/2019

DIY BrewHouse will be closed on July 4-6 for the holiday. Please everyone be safe and enjoy our Independence Day weekend!

Has been a busy weekend at home. Mead in the bottle, new wine in the fermenter, and new beer in the fermenter.

For today's brew day, first correct guess of the specific commercial beer being targeted gets a cool 50% off your next recipe kit at DIY. Must guess the specific beer correctly, e.g. Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

Recipe specs....

Base 2-Row, Rye, Munich, Honey Malt, Biscuit Malt

Magnum, Fuggle, East Kent Golding, Cascade, & Amarillo

American Ale Yeast

Cheers,
Kevin

05/30/2019

Let's beat down the 100 dF weather and have a brewday at DIY on Saturday. German Hefeweizen is on the docket. Will be a full volume extract brewing method on display. Not your basic / beginner type brew day and equipment, but rather a step in between leading into all-grain brew-n-bag components. Come check us out. Will get started around 10:30am on Saturday.

Cheers,
Kevin

05/22/2019

This is happening at DIY today. For the first customer guessing the correct style, take a cool 25% off your next recipe purchase here at the shop.

Maris Otter
Biscuit
Cara 20
Centennial
Cascade
Citra
OYL-004

Target OG 1.042
Target IBU 31
Target SRM 6.5

Cheers,
Kevin

04/12/2019

DIY has a few hop plants for sale this spring. Come get them while they last. Cascade varietal cuttings.

04/03/2019

In 1988, May 7 was announced before Congress as National Homebrew Day. The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) created AHA Big Brew as an annual event to celebrate National Homebrew Day around the world. AHA Big Brew is held each year on the first Saturday in May. This year's event is on Saturday, May 4th.

DIY customers are encouraged to attend and celebrate our shared hobby of homebrewing. We will participate in the simultaneous toast at 1:00 P.M., where homebrewers around the country will raise a glass together. At last year's event we had 3 homebrewer demonstrations onsite; Justin Brooks, Bill Cooper, and Wendy Deaton. It's a great opportunity for homebrewers of any experience level to see different brewing setups.

DIY will be running specials on day of event with discounts of up to 25% on ingredients and brewing equipment. Come check us out, and participate in our growing culture of homebrewing!

Cheers,
Kevin

02/27/2019

We as homebrewers love to debate yeast....strains, fermentation temps, yeast manufacturers, dry vs liquid, starter vs non-starter, rehydration vs not. My thought and advice to homebrewers has always been go with what works best in your own home brewery based on your brewing experiences.

I recently ran across an article related to rehydration of dry yeasts ( http://brulosophy.com/2018/11/29/direct-pitch-vs-rehydration-with-dry-yeast-the-bru-club-xbmt-series/?fbclid=IwAR2i-omk5ulrxRncEhCWMcisgxN8Y5Zc-hOVVRus4FM3QGuj5fLF3m0iX04 ). Experimentation in this example resulted in minimal differences between a finished beer fermented with the same dry yeast direct pitched vs rehydration. Is rehydration necessary? It depends upon who you ask. 25+ years ago when I began homebrewing, dry yeast were the only available option, and every indication was rehydration is a must do step in the brewing process. Granted, if you asked 5 people their process of dry yeast rehydration, you would get 5 different answers.

Why is rehydration beneficial to dry yeast? When in dehydrated state, a yeast cell (remember yeast are a single cell organism) cannot control which substances pass thru its cell wall. Not until cell wall lipids are fully intact are yeast metabolic processes functioning as normal. Direct pitch yeast with dehydrated cell walls, and some of them will literally "overdose" and die from excessive intake of sugars, amino acids, proteins, oxygen, etc. Wort is a pretty hostile environment for yeast unaccustomed. That said, why do many yeast manufacturers not recommend a rehydration phase? These are strictly my personal opinions...but quality of dry yeasts, cell counts per pkg, and not adhering to proper hydration procedures have far surpassed the deleterious effects of not rehydrating yeast.

Whether you decide to hydrate dry yeast or not, there are other factors coming into play with yeast that are far more important to your overall fermentation character.

Cheers,
Kevin

Author: Cade Jobe Like many homebrewers, the first beer I brewed used dry yeast from an unmarked package that I sprinkled directly into the fermentor. The beer was drinkable (Holy chemistry, Batman…

02/21/2019

DIY is closed @ 5pm on 2/21 due to area power outages. Re-open again tomorrow with normal business hours.

Cheers,
Kevin

02/19/2019

This coming Saturday is the final of the month (Feb 23rd). It's that time of month for another tasting outside DIY BrewHouse from 11am-2pm. Long term weather forecast is predicting an overcast day, but at least not rainy as every other day around it. We will have a tent or two setup just in case. It might be a little cooler weather than we want, but come join us with your homebrewed beer/wine/mead/cider and share some camaraderie amongst other DIY customers and homebrewers.

Cheers,
Kevin

02/19/2019

One very common question that I hear is "can I brew with my municipal water, or should I use bottled water?" The answer is both are sufficient, but each has caveats.

Store bought bottled water can be expensive, but also allows for greater flexibility. Spring water is great for brewing because it contains minerals that are necessary in the mash, fermentation, and finished product. Distilled water is an excellent alternative to a home reverse osmosis water system when the homebrewer wishes to build a specific regional water profile.

Municipal water sources are treated with disinfectants that should ideally be negated prior to using their water for brewing. These disinfectants can cause chlorophenol off-flavors (medicinal, plastic, band-aid) in beer. Luckily for us as homebrewers, we can take some simple actions to remove chlorine from our brewing water.

Chlorinated water can be treated by a couple of different methods. Carbon filtration systems will readily remove chlorine from the water. Chlorine is very volatile and will dissipate from our water over time. Simply filling your kettle and/or buckets with brewing water and letting it stand for 24 hours prior to brewing is sufficient. For those less patient, bringing the water to a boil and then letting it cool to mash/sparge temps will also do the trick. Treating chlorinated water with metabisulfite is also a good solution, but may be overkill for chlorine removal only.

Some municipal water facilities use chloramine (ammonia + chlorine) as a disinfectant. Chloramine is much trickier to remove since it does not readily dissipate, nor do carbon filters do an efficient job of removal. Use of campden tablets (potassium metabisulfite) is the preferred method. A single 600-700 mg tablet will treat up to 20 gal of brewing water. Some by-products of the chemical reaction are actually beneficial for brewing. Ammonium is one by-product, and your yeast will love you for it. Chloride is another by-product produced and will add a fuller, rounder mouthfeel to your finished beer.

One simple sensory test can be used to determine whether your water was treated with chlorine or chloramine. Fill a glass with water and let it sit overnight. Sometime the next day fill another glass with water fresh from the faucet. If both glasses of water taste/smell the same with a slightly chlorinated character, then your water was likely treated with chloramine which did not dissipate. If the glass allowed to sit overnight has lower levels of detected chlorine character, then your water was likely treated with chlorine only.

It's a good idea to perform the above sensory water test during all seasons of the year. Many municipal water systems will switch back to chlorine only during winter/spring months when there are lesser levels of organic material making their way into streams, rivers, and lakes. Chlorine is a cheaper disinfectant option than chloramine on city budgets.

Cheers,
Kevin

01/29/2019

Every man and woman needs a vacation once in a while. DIY will be closed during Feb 8-14 for a little vacation and downtime. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause our customers, but we hope to continue serving your brewing needs in the future. Come get your supplies this week and/or early next week!

Cheers,
Kevin

01/25/2019

Tomorrow is the last Saturday of the month, which means the monthly tasting at DIY. Come out tomorrow and share your homebrew beer/wine/mead/cider. Get some feedback, swap brewing ideas, enjoy the nice January weather. Hope to see many of you tomorrow!

Cheers,
Kevin