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It will be fine, RDWHAHB.
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Sep 18, 2011 18:07
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Acceptableloss posted:I've been using a hydrometer and correcting for temperature. I was just wondering if there was another way to measure it other than a refractometer. You don't need a refractometer, but they are a nice time saver. What I do is take a sample after sparging, chill it down in the freezer while the wort is heating to a boil and get the pre-boil gravity. It's a simple calculation from there to what your OG will be after a 60 minute boil. If I find I am low, I always keep a pound of dry extract on hand to bump me back up to my target. I've never come in too high but you could just add some more water or boil less vigorously or something to account for that. Keep good records and you'll quickly get a feel for the efficiency of your system. I'm at the point now where I almost always hit my desired gravity but I still take the sample just in case. If you find you are always a few points low, just take it into account and add an extra pound of base malt to your recipes. You aren't brewing on the same system with the exact same ingredients as the dude who wrote the recipe. --- Edit: unrelated question, any tips for brewing with chili peppers? I have a really, really lovely ESB that I may end up dumping, but then I figured it would be a good chance to experiment with heat and flavor contribution from chilis. It's something I've wanted to do for a while anyway. I can get roasted Hatch peppers for like $1/lb this time of year so I'd be using those. Would you soak them in vodka or something to sanitize? Docjowles fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Sep 19, 2011 |
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Sep 19, 2011 05:03
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Lrrr posted:I recently got a bunch of old bottles that I hoped to use for my next batch, but most of them have poo poo in the bottom. I'm guessing they weren't entirely emptied when the contents were consumed so some mold started colonizing the bottom. Then this was left to dry for years (quite possible decades). I've had some of them soaking with water and a bit of dish soap for days now, but it doesn't seem to do much at all. Is there anything that would do a better job than regular soap? PBW (available at your homebrew shop) or OxyClean Free. Let 'em soak for a couple days and that poo poo will be pristine.
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Sep 19, 2011 16:23
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What are you fermenting in? If it's a bucket just take the lid off and look in. If there's kreusen (foam/poo poo on top) then it's working fine and there's probably just a poor seal on the bucket or airlock. If it looks exactly the same as when you pitched 3 days ago that's a bit worrisome.
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Sep 20, 2011 22:52
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TenjouUtena posted:It's happily bubbling away now! I suppose next time, as suggested, I'll build a starter. Yeah it probably got a bit of a shock between the high gravity and the cold pitching temp. For your average ale you really want more like low to mid 60's; 50 probably put it right to sleep. Glad it is up and at 'em again, though! There's some debate as to the necessity of starters (Jo3sh, the OP, did a side by side brew and couldn't taste the difference) but I imagine he'd also tell you to use one for a beer that big. My LHBS often only has old-rear end vials of any uncommon yeast so I tend to make a starter regardless. It's only made my beer better.
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Sep 22, 2011 01:30
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wafflesnsegways posted:What would you consider "moderately hard?" The 50-60 ibu range? There's a "west coast red" that is basically Pliny the Elder with some more crystal malt and color, and the traditional Irish red that is way more malt focused. I've never had Rogue's but just based on the brewery I'd shoot for like 80 IBU's and multiple big late hop additions. She's your fiance, how bitter does she typically like her beers?
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Sep 22, 2011 04:50
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Huge_Midget posted:Have a style question for the folks here in the thread. Earlier I mentioned that I was going to be making Tomme Arthur's Saison Blanc recipe, which is as follows: Lost Abbey isn't exactly known for sticking to style. If that recipe is from a source you trust, it's probably correct.
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Sep 23, 2011 17:41
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Hypnolobster posted:After hours of grinding and general hilarity, I painted my brewstand properly and mounted the gas setup. I am thoroughly jelly, nice work! I am a total DIY retard so if I want a nice brew stand I'm pretty much relegated to giving Blichmann Engineering or MoreBeer or someone my life savings. As much as I love brewing that's pretty far down my life priority list so I deal with lifting lots of hot, heavy poo poo on brew day. Some day...  crazyfish posted:A lot of people say that "moving up" means moving to all grain (or at a minimum, partial mash). I don't necessarily agree, at least at first. I actually agree with this, too. All grain is a ton of fun and once you reach a certain level of obsession you just can't stand dumping extract in there and losing that control. But from a pure beer quality standpoint I totally buy into the cold side argument. Put money into fermentation temp control before anything else and your partial-boil extract beer will be way better than the dude that's brewing all-grain and fermenting at 80 degrees. I also found starters to be a BIG help for me but YMMV on that depending on what you brew and how fresh your yeast is.
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Sep 26, 2011 05:38
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silver97232 posted:That being said, having a metered amount of oxygen injected, proper pitching rates, and accurate temperature control are imperative. If you don't have those things down then it's going to take longer or be less predictable. Yeah this has been my experience too. Once I got into starters and aeration I found most "average gravity" beers didn't need those 1-2 months to start tasting good. But there's no way someone's doing all that on batch #1 so it's safer to just tell them to wait 3 weeks and  But you're right, there's no way Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is sitting in primary for a month for example. I wouldn't be surprised to hear it's less than a week.
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Sep 27, 2011 03:03
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indigi posted:You're going to be adding an absolute shitload of unfermentable sugars here. It will probably end up underattenuated and cloyingly sweet. I'd suggest replacing some of the DME with cane sugar added after it's been fermenting for a few days. With high gravity extract brews underattenuation is one of the most common problems. Yeah I was gonna say, that seems like a fuckton of Crystal 120. I've never had that beer so maybe it's appropriate? But I'd consider cutting that, like, in half.
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Sep 27, 2011 23:46
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Kraven Moorhed posted:Apologies for the repost, but I think my problem got buried under the new page. Could you please post the full recipe and process (times, temperatures, anything you feel went wrong), both hot and cold side? It's one of those things that could have like 10 different explanations.
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Sep 29, 2011 05:39
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hbf posted:Just did a brew with Safale US-05. Normally, I never worry about things getting too cold because my old apartment was always quite warm. However my new place gets really chilly, I haven't started using the heat yet. Ambient temp is prob around 60F. Is this too cold for proper fermentation? It's on the cool side but I think you'll be fine. When fermentation is active the internal temp can be 3-5* higher anyway. If you can put it somewhere slightly warmer near the end of fermentation that would help the yeast finish out but it's probably not a big deal.
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Sep 29, 2011 18:43
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Anyone have experience or advice for reusing lager yeast? It was a German pilsner, sat in primary for about 3 weeks between primary and diacetyl rest, then another 2 weeks dropping to lager temp/lagering. Gonna rack it to a keg over the weekend to continue lagering if needed, or just put it on tap. Should it still be pretty viable at this point? I pitched a big-rear end 2 liter, 2 vial starter into 5 gallons. Planning to either divide it in half and do two moderate gravity lagers, or use the whole thing for a huge doppelbock I can sit on for like 6 months. Docjowles fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Sep 30, 2011 |
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Sep 30, 2011 03:17
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TenjouUtena posted:So, I just opened the second batch of mine, an Kit Irish Red and it's.... Disappointing. It tastes watery, and doesn't have much body or much aroma. It's this kit: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/irish-red-ale.html I used the White Labs yeast this time. I know that I used too much fill(ice) when I went into the fermentor, so that explains some of it. There's a few things you can do to boost body in extract beers. First, you can steep a pound or so of CaraPils malt. It contributes little to no flavor or color, but is supposed to add body and improve head formation/retention. You could also look into stepping up to mini mashing (it's hardly more work or investment than what you're doing already). Mashing a pound or two of flaked wheat or oats will give you a solid boost in body. Finally, you could add more crystal malt or select a less attenuative yeast strain, but that will do more to boost sweetness than body. Hypnolobster posted:It's pretty simple, and basically just the one that keeps floating around the internet (namely HBT). I know autolysis is basically a bogeyman these days, but you don't have any problems with the cider sitting in primary more than half a year? Is that something specific to wine yeast like Montrachet? I have no experience at all with wine yeasts. I'm hoping to make a batch or two of cider this fall. BerkerkLurk posted:My favorite examples include: being able to buy hopped extract at the grocery store. For "ginger cookies." If you sent away for the Blue Ribbon Extract Cookbook advertised on the package, you got the cookbook, but then two weeks later you got brewing instructions mailed to you with no return address. Ahahaha that is awesome.
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Oct 3, 2011 17:39
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Hypnolobster posted:Well, I'm planning on throwing ~2oz of freshly coarse ground coffee in, and my dad works for the roaster so I know where it's coming from and what equipment they use, and it'll be fresh out of the roaster into a new bag, etc. I racked a moderate gravity oatmeal stout onto about 2.5 oz of coarse ground coffee, let sit cold for 2 days then kegged. No infection issues and it tasted great. Only suggestion would be to look at using a light roast. I used the same motor oil french roast I drink for breakfast and it was a little overpowering.
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Oct 4, 2011 05:49
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Docjowles posted:Anyone have experience or advice for reusing lager yeast? It was a German pilsner, sat in primary for about 3 weeks between primary and diacetyl rest, then another 2 weeks dropping to lager temp/lagering. Gonna rack it to a keg over the weekend to continue lagering if needed, or just put it on tap. Had a couple followup questions to this. 1) When I washed the yeast I didn't get a distinct "trub line" at all. There's just a layer of clear beer and then a giant layer of "brownish stuff". I guess it's possible I ruled at transferring the beer to the fermenter and just left all the trub behind but it seems odd. A few posts on homebrewtalk lead me to believe this might be common for lager yeasts but there actually seems to be almost zero talk of reusing lager yeast on the net at all. Anyone here washed lager yeast, and what was your experience? 2) The yeast is WLP800 Bohemian pilsner. Anyone used this in another lager style successfully? It seems pretty clean and neutral.
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Oct 6, 2011 17:03
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indigi posted:My lager's been fermenting for 11 days now and it's only dropped about 14 gravity points. I did two 2L stirplate starter steps for this yeast and it looked pretty healthy throughout, I don't know what happened. Something's definitely wrong It varies by yeast strain, but lagers are just slow. It took my pilsner about 3 weeks just to drop from 1.051 to 1.020 at 50 degrees. Then I raised the temp to about 60-62 for 3 days and it quickly chugged down the rest of the way to 1.012. Heck it took like 3 days just to develop a visible kreusen and start bubbling, and I pitched 2 vials into a 2L stirplate starter. Forget about it for another week or two before you worry.
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Oct 7, 2011 15:05
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I warmed up to 58* to give it some help. Maybe I just got a bad... I don't know what. It looked good in the flask. gently caress.
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Jo3sh posted:What about chefs from the rainforest? I know sugar is hygroscopic - are you saying it's not worth trying in a humid climate? Booooooooooooooooooooooo 
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Oct 7, 2011 16:10
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Morbid Florist posted:Is there an average quantity adjustment you'd use for exchanging hop pellets/plugs for fresh (even if frozen)? I came into some cascade and chinook hops I want to use. I know chinook is extremely bitter and probably only fit for IPAs, but the cascade I'd like to use as a dryhopper. Based on a few seconds of random googling, you get about 10% more bitterness out of pellets than you do out of whole. So a 50 IBU recipe with whole would yield 55 IBU's with pellet etc. j3rkstore posted:I just found 9lbs of milled Vienna malt sitting in my unused picnic cooler; Its probably a few months old but it the cooler was sealed and the grain is bagged. I gave it a smell and it didn't seem rotten or anything, should I make a brew with it or toss it? If it looks, smells and tastes good use that poo poo.
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Oct 7, 2011 17:56
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Morbid Florist posted:Can cutting down mid-boil hops from 1oz to .75oz throw your OG up .20 points? This is the second time I've made this kit, first was on target, this one was supposed to be in the .40's but going into the primary it was about .65. WTF No, hops have no effect on gravity. Probably one of two things. Either you didn't use quite enough top-up water, or the extract didn't completely dissolve and you happened to sample an especially sugary part. Extract is really hard to completely and evenly dissolve.
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Oct 10, 2011 16:24
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RiggenBlaque posted:Anyone have any general water tweaking recommendations for fixing what I can really only describe as a really boring, flat hop flavor? It looks like my sulfate levels are pretty low at 15 ppm, so I'm going to try and aim for about 75 ppm in my next hoppy beer. My chloride is pretty low too - 22 ppm, so I'm going to bump that up to about 50. I'm far from an expert, but I've been using the rough guidelines from this post with good results. Basically try adding 1tsp each of gypsum and calcium chloride per 5 gallons of brewing water next time and see how you like it.
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Oct 11, 2011 03:09
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Just poured my first couple glasses of the pilsner I've been lagering the last month. Not sure what to make of it. It has a smell I can only describe as "yeasty", so hopefully it's just sediment at the bottom of the keg. Also a bit cloudy so I'm doubling down on that assumption. Worst comes to worst I can hit it with gelatin til I can read this thread through the glass. Beyond that, it's surprisingly bitter and minerally considering I used a Bohemian pilsner recipe. I didn't bother to dilute my tap water and while it's pretty soft, I guess it wasn't soft enough. Assuming the yeast character goes away I'd like to enter it in a competition for feedback (and mad medals, bro). Seems like Dortmunder Export would be my best bet for matching flavor profile to a style?
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Oct 13, 2011 03:10
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Josh Wow posted:You can make a beer unpleasantly bitter. Why not just save the other 7 oz for other beers? That being said, I've done a beer with a pound of hops before and it was very good but it was a DIPA and you're in IPA range right now. I'd also look into adding like another 10% of the grain bill by weight as table sugar. You need a big beer to stand up to a goddam pound of hops, but a good DIPA is also pretty dry. The sugar gives you the extra alcohol and and also helps it finish low.
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Oct 17, 2011 02:04
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Toebone posted:I've got a recipe that calls for Northern Brewer hops at 60 and 20 minutes, but I'd rather use some of the bulk hops I have in my freezer instead of buying new ones. I haven't brewed with N.Brewer before, would Willamette or Cascade make a better substitute? It's a stout, so I'm not looking for too much hop flavor/aroma. I'd go for Willamette for the 20 minute addition, and then whichever is higher alpha acid % for bittering (if you care about maximizing your hop use, otherwise just go all Willamette). Like you said, outside of certain American examples stouts don't have much hop character. Citrusy Cascade would be out of place in a traditional English or Irish stout, which is why I'd prefer Willamette and its more floral and earthy English caracter.
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Oct 17, 2011 04:57
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Not sure what you're doing but I just went there in Chrome and can browse the site fine. Maybe you have an extension that's breaking poo poo?
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Oct 19, 2011 20:05
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I always just steeped in 1.5 gallons of water, then when I was done, lifted up the grain bag and slowly poured another gallon of water over it to reach my boil volume (doing partial boil obviously). The GhettoSparge technique.
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Oct 20, 2011 01:25
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I have a giant 20lb tank and it owns. Probably done about 10 kegged batches and the pressure dial hasn't even moved. The only part that sucks is when I want to bring a keg to a party, hauling around this enormous tank is painful.
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Oct 21, 2011 18:39
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wafflesnsegways posted:Ugh. I bottled a red ale (around 1.06 og, 1.15 fg) two and a half weeks ago. Cracked two open, and they're flat. I don't think I forgot the priming sugar - but maybe I did. Possibly dumb question but where are they being stored? If they're in the fridge they will take loving forever to carb, stick them in a closet or something where they'll sit above 60. RiggenBlaque posted:4 weeks seems like a long time for US-05 even at 64*, what do your gravity readings say? Seconded. Bubbling "several times a day" is probably just dissolved CO2 in the beer escaping, not real fermentation activity. Take a gravity reading, airlocks are a notoriously terrible indicator. A hydrometer is like $10 and will pay for itself the first time it answers a question about a batch for you.
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Oct 22, 2011 06:06
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I borrowed a friend's plate chiller today and am now highly envious of it. There's nothing wrong with my immersion chiller other than the fact that it takes like 45 minutes to chill down near pitching temps. With the plate chiller it was maybe ten minutes from kettle of boiling liquid to 65 degree wort in my carboy. poo poo is magic. It's kind of far down my gadget wish list just because like I said my current chiller works, but its convenience factor is impressive. I'm a little nervous about infection since people say they're hard to clean and sanitize, but it seemed pretty pristine so I'll RDWHAHB on this one.
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Oct 24, 2011 03:02
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Hypnolobster posted:45 minutes immersion chilling and a plate chiller knocks it down to ~10 minutes? Yeah it's a very small and basic model. I think 25', not doing any recirculating. So yeah it sucks something fierce 
Docjowles fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Oct 24, 2011 |
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Oct 24, 2011 15:28
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Have this dubbel recipe kicking around, it came out pretty well but took a couple months to mature and really get good. This was a collaborative recipe through my homebrew club and if I was doing it myself I'd probably leave out the chocolate and up the Special B to like 5%, but it's not a big deal either way. Just convert some or all of the Pilsner malt to Pilsner extract and you should be on your way. I'm currently having efficiency issues which is why there's such a shitload of pilsner malt for a moderate gravity beer. code:Docjowles fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Oct 27, 2011 |
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Oct 27, 2011 21:25
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Super Rad posted:Comments/suggestions? I have a thing for simple recipes, so I'd personally cut out some of the specialty malts. Pick one of the Honey, CaraVienne and Aromatic and see what that gets you. But I'm not exactly an accomplished recipe designer and that's pure personal taste. Jacobey000 posted:Also tasted the cranberry wheat beer I've got sitting on the cranberry mush going on two weeks and the chewy cranberry harshness has relinquished into a tart and tasty fruit beer. Not totally sure what you are saying here. If the beer is tasting how you want it, package that up ASAP. If you think it needs to sit longer...don't package it quite yet? If it's tasting great letting it sit on the fruit longer won't improve things.
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Oct 28, 2011 05:18
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I continue to be amazed by how badass Wyeast 3787 Trappist High Gravity is. Pitched a week ago into a 1.080 tripel, it's still fermenting so vigorously that I have poo poo clogging the airlock. Although to be fair, it was 1.064 at pitching time and I added 2lbs of sugar a few days later. Still, I've never seen a yeast literally jump out of the carboy like this monster.
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Oct 31, 2011 05:41
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Unless you're filtering, or have been lagering the beer near freezing for months, even very clear beer has enough yeast to carbonate still in suspension. Cold conditioning just helps drop out enough yeast that it's not a cloudy mess.
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Nov 1, 2011 17:38
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You could always take the carboy out again and let it warm up to room temp for a day before bottling if you're worried about it. As long as you don't shake it up it's not like the yeast is going to float back up into suspension.
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Nov 1, 2011 19:46
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tesilential posted:Will this age out of my dubbel? I only have experience with fusel off flavors, which in my experience never really go away. I underpitched (always do) with 1 packet into a 1.08 beer. I also let the temps rise to the low seventies by the second day, which I usually do not do. The one time I used that yeast in a dubbel, it really took a while to get good even with a big starter. Tasting a gravity sample about 10 days in, I honestly thought it was infected, really odd flavors. But it kept improving weekly and ended up being a nice beer with none of the initial weirdness. I'd suggest just forgetting about it for another month. I also had a scottish "90 shilling" last year that smelled really, really strongly of cider in the fermenter. Leaving that one to sit a bit longer completely scrubbed that out, too. vwman18 posted:Think its ok in there? Yeah I wouldn't worry about it, shouldn't do much harm. Good thing you decided on whole hops, though
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Nov 3, 2011 15:26
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Maybe I was just unlucky, but the only time I tried dry hopping with pellets it was a disaster. After racking to a keg, they kept clogging the dip tube, must have taken it apart 5 times before getting too frustrated. I eventually racked into a second keg but lost like a gallon of beer. If I ever do it again I'll at least put a mesh bag around the racking cane to prevent much crud making it into the keg. Edit: to be fair it was an American IPA so there was a shitload of hops in there, 2+ ounces. Docjowles fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 16:36
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Went to my local homebrew club meeting for the first time in a while, they seem to be taking a stab at making things more organized which was great. We broke off for tasting groups with at least one person who actually knew how to judge beer and I got some nice feedback on my recent pilsner ("brew this again" and "enter it in competitions" was nice to hear!) and some of the other beers were freaking awesome. In particular a braggot brewed with just extract, honey and some blackberries. Came on like a mead then took a sharp turn toward kind of an Irish Red beer in the finish, really interesting and I'd love to try something like that myself. It was like the best of mead and beer in one glass. It was back at New Belgium brewery this month and once again they were absurdly generous with their leftover ingredients. I came home with like 1lb each of Citra, Sorachi Ace and Tettnang pellets and a whopping 3lbs of Amarillo  Haven't done the math but uh they must have given away over $1k in ingredients tonight (at homebrew shop prices, not "giant brewery wholesale prices" but still). Can never say enough about New Belgium's generosity and how great their staff is.Finally, we're tasting the club project beer aging in an old La Folie barrel in a couple weeks. It probably needs more time since it's only been 6 months, but it'll be exciting to see what's happened.. The base beer was a very nice dubbel and I contributed a batch so I get 5 gallons of the finished product. If you have a club in your area, go hang out for a few meetings and see if you like it. It may not work out, but it might also be totally awesome. Getting feedback beyond your girlfriend saying "oh that's great honey" is invaluable.
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Nov 4, 2011 05:15
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Could you link a source on that? Everything I've heard said that a plastic bucket is like an order of magnitude above glass in oxygen permeability. Fake edit: found the source I was thinking of. Lists a bucket as 220 cc/L per year vs 17 for a glass carboy w/ stopper. 23 is for a wooden barrel. Although I admit I could be reading the chart wrong. http://www2.parc.com/emdl/members/apte/flemishredale.shtml Real edit: Either way, props on the Gabriel Knight avatar, love those games.
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Nov 6, 2011 01:25
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beetlo posted:I agree that it's pretty much a mini-mash, but at the bottom of the page they have mini-mash directions. Basically more grain and less DME. Good times. I figure scoop the grain bag out, place a splatter screen over the pot with the grain bag on it, and pour my sparge water slowly over it. I can handle it, I just find the instructions slightly misleading. It helps that I'm actually cutting it in half. My fridge isn't big enough for a full batch carboy or bucket. Practically speaking, sparging just means rinsing residual sugars off the grain, so their instructions are fine, if confusing. You don't have to conduct a mash to sparge, and vice versa. The crystal malt, and maybe the cara-munich (I'd have to check) will contribute sugars without mashing, and rinsing ("sparging") the grain will help pick up the sugars stuck in the middle of your grain bag after the steep. They're basically asking you to do exactly what you said. Suspend the grains above the brewpot and dump some water through to wash out any sugars sticking to the grain/bag. Which is really all sparging is.
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Nov 6, 2011 07:26
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