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ChiTownEddie posted:
Prior to this, I'd checked the gravity during fermentation only a handful of times so I am certainly making up for it.
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Mar 13, 2014 14:55
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who takes hydrometer samples?
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I want to brew a Patersbier in the next few weeks. Seems that actual recipe details are scant because they aren't widely available, but I put together one that I think I like. I went a little higher gravity than seems to be suggested by the style, but.... Lunch Pail Patersbier OG: 1.051 FG: 1.010 11lbs Belgian Pils 100% 60min 1.0oz Tradition 0min 0.5oz Saaz Wyeast 3787 Thoughts? Anyone have anything better? CapnBry posted:I'm doing a Dogfish Head 120 brew, which started at 1.084 OG and now every day I am feeding it corn sugar. Using a thief I suck out 500mL of beer, take a hydrometer sample, add 250g of sugar to the 500mL, add it back into the fermenter and swirl it around. Repeat for the other fermenter, then go back and measure the first one again. If I'm still below 1.020, I suck out 300mL and add another 100g of sugar. Then do the other fermenter. Every. drat. Day. 4 kilos (9lbs) of sugar in so far. I read a powerpoint presentation from The Bruery years ago about achieving super-high alcohol by tightroping the alcohol tolerance with adjuncts throughout primary that was basically exactly this. I've never gotten a chance to try it. Let me know how it works out.
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Mar 13, 2014 15:32
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Martello posted:So is secondary just one of those things they always tell you to do but you really don't have to? You really don't. These days I only do secondary if I need to free up my primary or I'm going to do some extended conditioning (lagering, for instance) and I don't want the extra headspace. They tell you to do it, I think, for a few reasons: a) It used to be recommended practice by everyone. How To Brew basically insists on it, but Palmer has since said it's not necessarily a good idea. The reason for this is because commercial breweries use "secondary" (brite tanks). In giant conical fermenters at commercial breweries, there's a lot more heat and pressure placed on the yeast in the bottom of the cone, which can actually cause autolysis. In a homebrew scale bucket or carboy (or even conical, probably) it's just not a big deal. I'd also guess that brite tanks are cheaper than large FVs, so it makes sense from an economic perspective at the commercial level. At the homebrew scale, another bucket or carboy is a pretty cheap buy. b) You probably suck at siphoning, especially if it's your first kit (the directions on kits are written assuming it's your first kit). If you rack to secondary and then to the bottling bucket, you'll get less sediment. If you're better at siphoning, using irish moss/whirlfloc, cold crashing, etc, and you leave your beer in primary long enough, you won't get much sediment either. Some of my clearest beers were all primary. c) They get to sell you a carboy that you probably don't need. Of course, I didn't know this before I bought the starter kit with a glass carboy in it and then proceeded to buy 4 more 5 gallon Better Bottles, but that just means I need to do more ciders, sours, etc. 
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Mar 13, 2014 16:22
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Well, gonna just go ahead and leave it in primary and then bottle as soon as I get back in April. Thanks for the info and advice.
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Mar 13, 2014 16:56
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CapnBry posted:I'm doing a Dogfish Head 120 brew  Godspeed, you crazy diamond
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Mar 13, 2014 17:04
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ScaerCroe posted:Check our SA Brewtoad group and I have a BW Recipe listed that turned out fantastic with this method. Basically, do a mash of 3 pounds each barley and wheat, let it convert, throw in some acid malt for a bit to lower pH. Let it chill out to ~100 and innoculate with some leftover grain. Leave it for 2 days, boil, and pitch some regular yeast. Any reason why the recipe has you add the acidulated malt to the sparge? Why can't I just put it with the other grains in the mash and do the souring there? My only temperature-stable vessel is my mash tun so it'd be best to keep it in there. edit: Another noob question semi-unrelated to that. How am I supposed to get 5 gallons of keggable beer out of a 5.5 gallon boil? There's always a ton of trub in there. Usually I just siphon everything into my fermenter and let the Whirlfloc do its thing, but then there's about a gallon of poo poo on the bottom when it's done and I only have 4.5 to drink. Less if I used dry hops. Glottis fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 17:10
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I'm a huge fan of the traditional method in Stan Heironymous' Brewing with Wheat where you first wort hop, pull a single decoction, and that's it. No boil. I tend to pitch a tube of Lacto culture anyways for insurance, but since only the decoction is getting boiled, I'm sure there's plenty of lacto swimming around anyways. Works every time, but it takes 3 months to get sour.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:45
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Are there any pH meters that don't require multiple solutions in order to use? I'd like to start really dialing in my mash and treated water pH, but know jack poo poo about pH meters.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:49
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Glottis posted:Any reason why the recipe has you add the acidulated malt to the sparge? Why can't I just put it with the other grains in the mash and do the souring there? My only temperature-stable vessel is my mash tun so it'd be best to keep it in there. Wouldn't the change in pH effect the extraction process from the other grains? I don't actually know, it just seems plausible to me. The answer to your edit: I think it depends on the amount of boil-off you have. I only have a 4 gallon pot (When it's filled to the rim) and I normally do 4 gallon batches. After I've batch sparged I usually end up having 6 gallons of wort that I boil on my stove in my 4 gallon pot and two smaller pots. With that kind of surface area I get a ton of boil-off, I'd imagine if I had only 5.5 gallons boiling, by the time I reached 60 minutes I'd be left with 3 gallons. Answer: Adjust recipe to fit your equipment.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:56
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hellfaucet posted:Are there any pH meters that don't require multiple solutions in order to use? I'd like to start really dialing in my mash and treated water pH, but know jack poo poo about pH meters.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:58
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hellfaucet posted:Are there any pH meters that don't require multiple solutions in order to use? I'd like to start really dialing in my mash and treated water pH, but know jack poo poo about pH meters. No. There are no accurate pH meters that don't require constant calibration. Your other option is just using pH strips, really.
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Mar 13, 2014 19:11
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more falafel please posted:if I need to free up my primary I hear this all the time and I still don't understand it. Do you guys have different fermenters that you earmark for primary or secondary and if so, what's the effective difference? I don't do secondaries anymore but when I did my primary buckets and secondary buckets were interchangeable. I guess now that I have better bottles and buckets, technically the better bottles would be better for secondary but even then... Don't mean to single you out, it's just something I've never totally understood. In other news, I have some Conan yeast from Gigayeast which should be arriving today along with a new stir plate  and I am raring to fire up a starter and brew this weekend. Have any of you guys had good success with Conan and care to post a recipe? I've been in a bit of a brewing slump lately and my last three or so batches were underwhelming to me, so I'm really hoping to brew something tried and true and awesome.
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Mar 13, 2014 19:38
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Secondary fermenters are smaller than primary ones. In secondary you want very little headspace and don't need to make room for the mess primary creates. That said, I use whatever the hell happens to be open at the time and adjust on the fly.
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Mar 13, 2014 19:40
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Just opened 2 of my bottles, same beer. One basically make a foam-snake out of the bottle and I think it smelled a bit of vinegar. It tastes alright, the same as the non-foaming bottles. Both where primed with coopers sugar tablets, so there shouldn't be that much variation, no other bottle from this batch has done this. Is it ok to drink? Probably something stuck in the bottle? I soaked all the bottles, but not in PBW, so it could be some mould or something left in it? I sanitised all the bottles at bottling. It's something like 9.5% so it's strange if something can live in it.
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Mar 13, 2014 20:12
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Sistergodiva posted:Just opened 2 of my bottles, same beer. One basically make a foam-snake out of the bottle and I think it smelled a bit of vinegar. It tastes alright, the same as the non-foaming bottles. Both where primed with coopers sugar tablets, so there shouldn't be that much variation, no other bottle from this batch has done this. Is it ok to drink? Probably something stuck in the bottle? I soaked all the bottles, but not in PBW, so it could be some mould or something left in it? I sanitised all the bottles at bottling. It's something like 9.5% so it's strange if something can live in it. Probably had some leftover gunk. I always do a hot rinse in my dishwasher, PBW soak, and then sanitize before bottling. I'm OCD though...
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Mar 13, 2014 20:29
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Mikey Purp posted:I hear this all the time and I still don't understand it. Do you guys have different fermenters that you earmark for primary or secondary and if so, what's the effective difference? I don't do secondaries anymore but when I did my primary buckets and secondary buckets were interchangeable. I guess now that I have better bottles and buckets, technically the better bottles would be better for secondary but even then... For me it's not about material or style of bucket, it's about capacity. I have 3 glass carboys, 1 is six gallons the other two are 5. I have one six or seven gallon bucket, and I have 2 of those plastic commercial kegs that I pulled the spear out of to convert to fermenters and those are 5 gallons. Since I have 20+ kegs I generally don't want less then 5 gallons in any batch I do, and honestly, if I'm going to brew, I do 10 gallons at a time since I have the capacity on the brewing side. That means I can do a primary in my bucket and a primary in my big carboy (split the batch and pitch two different yeasts usually). Now once fermentation is done I can transfer to holding vessels (my glass are usually reserved for a cider and a sour which I don't want clogging up my primaries for months at a time) and brew another batch. Sure if I'm doing a quick ESB or pale ale I can turn it around in a little over a week, but I generally don't move my beers onto the next step of their life until brew day. So if I'm brewing that means it either needs to be ready to keg or ready to move to secondary.
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Mar 13, 2014 20:30
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hellfaucet posted:Probably had some leftover gunk. I always do a hot rinse in my dishwasher, PBW soak, and then sanitize before bottling. I'm OCD though... Yeah my latest batch I let all the bottles soak in PBW in a fermenter for a long time, and the nasty mouldy bits that was left on the surface convinced me it was the right thing to do. These bottles I soaked and washed with a bottle brush, maybe I had too little PBW, not sure. At least I only have like 10 bottles left of this, and my latest batch has had zero foamers. Also, drat I thought this beer was good when I first brewed this. Compared to my latest batch this one is really bad. A 9.5% Vienna/Cascade smash is a bad idea, especially when you gently caress up and dry hop in primary haha.
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Mar 13, 2014 20:55
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Sistergodiva posted:Just opened 2 of my bottles, same beer. One basically make a foam-snake out of the bottle and I think it smelled a bit of vinegar. It tastes alright, the same as the non-foaming bottles. Both where primed with coopers sugar tablets, so there shouldn't be that much variation, no other bottle from this batch has done this. Is it ok to drink? Probably something stuck in the bottle? I soaked all the bottles, but not in PBW, so it could be some mould or something left in it? I sanitised all the bottles at bottling. It's something like 9.5% so it's strange if something can live in it. Was the more foamy one sideways? I know when I condition sideways in my fridge (less space because it's the food fridge, and sometimes i have food in it), it usually has much more foaminess in the bottle and would foam out if not poured right away. Now I try to keep my bottles up-right for a while before I'll be drinking them.
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Mar 13, 2014 21:12
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Glottis posted:edit: Another noob question semi-unrelated to that. How am I supposed to get 5 gallons of keggable beer out of a 5.5 gallon boil? There's always a ton of trub in there. Usually I just siphon everything into my fermenter and let the Whirlfloc do its thing, but then there's about a gallon of poo poo on the bottom when it's done and I only have 4.5 to drink. Less if I used dry hops. I do a 7 gallon boil to end up with 5 gallons at the end. Boil down to 5.75-6 gallons and then transfer a mostly trub free 5.25 to the primary. Lose the last .25 gallons when I rack to the keg and I'm good to go.
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Mar 13, 2014 21:14
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Was the more foamy one sideways? I know when I condition sideways in my fridge (less space because it's the food fridge, and sometimes i have food in it), it usually has much more foaminess in the bottle and would foam out if not poured right away. Now I try to keep my bottles up-right for a while before I'll be drinking them. I store them in my cellar after conditioning, I store them upright in the plastic crates that fit the bottles, at about 12c. Found a little bit of something in the beer, looked like a piece of hop maybe, at least that's what I'm going to pretend it is. That should become a point where bubbles can form right?
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Mar 13, 2014 21:32
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Glottis posted:Any reason why the recipe has you add the acidulated malt to the sparge? Why can't I just put it with the other grains in the mash and do the souring there? My only temperature-stable vessel is my mash tun so it'd be best to keep it in there. I work backwards -- I want about 5 gallons or a little more to drink. Figure 1/2 gallon for trub/sediment in the fermenter, so 5.5 into the fermenter. Figure a quart for trub in the kettle, so 5.75 post-boil. Figure about a gallon of boil-off, so 6.75 pre-boil. If I get 3 gallons out of my first runnings, I'll sparge 3.75.
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Mar 13, 2014 23:34
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 First framboise tasting after trying to forget about it for a year. 
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Mar 14, 2014 00:11
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more falafel please posted:I work backwards -- I want about 5 gallons or a little more to drink. Figure 1/2 gallon for trub/sediment in the fermenter, so 5.5 into the fermenter. Figure a quart for trub in the kettle, so 5.75 post-boil. Figure about a gallon of boil-off, so 6.75 pre-boil. If I get 3 gallons out of my first runnings, I'll sparge 3.75. Do you filter coming out of your kettle, or just wait for a while for it to settle? I feel like when I've got about 5.5 gallons in the kettle and wait for an hour for it to settle, I can only get maybe 4 gallons out before it's truby again. I think I just need to try to have 6 gallons at the end of my boils.
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Mar 14, 2014 00:40
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Okay guys, lets get serious. I have two IPAs I want to enter into a competition where the due date is March 19th. That means I have six days to move them both (they're done dry hopping but not carbonated) into kegs, chill them down, carbonate them and get them clear. This is what's available to me: Polyclar, Biofine, Gelatin for clearing, I also have a canister filter and 1 micron filters. Keggging setup for carbonation (I have a .5 micron stone on a carbonator Corny lid). Is there anyway I can do this without just throwing them through the filters? Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 00:41
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If I develop off flavors due to having too high a fermentations temperature, can this be solved by aging?
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Mar 14, 2014 01:37
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Glottis posted:Any reason why the recipe has you add the acidulated malt to the sparge? Why can't I just put it with the other grains in the mash and do the souring there? My only temperature-stable vessel is my mash tun so it'd be best to keep it in there. The acid malt lowers the pH of the yet to be innocculated wort, so that when you do throw the handful of raw grain in there, only things like Lactobacillus can ferment in that acidic environment. Otherwise, who knows what will take up residence in your beer! fullroundaction posted:
So how does it taste? Did you use Wyeast or WL lambic blend?
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Mar 14, 2014 01:38
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ShadowCatboy posted:If I develop off flavors due to having too high a fermentations temperature, can this be solved by aging? In mead yes. They will age out around the 9-15 month range. In beer you can age those out but you'll lose your hops.
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Mar 14, 2014 01:49
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ScaerCroe posted:So how does it taste? Did you use Wyeast or WL lambic blend? I used the only sour blend the LHBS had in stock at the time I was there: http://www.whitelabs.com/yeast/wlp655-belgian-sour-mix-1 Came out pretty good, certainly could use a bit more body (finished at 1.000). Medium tartness, the raspberry aroma and flavor is faint but there if you're looking for it. All-in-all I'd consider it a success but next time I'd double my fruit addition and not bother aging it as long (probably 3 months pre fruit and 1 month after fruit). The good news is it's ready to drink as-is so ... gotta hide most of it at my mom's house so it doesn't all disappear in a few weeks. e: It's not very bretty or funky, which is slightly disappointing (I didn't pitch any additional yeast other than what was in the blend). I wouldn't not recommend that blend, it just seems pretty neutral.
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Mar 14, 2014 02:03
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fullroundaction posted:I used the only sour blend the LHBS had in stock at the time I was there: http://www.whitelabs.com/yeast/wlp655-belgian-sour-mix-1 I have been thinking of doing a Kriek with the Wyeast blend with a year in primary, 6 months secondary
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Mar 14, 2014 02:21
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I'm really bad at turning out a complex / farmy / funky end product so I think I'm going to just go back to throwing a bag of lacto at things I want sour in a few months and then just riding the cake for a year+. Quick turnarounds on things like a Gose or b.weisse are all I really want anyway. Unless one of you can teach me how to make something like Matilda or Sofie from GI. (please)
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Mar 14, 2014 02:27
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Tired of washing bottles. For babby's first keg system should I look at pin lock or ball lock kegs? My keezer will fit either one without a collar but I'm curious about ease of use/cleaning and parts availability, etc. Also I'd like the option to use 2.5 or 3 gallon kegs with the same fittings as well. Would love to hear opinions about which type keg to purchase, thanks.
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Mar 14, 2014 02:56
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fullroundaction posted:Unless one of you can teach me how to make something like Matilda or Sofie from GI. (please) You could ask Ubik. He works/worked at Goose island.
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Mar 14, 2014 02:57
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I plan on starting small 1.5 gallon batches on my stove for doing extract SMaSH beers to learn what each hop tastes like intimately. I plan to bottle carb in 32 ounce growlers. I'm used to 5 and 10 gallon batches so I'd like to know if there are any complications doing batches this small.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:03
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Syrinxx posted:Tired of washing bottles. For babby's first keg system should I look at pin lock or ball lock kegs? My keezer will fit either one without a collar but I'm curious about ease of use/cleaning and parts availability, etc. Also I'd like the option to use 2.5 or 3 gallon kegs with the same fittings as well. Would love to hear opinions about which type keg to purchase, thanks. As the owner of a pin lock system, go ball lock. I chose pin because it was slightly cheaper at the time, but the majority of stuff out there is made for ball lock and it's annoying how every time I see some new awesome piece of equipment it's inevitably made for ball lock systems.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:12
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Midorka posted:I plan on starting small 1.5 gallon batches on my stove for doing extract SMaSH beers to learn what each hop tastes like intimately. I plan to bottle carb in 32 ounce growlers. I'm used to 5 and 10 gallon batches so I'd like to know if there are any complications doing batches this small. You're going to lose heat very very quickly compared to full-size batches, so temp maintenance will be a complete bitch.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:12
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Jo3sh posted:You're going to lose heat very very quickly compared to full-size batches, so temp maintenance will be a complete bitch. Temp maintenance in regards to what though? I'm doing extract so I don't need to maintain any temps. I plan to solely use some light dry malt extract and 4 hop additions for each hop.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:15
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Oh. Whoops, never mind. I was thinking of mash temps, which obviously don't apply here.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:19
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Cointelprofessional posted:You could ask Ubik. He works/worked at Goose island. I think he went to Lagunitas recently, no?
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Mar 14, 2014 03:23
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Jo3sh posted:Oh. Whoops, never mind. I was thinking of mash temps, which obviously don't apply here. Yeah, I'd rather mash, but that seems incredibly silly to attempt when I'm just using the 2 gallon batches for SMaSH pale ales. I might steep some Crystal 20 or Carafoam, but outside of that it's just going to be a dry malt extract, re-used US Ale Yeast, and 4 different hop additions of whatever hop I grab that month.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:23
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 23:34 |
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Syrinxx posted:Tired of washing bottles. For babby's first keg system should I look at pin lock or ball lock kegs? My keezer will fit either one without a collar but I'm curious about ease of use/cleaning and parts availability, etc. Also I'd like the option to use 2.5 or 3 gallon kegs with the same fittings as well. Would love to hear opinions about which type keg to purchase, thanks. Ball lock for sure. Neither is cheap, but I recommend going on eBay for the best price. I got them shipped from a place called "mceverdistributors" on ebay and they were ~52 shipped when I bought 4 (maybe three months ago). You'll assuredly want 4 at some point in your life. If you're ever planning to get a nonstandard keg size (e.g. anything that isn't 5), absolutely go ball lock. You will never find a non-standard system in pin lock.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:24
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