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I don't know about the new yeast thing, with a must that dense you may have trouble getting your yeast going. At any rate you'll end up with a wine that is extremely sweet, maybe intolerably so. It's hard to tell without an exact hydrometer reading but remember that you'll only get around 18% tops, depending on yeast, and the rest will remain sugar. I mean it can't hurt to try though! For a must that dense I recommend using ec-1118, it's good for high gravities.
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Feb 24, 2015 21:47
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What were the estimated gravities for both OG and FG per the directions? Did you take an OG before you tried to ferment?
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Feb 24, 2015 22:15
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I did not take an OG because I am a giant idiot. At this point in the process (at 9 days since start) the instructions say it should be between 1.000 and 1.010. I'm not at home so I don't have the instructions but the desired FG is 0.990 I think? Maybe? It really bugs me that this happened. I followed the directions exactly. They might have been idiot garbage instructions that meant "add 6 gallons to the must" but instead said "pour in the must and add up to the 6 gallon line" which is what I did. Even then a few Amazon Reviews said they only made it with 5 gallons and it was fine. e: This is what I got http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ELJK5U/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 e2: in the reviews, "Should be between 1.080 - 1.090." (in regards to the og) Adult Sword Owner fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 22:22
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Hm, I'm not sure why you're reading over about 1.08 SG. The kit should definitely be within 1.07 to 1.09. I have no experience with wine kits but I can't think of any reason why it'd coagulate or otherwise firm up like that. Just out of curiosity, have you tried dipping your hydrometer in some plain water to make sure it's calibrated correctly? And if you still have that extra must, does it look, smell or feel off? Are there any spots where the texture is uneven?
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Feb 24, 2015 22:36
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I'll do a test on the hydrometer when I get home for sure. The must is...well, it's thick grape juice. It smells fine and stains everything. I tasted it and it tasted like strong grape juice. e: VVVVV I'll double check but the hydrometer I have claims it can also do wine, but I'll verify that. I didn't look for activity at all, as a rule I don't check airlocks because if I don't see anything I panic. I have some replacement EC coming to me tomorrow, which is the stuff it shipped with. I might have totally blown it and just pitched bad yeast, so to verify that it's active should I dehydrate into sterile water with a tiny bit of nutrient? Would that give an indication of activity in an hour or so? Adult Sword Owner fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 22:37
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Adult Sword Owner posted:I did not take an OG because I am a giant idiot. At this point in the process (at 9 days since start) the instructions say it should be between 1.000 and 1.010. I'm not at home so I don't have the instructions but the desired FG is 0.990 I think? Maybe? Is your Hydrometer in "SG" units, i.e. is 50 supposed to be 1.050? If so, you need a hydrometer with a much higher scale for wine. If I were to estimate, it looks like you're probably around 1.10 which sounds reasonable for the OG, so maybe your fermentation just never started. Has their been activity in the airlock?
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Feb 24, 2015 22:38
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rockcity posted:Is your Hydrometer in "SG" units, i.e. is 50 supposed to be 1.050? If so, you need a hydrometer with a much higher scale for wine. If I were to estimate, it looks like you're probably around 1.10 which sounds reasonable for the OG, so maybe your fermentation just never started. Has their been activity in the airlock? Oh that's a good point, I assumed that the scale ended at like 1.17 (which some triple scale hydrometers do) but if that's only 1.07 then no problem.
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Feb 24, 2015 22:52
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OK, home with a few minutes * The hydrometer is as you say, units based on being increments of 0.010 * I put it in a tube of water and it went to 1.000, so looks good to me * The highest it goes is 1.16 
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Feb 24, 2015 23:45
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Dumb question: have you tasted it? Is it sweet?
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Feb 24, 2015 23:50
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Another dumb question: did you stir the must once you added the top-up water?
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Feb 24, 2015 23:55
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Yeah, something is way off on it then. That means you're around 1.2 which is nuts.
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Feb 25, 2015 00:00
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Jo3sh posted:Another dumb question: did you stir the must once you added the top-up water? Second option was going to be this. Stir that poo poo like woah and pull another sample. That and pitch fresh yeast.
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Feb 25, 2015 03:20
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Just got my kegorator up and running. Does anybody have any force carbing tutorials available? I have a stout ready to keg and I'd rather not wait another week or two. I seem to recall someone explaining how to carb up a keg in a day or two...
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Feb 25, 2015 03:51
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If you chill the beer to about 35 and set the regulator to 30 psi it'll carb up in 24-36 hours. If you shake the keg with the gas on it will take about 2 minutes.
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Feb 25, 2015 04:05
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Yep. Chill it, put it on gas, lay the keg down on the ground and roll it back and forth in front of you to agitate the beer for a couple of minutes.
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Feb 25, 2015 04:18
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I have the beer in the fridge right now. Tomorrow it should be right around 37-40 degrees. Are you saying that I can just put it on 30 psi for a couple days, then drop it to 10-12 psi for serving? Is there a chart for this or something? I don't want to pour foam. I seem to remember someone posting a method that was "set to serving pressure, shake until you hear gas stop running, then release the pressure and repeat until the gas stops running or something." I'm just very impatient. From now on I will have my pipeline ready to go, and never worry about it again. I just want this first keg to get up and running. edit: I'm worried about overcarbing, also. Can't shaking the gas into the beer result in overcarbed beer? Is there a foolproof method? U.S. Barryl fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 04:20
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U.S. Barryl posted:I have the beer in the fridge right now. Tomorrow it should be right around 37-40 degrees. Are you saying that I can just put it on 30 psi for a couple days, then drop it to 10-12 psi for serving? Is there a chart for this or something? I don't want to pour foam. I seem to remember someone posting a method that was "set to serving pressure, shake until you hear gas stop running, then release the pressure and repeat until the gas stops running or something." I'm just very impatient. From now on I will have my pipeline ready to go, and never worry about it again. I just want this first keg to get up and running. If I wasn't an idiot I would save this so somebody put it in the OP or copy it or something cause I'm on my phone and can't be assed to do real things but will type too much. HOW TO FORCE CARB YOUR BEER LIKE A TOTAL BALLER: 1) Chill your beer to serving temperature. This means leaving it wherever you're chilling it for 24+ hours. Yes it can really take that long to fully chill 5 gallons of beer. Realistically it probably only takes 8-12 hours to fully chill 5 gallons to that temp but why risk it. 2) Purge the headspace of the keg. I do this by putting 20-25 psi top pressure on the keg then shutting off the CO2 supply and pulling the pressure relief valve. This helps drive out oxygen, any oxygen you have in your headspace will be driven into the beer when you shake the poo poo out of it in the next step. I do this 5 times. 3) Put 25-30 psi top pressure on the keg and shake it for 30 seconds. USE A TIMER WITH AN ALARM! This is science motherfuckers, if you want repeatable results use a repeatable method. It's extremely easy to overcarb your beer so take the extra steps to make sure that doesn't happen. 4) Shut off your CO2 supply at the tank but leave the valve from the regulator to the keg open. Continue shaking your keg and you'll see your pressure gauge drop. When the pressure gauge stops dropping that's how much CO2 is in equilibrium in your keg. Use a carbonation chart to see what volume you're at: http://www.draughtquality.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Carbonation_Volumes_Pressure_Temperature_Chart.pdf If you aren't sure where you need to be carbonation wise look at the BJCP style guidelines and go somewhere around what they say. 5) If you're undercarbed turn on the CO2 supply and shake again for 10-15 seconds and repeat Step 4. Keep doing this until you're at the right carbonation. If you're overcarbed you probably shook for more than 30 seconds, use a timer. 6) If your kegerator is properly set up your equilibrium point for CO2 is the same as your serving pressure, so set the keg top pressure to your serving pressure. You have to wait for your beer to settle before serving or you'll just pour foam. 24 hours definitely does it, 8-12 hours is probably fine. Your first pint will be sediment so toss it, after that should be fairly clear beer. Once you do it a few times you get a feel for where you need to be so you can shake longer than 30 sec initially and dial your setup in. Just remember that the volume of beer in the keg affects everything. If you have less volume you need to inject less CO2, and vice versa.
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Feb 25, 2015 04:55
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gently caress yeah, thanks.
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Feb 25, 2015 05:01
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Adult Sword Owner posted:OK, home with a few minutes 1, Mix it up 2, Pitch champagne yeast 3, Have a dry rear end wine, because champagne yeast will eat any and all sugar they can get their mitochondria on until they literally drown in their own poo poo(alcohol) Unrelated, but I just bought a new couch today, and I already managed to explode beer all over it and the floor around it, because there is never a situation that I can't spill beer all over BLARGHLE fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 05:20
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Wow, at most I've been adding .004 to my hot wort readings. Now I just went form 58% efficiency to 65. Fancy that! For what it's worth you can grab a refractometer with a conversion scale to SG on it for like $20 on eBay  and they're way more accurate than putting a hydrometer in. I only use hydros now for during fermentation readings. That way I take readings pre boil and post boil so I can track accuracy. I currently average around 80% on BIAB
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Feb 25, 2015 09:22
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McSpergin posted:For what it's worth you can grab a refractometer with a conversion scale to SG on it for like $20 on eBay Another thing I realized was that when I was crushing grain is that I was turning the wrong thing to tighten the plates on my Victoria. Time to grind that poo poo to dust.
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Feb 25, 2015 14:53
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It's pretty hard to overcarb keg beer. You can almost always bring it back down by simply releasing the pressure. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never had any issue releasing pressure and the carb going back down.
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Feb 25, 2015 15:35
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Josh Wow posted:HOW TO FORCE CARB YOUR BEER LIKE A TOTAL BALLER:  I'm not sure why this never clicked with me until now, but thank you.
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Feb 25, 2015 16:03
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Economic Sinkhole posted:Dumb question: have you tasted it? Is it sweet? Yes, it was like strong grape juice. Jo3sh posted:Another dumb question: did you stir the must once you added the top-up water? I followed the instructions which *specifically* said to only gently stir after the yeast was added with the notice that it was optional. However when pouring the water in it did mix fairly well. I went and shook and swirled it around for a while yesterday (can't find my big rear end stirrer) so we will see if that possibly helps things. I have some EC-1118 coming in the mail today so I'm ready to try that.
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Feb 25, 2015 16:18
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Midorka posted:It's pretty hard to overcarb keg beer. You can almost always bring it back down by simply releasing the pressure. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never had any issue releasing pressure and the carb going back down. It can take a while to lower the carbonation. If you purge the keg, the headspace will be at atmospheric pressure and CO2 will slowly seep out of the beer until the headspace is at equilibrium. Then you have to purge the headspace again and again until the equilibrium pressure is correct for the volumes of CO2 you want in your beer. Depending on the headspace and how over carbed the beer is it can take a while to lower the volumes. I prefer to force carb at the correct PSI for the volumes of CO2. That way it's impossible to over carb the beer. It may take a few more minutes of shaking but it's worth it to remove the risk of over carbing.
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Feb 25, 2015 17:11
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Seph posted:It can take a while to lower the carbonation. If you purge the keg, the headspace will be at atmospheric pressure and CO2 will slowly seep out of the beer until the headspace is at equilibrium. Then you have to purge the headspace again and again until the equilibrium pressure is correct for the volumes of CO2 you want in your beer. This. I overcarbed a keg once and it took me about a week of degassing the head pressure several times a day before it was back to normal.
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Feb 25, 2015 18:57
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I guess its time to get back into the swing of things, but I'm way less excited about using all these pain in the rear end toys (pumps, weird serving keg things). I'm just going to make big batches of beer and put them in my kegs the least  way possible.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:06
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Interesting. Thanks for the knowledge.
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Feb 25, 2015 20:00
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A pump is kind of a weird choice for an rear end toy.
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Feb 25, 2015 20:09
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Josh Wow posted:This. I overcarbed a keg once and it took me about a week of degassing the head pressure several times a day before it was back to normal. Yep, huge pain in the rear end
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Feb 25, 2015 20:14
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Prop Wash posted:A pump is kind of a weird choice for an rear end toy. ChickenArise posted:Yep, huge pain in the rear end I thought these were related posts. But then I saw they weren't. I have nothing to contribute. carry on.
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Feb 25, 2015 20:44
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Prop Wash posted:A pump is kind of a weird choice for an rear end toy. If you knew anything you'd know its not. I used to use it for a recirculation system. But it was mostly just a pain in the rear end to set up and clean. My current process is just lazy as gently caress given that I'm doing an inherently time-consuming, detail oriented thing. Batch sparge all day, every day. When its done, I just stir that poo poo with the cooler itself and then dump the wort straight from the pot (it takes too long to use the valve and involves more cleaning) to the bucket with a paint-strainer stretched over the bucket. Then I throw it away because its a pain in the rear end to clean the strainer and then I order more of them on Amazon. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 21:13
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Angry Grimace posted:If you knew anything you'd know its not. Yeah I do BIAB and dunk sparge in my bucket (that will later ferment my beer). I just take the bag out, do some minor squeezing, and dump it into the boil. Easy, painless, clean, give no fucks.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:25
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Yeah I do BIAB and dunk sparge in my bucket (that will later ferment my beer). I just take the bag out, do some minor squeezing, and dump it into the boil. Easy, painless, clean, give no fucks. I stopped squeezing for BIAB and it really hasn't effected my efficiency to a noticeable degree. I just hang the bag over a small pot using a strap & my deck railing until the boil is mostly going and toss whatever drippings there were into the boil kettle. No dunk sparge or anything. The only thing I did that changed my efficiency was a 45min mash - don't try that... If you are going to be lazy, go all the way.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:30
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I've been doing 30 minute mashes on my new system with no problems 
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Feb 26, 2015 03:41
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I've been forcing myself toward laziness to reduce the things I hate: filling, counting, and holding multiple 1 gallon measuring cups of water out of the sink, collecting, counting, and holding multiple 1 gallon measuring cups of hot wort, cleaning multiple vessels, getting soot all over everything from my impossibly lovely turkey fryer that refuses to burn clean, carrying full batches and pouring them into fermenters, needing a third container for first runnings while I heat sparge water in the kettle, and confusing my beer notes between different computers. What a pain in the rear end. Carrying water from indoors to outdoors, getting distracted and not realizing if I've poured three gallons or four, ugh. A new burner, an $80 10 gallon megapot with thermometer and spigot off craigslist, a calibrated dip stick for kettle volume, and a drinking safe water hose with 10" filter are mine now. I should be able to go from empty kettle to full fermenter using passive sparge BIAB without doing any moving, counting, pouring, or lifting of anything (save the grain bag) in my comfortable brew spot. LAZY. I've done a few BIAB techniques before but never had the kettle volume to do heavy 5G batches until now. Also just figured out I could change my Beersmith working directory to a share on my NAS so now when I realize that recipe I was playing with was on the upstairs computer but I'm downstairs I can just pull it up here. LAY-ZEE.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:05
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So I'm in the camp of wondering why people do BIAB. It's a pain in the rear end to get consistent mash temps throughout the bag and efficiency seems to be a pain to dial in. Building a mash tun isn't very expensive and it doesn't add too much time. I advise people doing BIAB to look into a mash tun. /signed a person who did a few BIAB and thought it to be horribly inefficient.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:13
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it's worked pretty well for me. When I first started doing it I couldn't really afford even more junk, and now that I can I'm set in my ways. May go ahead and get one at some point, but not right now.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:25
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It's always worked acceptably for me. With a decent stir I never noticed any difference in consistent temps between that and my cooler mash tun, though the kettle is obviously less insulated over the mash period. Maybe it's different if you're trying to heat throughout the mash, but I'm just letting it go with a few blankets around the kettle.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:34
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Midorka posted:So I'm in the camp of wondering why people do BIAB. It's a pain in the rear end to get consistent mash temps throughout the bag and efficiency seems to be a pain to dial in. Building a mash tun isn't very expensive and it doesn't add too much time. I advise people doing BIAB to look into a mash tun. Apartment life  And I've never really had any issue with mash temps. A bit of variation happens, of course, but a couple gallons of water holds temperature pretty well. I tend to be around 70% efficiency depending on how strong the beer in question is, which I find acceptable.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:49
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