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zedprime posted:Every carb calculator is the same because Henry's law is both accurate and dead simple to program and the rest is universal assumptions about yeast consumption of sugar. Or start kegging  So I'm getting a pump for Christmas and I'm not entirely sure of what I'm going to use it for. Anyone here ever try using an add-on recirculating arm on their immersion chiller? Zainasheff is pretty insistent that method this is better than a counterflow for home brew applications.
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Dec 17, 2012 23:13
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Ursa Majora posted:I've got a stout that's been sitting in its carboy for about two weeks now. Unfortunately, my furnace started leaking CO in the middle of last week, resulting in a call to the local fire department and leaving me without heat for several days. The temperature in my house has been <60 for most of this time, and i'm worried that the yeast may have gotten too cold. Is there any way to salvage it at this point? Getting it warmed up again should do the trick, doesn't yeast just go dormant if the temp is too low as opposed to dying if it's too high? JawKnee fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 23:14
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JawKnee posted:Getting it warmed up again should do the trick, doesn't yeast just go dormant if the temp is too low as opposed to dying if it's too high? That's what happened with my saison. Spent a few days at 50F and came right back. It's no different than leaving a WL vial of yeast in the fridge.
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Dec 17, 2012 23:18
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That's a relief, thanks.
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Dec 17, 2012 23:23
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Angry Grimace posted:So I'm getting a pump for Christmas and I'm not entirely sure of what I'm going to use it for. Anyone here ever try using an add-on recirculating arm on their immersion chiller? Zainasheff is pretty insistent that method this is better than a counterflow for home brew applications. This is effectively what I do now, although the return is plumbed into the kettle rather than attached to my chiller. It works nicely. I got better cooling this way than I have with either the immersion chiller alone, the immersion chiller + intermittent stirring, or the plate chiller.
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Dec 17, 2012 23:36
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Acceptableloss posted:So I realize this is not normally done, but I'm thinking of souring a few gallons of some IPA I have in primary right now with some Brett L and maybe adding some pineapple. Anyone ever tried something like this and/or think it's a horrible idea? This might be a good place to start. http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2012/07/100-brett-trois-ipa-recipe.html Surly also made one called Brett Liquor IPA. It's alright. Like most of their stuff, it tries to bridge two different styles and in this case it's not a clear success or a miss. Just meh.
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Dec 18, 2012 00:15
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Ursa Majora posted:I've got a stout that's been sitting in its carboy for about two weeks now. Unfortunately, my furnace started leaking CO in the middle of last week, resulting in a call to the local fire department and leaving me without heat for several days. The temperature in my house has been <60 for most of this time, and i'm worried that the yeast may have gotten too cold. Is there any way to salvage it at this point? You are fine. It's all done fermenting, it's just conditioning at this point. A cooler conditioning period is fine and/or standard in some cases. e: Cointelprofessional posted:This might be a good place to start. Yeah, I could see an IPA be hit or miss with some brett. I'd steer away from 'pine/resin' type IPAs, but some AUZ or citrus euro/us hops. Jacobey000 fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Dec 18, 2012 |
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Dec 18, 2012 01:20
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IPA and Brett specifically seem to be at odds though since Brett beers take some time to develop and IPAs are best enjoyed on the fresh side. The IPA IBUs might also get in the way of the more subtle funky Brett flavors.
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Dec 18, 2012 01:37
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Super Rad posted:IPA and Brett specifically seem to be at odds though since Brett beers take some time to develop and IPAs are best enjoyed on the fresh side. 100% brett will allow those flavors to shine - it would also depend on the type of brett. I'd use Brett C and not touch B. L would be an okay substitute but is still kinda barn-yard. A guy in the homebrew club pitched brett c in a cream ale and it was like sex in my mouth. The other option is just to dry hop the dickens out of it. Or just keep a barrel and rotate in new/old. To keep the hop flavors/aromas fresh - but that is getting kinda expensive/complicated.
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Dec 18, 2012 02:01
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Jacobey000 posted:The other option is just to dry hop the dickens out of it. Or just keep a barrel and rotate in new/old. To keep the hop flavors/aromas fresh - but that is getting kinda expensive/complicated. This is what Cantillon does with Iris - they take 3 year old lambic and dry hop the crap out of it.
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Dec 18, 2012 03:26
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Does anyone have any recommendations for a yeast that does OK at room temperatures? I just started a business so I havent had much time to brew, and now that I've got a bit of time its when my cellar is probably too cold. The season has been a bit crazy, temperatures are anywhere around -1C to 8C (global warming you scamp!), so I'd say my cellar would be hovering around 5-10C depending on the day. I'm guessing these temps are probably too cold to do the ales I've been working on. Actually, now that I've read that out, its probably an OK temperature to give lagering a shot for the first time. Does anyone know of a relatively forgiving yeast for a first lager? My cellar will inevitably vary wildy in temperature while its fermenting. Will I still be able to make a decent beer? Do heat belts let you set a temperature, or is it a knob that you set from, say, 1-10, and then check to see what temperature the fermenter is?
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Dec 18, 2012 05:45
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Les Oeufs posted:Does anyone have any recommendations for a yeast that does OK at room temperatures? 8C is a reasonable lager fermentation temperature, but the key is keeping it there. If you start your fermentation at 8C but then it gets cold and drops to 2C, the yeast are going to go to sleep and you'll be stuck with half finished beer. Unfortunately, in brewing, wild temp swings are really really bad. In your situation, you want some kind of heating element. A good option is to get a temperature controller, the same kind you use on a kegerator. You just reverse the wiring so it kicks on once it reaches a minimum temperature instead of turning off when it gets too cold. Then you can plug that into a heat belt from the homebrew shop, or just duct tape a cheap pharmacy heating pad (like you'd use on a sore muscle) to the carboy. That will keep it within about +/- 1C of where you set it and deliver a great beer. Look for a yeast that produces minimal amounts of diacetyl (a buttered popcorn flavor), or plan on using that heat wrap to raise the temperature to like 16C for a couple days at the end of fermentation to clean up that diacetyl. Edit: Sorry, I have a really awful habit of identifying posters by avatar. I realize you post in this thread all the time and a lot of that was unnecessary 
Docjowles fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Dec 18, 2012 |
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Dec 18, 2012 06:04
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Les Oeufs posted:Does anyone have any recommendations for a yeast that does OK at room temperatures? How handy are you? Have you considered building a fermentation chiller so none of this is an issue and, as you describe, you have full control of the temperature?
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Dec 18, 2012 06:17
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5-10c isn't so huge a variance that a swamp cooler which completely surrounds the carboy couldn't insulate it fairly well. Worst case you can regulate it with ice bottles.
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Dec 18, 2012 07:49
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Ok, so the semester is over and I finally have a month the brew. The problem: 1. My roommates and I are kinda poor, so we keep the heat between 52 and 58 2. My 5 tap kegerator only has 2 taps running and I'd like to turn around some beers quickly. So it's obvious that my house is perfect for lagering right now, but I don't want to wait several months to get my kegerator filled. Anyone have good recipe or yeast suggestions where I can have a beer turned around in a few weeks instead of a few months?
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Dec 18, 2012 19:32
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Daedalus Esquire posted:Ok, so the semester is over and I finally have a month the brew. You can always just keg it relatively fresh and let it cold condition in the keg. It will be a kind-of kellerbier if you do that. edit: Also, if you're going to be at the higher end of that range you can do some hybrid styles. I made an Altbier with US-05 fermented at ~60F and it came out pretty much perfect. internet celebrity fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Dec 18, 2012 |
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Dec 18, 2012 19:42
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You can turn around a lager in three weeks no problem, that's what I normally do. Just make a bigass starter and ferment for 10-12 days, then do a diacetyl rest for 2 days. Transfer to secondary if you want and lager for a week, then keg it. It'll continue to cold condition in the kegerator but a lot of my lagers are great right away. Professional breweries don't lager beers for months, I think I heard Victory goes from yeast pitch to packaging in 15 days for Prima Pils.
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Dec 18, 2012 20:46
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Or if you want ales, you can probably get away with just wrapping a blanket around the fermenter to hold in some heat. A nice Ordinary or Best Bitter can be turned around in three weeks from grain to glass in three weeks for sure.
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Dec 18, 2012 20:59
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So on Sunday I finally had my first brew day, combining 1 lb DME, 3 lbs hop flavored malt extract and 1.5 gallons of water, boiling for 45 minutes. Pitched yeast when it seemed decently cooled, (didn't take a temp reading, I forgot to buy a thermometer) and had really vigorous yeast action sunday night, through monday. However, today all the foam is settled, and there's absolutely no bubbling in the airlock or in the fermenter itself. The O.G seemed really low (1.021), and today the gravity reads almost exactly 1.000. Any theories as to what's going on here?
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Dec 18, 2012 21:36
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Invisible Ted posted:Any theories as to what's going on here? Sounds like you either measured the OG/FG wrong (took the reading when the wort was still really hot maybe?) or your malt extract went bad somehow. There's no way 4 lbs of malt in 1.5 gallons of water came out to 1.021 and bottomed out at 1.000 in 2 days.
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Dec 18, 2012 21:47
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Invisible Ted posted:So on Sunday I finally had my first brew day, combining 1 lb DME, 3 lbs hop flavored malt extract and 1.5 gallons of water, boiling for 45 minutes. Pitched yeast when it seemed decently cooled, (didn't take a temp reading, I forgot to buy a thermometer) and had really vigorous yeast action sunday night, through monday. However, today all the foam is settled, and there's absolutely no bubbling in the airlock or in the fermenter itself. The O.G seemed really low (1.021), and today the gravity reads almost exactly 1.000. Any theories as to what's going on here? Everything seems OK, as in you now have something that can be loosely called beer. That said, there are like a dozen red flags here. First off, your OG is odd. 4 pounds of extract in 1.5 gallons of water, even assuming no boil loss, should give an OG of 1.112. So, I'm assuming you topped this high gravity wort off to 5 gallons or so, which would give you a target OG of 1.034 and since you may have not mixed thoroughly enough to get an accurate OG, your measurement of 1.021 is reasonable. That said, you really want to boil more water for this amount of extract if possible as you're dealing with a very high gravity wort that will cause darker colors and potential off-flavors. Your gravity of 1.000 indicates that everything fermented. That shouldn't normally happen so quickly or so thoroughly, but you may have had some eager yeast and they didn't have that much work to do, so we'll just accept that. Your yeast pitching temperature is fairly important and I'm guessing you're looking at some serious off-flavors due to high pitching/fermentation temps, but these can mellow out. I would give it 1 week to settle out, then go ahead now and bottle. Every week after that, pull a bottle and refrigerate for 3 days. In 2-3 weeks you'll be well-carbonated, and the beer can settle with age if there are some off-flavors. You'll have roughly a 4-4.5% ABV beer if all my assumptions are correct. I doubt it will be great but it may very well be drinkable.
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Dec 18, 2012 21:54
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Super Rad posted:IPA and Brett specifically seem to be at odds though since Brett beers take some time to develop and IPAs are best enjoyed on the fresh side. That's a good point. I think I'm going to give it a shot just because I have the Brett L leftover and 5 gallons of 10 gal IPA batch still sitting in primary. I'll sour 2-3 gal and add some fresh pineapple just for fun. I don't expect a huge amount of Brett flavor to develop but I guess we'll see. I could always dry hop before bottling if its not terrible. I'll report back in six months when this batch is ready to bottle.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:00
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Invisible Ted posted:Any theories as to what's going on here? Was 1.5 gallons your total batch size, or did you add water in the fermenter? What was the total size of the batch? If you added water, it's very likely that it was not mixed completely, and thus the sample you pulled for the gravity check was light. 1.000 is pretty light for final gravity, but if you actually did have an OG of 1.021, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:11
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I did top it off to 5 gallons, yeah. Looking at the description now for the malt extract I used, it recommends using 3 pounds of DME instead of 1, could that have been it, and if so, is there any way to fix it now?
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Dec 18, 2012 22:28
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A little quick back-of-the-envelope math shows that 3 pounds of LME and a pound of DME in five gallons would give an OG of about 1.031, which is still pretty mild (but sometimes mild is good, and a lot of mild beer is really good beer). if you bumped that to 3 and 3, you might expect to see an effective OG of about 1.048. There are a few things you can do here: 1) You can leave it alone and just accept that this batch is going to be mild session beer. Have three pints of an evening instead of two and plan to use more extract next time. 2) You could boil up a couple more pounds of DME in some water for ten minutes or so to sanitize it, then cool it and add it to your fermenter and stir it all up. The yeast will wake back up and have another party, and you will get a higher effective OG. You will also be increasing your volume, though, so it might cause a headspace issue in your fermenter and won't get all the way to 1.048. 3) If the other two pounds of DME are in sealed bags, it might be safe to add it to the fermenter dry and stir it in until dissolved. This is the riskiest choice, and I honestly don't suggest it, but it might work, heavy on the might. If it were me, I would probably take option 1.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:36
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Jo3sh posted:A little quick back-of-the-envelope math shows that 3 pounds of LME and a pound of DME in five gallons would give an OG of about 1.031, which is still pretty mild (but sometimes mild is good, and a lot of mild beer is really good beer). if you bumped that to 3 and 3, you might expect to see an effective OG of about 1.048. I think I'll go with 2, because having tasted it in its current state, I'm really curious what the difference would be like. Right now it has barely any bite, is really smooth and mild, with a malty aftertaste, so I'm wondering how this will affect the product.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:42
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That will probably work, but be careful of your total volume.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:57
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Jo3sh posted:That will probably work, but be careful of your total volume. I am brewing 5 gallons in a 6 gallon carboy, so I'm not too worried.
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Dec 18, 2012 23:05
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So... I wanted to make something hefty. It was fermenting nicely for about 5 days, then the bubbles slowed down. Needing the bucket it was in for some bottling (one too many batches going right now), I chucked the next set of dry hops into a carboy, racked it over, and snuck a sample from the cane to do a hydrometer reading. 1.074 had only dropped to 1.056. Hmm... ... ... ...plink In the two minutes it took me to take and read the sample (and taste it), my airlock had blown completely off. It's now in the shower with a crudely rigged blowoff tube, and after 8 hours, it's still going at this speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8_CU--L380 
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Dec 19, 2012 08:29
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almost fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2012 08:40
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almost fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2012 09:27
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almost posted:Also, does anyone know anything about these? Looks like a party pig. I know there is at least one goon in here that uses them. So yeah, it can carb your cider.
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Dec 19, 2012 16:08
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Maybe more like a Mr.Beer. If it holds pressure and has a way to inject CO2, yes, you can carbonate in it.
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Dec 19, 2012 17:16
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Are there any force-carb tablets or something like that for bottling? I'd like have more consistency than I do with a priming solution but so far all I've seen out there are sugar pills.
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Dec 19, 2012 17:18
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fullroundaction posted:Are there any force-carb tablets or something like that for bottling? I'd like have more consistency than I do with a priming solution but so far all I've seen out there are sugar pills. Not entirely sure what you are asking, but I have used brewers best and coopers conditioning tabs, and I have yet to open a gusher since I made the switch. I would recommend them over corn sugar any day. My personal preferences are the brewers best ones because the bag they come on is resealable.
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Dec 19, 2012 17:27
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What I mean is a way to carbonate the bottles without using sugar (in tablet/pill form or through a solution) like a concentrated CO2 tablet or whatever so that things like temperature, yeast suspension, etc are not a factor. e: As far as Brewer's Best, how many do you typically use? NB says 3-5. fullroundaction fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 17:32
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For bottling, really the only way to carbonate is to add sugar and let the yeast make the CO2. If you were really crazy, I guess you could look into adding dry ice to the bottles, but 1) it would be very very hard to meter well, 2) it might have contaminants that would not be good for the beer, and 3) it's actually a little dangerous to work with since it's so cold, and because it wants to change phase immediately when immersed in liquid. You could use PET bottles with Carbonator-type caps, but that basically means buying the gas side of a kegging rig anyway, so why not just keg at that point?
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Dec 19, 2012 17:49
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I use 3 tabs for regular bottles and I have been pretty happy with the carbonation, I can't imagine what 5 would be like. I think if I were trying them again for the first time I would do one bottle with 3, one with 4 and one with 5 and mark them. That way you could gauge what the amount of carbonation would be like. I think there were some dudes on hbt that were carbing with a soda stream, but I couldn't imagine that being any easier than bottle priming a batch, and I am sure that it would cost more than kegging after a few batches. Edit: drat you auto correct!
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Dec 19, 2012 17:57
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Hundred-dollar kegging rig: http://www.homebrewfinds.com/2012/12/kegging-system-pin-lock-99.html Pin locks may be the way to go right now, as the supply of ball-locks seems to be drying up. You do have to add a CO2 tank to the rig above, so it's not quite as cheap as it sounds at first.
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Dec 19, 2012 18:08
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Thanks. I planned on picking up some BB Tabs for our small batch stuff so I don't have to do any math. I'll try them out on our next beer batch. My low grav stuff always comes out fine with a priming solution but my high grav stuff is usually all over the place.
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Dec 19, 2012 18:25
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