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I racked my pale ale to a secondary on top of some gelatin just to clear it up a bit. I normally wouldn't bother fining a test batch of pale ale like this that has no real hop particulate in it, but my test sample + the carboy immediately reminded me of cat pee, so I felt like it might be helpful. It definitely is clearing, although I'm slightly concerned/wondering about the amount of headspace in my smaller carboy since the batch was kind of small, although the beer in generally seemed to have a lot of dissolved CO2 coming out of solution when I took samples so maybe that kept the oxygen at bay. (Although it's not a huge deal if it gets oxidized a bit, really, it's just a test run of all my equipment/process)
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Mar 8, 2012 20:43
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I understand why using a CO2 dispenser (a wine preserver) would be a good idea for bottling, ie preventing oxidation and therefore flavor drift; would filling your headspace with CO2 this way be useful? The explanation about aeration earlier made sense, but does the yeast take advantage of the available O2 in the headspace during fermentation or is that just doing harm?
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Mar 8, 2012 20:49
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During fermentation all of the oxygen in the headspace is going to be blown out by CO2 coming from the yeast, you don't need to worry about that. If you're using a secondary at all it's worth purging that with CO2 before racking in, though, if you are worried about oxidation.
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Mar 8, 2012 20:54
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Splizwarf posted:I understand why using a CO2 dispenser (a wine preserver) would be a good idea for bottling, ie preventing oxidation and therefore flavor drift; would filling your headspace with CO2 this way be useful? The explanation about aeration earlier made sense, but does the yeast take advantage of the available O2 in the headspace during fermentation or is that just doing harm? It's not necessary during fermentation because the yeast produce CO2 as a fermentation by product so it gets pushed out the airlock as those bubbles. Priming a beer is a fermentation activity and any oxygen in the headspace of the bottle is consumed by the remaining yeast in suspension. If you use a counterpressure-bottle filler to put in pre-carbed and/or filtered beer, you generally do purge the bottle of air prior to filling, since the yeast has been filtered out.
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Mar 8, 2012 20:55
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If you were really paranoid I suppose you could do that when racking to secondary, in case you got any splashing. But I'd guess the head space is completely displaced with CO2 within the first few hours of primary fermentation, before it can really do any harm.
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Mar 8, 2012 20:56
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Is that beersmith software worth it? Also doh, I caught up too late on this thread and missed the 30$ prime carboy :/
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Mar 8, 2012 21:08
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What would happen if I pulled a vacuum on the secondary fermenter after racking into it?
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Mar 8, 2012 21:12
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Jo3sh posted:Also, it's worth pointing out that the recipes in BCS are written for a slightly lower efficiency (70%?) than a lot of people get, and also they assume you lose a lot to trub and such, so the target volume is larger than you may expect. I personally feel that they goofed up at least some of the conversions to all-grain in the bargain. That confirms my suspicions. When I make my budget APA, I only use 10 pounds of grain and get an OG of ~1.054. As long a my dunkelweizen isn't too sweet, I won't care.
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Mar 8, 2012 21:27
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ChiTownEddie posted:Is that beersmith software worth it? I personally love it. http://beercalculus.hopville.com/recipe works well, but I often find myself in places with no internet, and want to pull up and tweak recipes.
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Mar 8, 2012 21:37
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Beersmith is pretty awesome. I don't like the interface very much but featurewise it's very powerful.
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Mar 8, 2012 21:40
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Yeah, beersmith is very very powerful software compared with any other brewing software, but it's got a pretty dumb interface and it takes a while to move around in it efficiently. Once you're used to the quirks, it's fantastic.
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Mar 8, 2012 21:50
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ChiTownEddie posted:Is that beersmith software worth it? If you're not brewing all grain then all Beersmith is doing for you is store your recipes and do some simple math for you that can easily be done by yourself or using something free like hopville's recipe maker. If you brew all-grain, though it really starts to become worth it. Once you learn to compensate BeerSmith's suggestions for your real-life setup BeerSmith becomes priceless - water volumes, temps, water treatment, even decoction mashes can all be easily calculated. The amount of things they have taken into consideration is actually rather impressive.
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Mar 8, 2012 22:08
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digitalhifi posted:Pints at the Saucer range from $4 to $6 for most standard beers. Some Belgians and really big stuff is a little pricier.
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Mar 8, 2012 23:53
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Let's talk about diacetyl rests. Last year I did a Helles and a traditional Oktoberfest using WLP833. In both cases, after the boil, I cooled the wort down to ~70F, then stuck it in the fermentation chamber with the temp controller set at ~42F. Next morning after the temp had dropped, I oxygenated and pitched the yeast (a two-stage starter, tube -> 2L -> 4L) and let the temp rise to 48F. 4 weeks of fermentation later, I lowered the temp to lagering, then transferred to a clean carboy and put it in the lagering fridge. Based on Jamil Z.'s statements on his podcast, in both cases I skipped the diacetyl rest entirely. His claim is that if you pitch super low and let it rise to fermentation temperature, you don't stress the yeast enough to cause substantial diacetyl production. The results seemed to support this claim: neither of these beers has any issues with diacetyl (and in fact both are awesome. WLP833 is a huge winner IMO). Fast forward to now: I'm making a Czech pils using Wyeast 2278. I was reading around and several people have claimed that it's a bad one for diacetyl production. Now, I followed the same procedure as before: chill to 40ish, oxygenate, pitch a two stage 4L starter, and let it rise to fermentation temp. Everything is going well, but now I'm thinking maybe I'll actually do a true D-rest on this beer in week 4 (let it rise to say 65 for three days, then chill 5F per day to the mid 30s for lagering). I guess my question is this: does anyone have direct experience with WLP833 and Wyeast 2278 to comment on how they compare with regard to diacetyl production? Do you guys do D-rests, or is this falling out of favor like secondaries on ales?
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Mar 9, 2012 00:40
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Random question, is it ok to use an airlock with a starter? I just made my first starter with my DIY stir-plate and everything seemed to go pretty well:   Does the flask have enough oxygen in it to work with an airlock? If not, I could just switch to using some tin-foil, but the airlock seems more sanitary to me. Also, in case anyone is interested, I used a 4-wire fan with a PWM input and a micro-controller for the stir-plate. Build info here
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Mar 9, 2012 01:08
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Scottw330 posted:Random question, is it ok to use an airlock with a starter? I'm absolutely unqualified to answer this, but last weekend when I popped into my LHBS the guy had a yeast culture going in a flask with an airlock on it. He swirled it around for us when we asked about it. Said it was a fine way to scavenge yeast (from a Young's London Gold in that case)
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Mar 9, 2012 01:17
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Yeah it's fine. Much like a full size fermentation, CO2 from yeast activity is going to drive all the oxygen out of the headspace anyway. Air isn't going to come back down through the foil, it's pretty much one way no matter what you cover it with.
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Mar 9, 2012 02:00
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For what it's worth, I never airlock my starters. I sanitize a piece of cheesecloth and a rubber band; after pitching into the starter, I flame the lip and then cheesecloth/rubberband go on with an inverted plastic container that I heated and bent so that it does not seal against the mouth of the starter. The cheesecloth is to prevent flies from finding their way into the starter. Unless you have a strong wind blowing in your kitchen contaminants aren't going to make their way up under the plastic top and over the lip of the flask. The rate of CO2 production from a starter is never so high that you won't get at least a little flow of O2 into the head space as long as you're not sealing it up tightly. This is especially true because a proper vortex will cause continuous air movement inside the starter flask, which increases the rate of gas exchange. Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff also recommend not stopping the top of your stirred starter. From p. 135 of Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation: quote:When using a stir plate, do not plug up the starter vessel with an airlock. A sanitized piece of aluminum foil, cotton plug, or breathable foam stopper is all you need. Bacteria and wild yeast cannot crawl, and a loose-fitting cover will allow for better gas exchange.
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Mar 9, 2012 02:31
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kwantam posted:Unless you have a strong wind blowing in your kitchen contaminants aren't going to make their way up under the plastic top and over the lip of the flask. Alright, I think I'll try the aluminum foil method next time. I don't really know how airborne contaminants work, but it sounds like I am being a bit too  about them.This year I want to attempt a lager and a high OG barley wine, so I am trying to perfect my starter technique now!
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Mar 9, 2012 02:46
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My flask just came with a foam stopper, so I just use that and haven't had any problems. I just figured they all came with those.
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Mar 9, 2012 03:25
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I've just used aluminum foil on my starters, and it works fine. The place I usually put my stir plate has a cabinet over it, so the airlock doesn't fit. Once again, Jo3sh chooses the lazy solution.
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Mar 9, 2012 03:44
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Ah, drinking my first homebrew, an Irish Red kit. It reminds me of a milder Lakefront Fixed Gear. There was little to no head, however. Is that normal for the style?
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Mar 9, 2012 03:44
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icehewk posted:Ah, drinking my first homebrew, an Irish Red kit. It reminds me of a milder Lakefront Fixed Gear. There was little to no head, however. Is that normal for the style? Depends. Was it not fizzy enough or did the foam just not stick around very long?
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Mar 9, 2012 03:50
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It's halfway through conditioning so it was somewhat fizzy but the foam was gone almost instantly. I have a stout in the primary that I used a pound of flaked barley in, and that seems like it'll have a much better head already based on aerating it.
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Mar 9, 2012 04:30
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icehewk posted:It's halfway through conditioning so it was somewhat fizzy but the foam was gone almost instantly. I have a stout in the primary that I used a pound of flaked barley in, and that seems like it'll have a much better head already based on aerating it. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Mar 9, 2012 |
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Mar 9, 2012 05:25
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Putting an airlock on a stir plated starter is fairly counterproductive. You want air to sanitarily come into the flask to help evacuate the CO2. Evacuating the CO2 is about as important in making a starter as is keeping the yeast in suspension so they are tricked into thinking the population density is lower than it is communally safe to be.
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Mar 9, 2012 06:37
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I really should pick up a decent microscope and do some cell counts of starters with airlocks vs foil covered tops. The truth is that regardless of what I found out I'd keep doing foil just because it's easier to keep completely sanitary.
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Mar 9, 2012 06:52
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kwantam posted:Let's talk about diacetyl rests... I haven't used Wyeast 2278, but WLP833 is my usual lager strain right now. My last lagers I made (still lagering now) were a Vienna and a Maibock. It took 2 weeks at ~48* to reach what I expected to be final gravity. I have a very similar cool and pitch technique as you. The sample did not taste buttery, nor did I detect the typical diaceytl oily mouthfeel. FWIW because I wanted to use the fermentation fridge I transfered the lagers to secondary (kegs) and left them in the freezer while I fermented my next beer for 9 days at 67*. Now the lagers are making there way down to 31* where they will stay for a month or two.
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Mar 9, 2012 16:07
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I have a couple questions that have been on my mind. I'm doing an extract pale ale kit this sunday and I wanted to try to improve the clarity of my beer. My idea was to stretch a nylon paint strainer bag over the top of my brew pot for when I add the pellet hops. Are there any side effects (besides burning the back if it rests on the bottom of the pot) I should be aware of by doing this? First that comes to mind is maybe some off flavors from the nylon but I've seen other people do this in other homebrew forums/blogs. On a related note, I have a flameout addition of Cascade. Now my plan with the strainer bag was to pull out the bag after the 60 minute boil, let it drain gently and discard THEN add the wort chiller and cool the wort. Is there some amount of time I should wait for the flameout addition to soak before removing the bag? Do flameout calculations account for being in the wort the entire time the wort is being chilled? My final question is in regards to fermentation temperature. I bought a large rubbermaid container that I plan on using as a DIY swamp cooler for the fermentation chamber. How long do you really need to regulate the temperature? My ambient temperature in my house is ~70 and it can hotter (lots of large windows and poor ventilation usually) so I hoped to put the fermentor into the container filled with ~60 degree water and hopefully the keeps the temperature within a good range for the yeast. I know fermentation can last ~5 days or so. Do you need to keep the temperature in that range for conditioning as well? I planned on letting the beer sit about 3 weeks in primary and then bottling it. Should I try to maintain the temperature for the full 3 weeks or can I let it warm to ambient temps after all the fermentation is complete?
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Mar 9, 2012 16:49
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So, I recently lagered a bock and was shooting for an abv of around 6.5 or 7. I not only got a better efficiency, but attenuated more than I thought I would, making the final abv around 8.3. Needless to say, the booze is a little much. My question is if it might be a good idea to add some grade of syrup back to the beer at a rate that would get the fg more in line with something like a dopplebock. I'm aiming to decrease the alcoholic sensation via an increase in sugar (I'll probably use a darker lyles syrup. Recommend me one if you think a certain grade may work better for this). I can do all this steriley and am planning on kegging and refrigerating it. Am I doing this right?
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Mar 9, 2012 17:08
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Even if it's in a fridge adding sugars will get some of the yeast back into production, albeit very slowly. Either drink the beer quickly or crush a quarter of a campden tab and throw it in before adding in the sugars.
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Mar 9, 2012 17:35
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lazerwolf posted:I have a couple questions that have been on my mind. If your kit doesn't include irish moss, then use irish moss at the recommended dose (I think it's like 1/4 tsp at 15 mins). This will help a ton.
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Mar 9, 2012 17:37
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For you guys doing lagers they really don't need to take forever. As an extreme example Victory can crank out their Prima Pils in 21 days, and it's one of the best pilsners out there. That's in a production setting of course but you don't need to ferment for a month and lager for two to make a killer beer, and doing that with something hoppy like a pilsner will probably make for an inferior beer since you'll lose hop character. Process for my lagers (which are always average gravity, generally 1.045-1.055 OG) is to pitch my yeast at 2-4* below my desired fermentation temp and let it ferment for roughly 2 weeks depending on when the yeast get finished. Then I'll raise it to 60* for 2-3 days for a diacetyl rest. It's probably not all that necessary for diacetyl but it doesn't hurt and it helps the yeast finish cleaning up any sort of off flavors there might be. After that lager it for 2-4 weeks depending on if it's a hoppy beer. You can probably get away with lagering it for just a week if you wanted, especially if it's going into kegs and will be cold conditioning in the kegerator. lazerwolf posted:My idea was to stretch a nylon paint strainer bag over the top of my brew pot for when I add the pellet hops. Are there any side effects (besides burning the back if it rests on the bottom of the pot) I should be aware of by doing this? First that comes to mind is maybe some off flavors from the nylon but I've seen other people do this in other homebrew forums/blogs. No problems with using the paint strainer bag, I do it when I use whole hops. Just make sure it doesn't touch the bottom of the pot, I use a clothespin to keep it attached to the side of the pot. If you're worried about off flavors boil the bag first. Most people sanitize their chillers by placing it in the boiling wort for the last 15 minutes, that's what I do so I just leave the hop bag in while the wort is chilling and pull it out when it's done. If you sanitize it some other way I would just leave your hop bag in there for 5-10 minutes after flameout before you pull it out and start to chill. I used to do the swamp cooler thing before I got a chest freezer to control my temps, and found that if you control the temperature for the first 72 hours or so that's the most critical time. Most of your fermentation will take place during that time and letting the beer warm up after that will help your yeast to finish fermenting. The important thing to remember is to try and avoid temperature swings, since these stress the yeast. If your beer accidentally gets up to 72* when you were trying to ferment at 66*, don't add a bunch of frozen water bottles to knock it back down to 66* all of a sudden. This will make some of your yeast crap out on you. Just get it down to maybe 70* or 68* slowly. Also yeast will clean up some of the off flavors they create from slightly too high fermentation temps, so leaving your beer in primary for 2-3 weeks can be helpful if you do get a little too high on your temps. Once your primary fermentation is complete you can let the beer temp rise to room temp and it won't have any ill effects, same thing for conditioning in the bottle. Eco RI posted:So, I recently lagered a bock and was shooting for an abv of around 6.5 or 7. I not only got a better efficiency, but attenuated more than I thought I would, making the final abv around 8.3. Needless to say, the booze is a little much. My question is if it might be a good idea to add some grade of syrup back to the beer at a rate that would get the fg more in line with something like a dopplebock. I'm aiming to decrease the alcoholic sensation via an increase in sugar (I'll probably use a darker lyles syrup. Recommend me one if you think a certain grade may work better for this). I can do all this steriley and am planning on kegging and refrigerating it. Am I doing this right? I've never heard of anyone doing that, and it seems to me like it wouldn't work like you're envisioning. If it's too alcoholic feel free to dilute it with (sterile) water when you go to bottle/keg it, that's what I've done when my OG was more than what I wanted or I boiled off too much. Just add the water then rack your beer on top of it to ensure it mixes in well. If you still want to try adding the syrup maybe do it on a per pint basis as you serve. This way if it doesn't work you don't wreck the whole batch with trying it. If it does work and you keg, you could then go back and add syrup to the whole batch in the keg. Josh Wow fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Mar 9, 2012 |
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Mar 9, 2012 17:37
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I also use a paint strainer bag for my hops - I use pellets - and it works great. The huge majority of the hop goop stays in the bag. I also don't worry about it touching the bottom of the pot. As I understand the physics of heat transfer, the liquid in the pot means that the inside surface of the pot really can't be any hotter than the boiling point of the wort. As more energy is added to the metal, it is absorbed by the liquid, causing phase change. The heat absorbed in the phase change cools the rest of the mass, keeping it at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. And anyway, convection keeps the bag off the bottom pretty reliably in my experience.
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Mar 9, 2012 18:19
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Kegerator at a reasonable price: http://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-KRS-2100-Refrigerated-Beverage-Dispenser/dp/tech-data/B000HJVYDQ Free shipping if you have Prime. Couple bucks cheaper at WalMart, free shipping to your local store: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Kegorator-Beer-Dispenser-Mini-Barrel/5679263#rr?wmlspartner=isIkAyUyNbM&sourceid=24470324743860490914
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Mar 9, 2012 19:57
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I'm entering my first homebrew competition soon. It's fairly unorganized, as are most homebrewing activities in my area, but I'm entering a Red IPA and a stout. Wish me luck.
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Mar 9, 2012 20:05
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Getting ready to brew this weekend and I'm shooting for an American amber somewhere near a Fat Tire, though not necessarily trying to clone it. I want more of the toasty bread flavor to come through. Here's what I've come up with: Batch: 3 gallons BIAB, shooting for 1.055 at 70% efficiency Grains: 5lb American 2 row, .5lb Biscuit, .5lb Victory, .5lb Crystal 60, mashed at 152 for 90 minutes Hops: .5oz Willamette at 60m, .5oz Willamette at 30m, .5oz Willamette at 5m. Yeast: Safale US-05 This is the first recipe that I'm formulating myself so I just want to make sure there's not some sort of glaringly obvious Bad Thing going on here. edit: Changed the hopping to tone back the IBUs a little internet celebrity fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Mar 9, 2012 |
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Mar 9, 2012 21:03
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Jo3sh posted:Kegerator at a reasonable price: Help me understand something here? I'm just beginning to scratch the surface of kegging and the knowledge surrounding it... One of the user photos shows two 5-gal kegs + a CO2 tank inside, but there's one tap on the top. I'm assuming the person who took that photo would have to do a lot of line switching or something like that to make use of the tap? Or would that just be a convenient way to keep them both refrigerated, and I shouldn't switch back and forth between which line is connected to the tap, as that makes things taste lovely/contaminated/etc? Do they have easy ways to turning what's being sold on those pages into dual-tap dispensers without making the whole setup a lot larger?
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Mar 9, 2012 21:34
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internet celebrity posted:Batch: 3 gallons BIAB, shooting for 1.055 at 70% efficiency What kind of pot do you use for your 3 gallon BIAB batches? Do you do everything on your stove-top?
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Mar 9, 2012 22:00
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wattershed posted:
It looks like he only has one of the kegs hooked up, you can see the bare post on the keg on the left. A very cheap solution is to just get a party tap for one of the kegs and open the door whenever you want beer from that keg. I don't have a kegerator, but I can't imagine modding it to a two-tap setup being all that hard. Probably just a matter of buying a new tower to attach to the top, however, if you look at the prices in the link below, you may just be better off buying a minifridge and a two tap tower and building it yourself... http://stores.kegconnection.com/Categories.bok?category=*Components%3ATowers%3ABeer+Towers
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Mar 9, 2012 22:31
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