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Is there something I'm missing about camden tablets that make them ok for wine, but not for meads or ciders or anything else? There's probably a reason they aren't used for the latter but it seems like it could be a simple way to make sure yeast outcompete anything you'd ever worry about without pasteurization like its use in winemaking.
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Nov 1, 2011 00:36
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SweetSassyMolassy posted:"Year old keg of I don't know what. Seems only half full... hmmm... better drink it."
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Nov 28, 2011 00:37
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mindphlux posted:I'm curious about this, but a step further. how the heck do breweries with fixed pipes and CIP systems really get clean? it seems like any enclosed system where you can't run a brush through would be a magnet for gunk - I mean even let's assume you transfer off a primary fermentation from a vessel to some secondary tank, and yeast sludge, trub, etc is going through those pipes. Even if you cleaned it immediately, I can't see having many thousands of dollars worth of beer on the line and just trusting that a flush of PBW and starsan or whatever cleans your tubes. same goes for plate chillers, where protein rich wort is flowing through nook and cranny ville. And if you don't have sanitary CIP ready equipment, you'll probably find your trouble spots you need to break down and scrub and then start debating that investment into CIP ready because opening lines and going into vessels is a pain in the rear end.
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Dec 4, 2011 19:23
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beetlo posted:Indeed it wouldn't. I'm trying to do things the Weihenstephan way. Of course I'm pretty sure they decoct, but whatever. Body can be complicated since it can be a very personal thing, especially since with simple mash schemes, you focus on temperature where you are trading body versus cloyness. When I first started mashing I was running off of How to Brew which made <151F range sound like the desert relegated to session beers at 35 points. Turns out final rest is kind of a bad way to modulate body depending how sweet you are looking for in your beer. If you can use the final rest to get to a beer with the sweetness and body you want, very cool. You might be playing with adjuncts or earlier rest temps to get a body to go with your sweetness depending on what you are looking for though.
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Dec 10, 2011 05:50
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I just need to brag a bit to get it off my chest but I am finally moving to start a position which isn't 100% overtime so I will finally have both the time and the money to brew instead of one or the other. I am so pumped to get out the equipment again even though I probably wont get back at it until the middle of January.
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Dec 12, 2011 19:44
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Cpt.Wacky posted:I think the concern with twist-off bottles is more about breaking them while capping rather than exploding afterwards. You can do that with any type of bottle by priming with too much sugar. I don't know if it makes any difference because I've always had pry off bottles and its honestly incredibly easy to drink a load of pry offs if you like beer in any capacity. Worst case they seal better which is worth the world in a step where oxygen is the arch enemy.
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Jan 7, 2012 01:25
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mewse posted:I cap canadian twist-offs, I don't understand what you're describing. Do American twist-offs flare towards the bottom or something? Why does the cap only touch the bottom coil of the threading?  By nature of the crimping the cap will be most intimately contacting the bottom most anything sticking off the lip. For a pry off its the lip itself, for the twist off its the bottom of the thread. That isn't to say the cap isn't touching the other threads, its just a lot more tenuous of a contact, especially when we consider where the forces will be coming from.  Here is what I mean. The pry off is an open and shut case since it has the one good contact. The twist off is a bit more complicated since it is contacting the other threads to varying effectiveness. The other threads will balance the pressure by whatever slim pickings friction has to offer. This will be pretty small compared to the contact at the bottom where the hooking around the bottom thread will provide the major constraining force, analogous to the twist offs lip but with much less glass bulk to take the force. This is less of an issue with a threaded cap since the threads on the cap provide a good, hooking contact on each of the threads and shares the love. I don't know if this would cause a measurably less amount of CO2 volumes you'd want in your beer. Personally I don't think I even care since as I said I always used pry offs for other reasons.
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Jan 7, 2012 02:55
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Chromium and molybdenum aren't heavy metals and can even be biologically active in a helpful way. The worst part about chroming coming off your taps is that your taps now look like horse poo poo. e. speaking of kegging I am in the market for a system and was wondering if anyone had guidelines on how many cornies and optionally CO2 cans you can fit into any given size of chest freezer. I could do the legwork or research eventually but that goes against the whole point of the internet. zedprime fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jan 17, 2012 |
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Jan 17, 2012 01:15
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Kegs are the cheap part of kegging since companies are basically just trying to flog their otherwise useless cornies off for whatever they can get for them. All the expensive parts are the pressurizing things which means any sort of rigged up keg will probably cost more than a legit system.
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Jan 24, 2012 03:07
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As far as oxygenating after the boil if its still hot you won't even be getting much oxygen into the wort and you'll probably notice the aftermath of that before you notice something with shelf life. Splash hot mash runnings and leave lids off erryday.
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Feb 4, 2012 18:47
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Hypnolobster posted:You may never notice a problem, but it's a giant vector for infection. The air in a house and outside is absolutely full of dust particles carrying yeast and bacteria, your house probably has some fun little skin cells floating around, your breath is full of tiny particulates of happy little sugar-consuming bacteria, etc. I guess its simple enough to spray down your lid with sanitizer and pop it on during cooling just to be sure. Personally if I had such a problem with air contamination I'd probably be more worried about my respiratory health than my beer.
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Feb 5, 2012 05:33
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Super Rad posted:Hop utilization goes up and SRM goes down when you add extract later in the boil. Hot break is pretty well agreed upon as needing to go. If you're skeptical about the hops, just try some hop tea and start wondering how anything good ever comes out of hops.
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Feb 7, 2012 02:28
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I finally went to a home brew club and against all odds it was a bunch of well adjusted adults and not at all like a meeting of Home Brew Talk forum goers in real life. Who would have thought.
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Feb 9, 2012 05:18
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Its always seemed to me everyone here leans toward batch. You need to vorlauf a few extra times compared to fly, but you don't need to worry about fluid dynamics when you can get perfect contact by stirring the mash a bit. Fly seems more attractive for large batches when the volume of water is a pain to dump manually and stir 30 pounds of grain and is begging for it for push button enthusiast stuff.
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Feb 14, 2012 03:08
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I just made my home depot shopping list for heat sticks and miscellaneous stuff I need to get my apartment brew ready. Even though ill have everything ready to go I have so much on the docket this weekend I don't actually know if ill get to brewing. I have just about run out of "one more piece". Ill probably make a stirplate sometime in the coming months and I have some breathing room in the kegging stuff I ordered and I've always wanted a mill... oh. poo poo.
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Feb 17, 2012 03:38
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Angry Grimace posted:Probably. Just realize when I say all, it's like, two recipes. A pound just seemed like a good round number.
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Feb 18, 2012 20:15
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Epoxy finished curing and my heat sticks can officially heat things without burning down the apartment complex or electrocuting anyone. I'm all on track to brew a lazy ESB tomorrow, my first beer since about September 2010. Lazy because I cheated and mixed in some Crystal 20 for body insurance and color. Between that and the supposedly low attenuation yeast I'm kind of torn on mash temperature and will probably just split the difference on the single infusion guidelines in my head and go for 150F.
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Feb 19, 2012 05:22
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Shbobdb posted:So I've moved to NYC and my old propane system is waaay too bulky. So, I'm going to make a brewing wand from a water heater. I've found some specs online but I was hoping someone had already tried it and had some suggestions. I'll just be doing basic 5 gallon AG batches. Direct heating the mash is a bit iffy. I gave it a try when the mash temp ended up a bit low (probably from striking with too little since I was eyballing despite not doing it since forever) and I burnt the poo poo out of some a bit of grain, but my mash was probably too thick to be mashing really anyway. Moral of the story is make sure your mash is thin enough to fluidize the grain and never stop moving the stick. I'll be doing as little of this as possible. Boil is just stick it in and go. One 1500w heater wasn't as boiling as much as I would have liked to, but 2 1500w in at the same time was geysering wort everywhere. I found a happy medium using one heater with a stovetop element beneath the pot modulating. Tips for brewing in confined spaces: don't throw out your back using your bathtub as a utility basin. e. Also towels. Towels everywhere. I forgot how wet brewing could be doing it outside when I didn't care if my cooling coil dribbled all over when disconnecting. Among other things. zedprime fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Feb 20, 2012 |
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Feb 20, 2012 23:43
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Who's bought kegs from Keg Connection? Can I trust the gaskets/cleaning of the valves and just give the kegs a bit of an insurance wash with PBW, or should I disassemble the whole shebang and give it all a good once over?
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Feb 22, 2012 23:58
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Imasalmon posted:A new set of o-rings is like $3. I highly suggest changing them out. The ones that come on it will probably work, but will also probably smell heavily of whatever soda was in the keg. For $3, is it worth the risk of a batch of beer or a co2 refill? I'm really just trying to get out of rigging a pin lock wrench the first time around even though I'll need to do something eventually.
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Feb 23, 2012 01:24
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Super Rad posted:You're going to have to do this eventually - may as well familiarize yourself with how your kegs are assembled/disassembled before you rack your first beer in - this makes life much easier when a keg isn't holding pressure.
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Feb 24, 2012 00:00
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There's efficiency associated with steeping. Maybe your sample temp isn't where you think it is. Maybe the hydrometer is sticking to the wall a bit. 4 points ain't nothing but a thing.
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Feb 26, 2012 20:46
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I stirred my mash with a heat stick for 15 minutes and all I got was a few degree temperature rise and a broken tip. JB Weld nooooo. Subsequently I think the whole stick part of the heat stick is a bit redundant when you encase the connections in epoxy anyway.
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Mar 3, 2012 19:18
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Jo3sh posted:You don't have to hate them, it's not like they don't have useful information over there. They just also have (in my opinion) a lot of cliquey bullshit and they seem more interested in telling in-jokes and refusing to answer questions. One of their favorite tricks (and they are by no means unique in this) is poking fun at newbies who dare to ask questions, telling them to read the FAQ and use the search. Way to be helpful and encourage people. I still kind of miss him.
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Mar 6, 2012 00:20
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There's a bar here that gives away pint glasses with your pint on Wednesdays. I was going to miss collecting bottles for bottling but now I can do glasses instead.
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Mar 8, 2012 14:08
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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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For what its worth I am incredibly disappointed in how much grain and water you can get into a 5 gallon so I would really recommend something bigger.
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Mar 15, 2012 23:30
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Every style is good for comparing two different beers made from the same mash/boil. You can pitch different yeasts and get surprisingly different beer. Read Radical Brewing, maybe I guess Designing Great Beers. The former is a classic beloved by all, the latter is a bit stuffy but some people still get good info out of it.
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Mar 19, 2012 21:17
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Spergio Leone posted:Quick question about conditioning: Can the bottled beer remain at fermentation temperature for too long? Or can they stay there without being chilled if I've calculated my priming sugar right, meaning once the yeast have eaten the sugar they'll just go dormant and nothing else will happen? It will age/go stale quicker. Its not a huge deal since stale beer is still pretty good, to a certain point you probably won't reach unless you leave a pale ale in the closet for a year.
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Mar 21, 2012 13:07
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Jo3sh posted:One more thing about Star-San - if you use it in a sprayer or anything else that agitates it, it will foam. Do not fear the foam. You don't have to worry about it. It will be pushed out of bottles and such as you fill them, and any tiny amount that actually ends up in your beer will be both unnoticeable and unharmful. Also its really convenient leak check solution that won't leave soapy residue.
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Mar 22, 2012 22:55
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Are there any brett veterans still poking about the thread? Any recommendations on how to make something not unlike Bam Biere with commercial strains? I love brett as much as the next guy so its tempting to pitch WLP653 after a saison primary but I'm worried it'd be a bit of a wrecking ball to a simpler saison base. Wyeast 3763 is tempting as a whole package solution but I am sure I'd miss the saison primary flavors. e. Dicking around ragesaq's yeast spreadsheet it looks like there is WLP670 available to consider. Probably simplest for someone just starting to consider homebrewing with brett. zedprime fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 02:14
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I'm not trying to clone Bam Biere, I was just using it as an example of something with hallmarks of brett without over doing what it means to be a saison. I was never considering 100% brett for this beer since as mentioned I really want the stuff associated with a saison primary. The summary of my post is basically fishing for either a vouch for a Wyeast or White Labs blend, otherwise a recommendation of what strain of brett to pitch in secondary that won't be counter to a saison.
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Mar 30, 2012 01:58
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Glass is less permeable than PET like water is less flammable than rocks. Plastic byproducts is almost kind of a worthwhile reason if you are worried about such things. I have trouble putting it into perspective considering I am using that vessel to make poison to drink for fun.
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Mar 30, 2012 23:16
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Imasalmon posted:Also, you're going at it too hot. I feel your pain, I'm in Houston. Sick your fermenter in a bucket of water, add ice (pro tip, frozen water bottles are cheaper, and don't continually add volume) in the bucket. Place a towel over the top of all if it, just touching the water. Change the ice twice a day. That'll get you to good temps. Or only do belgians and saisons. But, like I said,.don't worry too much about it. People did this in caves (which were much cooler, to be fair) This is such an annoying time for people to get into beer brewing cause its either getting warm soon or if you're in the south it already is hot. I don't think I want to know how many people gave up after a couple of summer brews coming out like plastic. The midwest was awesome in this regard because there's really only 4 months that are total trash for brewing au natural. Now I'm in Louisiana too and I've had my air conditioning on since the middle of March. Glad I spent my poor student brewing years up north though.
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Apr 4, 2012 02:51
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Imasalmon posted:
My Panamanian friend agrees anything over 80 is hot. I'll admit even with all the hot I've been through I am not looking forward to the humidity this summer. That's what the homebrew is for, I suppose.
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Apr 4, 2012 15:22
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mewse posted:I'm not in the states so I have no idea where I could get a pipette cheaply, online or local. I have tupperware just about the right size for 1 tsp for what it is worth.
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Apr 5, 2012 03:01
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Docjowles posted:1) Yeah that temp controller looks good and isn't a terrible price for one that can hold to with 1 degree (mine is analog and only good to 4 degrees, got it for about $60 after tax). If I'd known when I bought it how much I would love the hobby, I'd have shelled out another measly $30 for a better controller I get soapy flavors out of commercial beer that I never did before and then it seemingly went away too. Hop sourcing issues or something? Nothing intuitive jumps out for why it would be related to smaller volumes.
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Apr 5, 2012 13:20
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That is awesome
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Went over someones brew day with one of those Sabco rigs. It was... interesting. It seems like it takes more attention than just leaving it on its own. But then it doesn't take all that much attention so it'd be otherwise boring unless you invite people over to make a mini party of it.
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Apr 8, 2012 00:37
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Zakath posted:I just got my 10 gallon cooler from Amazon, and I'm ready to make my mash tun for my first all-grain brew. Anyone have advice for a good false bottom + bulkhead combo? I'm a little bit unsure about what I should get, but I do know the inner diameter of the cooler is 12". Depends how you plan to sparge. If you are doing batch, anything that can filter grain will work. I have a screen of mesh I cut out from a metal collander /strainer. People hook up bazooka tubes with the insert taken out to the inner fitting with some success but I've heard of issues doing this on a cylinder. For the valve, get whatever is the biggest diameter that will fit, a matching female whatever for the inside, and a gasket. Depending what you decide for internals, you may be more worried about exactly what sort of fitting you use inside.
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Apr 11, 2012 13:29
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Jo3sh posted:Personally, I love the experience of drinking beer as it warms. There are a shitload of interesting flavor perceptions I get from beer (especially big beer) as the temperature changes. Hops recede from the front and move to the swallow as malt comes up and dominates the early flavor. Plenty of times I have sat, nursing a glass as I tried to warm it with my hands so it would just come into its own. But then you need to make sure it isn't bad beer or you taste all of the bad stuff in it even more.
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Apr 13, 2012 23:21
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