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Hello brewgods, I am still on the first few pages of the thread, but I have a question that's quite relevant to a brew I have going, so I don't have time to read 300 pages to get an answer. This is my 5th or so brew, including a couple where I was assisting more experienced brewers with their own set-ups. I'm in San Francisco, so all of my equipment, all of my recipes, and my general brew instructions have come from the people at SF Brewcraft, who seem knowledgeable enough. However, their instructions have us using a two-step fermentation process - primary plastic fermenter, then moving to a glass carboy after 6 or 7 days. Since reading more about brewing, here and elsewhere, I've seen a lot of people suggest a.) that two fermenters is unnecessary for most beers, and b.) that most beers should sit in primary for at least 14 days. The current beer we have going is a Chocolate Stout (soon to become a Mexican Chocolate Stout thanks to our wonderful spice tincture, but more on that later). I totally botched my OG reading; I forgot to measure temperature, so I got 1.041 at I don't know what temperature (I suspect around 80-85, but I really don't know). We also didn't cool our wort well enough, so our initial fermentation temperatures were quite high (75-77 for the first day or two, then down to 70). Anyway, my main question is - when should we move this to secondary? 7 days? 14 days? I haven't seen airlock activity lately, but I also haven't had time to sit and watch it. If it has stalled out, would moving it to secondary and adding some priming sugar help at all? Is that a terrible idea? I know this batch is kind of a mess, which is why I am very excited to do a better job at the next one.
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Apr 28, 2013 02:00
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ChickenArise posted:I don't think you need to secondary unless you want to rack onto something. You can if you want, of course, and I'd do it once your gravity is stable. Which brings the next question: what's your gravity now? I just measured it at 1.010. I don't see any airlock activity. Should I do something about that? Possibly the priming sugar idea I said above? It's also a bit warmer than I thought, since I was just looking at the sticker thermometer on the fermenter before, not actually testing the liquid. It's more like 72.5 F. That makes it appear that it's about 4.33% abv at the moment - does that make sense? I've really just followed directions very literally before, this is my first time actually trying to understand the process. It's wonderful, but somewhat overwhelming.
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Apr 28, 2013 07:08
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zedprime posted:1.010 is about done dude. You can check it in a day or two to confirm primary fermentation has given up the ghost. From there its a matter of preference. 2 weeks in primary, or otherwise bulk, plus 2 weeks bottle carbonating is the most popular fermentation scheme with people uncorrupted by the secondary bug. Just make the beer and drink it and you will have the fastest idea of what or what not to do. We are leaning towards just racking it to secondary tomorrow, since it does seem like it's done. We want to do a secondary so that it can clarify (it looks a lot like terrible cloudy poo poo water atm), and so that we can add our cacao/spice tincture to it, since it's going to be a Mexican Chocolate Stout. Does this make sense? I've seen a lot about the uselessness of secondary, but I've done all my beers that way, since that's what the brewstore I frequent recommends. I understand it's probably a newbie crutch, but it feels like we might need that crutch for this batch. For the next one, it'd be nice to do a really no-nonsense pale and just do a quick primary fermentation, just to get a feel for that.
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Apr 28, 2013 07:49
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Thanks for the good advice. I get what you mean - this is totally about figuring out what sort of process works best for me, so that's why I want to try this process, then do something different and see what I like better.zedprime posted:Racking onto things for flavor Can you just explain this, though? I don't quite get the "racking onto things" part. On a related note - what brewing books do people recommend? I'd like to get a good one for my commute reading. It will also save you guys many more stupid questions, I'm sure.
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Apr 28, 2013 08:08
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Alright - two questions. 1.) I just did my first partial mash brew with our new wort chiller (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BBGZWZU/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ), and it still took like 90 min to cool the wort. Our tap water was about 65 F at the time. Is that weird? Should we be leaving the wort still while this runs water, or trying to get it moving around a lot? What is the secret to fast cooling?! 2.) I just attempted to build my first partial mash recipe from scratch, a sort-of Chinook Double IPA - http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/tba-ipa-1?new_recipe=true Any thoughts? Vinnie Cilurzo advises using dextrose to get a lighter bodied Double IPA, which sounds good to me. I also feel dumb using 6lb LME and 1lb DME, but our store sells LME in 6 lb buckets, and buying 1 lb buckets of it seems ridiculous. Any other tips to get the OG up?
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May 28, 2013 07:15
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Midorka posted:1: Yes you're supposed to move the wort. Otherwise you're only cooling a limited area while keeping the heat retained in the wort. My buddy makes a circular motion while I prefer to "shake" the chiller up and down. I do this because it aerates the wort while releasing the heat. Both work great. Thanks for the responses, guys. Definitely good to know about the wort chiller. As for the IIPA recipe - Kaiho, I did notice that the FG is pretty high, but I am already using what feels like a pretty decent amount of Dextrose to thin it out. Does it seem wise to bump up the Dextrose, or is there something else I can do with the malts to get it to a lower FG? Maybe a different yeast that people like for big IPAs?
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May 28, 2013 17:40
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http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/a-beer-that-inhabits-us-a-place-that-intoxicates-us?new_recipe=true Does this look like a decent Cream ale recipe? I took some tips from a couple sources (including http://beerdujour.com/Recipes/Jamil/The_Jamil_Show_-_Cream_Ale.html). Any tips?
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Jun 1, 2013 21:59
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crazyfish posted:You need enzymes from grains to extract the sugars from the corn. Add a pound of 6 row to the corn. Ah, that makes total sense, but I completely forgot about it. Thanks!
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Jun 1, 2013 22:14
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Jo3sh posted:If you want to use the flaked corn, you'll have to mash it with some malt that has diastatic power, like 2-row. Flaked grains won't convert on their own. What you would get if you did mash it would be neutral, though, so I'd probably just drop it. You could increase the extract and/or the corn sugar to compensate. Ah, now I'm torn. The flaked corn is a sort of thematic element of the beer, since it's being brewed in honor of our friend from a particularly corny part of Ohio. I picked a Cream Ale because of how iconic the use of flaked corn seemed to be in the style. The dextrose in the brew doesn't seem as significantly "corn" as flaked corn, so I think I might go ahead with it anyway... edit: really classy double post. sorry.
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Jun 1, 2013 22:23
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Thufir posted:So I found a mini-fridge on the side of the road on my way home from work today and it seems to still work. I was thinking of using it for a fermentation chamber but I have some size issues. A better bottle with a 3-piece airlock on it is about 1" too tall to fit in it. A 6.5g bucket would fit, but it bumps into the freezer portion of the mini-fridge, which I gather generally can't be removed (but maybe can be bent?) Are the s-bend airlocks particularly shorter than the 3-piece? Alternately, does anyone know of a squatter fermentation vessel than the normal buckets / better bottles? On this note: I recently got a used mini fridge for use as a fermentation chamber, but I'd like to replace the filthy door gasket. Its an older Sanyo model, so the replacement part is like $25 bucks, a significant portion of the Craigslist price. Anybody know of any other products we can use to replace the gasket? Some generic materials we can use to seal it it up? I'm not very handy, but I'd like to try...
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Jun 13, 2013 01:48
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I'm looking for a decent lager recipe, perhaps preferably a clone of Sam Adams Boston Lager (for thematic purposes). Also, we just got a fridge for lagering, so suggestions on that process would be welcome as well. I'll also be reading up on it in whatever various brewing books I can get my hands on.
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Jul 8, 2013 19:17
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Marshmallow Blue posted:I can mail you some Boston tap water if you pay the shipping. Get real authentic (except I think it's brewed in PA) Bad Munki posted:No worries, I got ya covered in that case. I'll just head down to lake Erie and fill up a couple buckets for you. Thanks, guys! But I was hoping to use Jim Koch's frothing spittle for the mash, so...
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Jul 8, 2013 19:29
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Building a cooler mash tun today. Looking at Palmer's guide and http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Converting_a_cooler_to_a_mash_tun#Rectangular - anyone have any other guides or advice that might be helpful. We are total idiots when it comes to this stuff, so advice is appreciated.
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Jul 28, 2013 22:12
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I'm going to be doing my first all-grain brew on Friday, and I'm curious if any Bay Area brewing goons do anything about the water. I'll probably ask the guys at SF BrewCraft,but I wanted to know if anybody here had any advice. I know Palmer says I'm supposed to get a water report and do math and stuff, BUT anybody want to save me the  ?
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Jul 31, 2013 21:32
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Jo3sh posted:Anchor brews with city water. They do charcoal filter it to strip chlorine, but they don't do anything about mineral content so far as I can recall. Good point. Great - so I'll probably Campden instead of charcoal, but woo! So excited to be moving to all-grain.
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Jul 31, 2013 23:03
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Had our first all-grain brew day with this mash tun we just built based on these plans: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Converting_a_cooler_to_a_mash_tun#Cylindrical It was a disaster. Every possible thing went wrong but most of that was just us being dumbasses and forgetting all the things we've learned from all of our extract brews. Well, that and completely loving up building the tun. That sucked, but it didn't end up leaking, so there's that. We DID, however, have really lovely efficiency. My brain is too fried to do the real math, but for Palmer's really simple efficiency rubric here: http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter18-6.html , we scored a 22.something. Not so great. I'm fairly certain we were just lautering too fast, and we didn't really have our sparge set-up thought through very well. What do you guys do to make sure that you aren't lautering too fast? Also, does aeration/oxidation matter while lautering? Palmer says it does a lot, but I find that confusing, because it doesn't seem to matter at any other point before pitching. The wort is going to end up being mixed with shittons of oxygen as you boil it and do everything else - why does it matter if it splashes or bubbles a little bit during lautering?
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Aug 3, 2013 07:54
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Alright - I think I figured out that having NO loving IDEA how to actually batch sparge might have been the cause of yesterday's batch's low efficiency. Next week's will be much better, I'm sure. On a related note - for our next batch, my brew buddies and I kind of wanted to do something with a bit of wheat - either a wheat beer or a saison, or maybe a belgian. Are these manageable for people who are quite new to all-grain? If so, which is most manageable? Does wheat actually make it any more likely for sparges to get stuck, or is that just oats and others? We're down to hack through challenges, but I've heard about wheat and oats and other non-barley grains causing stuck sparges, and I'd like to do something on the easy/simple side for this one, since we're trying to make it our first really successful all-grain brew.
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Aug 3, 2013 23:36
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I'm going to be bottling a Sam Adams Boston Ale clone this weekend, using the East Coast Ale yeast strain. I'd like to reuse the cake immediately (my first time doing so). What styles would be good to pitch onto an East Coast Ale cake? I assume stouts, porters, and other particularly "ale-y" styles, but anything else? We've been making a lot of Pale Ales, and we were already planning a Russian Imperial Stout for the week after. Should we just save the cake for a week for that? And if we did so, would it be okay to just refrigerate it for that week, then pitch without making a starter?
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Aug 13, 2013 20:07
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This is similar to a question/discussion last page, but since it's a different brew/style, I thought I'd ask for myself. Today I brewed this http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/tom-ronsons-ipa/brew-logs/101859 As you can see from the gravities pre and post boil, our efficiency SUCKS. According to a Brewer's Friend calculator, our efficiency was in the mid 50%s. This was only our second all-grain brew in our round cooler mash tun with a stainless steel braid. I am trying to figure out why our efficiency sucked so bad, and I am guessing it had to do with our low mash temp. Since it's supposed to be a pretty dry, alcoholic IPA, I thought mashing low at like 149-150F would be a good idea. We basically mashed for 60 min, then vorlaufed and lautered for 25ish, then did a batch sparge at ~168, as calculated by Brewtoad's Mash Water calculator. Should we have mashed for a lot longer since we were at such low temps (high/mid 140s)? Is that a reasonable explanation for such execrable efficiency? I mean, a 5.5% or 6% IPA isn't the end of the world, but gently caress do I want to improve our process.
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Aug 26, 2013 06:48
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Midorka posted:
Just that it's supposed to be a 7% IPA. I (somewhat stupidly) used the term "alcoholic" to designate a high ABV. Apologies.
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Aug 26, 2013 07:09
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World's Biggest Dumbass weighing in. I only started collecting and reusing yeast cakes recently, so I haven't really gotten a system down. Specifically, I was too COMPLETELY STUPID to label them, thinking that my system of chronological ordering in the fridge would be clear enough for my brain. Of course, it wasn't. Here's where I am at the moment: On Thursday, I started making a starter for this Russian Imperial Stout we are brewing on Sunday. Since I was in a hurry, and being a frightening genius, I am 90% sure I accidentally grabbed the Saison yeast cake in the fridge instead of the East Coast Ale yeast cake. So now I have a starter (with wheat DME, no less, since that's all I had) of Saison yeast, but I need to brew a big, fat (1.096) RIS tomorrow. What do I do? Do I make a quick starter this afternoon of the proper yeast, and just try to use a lot since it won't have much time? or Do I just go get like 3 or 4 packets of US-05 at the LHBS and rehydrate/pitch those tomorrow? Feel free to make fun of my dumb rear end. I am certainly going to start labeling my yeast cakes like a non-idiot.
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Sep 21, 2013 16:59
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My reign of idiocy seems to continue. I bottled a Saison (http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/untitled-saison-36) last Sunday, and just heard a bottle bomb explode in the closet a few minutes ago. I cleaned up after it, then cooled and opened another and got a LOT of fizz. I was able to pour some into a couple of glasses though, and it wasn't ALL fizz - there was enough to drink someone. It didn't taste obviously infected. It's possible that it is and that I don't have a refined enough palate to taste it, but I've been getting pretty alright at tasting beers lately (at least compared to how I was). I do have a lead besides possible infection - when I was bottling there was a strange moment when measuring out the sugar. I poured out all the sugar that I had and realized it was only 76g (I think) of the 190-something that the NB calculator told me I needed. So I ran to the store to get some, came back, and found the scale had shut off, and that I couldn't re-tare it to the vessel I had the sugar in. Now, I figured that I remembered the number properly, so I just added enough sugar to complete what I thought was the proper measurement, but of course it's possible I remembered totally wrong, and that I added a crazy amount of sugar to a beer style that already has high carbonation. Of course, it's also possible that bottling re-awakened the Dupont yeast a lot, and it chewed the beer lower than 1.012. I am going to test for that tomorrow. Either way - what should I do with these 30-something potential bombs? Is it worth trying to refrigerate them? I don't have a separate beer fridge (or I only have one that's currently a fermentation chamber), and I don't want them popping in my house fridge. Do I just have to dump them? 
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Sep 23, 2013 09:14
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I've got a Russian Imperial Stout that I brewed two weeks ago that appears to be done. It was supposed to finish at 1.024 and is now at 1.017, though I will take another sample today to make sure it's stopped. My question is: is there a real difference between aging a beer like this in secondary vs in bottles? If so, what is it? I'd love to free up the carboy space ASAP, but if it will help the beer age better to rack it to secondary and leave it for a while, then I will do that. It's my first beer of this style, so it's hard to tell what it SHOULD taste like flat from a sample beaker, but it tastes pretty good to me. Not too hot, despite being at 9.5% instead of 8.5%.
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Oct 6, 2013 17:26
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Jacobey000 posted:In all seriousness: talk to this dude and have him talk to his manager about taking the rest of the stock as a 'way to clear out the area for useable space' then have him sell them off in lots. I'd take 20 or more, honestly. Second.
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Oct 12, 2013 07:10
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Dilemma: pitched 2 packets of US-05 into a pale ale on Sunday, got a very vigorous fermentation. Just checked, and it's reached what Brewtoad predicts should be its FG- it started at 1.057 (overshot our target 1.054), and it's at 1.014 When I just dry hopped, I still saw a large krausen, and it's down to bubbling around once every 10 seconds. We really wanted to use this yeast cake for this Old Chub clone tomorrow, but do you guys think it will be safe to bottle this tomorrow? Or should we just rack to secondary in the carnboy that I forgot we had until this very moment :facepalm: oh well,at least we bought the hops in bulk.
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Nov 9, 2013 03:27
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It's good that there's been a ton of Sour chat lately. My brewing partner and I are going to do our first sour soon, and we're trying to figure out how exactly to go about it. We're both big sour fans, and we're willing to sacrifice one of our plastic carboys to the sour gods. We both love Duchesse, and since it was the first sour beer either of us tried so long ago, it seems like a decent place to start for a recipe, so I just stole this http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/first-sour-1 basic recipe from the thread (I think it's fullroundaction's), but substituted Nugget in for the hops, since we have a ton of that in the freezer. I know it says Roeselare on there, but we really want to do bottle dregs. We had a few different ideas for this, and I wanted to get some opinions. 1.) US05 for primary, then pitch Duchesse dregs for secondary. Seems pretty standard, but less exciting to me. 2.) Culture some Duchesse dregs in a starter for a while, and just pitch these for primary. Probably more waiting/would this even work? 3.) My favorite idea. Hold THE SOUR BOWL at our house, and have all our beer friends bring bottles of different sours. Either brew earlier in the day and have the wort ready for pitching, or just take the dregs of all of these bottles and make a starter with them and brew the next week. But ONLY using these dregs, no primary. Or I guess we could do primary with US05 and then do this... Anybody have any thoughts about this idea of pitching the dregs of many different sours? It seems exciting, because it would a crapshoot - hopefully the fact that they'd all be "good" sours would avoid the chance of those really weird bug flavors (enteric, butryic). I guess it does have a problem in the fact that all of these sours will be disturbed and moved during transportation, so it would be harder to get a good concentration of bugs at the bottom. Any ideas for this? I guess we could just buy a few bottles the week before to make sure.
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Jan 23, 2014 07:50
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Cointelprofessional posted:
Thanks for the advice, everybody. Good to know about Duchesse bugs not being viable - in retrospect, I am sure I would have heard WAY more about people using them if they were, since it's such a popular beer. We'll probably grab some Jolly Pumpkin and Russian River stuff and go hog wild.
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Jan 23, 2014 16:47
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Two questions for the hivemind: 1.) What is a good substitute for Breiss AshburneŽ Mild Malt in Jo3sh's Best Bitter (https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/colt-177-v3)? My shop carries a few base malts, but they don't carry that one. Here's what they have http://www.sanfranciscobrewcraft.com/category_s/88.htm?searching=Y&sort=13&cat=88&show=100&page=1 2.) I am ~3 weeks into primary on a Baltic Porter, fermenting around 52 F. I checked the temp very regularly until this past Sunday, when I took a sample and found the gravity was 1.030 (started at 1.081). Unfortunately, I just noticed that the fermentation fridge was unplugged, and the fermenter reads ~58 F. WHAT DO I DO?! Cool it back down? Let it stay here and finish out before bringing it up for the diacetyl rest? Take a gravity sample and see if I think it's done? Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew? (duh)
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May 29, 2014 23:28
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wildfire1 posted:
My first ever lager saga continues. I brewed this https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/ritual-porter (a Baltic Porter) May 11th, and it went alright on brew day. Hit 1.081, 3 off my target OG, and started it fermenting around 50-52 for a couple of weeks. I took a gravity sample last Sunday, and it read 1.031, so 60% attenuation so far. Then, at some point between Sunday and yesterday, my fermentation fridge accidentally got unplugged. By the time I noticed yesterday, the beer was up to around 58F, and I got nervous. Before reading the above reply, I plugged it back in and the beer got back down to about 55F. At this point, I am just letting it stay there. I took another gravity sample today, and I got 1.031 again, so obviously the beer's indeterminate stay at a higher temperature did nothing to increase attenuation. It also still tastes fine, albeit super syrupy. I am wondering, though - has anybody known WLP830 German Lager to stall? Is it possible the beer is just done? I mean, it's a big ol' sweet grain bill, but we did mash pretty low (151-149-151 over the course of the mash), and 60% is pretty drat low. Any thoughts? I'll probably just leave it at 55F for another couple weeks and see what happens. I really have no idea how long primary should be for a giant, fat lager, so I'll let it chill.
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May 30, 2014 21:27
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It's been FOREVER since my brew partner and I have gotten to brew. Probably since June? We've had this Baltic Porter lagering since then, and we're finally going to bottle it. Hopefully nothing terrible happened... it tastes fine. Anyway, we want to jump back into things with a big ol' RIS, since we brewed one around this time last year and have been aging bottles. We want to make it a yearly thing, so we can compare it to past efforts, etc.. Now, the obvious choice would be to do the same recipe again, but that's BORING. Last year we tried a "clone recipe" (who knows about its authenticity) of Old Rasputin, and this year we want to do something more like Narwhal. SN's site lists the ingredients and statistics for the beer, but not the recipe or proportions. Using their stuff, I made this recipe: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/narwhal I'm not so worried about whether it follows their recipe precisely, but I do want to know if anything about this looks off. It seems alright to me, but I haven't brewed or made a recipe in a long time, so I could be missing something obvious. Will be making a big ol' starter for this one, plus probably some extra yeast packets, just to make sure it happens. We got some strained yeast flavors on the last one, even pitching onto a fresh cake. What are some other things we can do to assist a quality fermentation? Yeast nutrient, obviously, plus good oxygenation. Anything else? Mash around 154F?
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Oct 17, 2014 02:30
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