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I'm trying to do another batch after a bit of a hiatus. I'm looking to regulate my fermentation temps better. I'm thinking about getting a big rubbermaid container and filling it was 60 degree water and letting the bucket sit in that. I was also reading up on some all grain BIAB 3 gallon batches. Should I stick to exact brewing to see if the container cooler helps improve the quality of the beer or should I go for broke and try my hand at small scale all grain brewing. Edit: It turns out I have no garden hose hookup or any faucet hookup that can fit a wort chiller. I'm sick of waiting for a crappy icebath to cool my wort down. Is there any other solution to cool it down quicker than ice bath or do I just have to suck it up and prepare more ice lazerwolf fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Feb 9, 2012 |
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Feb 9, 2012 18:08
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Garanimals4Seniors posted:Where do you brew? is it near enough to the kitchen that you can use a garden hose adapter to replace your sink aerator for the brew day? One of those plus the shortest length of cheap garden hose that reaches your kettle should be all you need to add to an immersion chiller. Just wear a glove if you hand tighten it, because the threads can be sharp enough to cut if you have to apply a bit of torque. I do brew in the kitchen but unfortunately my kitchen sink faucet is weird and doesn't have the usual screw on aerator. So unless I brew at a friend's house and transport the bucket back to my place, it looks like I'm SOL on the immersion chiller at the moment lazerwolf fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Feb 9, 2012 |
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Feb 9, 2012 18:45
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Sirotan posted:Can you go to a hardware store and see if there are any adapters you can buy? What about some kind of flexible tubing that you can tie on with a compression clamp or something? That's a good idea I never thought of. I'll have to take a picture of the faucet tonight to see if there's anything that can be done.
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Feb 9, 2012 18:59
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 This is what I'm working with faucet-wise. I'm not sure there is an add on I can buy or anything I can unscrew from the faucet
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Feb 10, 2012 01:47
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Dilute Star San can last a couple of months if stored properly. Just test the pH before using it later on
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Feb 12, 2012 18:41
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I'm looking for some input on stock pots/brew kettles. Since I found out that I am able to use a wort chiller through my kitchen faucet, I'm looking to step up to full boil Mini-mashing/BIAB until I have the space to do all grain. I have a stock pot that is probably 4 Gallons at the brim. I have a buddy that has a 5 Gallon pot. What size pot should I be looking for to stovetop minimash/BIAB that can also be used for extract brewing? Bonus if I can use it for actual food cooking as well. Off the top of my head I was thinking of an 8 Gallon pot but before committing to a purchase I'd like to get a good sized pot that I can utilize if/when I try my hand at All Grain
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Feb 16, 2012 18:25
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I'm getting back into homebrewing. I picked up an extract Sierra Nevada pale ale-esque kit from Northern Brewer. The last time I brewed an extract batch of IPA it came out a lot darker than I wanted. I've got some tweaks in mind for this batch: 1. Do a 4 Gallon boil instead of their 2.5 gallon on the instructions. 2. I was thinking about adding half of the LME (3lbs) and all of the DME (1 lb) at the 60 minute mark and then adding the rest of the LME (3lbs) at the 15 minute mark. I know both of those things will alter the hop utilization of the boil but my question is how noticeable will it affect the final beer. Here's the kit for a reference: http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/SierraMadre.pdf
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Mar 2, 2012 17:40
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Super Rad posted:Both of those will indeed result in a lighter colored beer and will drive the hop utilization up, probably by 10-20%. Plugging the recipe into hopville gave some interesting results. adding 1 gallon to the boil with all the DME/LME and normal hopping schedule gave ~45IBU total. Removing 3 lbs of LME from the total boil in addition to 4 gallon batch size projected over 60 IBU. I'm thinking for a pale ale, 60 IBU is really pushing into IPA territory without having the malt body to support the bitterness. I think I'll just boil more gallons to start off EDIT: I've seen people make a hop catcher to put over their kettles/brewpots. Couldn't you do a similar thing by stretching a 5 gallon paint strainer bag over the top of the brewpot or would that ruin some aspect of the boil? lazerwolf fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Mar 3, 2012 |
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Mar 2, 2012 21:55
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RiggenBlaque posted:I bought this one and it works pretty great. However, I bought it for ~$125, I'm not sure why it's gone up in price so much. Also, I put the taps in the front out of laziness, so I can't speak to how easy it would be to put in a tower on the top. I'm wondering if that would also work as a nice fermentation chamber if you could find a temperature override? I'm looking to get a nice controllable fermentation space. I don't have a huge space though
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Mar 5, 2012 21:12
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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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The pale ale brew day went well! A little mishap here and there but right now the beer's fermenting away at 64* The paint strainer bag worked well to clear out the hop junk before I cooled it down however a bit of it melted on the outside of the kettle. oops. I boiled 3 gallons of top off water in case and it only got down to 100* when the wort was chilled so I had to wort chiller the top off water...but all in all excellent brew day! This is about 16 hours later 
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Mar 12, 2012 15:16
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LeeMajors posted:Consider Irish Moss at some point in addition to your hop bags. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but you add 15min prior to flameout. I assume there are either some enzymes or binding agents that drop the proteins out of solution--which drastically clears your beer. When I started using it, I couldn't believe it took me so long. I think I went a bit overkill, hop bag in the boil, chilled the beer and poured the wort through another sanitized paint strainer bag into a fermentation bucket, topped off to 5 gallons with the pre-boiled water THEN siphoned from the bucket into the carboy... I plan on cold crashing in about 3 weeks too so if this beer isn't clear I guess Irish moss is the next step
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Mar 12, 2012 16:04
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Now that my pale ale is fermenting away, time to help out a friend brew one of his kits. He has a brown ale kit and we want to spice it up a bit and make it a coffee brown ale. Brewgoons, what's your favorite ways to add coffee flavor to a beer without adding the harsh bitterness to the beer.
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Mar 12, 2012 21:05
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Sirotan posted:Sorry if this seems like a really basic question, since my mind always goes to the acting of mash(ing) potatoes when I think of mash in terms of beer. But in this case, that just means pouring water over the grain (slowly?) to get the volume of water you want, right? If you're talking about the sparge then yes. Think of it as rinsing the last of the sugars from the grain into your wort. Internet Celeb - What do you use to ferment your 3 gallon batches? I would like to start trying small BIAB but I'm not sure if my 5 gallon carboy (smallest I have right now) is too big for the headspace
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Mar 15, 2012 18:14
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Is there any reason I should replace my blowoff tubing after fermentation is finished? The tube is submerged in water with sanitizer
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Mar 17, 2012 18:21
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I used an Oxiclean bath for my bottles. Cleaned out all the crud AND removed all the labels too! Then I did a hot water wash to get rid of any excess Oxiclean residue and they were go to be sanitized in star san when I needed them.
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Mar 19, 2012 18:16
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Kelley Geuscaulk posted:How do people keep their fermentation temps between 64-68 in a glass carboy? At room temp., I'm seeing my fermentation temp. is getting to 74-78 because of the yeast activity. I was thinking of putting the carboy into a 18 or 20 gallon ice bucket filled with water. I had this problem the last batch I brewed. Solution go get a 20 gallon or bigger rubbermaid container. Fill that will cold water and place your carboy in that. Water temps fluctuate a lot slower than ambient air temperature does so the most work you have to do is add a couple handfuls of ice if the water starts to get up passed 68* I just did this and my water temp read 64* and my fermenter was reading between 64-66* for most of the first days of fermentation.
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Mar 20, 2012 20:47
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Sirotan posted:...why not just get a PET one? I mean, is there a reason legit reason to buy a glass carboy over plastic? I might be wrong but I believe glass carboy has way less 02 permeability than PET does?
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Mar 30, 2012 21:26
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I then owed my friend who lent me his equipment a new 6gal carboy. My excuse was it was my very first batch of homebrew.)
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Cpt.Wacky posted:If you're bottling, do yourself a favor and get a bottle tree and sanitizer pump to go on top. It is completely worth it for the time saved. Is this really necessary? When I bottle (which I plan on doing tomorrow for my SNPA clone!) I just make a 5 gallon batch of starsan and submerge the bottles completely until I need them. Pour out the starsan, rack beer and cap.
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Apr 4, 2012 16:51
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Woo bottling day. The best times (not really). Only took me like 3 hours from start to finish which isn't bad. Came away with 45 bottles of Norther Brewer's Sierra Madre Pale ale. I am pumped to try this in 3 weeks. My process for bottling is pretty streamlined but someone sell me on the pros and cons of getting into kegging.
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Apr 6, 2012 03:57
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Stultus Maximus posted:At the end of this month, I'll be taking a nice 7 month paid 'vacation' to the desert. I plan to pitch yeast into (most of) a gallon jug of cider then rack it into a second gallon jug, screw the top on, and put it into the refrigerator until I return at the end of the year. Maybe beef it up a bit with some extra dextrose. That's what we did for our cider which came out pretty good. Boiled the dextrose with some water to sterilize it and then add all of the cider and dextrose into your gallon jug(s)
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Apr 6, 2012 04:37
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Jo3sh posted:Hard to take just a couple of bottles to a BBQ or give them to a friend. This is ameliorated somewhat by using growlers. For short distances is it possible to fill bottles and cap them for this purpose? What's the bare minimum for a kegerator? I am running some limited space and I have heard of converted minifridges that can fit a corny keg or 2. This is the angle I'm interested in right now if its possible
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Apr 6, 2012 04:50
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Super Rad posted:Also regarding the two posts about kegging above - kegging is awesome, I went from bottling to having a 4-tap keggerator within a few months. You just need to be sure you love brewing enough to dedicate that much money/space but the convenience factor is huge - now I just need a beer gun to bottle on-demand. Yeah I'm getting there with my love of it. I'm hoping this batch of pale ale is worlds above my last batch that I didn't try any temperature regulation. This is also my first time fermenting in a glass carboy instead of a bucket.
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Apr 6, 2012 17:33
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Gothmog1065 posted:Okay, I tried the stout I bottled today. It kind of smelled vinegary. I used starsan in the bottles before I bottled them, and there was a little foam in the bottles. I know star san should be rinse free, but when I opened my bottle and drank some, it seemed to have that same type of foam. Did I ruin my beer? This happened to an oatmeal stout my friend and I made. We decided to add chocolate to it in the secondary. I guess my friend just dumped in the powdered chocolate instead of boiling it first. Now we have a slightly sour cherry chocolate smelling oatmeal stout
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Apr 8, 2012 16:05
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I decided I would crack open a bottle of pale ale I just bottled a week ago. Still needs a bit of carbonation and the beer is clearer than my previous attempts at homebrewing. The beer is bit sweet and not so Hoppy as I would expect a sierra Nevada clone, would some more age help balance that?
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Apr 14, 2012 01:05
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internet celebrity posted:Yeah. If it's not carbonated all the way then there are still excess sugars in there altering the flavor. Once it's carbed up all the way the hops will come forward a bit more.
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Apr 14, 2012 01:43
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I just bought a 10 gallon brewpot and I was wondering if I did a full boil with an extract kit from Northern brewer would I be changing the recipe too much in terms of ibu?
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Apr 14, 2012 20:25
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I've posted recently about boil volumes and hop utilization, so I'll get into specifics here. I'm interesting in doing this kit (http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/PetiteSaisondEte.pdf) as my next batch. I love saison and it sounds amazing plus with the warmer temps rolling in using the 3711 yeast will work well. I plugged the recipe into hopville and messed around with the boil volumes. The initial recipe is 3.15# Pilsen LME 1# Pilsen DME 1# Wheat DME 0.5# Belgian Caravienne (steeping) 60 min 1 oz UK Kent Goldings 10 min 0.25 oz Saaz / 0.25 oz Styrian Goldings 2 min 0.75 oz Saaz / 0.75 oz Styrian Goldings the instructions call for a 2.5 gallon partial boil with all of the fermentables added at 60. Hopville gives me a rough calcuation of ~15 IBU. If I bump up the boil volume to 6 Gallons I'm getting ~28 IBU. I know Saison are the true 'Belgian IPA' but would that big of a jump in IBU change the taste of the beer entirely?
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Apr 16, 2012 17:38
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mrhemisphere posted:My kit came with a jar of the 'Easy Clean', and it seemed to work fine. That said, I'll be sure to get Star San next time so you guys get your cut of the cash. I bought another primary bucket (without a hole & grommet) to keep the mixture in. Is there a rule of thumb for how long it keeps? You can test the pH of star san and as long as its still acidic, it should be fine to use.
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Apr 18, 2012 05:09
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The session beer chat in the let's talk beer thread got me thinking about trying to brew session level beers of normally non session level styles. I'm thinking a normal west coast styled IPA is roughly ~6-7% with 60ish IBU of nice citrusy fruity hops. Is there a way to scale that down to 4.5% or does the resulting beer just become a Pale ale?
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Apr 18, 2012 18:56
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cryme posted:With an OG of 1.065, do you think a starter is really necessary? Also would like to know this for sure. I think its a good practice to make starters to ensure healthy yeast BUT you could get away with direct pitch with that gravity, at least I think so. Edit: Continuing Homebrew Pic Chat Pale ale 2 weeks after bottling  Its still coming out a bit cloudy. I might have to start using Whirfloc or something similar lazerwolf fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Apr 20, 2012 |
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Apr 20, 2012 02:25
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Also the longer boil helps boil off more of your initial boil volume if you have too much to start
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Apr 22, 2012 18:31
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My pale ale is 3 weeks in bottle now so I decided to give another taste to it. It has a decent amount of carbonation bubbling in the glass and a decent head. The taste is good, slightly hoppy and some slight caramel sweetness. The beer finished a bit high (extract batch) so I assume that's where the residual sweetness is coming from. The clarity of the beer is a lot better than my previous batches which is a good sign. All in all my first successful batch of drinkable beer! Huzzah!
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Apr 26, 2012 02:06
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MJP posted:I thought it was already a partial mash since I'm using the specialty grains for coloring? You need some base malt to provide the enzymes to convert the sugars in the oats and barley. Adding specialty grains for coloring/flavor is not the same as mashing
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May 1, 2012 16:46
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Airlock chat: Is it generally a bad ideal to just leave a blowoff hose on for the duration of primary fermentation? I almost pushed the bung into my carboy so I just left the hose in a growler filled with star san and made sure to keep the hose submerged the entire time. The beer came out great so I'm wondering if that is an acceptable thing to continue to do?
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May 2, 2012 20:56
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Kelley Geuscaulk posted:Lagunitas has put out a clone challenge for the National Homebrew Conference this year. They gave their recipe out and are challenging homebrewers to put up against the real Hop Stoopid. Extract contributes the desired IBU without soaking up too much wort compared to the equivalent amount of hops. I think it's mainly to keep production costs down.
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May 8, 2012 16:07
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I have a 25$ gift card to Northern Brewer burning a hole in my virtual wallet. I am considering this kit, http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-PetiteSaison.pdf . I've never done all grain and I think I have what could be considered a decent BIAB set up. -10 gallon megapot -5 gallon auxiliary pot -5 gallon paint strainer nylon mesh bags Is 7 lbs of grain too much for BIAB? I'd really like to try my hand at all grain and I love saison during this time of year.
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May 21, 2012 04:43
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Just picked up the extract petite saison kit from Northern brewer. They were out of 3711 yeast but had the T-58 dry Belgian yeast. Would it be ok to let his yeast ferment in the 70s? Also I like my saisons on the drier side, the recipe is for 1.041 OG, would adding some table sugar help push the FG down without too much residual extract sweetness?
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Jun 16, 2012 19:48
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nominal posted:Tomorrow, I'm about to do my first all-grain, in addition to a first real run on a bunch of new equipment (keggles, mash tun, burner). My test runs (just boiling water and transferring around from container to container a few times) have gone well, but last week I noticed that my wort chiller will not work very well at all in my keggle. The bends I have on it are not quite right and in addition to not submerging very far into the keggle, it would also place some leaky hose junctions INSIDE the keggle, which I do not want. This was not a problem earlier since when I was using it in my trusty little brewpot, the leaky junctions were safely outside the pot and would just drip into my sink. There are no chill methods where homebrewers do exactly as you describe and wait until the wort reaches equilibrium with its surrounds (i.e. your fridge in this case) and then pitch the yeast. However, I think you have to scale back on your hop additions because the hot wort will continue to extract the acids from the hops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_ImGab5qC8 This is where I saw a no chill brew day the first time for your reference
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Jun 20, 2012 15:02
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This is the Saison I brewed last thursday.  I was away for a couple days right after I made it so I didn't actually observe active fermentation but it seemed to stop bubbling around last sunday. Its cloudy as hell and looks like orange juice. Should I attempt to transfer it to a secondary to clear it up more or just go with the flow? The OG on this was 1.041 and it should be ready to bottle in 2 weeks
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Jul 12, 2012 13:21
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