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Whodat Smith-Jones posted:Yea or nay on secondary for cacao nibs?
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Feb 23, 2013 18:51
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:00 |
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Oh I already pitched it. I'm just impatient because it's a Belgian Tripel that looks super tasty. Can't wait to see what Wyeast 3787 does to an OG of 1.079.
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Mar 12, 2013 03:40
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I did my first partial mash today, it was a Roggenbier with 5.25lbs rye malt, 2lbs rice hulls, 3lbs munich, 2oz Carafa II, and 12oz cara-45. I wasn't expecting anything amazing for my efficiency, but it only came out to around 50%, which seemed low, I was expecting 60-70%. Should I have thrown in some 2-row with this? I thought the rye and munich were supposed to convert themselves, but maybe I'm wrong on that. My process was to steep all the grain (loose, not in a bag) in 3.5 gallons of 154* water in a 10 gallon cooler for 60 minutes, sparge with 4 gallons at 168*, then add LME and bring to a boil. I threw in some DME after I took the gravity and saw it 9 points under, but I was hoping to figure out what went wrong for next time.
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Apr 1, 2013 05:21
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Shbobdb posted:Munich malt can convert itself but it usually struggles. German rye malt is also very undermodified (basically, the Roggenbier breweries wanted to use unmalted rye but couldn't so they used the least modified rye they could get away with under the RHG). Plus rye is tricky and tends to lower mash efficiency anyway. Given the grainbill, I'd say that is pretty good.
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Apr 2, 2013 00:55
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Is bottling with table sugar or demerara sugar okay once adjusted for weight? I read about off flavors from that, but that kind of sounds like homebrewer myth to me, and corn sugar is expensive so I am hoping this is cool.
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Apr 9, 2013 04:41
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I got a plate chiller from a friend that has a bunch of really old nasty hop bits and other crap in it. Running it through a couple Oxy Clean baths loosened a lot of it, but there's still some stuck in there, it's cool to throw this in the oven on the clean cycle and leave it for a few hours to ash all the crud, right? Also, I always spiral cut my hot dogs during fermentation to increase surface area flavor yields, hot dog chips just won't do for a competition beer.
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Jul 10, 2013 03:33
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Yeah, you can run it through the oven and you should be fine. Solder temperature is a hell of a lot higher than the self cleaning cycle of an oven. Thanks, I'll give it a shot.
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Jul 10, 2013 04:07
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LHBS was out of LME, so I ended up doing my first all grain brew today. God drat that took a really long time.
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Jul 22, 2013 03:21
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cryospam posted:You guys and all of your newfangled technology. What do you guys use to spin the stirbar, is there an inexpensive magnetic stirring hotplate?
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Aug 6, 2013 02:56
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Shifty Pony posted:My favorite beer style by far is kolsch and no matter what I do I can't get WYeast 2565 to drop bright. I also would like to have an alternative to using gelatin or Super-Klear as I have a number of friends who are vegan so if that stuff touches the beer they can't have any. I brew a lot of Kolsch as well, and haven't found better way than whirfloc, fermenting in the upper 50's and racking to a secondary, and leaving that in the upper 50's for 3+ weeks. 2565 is my favorite Kolsch yeast, but it's pretty difficult to totally clear up. I was going to try gelatin in the next batch and see how that works in addition to this.
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Aug 13, 2013 03:14
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LaserWash posted:Goon bottle brewers, We get a lot of bottles of mixed quality from friends/coworkers, and the system that works best is: cleaned and checked bottles that just need a dip in starsan go in tupperware tubs in a closet inside the house, while anything that is unknown stays in the garage. An occasional bottle cleaning party with the cordless drill and a bottle brush helps move bottles from the garage to the house when the stash of clean bottles start getting a bit low. We used to just put them next to each other in the same closet, but that lead to too many mixups and made bottling day a pain in the rear end.
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Aug 24, 2013 16:31
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LaserWash posted:WHOA! How did you get said bottle cleaning brush attachment for your cordless drill? You can just snip the ring off the end of a regular bottle brush and use that, but this is a) the best bottle brush ever and b) already has a hex bit on the end: http://www.williamsbrewing.com/CORDLESS-DRILL-BOTTLE-BRUSH-P3321.aspx If you don't have a lot of room, try grabbing a bunch of cheap plastic tubs with lids from Home Depot so you can stack them up. I have 7 of them filled with dirty bottles floor to ceiling right now. And then you can just move the whole container when you clean it to the house, makes things WAY easier.
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Aug 24, 2013 17:35
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fullroundaction posted:Yeah, and let's not forget about sours. My last batch of Flanders red is basically a Duchesse clone (except not as sweet, which I like better) and that cost about 10% of what it would have retailed for.
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Sep 2, 2013 20:17
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fullroundaction posted:Sure thing! My recipe was mostly based on one from Radical Brewing, but a I made a couple modifications based on what I had on hand. One caveat is that I have no idea what kind of bugs were in it because I grew a whole bunch of lacto from old grain and apple juice for a no-boil Berliner Weisse, which I used the cake of to ferment this beer. If I were to play it safe I would just use US-05 and a bag of lacto (pitched at the same time) and wait a few months, sampling every month and bottling when it's sour enough for you.
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Sep 3, 2013 01:11
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Kaiho posted:Am I completely insane for wanting to brew an imperial stout and not doing it full all-grain? I am short on equipment and space at the moment.
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Sep 4, 2013 14:38
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Flemish ale question: should I let it ferment with Belgian yeast for a couple days (until the main activity is over) rack to secondary and throw in the sour bugs, or let it fully ferment out over a couple weeks and then secondary/throw in the bugs? I'm not sure if fully fermenting and then pitching the Roselare will get it sour enough, but I'm only looking for something with a medium/low pucker level here.
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Sep 9, 2013 19:27
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fullroundaction posted:If you plan on saving the yeast for another (non-sour) project then do the first one.
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Sep 10, 2013 00:25
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Oxy everything, take it all apart and put it back together to check and make sure you don't have any gunk in some out of the way crevice. If it is the bottling wand, maybe it's something inside the spring mechanism piece? That'd be a huge bitch to clean--you can check by bottling half your next batch with the wand, and half with a bottling bucket or something, but I'd just oxy it all to be sure anyway. So hooray, the best part of homebrewing is cleaning things over and over and over.
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Sep 11, 2013 14:41
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LaserWash posted:Yeah, I think the thing that bothers me is that I was really wanting to compare the flavors of the WLP029 to the Wyeast 2565 that I've done before. The 2565 had a little powdery clouding that wasn't going to go away unless I hit it with a lot of time (I did some gelatin and hit it with a whirlfloc when I brewed and fermented).
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Sep 13, 2013 15:30
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Duxwig posted:No response from the last post so I'm going to just do a yeast starter to make sure things work even if it's more timely. I have he yeast packet out waiting to come to room temp before I smack it and let it grow. Also if you haven't used it before, 3068 gets ridiculous, so make sure you have some extra headspace in your fermenter.
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Oct 15, 2013 00:47
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No you're fine, just leave it 18-24 hours total and the yeast will do most of their reproduction--you can shake/swirl it (GENTLY) to aerate as much as you feel like, and keep it on the warmer side (low 70's) for the best cell yield. With that small amount of starter, I wouldn't even refrigerate it before pitching, just throw it into the wort directly.
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Oct 16, 2013 23:50
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wattershed posted:But nevertheless, if anyone's got a knockout wheat recipe, lay it on me...I'd rather tinker with something proven and tweak it to my liking than wing something myself and take 3-4 batches before it's where I want it. I always do a 1:1 ratio in my hefeweizen, plus 4 oz of Munich, and that gets great reviews. I like it because it's simple, and don't want to overthink the grain bill and throw too much in there.
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Oct 19, 2013 00:53
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wattershed posted:I'd like something a little more easy drinking with a light heat. No time to have a simple poolside beer like December! I'm SMRT.
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Oct 19, 2013 18:22
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crazyfish posted:So in 'crazyfish comes up with a completely stupid idea' kind of recipes, I've decided to do a braggot witbier, using orange blossom honey to get some of the orangey characteristics that are so classic in a witbier. Is my idea completely dumb? Here's an off-the-cuff recipe I came up with based on a recipe I've done in the past: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/witbraggot What I'm mostly wondering is, does that amount of hops make sense here? I've never brewed with honey before, so I'm not sure how perceived bitterness works when honey is used as a big chunk of fermentables.
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Nov 6, 2013 15:38
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Sistergodiva posted:Thanks. Yes it's airtight. It's still bubbling but very rarely. To measure og, should i siphon some of it into something and use the glass stick, or just stick it in the fermenter? A second bucket to bottle from is a good idea so you can siphon the beer off the trub and yeast at the bottom of the secondary before bottling. Cold crashing is nice to do if you have the time and ability, but just letting everything settle on its own works fine. Remember that when it's done bottle conditioning and you put them in the fridge, the bottles will settle again at that point (since you're effectively cold crashing each bottle).
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Dec 5, 2013 02:44
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Sistergodiva posted:Just bottled my first batch of beer! My girlfriend really is the most handy of us and she took command and figured out how we should bottle. I think mostly so she could get rid of all the mess in our kitchen. The only way to tell is to taste it and see. Oxidization might give it some off flavors and it probably won't age well but that just means you should drink it sooner! Don't worry, it's probably fine.
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Dec 11, 2013 03:53
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Sistergodiva posted:Thanks! Would I notice oxidation instantly? It was hard to notice if it tasted off since it was flat. Guess I'll have to see when it's done carbonating. Probably not? I doubt you'll notice it for months, especially if it's a robust stout or porter or something, but the only way to be sure is just taste it and see. Things like that are very hard to pin down for a lot of reasons, partly because it's hard to quantify just how much is too much for a specific beer, partly because people's palettes are so wildly different that something that may be a diacetyl bomb to one person may not even be noticed by another, or because some beers just age better than others. And then you hear horror stories of dumping beer because it tasted awful, but who knows if that was a result of blaming "oxidization" or because JimBob McHomeBrewer doesn't know what Starsan is and got an infection? There's a lot of lovely unhelpful and inaccurate info out there by armchair brewers who swear up and down that "x thing ruins beers", which I think causes worry on new brewers where it really shouldn't. Beer is pretty forgiving and despite what HomeBrewTalk says, it takes a lot to gently caress something up bad enough to dump it, so I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Also, try keeping back a couple of bottles for a while (like a year), put a label on them with the batch, brew date, and write "oxidized", and when you crack them open in a year it will help to see exactly what these off flavors taste like so you can identify them in the future. Who knows, they might even taste just fine? You've got the right idea in that you know exactly what you can improve on for the next batch, so you'll be able to screw up something different now.
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Dec 11, 2013 12:31
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Just picked up the ingredients for an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Stout, to be brewed this weekend. This is going to be delicious: 7 lbs Maris Otter 2 lbs Quick Oats 12 oz Caramunich 12 oz Chocolate Malt 8 oz Roasted Barley 12 oz Crystal 90 4 oz Special B 8 oz Lactose 8 oz Turbinado .7 oz Chinook Adding cinnamon, nutmeg, and a pinch of cloves at the end of the boil and again in the secondary for aroma.
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Dec 12, 2013 03:55
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Shbobdb posted:I love this idea. Are you planning on baking the oatmeal for a bit to give it that aromatic character? Yes! I'm going to bake the oats for an hour or so before mashing, and hopefully that will add a nice cookieish layer to the beer instead of the usual raw oat flavor, we'll see!
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Dec 12, 2013 06:22
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Toasting oats experiment: failure. I put it in the oven in a thin layer on cookie sheets at 300 degrees for about 30 minutes, and it just smells like a combination of unbuttered popcorn and french bread. I can tell if it stays in there longer it's going to get burned. Last night I found some pre-toasted old fashioned oats at the grocery store which have a delicious smell of cookies, but it's a lot fainter than I was hoping for. I took a few ounces of this and tried it at 325 for 5 minutes, and again it just gave me a bready/popcorny smell instead of enhancing the cookie smell, so it's good enough and I'm going to roll with this (<---it is a rolled oat joke) and do a cereal mash this morning because the brew day isn't quite long enough already  . I'll have to play around with toasting time/temp in the future and try to nail this down so I can get this done with quick oats for the next batch. Has anyone toasted oats to get that elusive cookie flavor, and can give me some advice here?
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Dec 14, 2013 16:59
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Nanpa posted:Does anyone have any experience toasting oats for an oatmeal stout? I was trying out the BYO recipe http://byo.com/stories/beer-styles/item/2815-oatmeal-stout-style-profile, and after toasting the oats in the oven for at least half an hour and I couldn't make out much difference beyond a slight nutty taste (I couldn't see much colour change and my sense of smell isn't that great). In the end I was getting impatient so I turned the oven up to 200C, doughed in the rest and put the oats in last. My question is, is this what you're aiming for or are you meant to go for a good golden/brown type toast? In the end, I didn't really find a solution I was happy with. Radical Brewing says use 325 degrees for a few minutes until they smell like cookies, but I never got anything but "unbuttered popcorn and french bread" smell out of them at 300 or at 325. Maybe some friends who are good at baking can help me narrow down what to aim for--I was thinking it's more of a combination of the butter, brown sugar, and oats that usually go into cookies rather than the cooked oats, but I got some Country Choice Oven Toasted Oats at the grocery store, and those had the right smell to them, it just wasn't very strong. I'm going to spend some time this week playing with some Quaker 1 minute and seeing if there's a better way to get a real cookie flavor out of these, I'll let you know if I find anything that works well.
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Dec 15, 2013 07:00
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ScaerCroe posted:How long and what temp do you suggest you roast the quick oats? I tried two batches: one at 325 for about 12 minutes (checked it at 5 and 10), and then again at 300 for about 30 minutes (checked it every 5 minutes). Neither worked out well.
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Dec 16, 2013 20:24
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Ne Cede Malis posted:I'm brewing my first batch ever and I think I might have a problem. I started an extract kit from my local shop three weeks ago and I just checked the specific gravity today. The kit says that the final gravity should be between 1.014 and 1.018 but I measured something around 1.23 or 1.24. I put it into the primary fermenter right before I left town for thanksgiving so I didn't see if it had a really vigorous first few days of fermenting. When I came back there wasn't really any krausen or krausen marks on the side of the fermenter at all. It was pretty cold out in my apartment (in the low 60's) while I was gone and the sample I tasted was really sweet and odd tasting, kind of like the burnt edge part of marinated roast? It looks like the yeast didn't really do a good job fermenting? Can you put it in a warmer area? Usually bringing the temp up to around high 60's-70ish for a couple days will get the yeast to finish off that last bit if it's having trouble. I'd try that before repitching anything.
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Dec 17, 2013 15:40
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LaserWash posted:I have a plastic cup full of grains on the countertop. Could I put these in a plastic bag and use them later (tomorrow or tonight?). Yeah, don't worry about them, they'll be good for a while. When in doubt, taste and see. Generally if you can't tell from a taste test of the grain, you won't be able to tell in the beer either.
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Dec 19, 2013 04:30
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Oh yeah don't leave spent grain out, that's gross and it will smell.
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Dec 19, 2013 04:53
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That hydromel looks awesome! I bottled a copy of Pliny the Elder tonight (using the recipe from AHA), it smells delicious and I cannot wait for it to carb up. However, I will never use pellet hops in the secondary again, that created a ridiculous cloudy mess even with a hop bag, and of the original 6 gallons brewed, I lost 1.5 gallons between the brewpot, primary, and secondary. The leaf hops worked out pretty well, I'll try either all leaf hops in the secondary or maybe try to find some whole hops and see how those work.
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Dec 27, 2013 05:51
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Jacobey000 posted:Thinking of brewing a Kolsch next week... recipes? Go! 4 oz C-10L (replace with Carapils if you can't bring yourself to put crystal malt in a Kolsch, but it's not as good that way) 1 lb Munich 10L 9 lbs Pils 2-row 1 oz Tettnang @ 60 min .5 oz Hallertauer @ 5 min Wyeast 2565 (I like this one better than the White Labs Kolsch yeast) Mash low, like 150-151, keep the fermentation on the cold side (around 60). If you can split it into a few batches, Kolsch is awesome for fruit additions that would get overpowered in other beers (like watermelon or strawberries). Carbing it with honey sounds like it would be good, but it's not.
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Jan 11, 2014 01:59
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Virigoth posted:How do you handle extract w/ steeping grain conversion to all-grain? I've got a Founder's Porter clone that I've been using for extract and I want to take it to all-grain for cost benefit. Just add them all in at the start of the mash? This is a BIAB recipe. I could just steep them in another pot and use that water to sparge my grain when my 60 minute mash is done but I'm not sure what effect that would have. Throw everything in the mash. Use about 1.25 pounds of base malt for every pound of extract. Use the money you save to buy more unnecessary brewing equipment.
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Jan 17, 2014 17:57
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NEED TOILET PAPER posted:It was ostensibly a Baltic Porter, though I'll drop the recipe here and let you all see for yourselves:
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Feb 3, 2014 05:10
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:00 |
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the yellow dart posted:Someone please talk me off the deep end. I just had a stout turn out super roasty, to a nearly unpleasant degree. I have about 3 lbs of pale DME just sitting around, could I just create a mini-wort (lightly hopped) of about 1.5 gallons and rack the stout on top of that to give it a balanced malt background? Or am I insane (guessing this one)? How much roasted malt did you use and what was the batch size? A lot of that flavor will mellow out over time.
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Feb 8, 2014 19:56
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