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more falafel please posted:I have this and the drat "pro" probe is crapping out on me. I think leaving it in the kettle after the boil (for chilling) gets some steam in it or something, but either way it's "stuck" around 100F now. The regular probe that came with it works fine as long as you don't get it wet. My "pro" probe crapped out immediately after using it for the first time and Thermoworks was really good about replacing it quickly. I'd shoot them an email, cause that seems like a pretty straightforward use case.
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May 21, 2014 00:05
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Just put this beer in the keg and I'm really proud of it: http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/132190/next-level-hoppy-thing First time doing purely whirlpool hops, none in the boil, and ended up being the first beer I got under 1.01 despite having 4.2% carapils and 5% crystal. The hops don't taste grassy at all and there's tons of flavor, which is good because I put 10oz in a 5 gallon batch. I might also dry hop it later. My volumes are weird because I use a homemade spreadsheet to determine how much trub will be at the bottom of the kettle and I'd rather spend ~$4 extra on ingredients to not have to feel like I need to suck up the trub. more falafel please posted:Yeah, it looks like they're sending me a new one. They also basically said "don't submerse the cord in a mash", I wonder if that applies to wort as well. Ohhhh I was assuming you had the "needle" probe. That one is waterproof, the other one is not. Basically any normal thermocouple will eventually crap out if you submerge them. I use the needle one for putting in a mash and the other one (with a clip) for boil and chill temperatures.
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May 22, 2014 19:08
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more falafel please posted:Oh, I do, that's why I was pissed. It's waterproof, but it's apparently not "wort-proof": Lame. I guess I should stop doing that with mine, or stick it in a plastic bag or something.
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May 22, 2014 21:25
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Yeast question. I have a vial of this Funktown Pale blend that is supposed to be basically 50/50 Vermont Ale yeast and Brettanomyces of some sort. I have a Vienna / Mosaic SMaSH I want to brew with it. I'd like to at least get some pineappley character from the Brett side, ideally funky character as well. The vial is probably 40% viable at this point. My thought was that I should not make a starter and mash around ~150, giving the Brett plenty to eat and pick up the slack from the underpitched Vermont Ale yeast. Does that make sense, or am I going to end up with just poorly attenuated beer? I could make a starter too, but I know the percentages won't be ideal with that.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:28
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Discomancer posted:The brett will finish up whatever the Vermont doesn't eat, so you don't need to worry about under-attenuation, that might lead to a slightly higher Brett:Vermont ratio in the taste than you were looking for but it should bring out a little more funkiness and still be in line with what you were looking for. OK cool, I think I'll give it a shot. I'm guessing it's going to take longer than my usual 8-day fermentation schedule, hopefully I find the patience to wait.
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Jun 3, 2014 19:10
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Toxx posted:Taste seemed fine. Really really strong yeast flavor (not exactly in a good way, I figure this will fade considering I added a quart of fruit/sugar to a 3gl batch) I used wyeast 1272, OG .066 FG was .008. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but is that not like super high attenuation for this yeast? It was in a 70 degree basement for what amounted to about 4 weeks. The normal attenuation levels kind of get thrown out the window once you start adding sugars, since they are a lot more fermentable.
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Jun 27, 2014 02:01
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Finally bottled and kegged my Vienna / Mosaic SMaSH pale ale using the Yeast Bay's Funktown Pale Ale blend (basically "Conan" yeast with Brettanomyces) and it's probably the beer I'm happiest with out of the 20 or so batches I've brewed. Amazingly pineapple-forward scent, super clear, nice mouthfeel considering it's 1.008. The Brett managed to pick up the slack of my underpitching (only used 1 vial @ ~40% viability in an OG 1.05). Definitely going to brew this one again, and interested to see what happens to the ones I bottled as they age. Here's the recipe if anyone is interested: http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/132625/pineappley-smash
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Jul 15, 2014 22:24
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Has anyone here successfully sour mashed for a berliner weisse in a round cooler mash tun? Mine is 1 day in and it's getting a little butyric. I'm gonna ride it out and see what happens and hope it goes away, since it's already a sunk cost, but it'd be nice to get it right the next time.
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Jul 21, 2014 07:41
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Bag of Sun Chips posted:Brett may be able to clean some of that up. Hell, even Crooked Stave had issues with butyric acid in some of their botlte releases but it got cleaned up by the brett. Interesting. Would you suggest I ferment it normally (I was gonna use Kolsch yeast), then if it still tastes lovely, throwing some Brett in there? Who am I kidding, 80% of the reason why I wanted to brew a Berliner weisse was because I was too impatient to wait for a real sour. edit: 48 hours in and the liquid coming out of the mash tun is ~80 degrees tops. This is not going to work. Glottis fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 04:06
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Adventures in Berliner weisse brewing: Round 1: Use the mash tun cooler for a 3 day sour mash, plastic wrap on top. Result: pukey and cold by day 3. Round 2: Calculate my first infusion volume so it will just fill up a 6.5 gal carboy, then put that carboy in a cooler with a water bath controlled at 117 degrees with my Sansaire**. I used some uncrushed grain as well as a vial of lactobacillus delbruecki. Wait 3 days. This is super sour and not spoiled at all! I used a simple 50/50 white wheat/pilsner recipe with ~6 IBUs from a 60 minute Warrior addition (+ .5 lbs corn sugar because I suck at planning), then pitched a shitload of 3rd generation Kolsch yeast (~a pint of thick slurry). This was a completely half-assed recipe, because my home brewery is so messy that I feel like Masaokis, I let the post-boiled wort sit outside for a day before sticking it in the fermenter, and I only gave it from Sunday to Thursday to ferment. It managed to get from 1.042 to 1.010. What I am surprised about the most is how much more sour the end result tastes than the ~110 degree wort from immediately after the sour mash. Round 3: Brew it like a competent person. I can't wait. **I use this thing constantly for homebrewing. Besides sour mashing, I batch sparge with a 8 gallon first infusion and use the Sansaire to precisely heat my strike water directly in my round cooler mash tun. I can set it in the morning and get the brew going right away when I get home from work. It's awesome for food too, but I use it every time I brew. Glottis fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 03:26
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I took a gravity sample / taste of my Consecration kit beer that's been in secondary for about 3 months (with the currants) and has had the Roeselare blend in it for about a month and a half. 1) The gravity was 1.003 which seems impossible to me. 2) It still tastes too hoppy because the kit is a piece of poo poo and tells you to put way more in than it should have 3) It's only vaguely sour, but that could just be me hallucinating sourness from the weird hoppiness. I'm going to add some dregs from a Jolly Pumpkin beer. Based on what I've read about Roeselare, it frequently results in not sour beer on the first go-around, and some extra bugs would be a good idea. Does anyone think I'd need to add some extract as well to give the microorganisms more food, since the gravity is so stupidly low already? Docjowles posted:Hey homebrew thread, long time no see. Had a quick question: If you are reluctant to throw it out, you can try tasting the grain. If it tastes stale and lovely then it'll probably make lovely beer, but it might be fine? Or you could even go so far as to mash it and taste that, since it just requires water and time. I've brewed with grains that were crushed in an open container for about half that time and had no issues.
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Aug 8, 2014 00:34
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Jacobey000 posted:Roeselare doesn't get 'tart' until it's third pitch. I've held onto 1st gen roeselare bottles for a long time too, nothing changed in the way of "sour". JP dregs will liven the beer quite a bit. I don't know what extract would do entirely, maybe add fruit to this batch? Pull the recipe and use less hops next time. You may have also killed off the lacto (dependent on strain, I can't remember which is in Roeselare.) I honestly don't know why I keep buying pitches of that drat yeast either, barely worth my time and the profile isn't super wonderful supreme or anything. OK, I think I'll go with that. I'm pretty annoyed with the kit instructions (which I followed exactly), especially considering it cost around $65 for ingredients, but it's good to know these things now rather than a year into it. Regarding the lactobacillus thing, part of me thinks that killing it was intentional to the recipe, as Vinnie doesn't really prefer lacto sourness and wants pedio sourness instead, so maybe that's the idea. In a week or two I'm brewing my next sour beer to stress over, based on the "sour american" recipe in American Sour Beers and using the "Melange" blend from The Yeast Bay.
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Aug 10, 2014 02:42
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rockcity posted:20 degrees Celsius is really warm for a lager yeast. I'm not sure what the range on the one is, but it's higher than any lager yeast I've seen. It's a California Common. Isn't that sort of the thing with that style?
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Aug 12, 2014 21:58
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more falafel please posted:20C is 68F -- I thought for Cal Common you were supposed to go on the low ale-temp side, like 60F. Whoops, yeah you are right.
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Aug 13, 2014 01:42
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I would wait on activity longer than a day and a half, personally. If only a small amount survived it might just take a while. You weren't planning on making a starter?
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Aug 13, 2014 21:17
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HatfulOfHollow posted:Turned out this was the correct option. I got home about 15 minutes ago and found my air lock bubbling away. Definitely a much slower stay than I'm used to. Yeah, assuming you did the other things that usually lead to a quick start (oxygenation, servomyces), it's probably just because the yeast had lower viability than normal. Probably won't be a big deal at all but will likely attenuate on the lower end of the spectrum. Glad you didn't dump it out!
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Aug 14, 2014 05:28
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Anyone ever done a short-boil extract beer before? Yesterday for the hell of it I brewed a 15-minute boil hoppy pale ale with Pilsner LME and all Dr. Rudi hops. Should be interesting.
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Aug 24, 2014 21:55
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For the 15 min boil recipe I did, the only thing I did that could go either way was that I added 1oz of hops to the cold water before I even turned on the heat. I plugged that into my calculator as 25 minute hops but I have no clue how those will be extracted. Supposedly I'm getting about 60 IBUS for 5oz of kettle hops. All Dr. Rudi. Another thing I did for the first time was I used a plate filter to filter a Kolsch that just finished fermentation. Man that thing took forever, but it's definitely clearer than before. Not quite commercial clear, but close.
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Aug 25, 2014 07:47
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Why can't you move with a regular 3-piece airlock in there?
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Aug 28, 2014 04:58
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pugnax posted:Actually, it might pay for itself in electricity in about a year and a half. So a cheap fridge is definitely superior from a utility perspective, but over time that electricity bill sucks. I feel like there's no way this this uses less electricity than a mini fridge. In a mini fridge, at least the thing being cooled is in an insulated environment. This just sucks up ambient temperature constantly. It's not like the cooling system here is known to be more efficient than a fridge compressor, either.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:06
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Getting pretty crazy attenuation with the Yeast Bay's Dry Belgian Ale yeast: http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/162428/lightened-belgian-blonde 90%!!!! Granted, I put 1.5 lbs of sugar in there, but goddamn this beer is going to be bone dry. The hydrometer sample I left out all day got down to 1.004 so maybe it'll even go there.
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Sep 24, 2014 03:53
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Adult Sword Owner posted:What's the cheapest beer anyone's made from 100% bought stuff? I assume everyone's done a "well I got all this extra stuff and I just pulled off a cake for another batch, let's see what happens," I mean a full 5 gallon batch with purchases grain/extract, hops, yeast. I haven't tried to make a cheap beer on purpose, but something with a reasonably low OG and IBU ends up being cheap. The last Kolsch I made was about $20 in grain, $3 in hops, and would have been $6 in yeast if I didn't already have it, for a 5.5 gallon batch. You could probably make it cheaper by replacing some of the malt with sugar and using half the hops, but why bother? Once you are in the <$30 per batch range you really would have to cut corners in quality to make it cheaper.
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Sep 24, 2014 17:54
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Why is it that people brag about pellicles, again? Isn't a pellicle just a sign that you have oxygen ingress / a poor seal?
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Oct 1, 2014 17:44
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crazyfish posted:The spigot is like 3 bucks at my LHBS. Why risk an infection over 3 bucks? If I were in that situation, I'd just say screw it and use the discolored spigot. I've yet to have an infected batch despite brewing beer like Masaokis and I think I need a wakeup call.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:16
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The opinion that my brother and I share about Chris White's opinions of pitching rates is that his company makes great yeast but they do not know a whole lot about making great beer. Taste any beers from White Labs and you will agree.
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Oct 4, 2014 21:16
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McSpergin posted:
3 things: 1) plastic wrap only hardly seals air out 2) pellicles form in response to oxygen, it's basically just a measure that your beer has brettanomyces and is getting some oxygen 3) why are you using plastic wrap to seal the top?
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Nov 14, 2014 05:26
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McSpergin posted:I've always used plastic wrap ever since having issues with fruit flies getting in through airlocks that had run low on air and dosed the whole batch quite severely with acetobacter. My LHBS recommends it over airlock and lid, and there's like 60 years' brewing experience between the 3 and they all do it. I assume there would be oxygen bc I pitched the brett after most of the other stuff and then pitched the strawberries a week or two later. I'm just telling you, it's a lot more oxygen permeable than the rest of the container, so that's why you get a big pellicle. If you want the extra oxygen that's fine. the fact that you are putting on such a large opening means you get a pretty significant amount of O2 in there, if it was just covering the opening in a glass carboy it wouldn't be as big of a deal.
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Nov 18, 2014 04:19
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Am I going to regret using Us-05 for a coconut porter? I really don't feel like making a starter and I hear mixed things about S-04. I guess I could just get multiple vials of WLP002?
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Nov 21, 2014 01:57
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conversely, I just brewed a beer with OG of 1.039 and ~80 IBUs on purpose!. Gonna push this "session beer" thing and see how it turns out.
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Dec 23, 2014 20:31
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Anyone used a Colonna capper / corker? I'm interested in upgrading from my flimsy plastic clamp capper and I really like the idea of being able to cork bottles as well. Also, I'm starting to get nervous about bottling my 2 current sour beers. When I went to Cantillon, they said their beers are carbonated by the "young" lambic - which is already a year old! I wasn't planning on aging my sours longer than that. Initially I planned to bottle it like I'd bottle any other beer - priming sugar and time, but then I read things about using wine yeast because the ABV is too high / the beer is too acidic. My currently most likely approach (based on the Cantillon thing) is just bottling after a year with no priming sugar, then open a bottle after a few months and see if any carbonation is happening. If it's still flat, drop a carbonation drop in there, wait a couple months, and check again. I'm just worried it will never carbonate without wine yeast, which would be annoying. Thoughts?
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Jan 6, 2015 23:36
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BLARGHLE posted:Great, an hour into the boil, and my propane tank stops working. It's not empty, so I guess it's just frozen up or whatever. I did that once or twice, and now I get really nervous if I am brewing and don't have a second completely full propane tank on hand.
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Jan 7, 2015 01:30
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Jacobey000 posted:This is me too pretty much. I get about 70%+ on big beers too; I sparge SLOW AS gently caress. Bumped me a good 15-20% in efficiency. That reminds me, why is it that you are supposed to drain your mash tun slowly? I get 70% almost exactly every time (except last time I got 78%, go go new mill!) and I just open the valve on my mash tun all the way to drain as fast as I can. Does draining slower help efficiency?
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Jan 7, 2015 23:32
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Economic Sinkhole posted:
How did you get the measurement for the final wort volume? Is that also from the fermenter bucket? Assuming you got the 5.72 gallons in your recipe @ 1.060, I'm seeing 67% efficiency. I would consider 70% +/- 5% to be normal for batch sparging, so I don't think you should be too concerned. If you want to increase your efficiency, I think the #1 thing you need to do is make sure your volume and grain weight measurements are accurate, because without that information you really don't know what your efficiency is. Once that is in order, you can try getting a smaller crush on the grain. It sounds like you have mash pH under control.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:48
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Economic Sinkhole posted:I sparge wide open. It would be easy enough to try a slower sparge. I'll look in to the pan idea for the vorlauf. Or maybe I'll just skip it since I sparge through a mesh strainer anyway. Economic Sinkhole posted:The final volume is basically an estimate from sparging into my fermenter bucket in batches, then adding the volumes together. Can you recommend a good, accurate way to measure the wort volume in the boil kettle? It looks like my choices are either a sight gauge or a "calibrated stick" marked with volumes. Neither choice seems terribly accurate though. That should be accurate enough for your pre-boil volume. Even if the bucket only has lines for whole gallons, you can probably estimate to 0.25 gallon accuracy, which is plenty accurate. The post-boil volume when you pitch the yeast and take your OG reading is more critical, I think. A hydrometer is fine for that OG reading, too, you just need to make sure it's calibrated.
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Jan 15, 2015 01:35
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Marshmallow Blue posted:On the Dubbel, I'm going to be using candi syrup. What do you guys reccomend the D-180 or the D-90. I'm really aiming for the plum, fruity, toffee, bready flavors and Not really spicy esters (which is probably more of a yeast thing anyways). Edit: It may be more of a lower alcohol (7%) Belgian dark strong than a Dubbel, but either way. I'm aiming for flavor and great beer, not style guidelines. I think it depends on what you want. I personally would base my recipe on one of these: http://www.candisyrup.com/recipes.html . The first dubbel I glanced at used D-90 but I used D-180 in my rochefort 8 clone, although I guess that's closer to a quad? I don't know.
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Jan 16, 2015 00:30
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Fluo posted:Could you post your rochefort 8 clone recipe please. It's the one on that site, actually. http://www.candisyrup.com/uploads/6/0/3/5/6035776/rochefort_8_clone_-_040.pdf Mine didn't turn out amazing, probably because
One of these days I'll give it another shot, this time not as a novice. I think the recipe is good and worth doing.
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Jan 16, 2015 18:01
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McSpergin posted:Also just on the topic of brett stouts, my LHBS guys have been on a real big experimental yeast kick at the moment. They did an oatmeal stout, then threw Roselare blend (lambic/gueuze/flanders with a mix of brett, pedio, lacto?? and saccharo) at it. The only sour stout I've ever had was New Belgium's Clutch beer, and I thought it was pretty dang good. I may be biased because I already knew that Clutch was the greatest band before I drank it.
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Jan 25, 2015 06:27
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adebisi lives posted:I'm trying to think of something pretty weird for my next beer and came up with this for an ipa: some kind of belgian yeast with a malt bill of maris otter and lots of rye. Hops would be a few New Zealand ones like green bullet, moteuka and/or nelson sauvin. It sounds pretty unique but I'm also thinking the yeast and the rye or hops might clash too much. I also thought of something pretty weird. After I brew my pilsner/vienna extremely super duper hoppy IIIPA (instead of waiting in line for 10 hours for Pliny the Younger), I'm brewing a beer where I take a basic pale ale malt bill (2-row, C40, carapils), sour mash it for 3 days with L. brevis, boil for 15 min, then dry hop it with Galaxy and Nelson Sauvin. I'm a dumbass homebrewer.
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Jan 27, 2015 05:46
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Otto Von Jizzmark posted:If it's recent you might be able to save it. This happened to me with a stout. I brew lambics and must have had some cross contamination. Isn't that a bit overkill? Assuming it'll be refrigerated in the keg, the contaminants will basically go dormant and the flavor damage is already done (if there is any damage, even). I'd just taste a sample, and it if tastes like rear end I'd dump it, otherwise keg as normal.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:43
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 03:19 |
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I checked my calendar today and I have my fermentation fridge booked from about a month ago until mid August. 2 people asked me to brew for their weddings. 1/3 of the beers I'm brewing are supposed to age for at least 6 months. I think I have a problem.
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Feb 7, 2015 03:00
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