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Monkeybutt posted:I've been brewing root beer and am having difficulty with either the bottling or fermentation. Almost all of the recipes I've worked with say the bottles should be allowed to ferment 3-4 days 'or until hard.' In my attempts, they get extremely firm within 24 hours, distended within 48 and the one time I let it go longer than that... boom! I've filled the bottles bout 80% full and the general rule of thumb has been 1/8tsp of ale yeast per gallon. Since you are trying to do a root beer I am going to assume that you're NOT wanting it to be alcoholic root beer and the yeast is ONLY for carbonation. The short answer is yes, stop after the bottles are firm. Do NOT keep fermenting them afterwards. Throw them in the fridge to cold crash (this essentially means stop) the yeast. You can use any yeast type you like but be aware that each yeast will impart a different flavor. Ale yeast is the best in my opinion. I do note one thing, you said bottles as in plural. How much root beer are you making? You really should only make a couple bottles at a time because even with cold crashing there is no guarantee you won't have bottle bombs. The only way to save root beer is to pasteurize which you can't really do with plastic bottles without losing the carbonation.
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Oct 27, 2011 21:20
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deebo posted:I thought I read someplace honey will stop things growing in it, but once you water it down dormant bacteria can start growing? Is this correct? Yes other stuff can lie dormant in honey, however honey is generally pretty safe to add in unpasteurized. But if you really want and you have the equipment for it, you can pasteurize it yourself at 140F for 45 minutes. 140F is below the boiling point of water but is still going to kill 99.999% of whatever is in your honey. Honestly when I make cider I bring everything (cider, spices, honey, brown sugar) up to 140F in a big pot and let it stay at that temperature for close to an hour. Kills off anything that might have been in my cider or other ingredients but won't set the pectin in the cider. It isn't necessary but it's peace of mind that any infants getting drunk off my cider won't die from bacterial infection before they die from alcohol poisoning. Acceptableloss posted:From like eight pages ago: How your cider finishes is more a question of how long you age it than anything else. You could spice it, make it sparkling, hell make it a cyser and the question remains of how long you age it. Not clear enough yet? Let it age more. Seriously cider is more a wine than a beer. You CAN drink it on week 2 but it tastes much better on week 52. As to flavor, I tend to use mostly honey and only a little brown sugar. But really the answer is make several batches and see which one you prefer. Again though, this takes time because a crappy cider can turn godlike in a year. TheCIASentMe fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Oct 31, 2011 |
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Oct 31, 2011 22:51
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zedprime posted:Is there something I'm missing about camden tablets that make them ok for wine, but not for meads or ciders or anything else? There's probably a reason they aren't used for the latter but it seems like it could be a simple way to make sure yeast outcompete anything you'd ever worry about without pasteurization like its use in winemaking. Lots of people use campden tablets for beers and non-wines. It's not that they can't be used for cider or mead. It's just that in the case of mead the honey is already sterile-enough. It's not completely sterile but the trace amounts aren't going to affect anything and by the time it can the alcohol will inhibit growth. As for cider, that's usually because the main ingredient comes in pre-pasteurized bottles. You can get fresh, unpasteurized cider of course, which again requires more care unless your one of the people who makes and drinks their cider within a couple of weeks. TheCIASentMe fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Nov 1, 2011 |
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Nov 1, 2011 05:08
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quantegy posted:I see. What about cold-conditioning, is that different than cold crashing? I keep seeing those terms thrown around but I haven't been able to figure out when/how long they should be used or what temp ranges they should be. The terms are similar but indicate different intentions. Cold-conditioning is usually for clarifying your beer. Cold crashing is for stopping yeast from fermenting. The process is the same with both generally. Just stick the beer in your fridge for a while.
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Nov 1, 2011 16:05
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Jacobey000 posted:So my cranberry wheat beer is just sitting in secondary (tertiary?) just hanging out in the back hallway because I don't have any containers to put it in. The base brew is ~8.5% then the cranberries went in, and I didn't measure the added sugar but it was bubbling really well, and even know is slightly active. I'm unsure of how long before I can get something to serve it in, this isn't a problem is it? It can be if you let go for too long. Generally speaking you've got about 3-4 months before your beer will go bad. Longer if you refrigerate it. It won't spoil but it will taste worse the longer it goes. There are a lot of factors in how much time you have. Namely where is it stored? At what temperature? Is the container it is stored in glass? If so is there light getting to it often? You should store your beer in cool, dark places and if you must use a glass container use a dark brown glass if possible as sunlight will make beers go stale quite quickly. I don't actually like using glass carboys for this very reason.
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Nov 5, 2011 02:34
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Paladine_PSoT posted:Does anyone make dark brown glass carboys? Not to my knowledge. The largest I've seen are gallon brown glass jugs.
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Nov 5, 2011 05:05
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Josh Wow posted:This isn't really accurate info. Your beer will not go bad just sitting around in a fermentor and sunlight doesn't make beers stale. You're right, I used the wrong word and should have used skunked. But you're wrong on a lot of other topics. Plastic buckets are more oxygen permeable than glass but the difference has been proven to have no appreciable difference when it comes to storing beer. You'd have to store the beer for a year to have a demonstrable difference. Your typical homebrew bucket leaks 23 cc/L of oxygen per year while a glass carboy with silicone stopper leaks 17 cc/L of oxygen per year. Your suggestions for covering the carboy are smart. Your typical lightbulb emits a small amount of UV light. Comparing it to the sun, 8 hours of indoor lighting is the equivalent of 1 minute of direct sunlight. To put that into perspective, direct sunlight can skunk light beers in under an hour. The darker the beer the more time it takes. Stale flavors in beer are typically caused by a compound called trans-2-nonenal which is generated in beer naturally around a rate of .5g/L per 5 months at room temperature. At 0.35g/L of trans-2-nonenal a beer is generally considered stale.
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Nov 6, 2011 00:59
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