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Brewed up my pumpkin ale yesterday and it is fermenting quite vigorously right now. Not a crazy krausen, but it's bubbling like mad. Really looking forward to drinking this one next month, it smelled fantastic going in.
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Sep 19, 2011 16:06
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Lrrr posted:I recently got a bunch of old bottles that I hoped to use for my next batch, but most of them have poo poo in the bottom. I'm guessing they weren't entirely emptied when the contents were consumed so some mold started colonizing the bottom. Then this was left to dry for years (quite possible decades). I've had some of them soaking with water and a bit of dish soap for days now, but it doesn't seem to do much at all. Is there anything that would do a better job than regular soap? Have you tried blasting the crap off with something like this? These things work awesome. http://www.monsterbrew.com/Prod_BrassBottle&CarboyWasher.cfm
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Sep 19, 2011 18:32
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Yesterday I stopped by my brew shop and they had guest speakers from Sierra Nevada come in to talk about their new Ovila Belgian style beer line. It actually has a really cool backstory. They got the idea of the line when they had a monastery come to them about doing a partnership with them to benefit rebuilding some of their property. They learned a lot from them and actually went over to Europe with a few of them to visit other monasteries and trappist breweries to really understand the process and I have to say, it really shows in the beer. All three of the beers are really good. Strangely enough, I actually went into the shop to buy ingredients for a Belgian golden ale so the timing was nice. 7 lbs pilsen light dry extract 1 lb aromatic malt 1 oz cascade 60 min 1 oz cascade 15 min 1 oz cascade 3 min 1 lb candi sugar .75 lb corn sugar 1 tsp irish moss Wyeast 3787 Trappist Ale Yeast
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Dec 23, 2011 20:58
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Dr. Cogwerks posted:I'm kinda worried about my IPA at the moment, it's a day into fermentation and bubbling quite happily but the bucket is hovering around 73 degrees. The room itself is at 65F. I'm fine with fruity esters but I hope this doesn't start producing lovely fusel alcohols and such. Most ale yeasts should be fine in that range. If it has a range that large, it's a pretty hearty yeast and you should be fine. Being in FL a lot of my fermenting is done around 74 degrees and I haven't had any problems.
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May 16, 2012 18:36
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Just brewed up my pumpkin ale for Halloween/Thanksgiving drinking. 4 lbs dry light extract 3 lbs dry wheat extract 1 lb Crystal 40 1.5 lbs pale malt .5 lb flaked wheat 3 lbs roasted pumpkin (just a splash of molasses) 2 oz fuggle 90 min 1 oz hallertau 60 min 1 oz fuggle 5 min 2 tsp mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves Wyeast 1056 American Ale Tasted drat good going into the primary, can't wait to try the finished product.
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Sep 29, 2012 22:07
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fullroundaction posted:My Midas Touch clone seems to not want to carbonate. It's been in bottles for about 2.5 weeks and there's (other than barely a hiss) almost no flocculant in the bottom of the bottles. How worried should I be? Was thinking the muscat concentrate might cause a problem but I had my fingers crossed. I had a similar problem with my pumpkin beer this past fall. I bottled it 3 weeks before Halloween and when we opened the growler at the party it was nearly flat. Made for ok pumpkin beer floats with my homemade pumpkin ice cream though. What I ended up doing was giving all the bottles a bit of agitation by tipping them up and down a couple times and then letting them sit another week or so. The next one I opened was fully carbonated. So maybe give the bottles a light shake and let them sit a while longer and open another one.
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Mar 18, 2013 04:32
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Crunkjuice posted:I'm gearing up for my first real brew. I'm going to try the norther brewers witbier recipe. http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/Witbier.pdf . I'm going to buy the ingredients from my local store but i have a few questions. When i add the hops/coriander seed/orange peel, do those need to be bagged and removed before cooling, or do i just dump them in? If so, how do you guys use the grain/hop bags? Do you tie em off and toss em in, or do you hang them from something so they don't hit the bottom and burn? What local store are you going to? If you don't mind driving to Lake Worth, go to BX Beer Depot. By far the best brew shop in the state. They do brewing classes for pretty cheap too.
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Mar 20, 2013 05:19
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Crunkjuice posted:I'm in Dallas so driving there would take 18 hours according to google maps ;p Haha my mistake, I think I got your location mixed up with one of the other guys in the diving thread.
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Mar 20, 2013 14:50
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wattershed posted:Could this be what happens when an IPA's hops begin to turn? Can that even happen? All my other IPAs have kicked quickly and I've never had this issue. Nothing has been touched within the kegerator and the pressure/co2 is all good on the keg. Your beer should not be going bad that fast so something likely got into it somehow. Hops are a natural preservative so it's unlikely that that is what is causing the issue.
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Mar 29, 2013 20:05
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I recently just bought my first house and I've gained permission from the wife to be to put a kegerator in the kitchen provided that A. it looks nice and B. I can mount the tap handle on top of a counter top so it's somewhat built in. We have a nook in our house that was supposed to be for a "desk" area, but the builder wanted way too much for the cabinetry/countertop and also they had upper cabinets that I didn't want, so I'm going to order cabinets on my own to fit around the kegerator and do a butcher block countertop which should make it easy to drill a hole to run the lines for the tap. Has anyone done something similar in their kitchen that they have any advice on? I plan to put some kind of insulated collar around the hole to make sure that space stays cold. I also read that unless you get a kegerator specifically for built in purposes that you need to leave a couple inches on each side for air circulation, which sounds like a good idea. I'm hoping that I can find a place doing some black friday sales in a few weeks on kegerators. Right now it seems like Beverage Factory is one of the better retailers. Are there any other ones I should be looking at? This will be my first experience kegging at all so if there are any things I might want to consider adding that anyone has any advice on that would be awesome too, i.e. upgraded faucets (perlick), gauges, etc. Right now from my limited research I'm liking the Kegco 309SS dual tap unit, largely because it has a big temperature range so I could possibly use it to lager in if I wanted to as well. rockcity fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 02:52
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ieatsoap6 posted:http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/an-iipa-1 It may just be that you don't really have any significant hop additions between the bittering and late flavoring/early aroma stages. I think if you had either saved 1/3 of those hops to throw in around 30 minutes or added some more to the 30 minute mark it may have given a more balanced bitterness rather than just a sharp forefront of it. My favorite IPA I made using the Bell's Two Hearted method of just mixing all the hops and dosing them out every 5 minutes over the 60 minute boil. My next IPA I want to do with that same method but also using honey like Hopslam.
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Nov 11, 2013 04:20
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What's a good place to buy kegs online? My mom is looking for ideas for me for Christmas and I was thinking about asking for a couple of kegs for the kegerator I should be buying soon. She lives across the country so buying local isn't really an option.
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Nov 29, 2013 03:29
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I finally took the step forward and ordered my kegerator on Black Friday. Beverage Factory had the one I was looking at on sale and then an extra $50 off. I went with the Kegco 309 dual tap. I'm going to modify it to build it into a row of cabinets and put a butcher block counter on top of it and run the lines up through it. I need to make some kind of PVC collar and insulate it in spray foam so I don't lose temp efficiency. I upgrade to the perlick faucets while I was at it as well. Now I just need to have my mom order a couple kegs as my Christmas gift and get this thing running. I'm planning on finally moving to a BIAB all grain process with my first kegged batch.
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Dec 2, 2013 00:22
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I'm brewing up a session IPA today and I'm planning to do a gradual hop dosing every 5 minutes throughout the boil with a blend of galaxy and citra hops and do a drop hop in the secondary as well. I'm planning on using 3oz in the boil and an oz in the secondary. I have two 1 oz nitrogen sealed packages of each, my question is that if I open them all to blend them and save an oz of it in a ziploc bag are they going to lose their potency for the week in a bag in the fridge? Would I be better off blending three of the packages and saving one of the sealed bags for the dry hop instead? I also picked up an copper tube wort chiller a little while back that I'm finally excited to try out.
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Apr 19, 2014 19:20
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ieatsoap6 posted:I usually store opened hops long term (i.e., more than a day) in the freezer instead of the fridge. I have no basis for this being better or worse, but to me it seems like a way to minimize any aging. That said, I doubt much would happen over a week. Yeah, I just mixed them all up and re-bagged an ounce. I pushed as much air as I could out of it and threw it back in the fridge. The bad thing I learned during my brewing is that my new stove can barely get my kettle to boil when it's at volume. Guess that finalizes my decision to finally buy an outdoor burner.
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Apr 20, 2014 01:15
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Ask them what specifically is breaking the law. Is it they're not allowed to hook up something brewed at home to their tap to serve for health reasons or something? I could see them not wanting to be held liable for serving something that wasn't commercially produced, but that would be an in house policy, not a law. Would they let you serve bottles? My sister in laws wedding they had home brewed beer, but it was bottled and at everyone's seat at the table like a favor. I'm willing to be there's nothing legally wrong with it, just that they're now allowed to by ownership. If that's the case, you might just be out of luck.
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Apr 22, 2014 00:50
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A little while back I ordered a Kegco 209SS kegerator for a bar build that I'm doing in my kitchen. Due to general busyness I haven't ordered the cabinetry for it yet, but I've finally gotten a quote on them and plan to order them soon. Has anyone turned a standalone kegerator into an under-counter one? I'm not trying to make it look super built in like the flush mounted Summit models are, but I want to put the unit under the counter and mount the tap on top. I know that I'll need to make a sleeve for the top to make sure that air can flow to the tower and not just escape, but my big questions is airflow for the refrigerator. I know that it's going to need some room for ventilation, but how much is needed and should I consider some sort of small fan to push the warm air out? I'll have one free power outlet to plug in some form of air circulation should I need it. I know I'll need a few inches behind it and I'll probably leave 1-2" on each side to make sure air can get out. The counter should sit about an inch above the refrigerator as well so air should be able to flow on top. Has anyone done something like this? I want to make sure I plan ahead so I can be proactive rather than reactive.
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Apr 22, 2014 15:57
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I'm doing a session IPA right now as well. 6lb golden LME .75lb honey .5lb carapils 3oz of a blend of citra and galaxy dosed out every 5 min thought the boil. 1oz of that blend to dry hop. West coast American ale yeast. Should end up around 5% and 80 IBU. Taking most of this to a 4 day beach camping event that I'm doing next month.
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Apr 25, 2014 06:02
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Josh Wow posted:Here's a great resource if you want to know too much about draught beer: Thanks for this. I bought a kegerator a little while back, but have been holding off until I get the cabinets I'm installing around it to set it up. This is a big help for me to read ahead on the setup process.
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May 6, 2014 02:50
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Jo3sh posted:For any big beer, it is a challenge to get a wort fermentable enough that it finishes where you want it and does not end up cloying. The issue is compounded by the fact that high-gravity worts have lower hop utilization than milder worts, so it's also hard to get them bitter enough to be balanced. Seconding this. I'd have used candy sugar instead of the extra malt extract if you just wanted to make it higher gravity. I did that to a couple Belgians.
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May 11, 2014 05:07
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Midorka posted:Brewing my first stove-top batch, BIAB 1 gallon mosaic single hopped and I'm already considering using extract next time. My largest stove-top pot holds ~1.5 gallons, which is what I'm mashing with. With the grain it's about full. I heated the water to 160 and added the bag of grain and the temps are all over ranging from 150 inside the grain to 160+ outside. What a pain. BIAB in a one gallon batch just seems really weird to me. I can't see being able to hold temps on a stove to properly mash with that little water. A 5 gallon pot could actually be worse because it's likely wider and would just put the bag closer to the bottom of the pot. You'd probably be better buying a cooler and heating your water and submerging the bag in the cooler of water.
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May 12, 2014 19:19
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Marshmallow Blue posted:I'm going back to buckets! I hate cleaning carboys. I'm gonna use them for meads and stuff and maybe get some for souring in the future though. The carboy brush I have makes cleaning them pretty easy. I usually give them a solid rinse right after use, then soak them with some dish soap for about 15 minutes, run the brush through them and then rinse them clean. Works easy enough for me.
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May 16, 2014 15:51
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Jacobey000 posted:You should really not be using dish soap - bad for head retention, can leech scents, etc etc. It gets rinsed several times and power washed out with my carboy nozzle and then rinsed again when I sanitize before my next batch. I've never had a problem.
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May 17, 2014 16:02
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BLARGHLE posted:I use honey to prime my honey-wheat and braggots and things like that, so I don't know how much honey flavor you get from doing that, but it carbonates just fine as long as you calculate the adjustment properly. I mix it into a cup of hot water before putting it in the bottling bucket, because otherwise a lot of it just ends up stuck on the bottom of the bucket when you're all done. Yeah, I was going to say you need to be heating it up with some water anyway just so that it mixes properly. Very little of it would make it to the bottles otherwise.
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May 19, 2014 20:47
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I've been looking to make the leap from partial mash brewing up to all grain and I'm finally getting closer to pulling the trigger on some equipment. My birthday is coming up in a couple weeks and my mother is looking for some gift ideas for me so that's sort of acting as the catalyst in finally looking into the equipment I'll need to take that step. Right now I'm looking at doing some sort of a cooler/false bottom setup. It looks like a couple companies sell 7.5 gallon and 10 gallon cooler kits. I know you can build them yourself for slightly cheaper, but I'd rather have my mom buy me something ready to go rather than a bunch of random parts. The other things I'll need to get is a bigger boil kettle as my 6 gallon kettle isn't going to work for full volume 5-gallon batch boils and also an propane burner as I just figured out that the stove in my new house is just not powerful enough to do large boils. My big questions are... Is there any reason I should consider jumping to kettles and more burners to do my all grain instead of coolers? If I'm doing 5 gallon batches, is there any reason to go with 10 gallon coolers instead of 7.5 gallon? Is a 10 gallon kettle big enough for full volume 5 gallon boils? Also, is there a good reason to drop the money on a kettle with all the bells and whistles like a sightglass and built in thermometer? I do think having a ball valve would be handy.
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Jun 5, 2014 01:24
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Discomancer posted:1) Coolers are useful for keeping your mash temperature consistent. The classic Home Depot cooler will lose maybe 2 degrees during an hour long mash. Thanks. I figured 10 gallon would give me room for the bigger beers, I just wasn't sure if having the extra airspace could lead to problems with beers with smaller grain bills. I do have a probe thermometer already so I'm good there, I just wasn't sure if there was a benefit I wasn't aware of to having one built in.
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Jun 5, 2014 01:56
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pugnax posted:So I decided to just go straight American Pale Ale for my first foray into all grain. I'm basically in the same exact situation. I just got a dual cooler all grain setup for my birthday and will be starting soon. I'm going to do an APA for my first too. I'm also planning to start kegging with this batch as well. I have my kegerator and kegs, I'm just waiting for my butcher block countertops to come in so I can install it with the counters.
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Jun 15, 2014 23:27
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Picked up a 10 gallon kettle with a ball valve and ingredients to do my first all grain batch in my dual cooler rig. It's going to be a hoppy wheat beer that I'll be brewing on the 4th of July. 5 lbs 2 Row Malt 3 lbs White Wheat Malt 1 lb Crystal 15 .5lb Rice Hulls I'm still not 100% on how I'm doing the hops yet, but I bought 2 oz of Cascade and 1 oz each of Nelson Sauvin and Sorachi Ace. Right now I'm thinking something like this which would land around 43 IBU. .5 oz Cascade 30 min 1 oz Nelson Sauvin 10 min 1 oz Sorachi Ace 5 min .5 oz Cascade 1 min 1 oz Cascade dry hop Wyeast 1010 American Wheat
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Jun 30, 2014 18:23
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more falafel please posted:Nelson Sauvin is supposed to taste like Sauvignon Blanc. I had a braggot single-hopped with it and it was very interesting. Unique flavor for sure. Yeah, it's supposed to be sort of a citrusy wine taste. Certainly smelled that way. All three have a bit of a citrus/fruit component to them which is what I'm going for. I have heard that about wheat beers, which is definitely why I only made the wheat 31% of the grain bill and added the rice hulls. I bought a full pound of the rice hulls, but the guy at the shop said I'd probably only need half of it because the grain bill isn't very large. I'm definitely expecting having to really baby how quickly I'm draining the cooler and possibly having the give things a stir. The main reason I'm doing a wheat is that this is also going to be my inaugural kegged batch and I wanted something fairly approachable for the not-so-adventurous. I didn't want to go straight up wheat beer though which is why it's sort of a wheat meets APA.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:31
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Just finished brewing my first all grain batch of my hopped up wheat beer. Man, whoever said that wheats aren't the best one to start off with was right. I had an immediate stuck sparge when I opened my ball valve. Part of that was because I should have gone with my gut and used the full pound of rice hulls and part of it was because I definitely should have started with hotter water, or pre-warmed the cooler a bit because by the time my mash was done I was down to 145. I also hit a snag because I started pouring in heavy wind and I had to move my burner out of the rain which took a few minutes. After adding some of my sparge water and vigorous stirring I got it to budge for a few seconds, but then it slowed right up again. After trying that a couple more times and getting nowhere, I dumped my sparge water back into the kettle and dumped the whole mash into my HLT and ran some water through the mash tun. I then dumped it all back in and by the grace of the beer gods, it opened up. I used the rest of my hot water for a fly sparge and was on my way. Despite the serious temp drop and all the crap I had to do to get it going. I wasn't really far off on my target efficiency. I was aiming for 1.046 OG assuming 75% and hit around 1.042. That'll knock the beer down a smidge in ABV, but overall, I'm happy I was able to get that close to my goal given the huge problems I was having.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:36
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DecentHairJelly posted:Another first timer question here. It might just be some yeast rafts floating up to the top, which is normal.
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Jul 8, 2014 16:30
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pugnax posted:Ok, question. I finally got my hands on a piece of furniture that will work as a liquor cabinet for my living room, and it has a cabinet that looks perfect for putting in a smaller draft tower. There is already a hole drilled in the floor that previous tenants had run coaxial cable through - can I run beer line through that narrow of an opening? I'd love to have the keg in the basement and a tap in the living room. Sure, if you like room temperature beer. I've seen people build taps into furniture, but the refrigerator is usually on the other side of a wall inside of a closet or something and there is only a foot or two of line that they have a flexible insulated tube around to share the cold airspace. Even if you ran a similar setup at the shortest possible distance, you'd probably be looking at 8-10 feet that you'd have to cool which would not be easy.
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Jul 8, 2014 19:28
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Jo3sh posted:I think smoked malts in general are kind of variable. Maybe it has something to do with slow turnover in homebrew shops or something, but when I've done beers with smoked malts sometimes they are intense and sometimes subtle. You could try smoking them yourself to control it. It really wouldn't be all that hard as long as you have a grill and a pan to hold the grains.
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Jul 9, 2014 16:08
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BioTech posted:Just started my very first brew and I have a question. When you're transferring, you should be using a siphon of some sort which will be drawing the liquid below the surface of the krausen (the foamy part) but above the yeast cake at the bottom of the fermenter.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:40
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What are the go to controllers people recommend using for temp control in a fermentation fridge? I'm finally breaking down and deciding to build one to go in my garage. I'm getting tired of having to stick with the handful of yeasts that will ferment ok at 74 degrees during the 6+ months a year I have to run AC in my house. I'd just be looking to do a small setup for one or two 5-6 gallon carboys.
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Jul 22, 2014 19:22
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Awesome. That's what a few of the builds I've seen online use so that's good to hear. Looks like I can get one for about $20 prime shipped from Amazon too. Time to scour around on craigslist for someone unloading a small chest freezer on the cheap.
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Jul 22, 2014 20:00
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I finally was able to finish up the bulk of my beer/coffee bar last night and I put the inaugural batch into the kegerator to start carbonating. Out of curiosity, how do most people do their carbonating in kegs? It seems like it ranges from anything to a natural yeast fermentation, setting the regulator to serving pressure and waiting a week all the way to cranking the regulator the 60 psi and shaking the crap out of the keg. I ended up sort of settling in the middle and am using the way Northern Brewer recommended with setting the pressure to 20 PSI for two days, then backing down to serving pressure. I also picked up a used 7cf chest freezer on craigslist for a decent price and built my temp controller setup for it as well. I'm going to rather enjoy not having to stick to the handful of yeast strains that will ferment well at 74 degrees during the 6+ months we have to run AC here in Florida. Edit: One thing I meant to mention was that I made sure there was a good sized gap all around the kegerator to allow air flow. There is about an inch on each side and an inch and a half up top and I also have an access hole on the right cabinet to control the temp and allow another place for air to go. Because of that I did have to build a flange on the top of the unit to maintain a sealed cool air space between the kegerator and the tap. rockcity fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 16:46
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Jo3sh posted:That's a sweet-looking build. Thanks. I had to come up with something really put together looking to convince my wife to let me put a kegerator in the kitchen. My next small project with it is to buy some hardware to make one of those cabinet doors a sliding pull out that will hold all my glassware.
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Jul 26, 2014 19:00
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Toebone posted:My homebrew club's annual competition is coming up, but none of the recipes I've done lately have really had that "wow" factor to make them stand out in a crowd. Anyone want to share something that'll blow peoples socks off? Do they have categories or is it just a free for all?
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Jul 29, 2014 15:23
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HatfulOfHollow posted:I just started brewing a few months ago. I'm starting to think about my third batch and was wondering where you guys buy your supplies? Do you just go through your local home brew shop or do you order online? Maybe a combination of the two? And if you're doing online, what's a good site to use? I buy all my ingredients locally, largely because I like the input when I'm buying things if they have any suggestions to tweak or add to a recipe. If you do want to go online, the usual candidates are Northern Brewer, More Beer and Midwest Brewing.
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Jul 29, 2014 16:01
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