muench1

Recipes 

Yeah I usually add pectic enzyme in primary, come to think of it. Not sure why it would go into the boil...

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Primary: Pale Ale
Secondary: Experimental Honey Steam, Apricot Wine, Plum Wine
Bottled/Kegged: Steam Beer, Imperial Porter, All-Juice Apple Wine, Cider, GF Graff, Red Kale Ale, GF GF Ale, Another Cider, Black Ale, Scotch Ale
Coming soon:, Blackberry Wine, GF Pale

ChasidicCalvinist

Recipes 

BTW--congrats on the good beer! Always a worthy cause of celebration in the world of gluten free homebrew.

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so whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

drchris83

Recipes 

I live in a region where wine and cider making is prominent. Where I come from, pectic enzyme is used to maximize must extraction - what is it supposed to achieve in beer making?

frothdaddy

Recipes 

Chestnuts are fruit, so it's a cloudy muddy mess when you rack to the primary. Pectic enzyme is supposed to help all of that drop out and clarify the brew ... whether it actually did that by adding it to the mash is another question.

frothdaddy

Recipes 

Update: Over the holidays I saw fresh chestnuts on sale, so chopped, dried in a food dehydrator, and then ground them in my corona mill. I tried exactly this: boiling for 15 minutes, then cooling to saccarification temp and adding enzymes.

The answer to this question is a resounding no, it can't (shouldn't) be done that way. The boiling of the chestnut chips left a lot of starch particles in the solution that wouldn't convert. I finished the brew session anyways, and had a good primary fermentation, but I can see a good 6-12 inches of starch that has settled in my carboy. My yield off of this 5 gallon batch will be lucky to be 2.5 gallons.

I'm going to do another experiment though, testing brix and starch conversion on a long mash to see if that long mash is truly necessary (especially when adding 5# of sugar). I suspect that I can get a lot of flavor/color out of a much shorter mash, by only sacrificing a few gravity points.

Also, for those out there that think they can chop, dry, and grind their own chestnut chips for a fraction of the price of Chestnut Trails .... this is a huge PITA, and I now think the Chestnut Trails chips are an incredible bargain, compared to the hours of work it took me to get only a few pounds.

Psych

Recipes 

Hah, I recently had fire roasted chestnuts for the first time in my life this winter and holy moley was it a pain in the arse to get them out of their shells to eat. Couldn't imagine doing a few pounds of them!

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Single vessel E-BIAB setup

Donor Fridge Fermentation Chamber