Recent content by airving

I remember picking up a bottle post-college and noticing it said 'Serve Very Cold' on the label. I am not a smart man. Do not read this as a friendly suggestion from the manufacturer - it's a warning label.

Late response, but my last three kits have been fermented cool. I did one of the chocolate raspberry ports, with 3x premiere cuvee (plus yeast nutrient) @ 57 degrees, and also did a Luna Bianca the exact same way. Mind you the port was 3 gallon and already came with 2 packs of yeast. The Luna...

I think the goal is also to give the yeast an ideal environment to reproduce in. 100g of dme in .5L is going to be rougher on the yeast than 100g of dme in 1L due to the concentration of sugars and resulting alcohol production. Consider, rather, how much yeast you will get from X liters of...

I thought that was the purpose of adding k-meta and sorbate: to stop any live yeast from starting further fermentation. Note that I'm not suggesting trying to stop an active fermentation: everything I've read says to add those prior to back-sweetening and you should be safe. Is that not your...

I've had luck fermenting (primary and secondary) at those temperatures - my fridge is set at 57 right now to ferment a kit, and just got done bottling another done at that same temperature. It was by far the best I've made. Reading the beer brewing forums, temperature control is one of the...

I've also heard of the 'add sugar slowly until the yeast can't take anymore' method, but being inexperienced personally, I would be fearful that the yeast were still processing slowly - perhaps too slowly for me to see. Isn't there risk of bottle bombs from gradual pressure increase after...

Quick update: it went the final stretch from 1.026 down to 1.000, still at 57 degrees. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the abv calculators on the web, but 57 degrees (steady) didn't seem to hinder the yeast from cranking out ~19.5% .

Warning - I'm not an expert by any means. But this is something I've wondered as well. My first few kits were fermented at room temperature (Houston, summer, marginally within the range specified by the yeast manufacturer while inside with the A/C running) and I suspect they'll have to age a...

When talking about starters, I always consider the volumes mentioned to be the starter wort volumes, but only the settled yeast 'sludge' is what I put into my fermenter. And to be honest, my 2L starter is really about 1.6L to leave some room for fermentation in my 2L flask.

I've not dislodged my dip tube, but my first time using my FB, I added a short length of tubing underneath to get closer to the bottom of the mash tun. It worked fantastically when I tested with water - only about a cup of liquid left in the cooler. Not sure if I stirred too vigorously or...

Don't worry about hot side aeration. I'd be more concerned about carrying 5 gallons of near-boiling wort down stairs... Be careful.

Check this page: http://hbd.org/uchima/tech/extract.html in the second table, both cane sugar and dme are listed as having 45 gravity points (1 lb of either dissolved in 1 gallon of water would yield a gravity of 1.045) BUT malt extract will not ferment out as far as cane sugar. So your...

volume, volume, volume. How big (gallons) was your bucket? And how many gallons of wort did you put into the carboy? It's always a risky proposition when you've got only about a gallon of headroom left. Being proactive with a blowoff tube is a good idea. Cooling down your fermentation (if...

Or get 1 or more heating belts (and temperature controllers, probably) - a bit wasteful, sure, but could allow you to temporarily adjust the temp of one or more of your in-progress brews independent of the fridge temp while still using just the one fridge.

I'm still dialing in my efficiency, but I've got a problem in the other direction because of that. Fearing low efficiency, I add enough extra malt to cover for a bad extraction. And then when it works out better than expected (hit 75% last time!) I end up with a 6.5% brew when I was...