Recent content by arnoldk2

I haven't brewed in 6 months. Due to family tragedy and building a playroom for my son I thought I lost the passion for brewing. Recently though I find myself thinking of brewing just like I did 6 months ago so I know I haven't lost the passion. My wife is pretty happy that I've turned the...

I usually wait to aerate right before I pitch. In other words I use my immersion chiller to chill the wort as quickly as possible. I then put that into the carboy. I then put the carboy in the fridge for several hours to get a couple degrees below fermentation temp. I then aerate with O2 and...

I do this. I put my wort into a carboy and then put it in the refrigerator. When I brew late I put it in over night before I pitch. I've never had any issues.

Thanks to yooper and AnOldUR. You guys were correct. I found the podcast and listened to it again. They were talking about fly sparging. Batch sparging they said run it slow during your vorlouf to set the bed and then you can run it as fast as you feel comfortable. I learned something...

Maybe I misheard them and they were talking about fly sparging. I will have to go back and try and find that podcast.

Just telling you guys what happened when I slowed down my drain. Take it or leave it. I guess people like john palmer and jamil zanisheff are wrong too. Listen to their podcast and they say slowing the drain increases extraction efficiency.

I batch sparge and always use a nice slow drain. A slow drain does a couple of things. 1. It ups your efficiency. I went from a 60% efficiency to a 75% efficiency by slowing the drain process. 2. A slow drain will help set the grain bed and reduce stuck sparges. My drain times usually last...

I had the same problem except I was collecting not enough wort making my OG higher than what I wanted. I would fix this by adding a gallon of boiled water into my carboy. My problem was beersmiths default boil off for me was not enough. In a 60 minute boil I boil off about 2 gallons of water...

If you use the dishwasher I would run the dishwasher empty to get all the stuff out of it and then put the bottles in and run the sanitizing wash. I've done it that way but not a fan. The way I use to bottle is scrub the bottles in a bucket full of iodopher solution then let dry. If there was...

I completely missed it was dry yeast. Typically what is recommended is that if you use dry yeast that you don't make a starter. Because dry yeast is pretty inexpensive you just add the amount of packets required to get the required yeast cell count.

The 900 ml starter isn't big enough. But don't worry, 900 ml is better than nothing. To help the yeast try and pitch the starter when it is at high krausen. You should be okay. Try and find something on stepped starters. That will help you for your next starter.

Sorry, just to clarify. The gravity is 1.010 and not .1010.

Yup, take another reading the next day. If they are the same then your beer is done fermenting. Most final gravities won't go much below that.

A good lager is tough to make. I'm a proponent of no secondary but lagers are different, especially light lagers. This is what I do for my lagers. Some will say I'm over doing it but I must say I make very clean lagers. After I put my wort into the carboy I put it in the fridge to cool it...

The only reason lagering is anything at all is because back in the day people would brew a ton of beer in the summer and then store them for the winter months. Yes, lagering has some benefits. It will mellow a beer out and if lagering in oak barrels it will extract the flavors of the oak. It...