Recent content by BackAlleyBrewingCo

Success! Here was my process: Bring 2 qts of water to boil on stove top, added campden to drive off chlorine and a few drops of phosphoric acid to drop water pH (I've read that hop teas made with high pH water can result in vegetal flavor/aroma.) Boil 1 oz Columbus pellets (14% AA) in 2...

Thanks to everyone who responded. I'm going to go the hop tea route to balance things out, but first I'll draw off a couple of 2L bottles to try the freeze concentration approach as well. Prost!

Hi all, I brewed a Scotch Ale in late July, OG 1.084, to be ready for Christmas. I fermented with a slurry of Bell's house yeast that I had kept from a prior batch. It had been in the fridge for a couple of months so I was a little worried about how it would perform, but it hadn't ever let...

With an OG of 20 Plato

I just dump mine in hot; it won't hurt anything.

Be careful - those bottles may not hold up to the pressure.

I'm curious - how big of a starter did you make? What are you brewing? Have you made a decision about what you're going to do with your starter? TD

I don't think the off flavors will be cleaned up in the main fermentation, but depending on the size of the starter and the beer style they may not be detectable. When I have time I like to let the starter finish, crash cool it in the fridge, and decant the starter beer before pitching the...

I think you'll find that the end of your tube will clog up pretty quickly like that. To use a bag as your filter you'll need some sort of false bottom to give a large surface area for the wort to flow through. a simple baking cooling rack would probably work just fine in your case - just put...

Hi Hermit (or anyone else), Can you give more information or a link on using a pressure cooker to invert sugar? I've never heard of this method. Thanks, TD

AJ, thanks for the clarification.

AJ, can you (or anyone else) expand on this assertion? The conventional wisdom on water adjustment is that you want at least 10ppm of Mg; I have to infer from this that there isn't enough (generally) in the malt alone. Is that not true? So, is there any bare minimum amount of Mg or Ca you...

Hi all, When ramping fermentation temps, do you start raising temperatures as soon as fermentation starts, at high krausen, or some other time? For example, yesterday I brewed a Tripel recipe that recommends pitching at 64 and slowly ramping the temperature to 70 over the course of a week, to...

Hi all, Last night I made a 2L starter with a pack of Wyeast 3787. The pack has a production date of 3/18/2010. I took it out of the fridge and smacked it, then let it sit at room temperature for 4 hours. The pack only swelled a little bit in that time, but I decided to go ahead and pitch it...

Hi all, Last weekend I poured the yeast cake (harvested Bell's Oberon yeast) from my latest batch (American Wheat) into a couple of mason jars and threw them into the fridge. This weekend I pulled one jar out of the fridge to warm up a little before pitching. After two hours or so I noticed...