Recent content by BasementAle

I set out to recreate a strong ale that I brewed last year and fermented with a yeast of unknown origin. I salvaged the mystery yeast from the strong ale keg and made starters upon starters until finally getting enough viable cells to make a 2 gallon batch of pale ale. The plan was to keg the...

From my friend's son's friend (17-ish): "We SO need to make a bunch of beer!!!" No, sonny. WE aren't doing anything involving alcohol.

Thanks for all of your input. I was thinking Nottingham may avoid a lot of the champagne yeast issues, and I'm seeing some are getting it to handle nearly 12%abv. If I can get it rolling again with Notti, does anyone see a problem with finishing it off with champagne? And if the champagne is a...

Just to clarify, I'm not blaming the LME on my woes. I just thought it might be a contributing factor based on some posts about extracts added at the beginning of the boil (which I did) not fermenting out all the way. Had I known this I would have treated the LME differently. I aint mad at it...

My understanding is that beano = amylase enzyme (sorta). That tell me that this can make your beer SUPER dry, so I'm going to try a super champagne starter w/nutrient first.

Yes, I tasted it and the alcohol content seems to offset some of the sweetness. But I would still refer to this as a "dessert beer " (which is not exactly what I was going for)

So I brewed my first barleywine from my own recipe (Okay, I had a bunch of miscellaneous grain lying around): 10lbs American 2-row 11oz roasted melanoidin 2.7oz patent 5.3oz Dingemans Special B 10.7oz WyermannnDk Munich 5.8oz Muntons Chocolate malt AND 7 lbs of amber LME...

I am planning on adding gelatin to the secondary to clear up a stubbornly non-flocculant Kolsch. Will the gelatin leave some kind of craziness in the bottom of the secondary that I have to be careful not to siphon up on bottling day?

I only prime with honey. Don't ask me why. I started and kept doing it because it worked really well for me. I think you may have low-balled it a bit. 225g (8 oz) should be about perfect for what you are doing.

To clarify, my thought was not to have a sealed, but an open bag where the opening was above the top of the wort to allow the sublimating CO2 to escape (visualize a sanitized bread bag with a block of dry ice in it, weighted if need be). The insulating ice that forms may decrease the efficiency...

To resurrect this thought of chilling wort with dry ice: I understand the issue with the industrial contaminants in the dry ice, but what if one was to have a container or long-ish plastic bag sanitized on the outside that one sticks the dry ice in and submerges in the wort. That would...

This is fabulous. I decided to try something stupid with Golden Grahams cereal. And in case anyone is interested, 7.5 lbs malt + 2 lbs Golden Grahams = sparge stuck like a glue Some creative wort handling and a boil later it's fermenting like mad. I checked the box and it also contains...

The printing on it shows the two-spout end to be the top. There is also graduation on it that is in pounds and kilos, presumably for weighing milk?

Ah, and this is what happens when you mix me with technology. Let's try the edited ones: P10100531 - HomeBrewTalk Gallery P1010052 - HomeBrewTalk Gallery

My dad found this cool piece of Kimax glassware at a garage sale and got it for me to use as a fermenter. (How cool is my dad, right?) The people at the sale said it was from a dairy. I haven't been able to track down EXACTLY what it is or how it was used, but I plan on making beer with it...