Recent content by cms

No harm, as long as the tube is secure.

I have some hops (mostly leftovers) that have been wrapped up in the freezer for a while and it's probably time to use them... What would you do with the following: 3oz Amarillo (unopened, but not nitro-flushed and about a year old) 1oz Simcoe (unopened, but not nitro-flushed and about a...

It depends on the kind of beer, if you bagged your hops (especially dry-hops), the yeast, etc. I always bag my hops now and that's saved me a good half gallon per batch. I am also more careful to strain my wort when adding it to the fermentor. Some yeasts also seem to cake better than others...

I'm not sure what you mean by "as a starter". Activating a smack pack is different than making a starter. There's yeast in the pack and yeast nutrient in the bladder that you burst from smacking. There's not really any additional food or oxygen in the pack so the yeast pretty much just wake...

I prefer to bag them but it doesn't hurt to toss them in. There's no wrong answer. I like to try and get my beer as clear as I can so I will always either bag the hops or strain the wort so I have less trub to accidentally siphon up (perhaps flawed logic, I dunno). If you toss them in, you...

A warning of what not to do (just in case you're tempted)... My first couple AG batches were really low as well (55 and 58, I think). I tried to compensate by sparging until the runnings were nearly clear and then boiling the hell out of all the extra volume. Dumb idea. It did ultimately...

I didn't - just left them sitting on the counter. My hope was that, if anything, any CO2 it started producing would flush out any O2 from the bottles. The risk is that the won't be enough left after I cap them to pressurize them and get some CO2 into suspension. Would have been a better...

I ended up doing a mix between this and my initial thought. I bottled a couple and covered with sanitized foil and then left the rest (~4-5 more, I think) in the bucket and will finish filling in the morning. I'll mark the bottles so I can compare them later on, but I don't expect them to be...

Just moved beer to the bottling bucket and primed. The bottles are all sanitized and I just noticed that I will be about about 10 caps short. I buy crowns in bulk and haven't given it a though in ages. It's 9PM and I have to decide... Should I bottle all of them and cover what I can't cap...

I haven't, but I think I will if the new batch has a problem. As I understand it (or misunderstand it) bottled water will either come from a spring or from a municipal water source. Not sure if either is necessarily sanitary, but what should I look for, other than not being distilled? Are...

So I took a few months off for a couple reasons. Every one of my AG batches were worse than my previous extract batches (various off-flavors along the way) and because time was against me for a while. During my hiatus, I mostly killed my stash (about 6 more medicinal, yeasty Oatmeal Stouts...

Can you get bread yeast? You can use a packet of dry bread yeast with pretty good results. I'd skip the pH test until you get more experience and just go by rule of thumb to know when the mash is complete (i.e. 60 minutes at 154° and you can be pretty confident that conversion is complete.)...

+1

...Get that thing out of the sunlight while you're waiting it out (in case you haven't).

The crush could have a huge impact on the clarity. In my amateur opinion, I would start here. Does the mill at your LHBS adjust (some let you adjust, some don't)? If so, try to dial that in - you can find lots of info on what makes a good crush. Are you getting any off flavors that seem to...