Recent content by CraptainWirtz

It's also very likely that your wort wasn't completely evenly mixed with your topoff water when you took your sample for the OG reading, so your sample was more dilute than the rest of the wort. If you put all the extract in and came close to the right topoff volume, your OG was probably pretty...

Have you tried swirling your fermenter to get the yeast back in suspension?

I've seen 7 oz pacifico bottles. Those are brown, so see if you can find some near you.

For some brands, you might be able to find out the mash temp for sure. I use MoreBeer LME, for example, and they let you know in the product description that it's mashed at 152°F. For whatever brand you use, I'd call your homebrew shop or the manufacturer and see if they'll tell you. I get...

It may just be a lot of yeast still in suspension. Although it seems unlikely given how long ago you pitched, I wouldn't discount the possibility. What yeast did you use?

I used 1332 once and rocked the carboy a bit to knock the krausen down. As long as you're sure fermentation is complete, it shouldn't be a problem to do that with yours.

Are you using a hydrometer or refractometer for your FG readings?

Did you take any gravity readings? Sounds like it might not have fermented out completely before you bottled. After metabolizing your priming sugar, the yeast slowly went back to work on the maltose.

Found the figure I was looking for, for those interested: https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/7538/Thesis%20%28Takeshi%20Kunimune%29.pdf?sequence=1 Check out page 48. The top row of the image is iso-alpha acids in increasing concentrations from left to right.

I was under the impression that it was alpha acids that contributed to head retention. I can't find it now, but there's a nice PowerPoint presentation from a lab at Oregon State showing this, available on the web somewhere.

Awesome, I was at a brewpub a while back that had a black lager made with "chocolate hops."

You might just have a lot of yeast still in suspension, which refracts a lot o light and might make your beer a lot lighter than it actually is. Wait until you have it in a glass before you start freaking out.

Just for fun, here are three imaginary beers run through the calorie estimator I linked above: A Belgian Tripel made with significant amounts of highly fermentable simple sugars such that a very low FG was reached: OG = 1.075 FG = 1.006 ABV = 9.0% Calories = 251 A syrupy...

I don't think you can really make the comparison you've suggested without OG and FG information. Though, in general, alcohol has fewer calories than the sugar from which it was generated, if that makes sense. To put it another way, for a given OG, a beer that fermented to a lower FG will have...

I think the recipe is just wrong. Isn't invert sugar 100% fermentable? Your recipe as posted seems to make the assumption that it's only ~71% fermentable. I assume Beersmith is calculating attenuation properly.