Recent content by El_Exorcisto

I cracked the bung on this again today for a taste and gravity. I never formed a pellicle, so I was afraid that it wasn't cooking right... I was wrong. It has dropped to 1.004 and tastes incredible. There is just a bit of a metallic thing on the edges of my tongue with a very smooth sourness and...

It tastes sour and a touch funky with subtle notes of pineapple. The only reason I am getting into the long aged funks is because of the smells coming off the fermenter from the grain. It smelled buttery and fruity, like guavas, pineapples, and buttered biscuits. Those were aromas that I really...

0. Adding new yeast and food would do nothing to kill off your infection. It would just potentially make it worse, since the bacteria often times can outpace yeast. 1. Absolutely 2. Absolutely, but just make sure you rinse anything that comes in contact with fermenting beer REALLY well to...

So my next beer is going to be something a little weird. I want to do a sour saison, but am wondering what souring method I want to use. I want it to be a "quick" sour, so the usual methods of funk are out. So my options are doing a sour mash, or adding some unmashed grain to the fermenter...

You need to mill your grains first, don't forget. Find someplace to buy a corona style mill locally, or buy one online. Make a cooler mash tun, there are plans available all over. Then you'll need to make a chiller for the hoppier styles, but initially you can get by on more balanced and malty...

I'm not planning on touching it any sooner than appropriate, was just wondering if the fruit addition was more a gravity concern or one of age. I'll pull another gravity in another 2 months and figure it out then. I am planning on putting 4 gallons on blueberries and dry hopping the remainder...

Ok, so my wild bugs have been chewing through gravity like Pac-Man chews through little white dots. In two and a half months I've dropped from 1.018 to 1.008. The hydro sample tastes phenomenal, too. Is the addition of fruit dependent on gravity, or on timeline? If this follows the trend I am...

So all of the cottage-industry hop yards opening across New York and New England are growing an inferior product compared to the mega farms of the Pacific Northwest? Like all things that one tends to on their own, the end result is often far better than what can commercially be produced. A...

I pulled a hydrometer sample today, and at a little over to months from finish of primary BM45 fermentation it has dropped 10 points to 1.008. It's lightly sour with subtle notes of pineapples, funky something, and a kind of metallic flavor. Still no pellicle, but some bubbles are always...

The BM45 had visibly wrapped up in 5 days, so I racked it onto the bugs one week ago at a gravity of 1.018. The bugs got to work almost instantly, since it came from a continuously fed starter essentially. I took a gravity today and found that the bugs had already chewed through 2 points...

How small is the bunghole? I use a small rubber bung that gits the grommet hole in a drilled bucket lid. I doubt it could be any smaller than that and have any function at all.

I'm enjoying one right now, and it has changed a lot. The ester profile has definitely become more English, but the rummy notes from the molasses are still there in a big way. Definitely a page of the notebook worth keeping around.

I use a couple of sterilite totes to store my base malt and they seem to work fine, almost a year later.

Get your wort chilled down to pitching temperature. If you want to ferment hot for a reason, and you will eventually learn good reasons to, then use temp control or free rise to get the temp up, never pitch hot. Beer clears, it's generally pretty good at it. It takes time and preferably some...

bottlebomber, if they can ferment the starch in a turbid mash, some dextrines would be a piece of cake.