Recent content by elgrindio

Nope... I did add a pound of boiled brown sugar water after 3 days. That’s as crazy as it gets.

Hey everybody. Just wanted your opinion about this: This is a heavy porter that has been in the fermenter for almost 3 weeks now. Initial fermentation seemed to go fairly normal. OG 1.078, now settled at around 1.020. Hydrometer readings 2 days apart were the same. Tastes good, so I’m not...

Great stuff everybody. Thanks for your time!

Hey there everybody. So, I´ve come up with a recipe that I believe should come out something like a heavy, somewhat sweet, porter. Recipe below. My main question is, what kind of IBUs and aroma hops would you recommend? What would be the low and high ranges? I´m thinking the lowest should be...

BYO Mag.

Perfect! That let's me know I'm on the right track. Even with the sugar, I think I will lower my mash temp as you recommended.

Giraffe, thanks for the specific recommendations. You're right, I don't have lager capabilities, so ale it is! Just a question: why the lower mashing temp? Would that be to make a thinner beer, to more resemble a lager?

Ok, good. Thanks for the info. The brown sugar isn't really a big part of the question, but it's good to know the effect it has. As the recipe says, it could just as easily have been white table sugar. I was more curious about the effect of the mash temperature. Thanks for the info!

So, the concensus about starters is to only use tinfoil so that oxygen can get in. If that's the case, then why is it so important to use an airlock when brewing? Why couldn't you just use tinfoil again? Or a loose screw-on cap? It seems like if it can't contaminate a starter, then it can't...

So, you're saying that mashing at higher temperatures doesn't make beer sweeter? Just "thicker" (more body)? Also, what about the idea of using table/brown sugar in a recipe but compensating for the "drying" effect by increasing the mash temp? For example : 13 lb. Base malt 1lb...

Cool! Thanks guys for the confirmation, and the tips about the sugar. I'll let you know how it turns out!

I'm hoping you guys can critique this recipe for me. I was envisioning a really strong/big bodied Porter, with Caraaroma flavors. After investigating I realized that what I was imagining was (close to?) a Baltic Porter. I live in South America, so that ingredients you see in my recipe are...

I'm hoping you guys can critique this recipe for me. I was envisioning a really strong/big bodied Porter, with Caraaroma flavors. After investigating I realized that what I was imagining was (close to?) a Baltic Porter. I live in South America, so that ingredients you see in my recipe are...

So, just to provide a little closure, and for what it's worth to anybody who might search for "CaraAroma" later, I tried it, and the hops were fine, but the CaraAroma was just nasty. I have a pretty open mind about beer, but it's kinda gross. I'll stick to using it in my porters... :(

So nice to hear somebody else admitting to such irresponsible, unpredictable behavior! I was afraid to tell anybody else that I did the same thing! :o Sometimes we can get so specific and nit-picky here when we give advice that it tends to intimidate newcomers, when in reality, beer usually...