Recent content by esarkipato

It's been a few years since I brewed. I'm looking to brew up a double-batch of drinkable IPA, with some of my favorite hops as the showcase. i would like it to be crisp, with a bit of malty backbone but hoppy as hell. What are your thoughts on the following recipe...

For those that complain of tartness -- you need to age this a bit more. Like a wine that uses a lot of fruit, age will bring out the natural strawberry flavor.

I am thinking of a triple batch coming up here, and only have 1 brew kettle and 1 mash/lauter tun. A few things I am thinking of to ease the pain of a long day and increase efficiencies: -do 30 minute boils, using more hops for appropriate IBU level (I like hop flavor & aroma anyway, and have...

Coming around to harvest time again. To update this thread, I experienced some pretty crazy sulphur production. I ended up running the wine through copper tubing I had laying around and WHALA it was free of that skunky aroma. The wine was really good. Many good reviews even from some wine-o...

Sounds awesome. I'm becoming a fan of weaker meads - not so dang long for aging!

I'm going to read those recipes right now! Good thinking. I've read many of his, but never the blackberry ones.

Sounds pretty delic! I've never had a huckleberry let alone brewed with one. However, I think you will be pleased with the results - if you have patience :). Higher gravity meads like this that are dry will take some aging to really bring out the hint of honey aroma. I think you've planned...

Well I just had the same problem as you did Bovine. Brewed a high gravity IPA with huge aroma additions and dry hopping. As soon as carbonation levels were OK the HUGE amarillo nose was pretty much gone. So dissapointing. One solution I read was to immediately stick the batch in an extra...

Right, so the san fran yeast took about 24 hours to get moving, which scared me right good. But at that point it took off, and the aromas from the ferment were great. So, after another day I added my 5 lbs honey and some nutrient/energizer, and I'll be d*mned if that yeast didn't already eat...

Yea I should really do better about making starters. Really. But when I get the chance to brew, I just gotta do it. I decided to go ahead and pitch the decanted yeast, but I'll wait to add the honey until it really gets going. Thanks guys.

I'm hoping to ferment a braggot (raspberry brown ale with 50-60% honey) with san fransisco lager yeast. It worked really well for me in the past, and I washed and preserved about 1 cup of the yeast from my last batch a few months ago. It's been in a sterilized container in the fridge since...

Great advice. I guess I didn't even think about the sterilization of the un-boiled wort (other than keeping it's containers sterile). I'll probably just bring the "second" wort to a boil after my initial boil just to sterilize it. Thanks for the help! I'll scale the ibu's by volume...

I really want to max out my 15g mash tun. So bad. I'm planning to do a double batch of an ipa. I'm calculating a gravity for 11 gallons of beer with 35 lbs of grain of about 1.080, given my expected efficiency. My question is just how heavily should I hop this thing to try and hit 70 IBU...

inexperience. I thought they might be more prominent in the flavor if they were added in secondary. At this point, if I were to make this again, the berries would go in the primary OR I would add more honey to restart fermentation. Having active yeast I think draws out the berry flavor more.

Nucleation sites - awesome. It sounds like the same could be accomplished using a sponge or other porous material. Maybe I'll try an experiment (read=excuse to drink another beer). Regarding oils on the rind, I wonder about that because I've seen the reaction to a finger, or even a quick...