Recent content by fcwegnm0b

I just did a sour mash experiment. Basically followed Papazian's sour mash process from Joy of Homebrewing. I took pictures, too... 1 gallon batch: brewed 3-6-11 OG ~1.045 1.5 lbs. 2-row 1 gram Chinook pellets (11.9% AA) - 20-25 mins in boil 0.1 lbs. crushed 2-row for bacteria Used a little...

Eh the part that's beer should be ok. I take a gravity reading pre and post boil... pre boil to see how much to boil off to hit my target gravity and post boil to see how close I came.

I do the same thing. Immersion chiller in the kettle. Once its to 65F put the lid back on and let it sit on the counter for about half an hour... or a few beers. Don't let your siphon go to the bottom; start in the middle. Just watch and lower it down and leave all the crap down there. You get...

Fair enough. Nothing against small batch experiments, but first... next time I brew I'll pull maybe a pint of mash, check conversion with iodine, bring it to a boil like one would a decoction, and do another starch test. Should be informative. I'll get back with results in time. Then maybe a...

Ah I didn't think about that.. good point. Hence a thick decoction being returned to the main mash for conversion after it's boiled. I hadn't put that all together yet.

Single infusion mashing is getting boring, so I was reading up on decoction mashing. I haven't tried the technique yet, but all my reading brought up an idea. First, I am to understand the point of doing a "mash out" at ~168F (in any mash, decoction or not) serves to complete conversion and...

Hell yea. Look into a fermentation chamber / some way to keep the fermenting beer at a nice steady temp. Pitch an appropriate amount of good heathly yeast... bottle (or keg, if you're lucky) on time.... it'll be the best beer you've ever made. Very good points. You can get DME and hops in...

Bump. I have the same problem... anyone know a fix?

Derp! Sorry for the redundancy. I posted over on your first thread before I saw this one... should pay closer attention to usernames... Anyway let us know when you brew this... interested to see how you go about it.

Check out this thread. We've been talking about a plan for a 1-2 gallon 1.100 batch. Like Hex said... BIAB

Here's an example of the mash I was talking about... it was a brown ale. 11 lbs. of grain total. Dough in with 11 quarts (boiled and cooled) water at 185F (I don't preheat my tun, instead I just heat this strike water 10-12F hotter) Temp. stabilized at 156F and held for 60 minutes...

I'm gonna have to go ahead and sort of.. disagree with everyone here. Dry hopped an IPA with 2.2 oz whole leaf hops... just dumped them in the primary (better bottle) after fermentation; no secondary. Most of them didn't get in the beer after a few days so I gently swirled it for three or four...

I believe sterility is like a theoretical goal... we can come close, but never perfect. There's lots of discussion on this point too as is pertains to saved wort for starters.. check out some of the threads... like everything else man, do what works for you. Thanks for the recipe my quick...

Yea PET bottle works. Some people can the wort... there's several threads on it. Just bring it to a boil before you use it. I've though about boiling it down to 1.080 or so and diluting it before making a starter... smaller bottles would save some space in the freezer. I haven't tried what...

Mash thin an do a mash out infusion to raise the mash to 170F or so... then the first runnings should be enough to hit your pre-boil volume... you could do a parti-gyle.. or freeze the second runnings for starters.