Recent content by forces

I agree, a garnish in most cases is better than adding zest. I chose to zest based the following reasons: 1. I recently did a honey orange wheat with orange zest, which may have been the most favorable beer that I have ever brewed. To top it off, I created my own orange extract that I...

I understand that wort is acidic. According to what i've read, I "know" that higher gravity beers have poorer hop bitterness extraction. Bitterness comes from alpha acids, which I surmise are weak acids. So if the gravity of wort were higher, it would theoretically be more acidic, and there...

repeat thread. sorry

revised 0.50 oz Simcoe- First Wort 45.0 min 0.50 oz Simcoe - Boil 45.0 min 1.00 oz Amarillo Gold- Boil 15.0 min 0.50 oz Simcoe - Boil 15.0 min 1.50 oz Amarillo Gold - Boil 10.0 min 1.50 oz Simcoe - Boil 10.0 min 2.00 Items Grapefruit Zest (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice 10 min...

Thanks for the help. I am trying to kind of re-create an extract brew I did some time ago... only then I was doing about 2.5 gallon boil so my lupulin extraction was significantly less, which allowed my to add ungodly amounts of these hops without getting overly bitter. I think I may try...

I am developing an Amarillo/ Simcoe IPA for a camping trip this September. I am looking for something that is going to be crazy citrusy on the aroma and flavor, but not melt your face off with tremendous IBUs. This "problem" is also going to be accentuated by the fact that the beer has to...

What about using clementine peels (trade name: cuties)? They are in season, and have very thin peels. Ergo, less pith.

Any way to avoid the "rotten fruit" complaint?

I've been posting here a lot lately because I am trying to get a "feel" for mead making. I'm working with my second batch, here are the specifics; 5 gallons of mead roughly 13 # of tropical flower honey Wyeast "Dry Mead Yeast" OG ~ 1.090 FG ~ 0.995 I fermented with honey+water+...

You might be on the right track with the pectin hypothesis. you might look into the pros an cons (if there are any) of introducing pectic enzymes. FWIW, I did a strawberry blonde ale which NEVER cleared.... in fact it remained the opaque pale color of Caucasian skin. Gross.

I recently created a dry mead; Roughly 6 gallons; OG 1.090, FG 0.990 using Wyeast "Dry Mead Yeast" and Tropical Blossom honey from the LHBS. Obviously, based on my yeast choice, I was looking for something dry..... Originally, my plan was to do an orange/ cinnamon mead using about 1 cin stick...

Yup, it's kegged and tapped. Not as apple-y as I would have hoped and there was initially a very strong banana flavor, which seems to be fading with age- probably esters/ phenols from the yeast. First time I've used this strain... Probably won't use it again unless I want something estery and...

I went ahead and did it. I didn't imagine there would be an issue, but I wanted to throw it out there, and see if anyone saw a major problem with that method. Thanks!

I just edited my previous post with the CORRECT email response. Sorry about that

Sh*t. I just realized that I posted a quote from the wrong email reply.... yeah thats confusing as hell. Here was the actual response: "I would recommend using DME for this starter as well. The main reason DME is a great base is the fact that it has all of the nutrients the yeast...