Recent content by henrik

Another quick update. 24 hours after pitching, the fermentation is highly active. I have my temp in the low 60s, so I'm not getting the kolsch yeast blow off effect, (although I have my blow off tube on just in case), but the yeast is creating that nice, fast swirling effect in the fermenter and...

Quick update in case anyone comes across this down the road and is interested. I decided to leave the starter out for another night. The second morning (which was this morning, approx 36 hours after making the starter) it was clearly active with a thick top layer of creamy goodness. I pitched it...

I would guess it was about midway between 1.020 and 1.040. I used a little less than a half cup of LME (rather than DME) and 2 cups water. I had a very small boilover after which I added a touch more water to make up for the volume loss. So that probably further diluted me to somewhere around...

Hey guys. Hoping someone can help with some issues I'm having activating some old yeast. About 9 months ago I brewed a Kolsch using Wyeast 2565 and saved the yeast from the cake using the washing method described on this post: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/...

Update: After trying my hydrometer sample at bottling I had been worrying more and more about how my batch was going to turn out. Yesterday after only 5 days of bottle conditioning I couldn't help myself and tossed a couple bottles in the fridge to try out later in the evening. Result =...

Thanks for the input, guys. I'll wait and bottle at the 11-12 day mark and maybe (based on smokinghole's linked article) it makes sense to do a one day burst of another ounce or so to get that extra hop aroma just before bottling. Hmmmmm.

I'm in the middle of a dry hop on an IPA...just started the dry hop 3 days ago (Sat). Anyway, we have an unexpected trip out of town this weekend that will keep me away beyond the 7 days of dry hop I had planned. Any thoughts on whether I should bottle early before I head out of town (it would...

Exactly what I was thinking.

Quick update on my batch: I transferred today to secondary after 8 days in primary. As noted in an earlier entry, my original gravity was 1.064 and today's reading was approx 1.014-1.015. I decided to up the amounts on the dry hop compared to what was called for in the recipe mostly just...

Brewed this tonight. My recipe ended up getting tweaked a bit from the exact recipe stated here. I used 8.75 lb golden light LME plus the specialty grains in a partial mash. One thing I'm a bit worried about, however, is when I bought grains from the LHBS, they didn't have "Carastan." They...

Oh yeah, one question, hogwash. I noticed in your recipe on the first post that you wrote this for a 6 gal batch. Did you mean a 6 gal boil with a target final volume of 5 gal? Any of the calculators I use only seem to get to the numbers you projected when I'm calculating based on a 5 gal...

Thanks for the heads-up on the alpha acids. I'll have to double check mine, although I honestly wouldn't be too bummed if my IBUs came in a bit high also. Regarding the grains, yeah, I do already have them and I'm just planning to do a partial mash. Deathbrewer's how-to post looks more thorough...

I bet you'll hit your 1.010 target in a couple days. Looking forward to reading the updates. I'll post some status on mine here as well once I get her going...hopefully before the weekend, but it may have to wait for Saturday.

So I'm planning to brew this (using extract instead of all-grain) this week. Anybody have thoughts on how much time this will need? I was thinking: -One week to 10 days in the primary (assuming the gravity checks confirm complete fermentation), and then rack to secondary. I think I should get...

Have a question about this. If you want some oxygen exposure, but you also want to keep it mostly covered, why not just use an empty airlock?...no water or sanitizer in it so air exchange is free to move back and forth, but it is still protectively covered?