Recent content by hokenfloken

Greetings! I am getting ready to make a batch of orange blossom mead. I have been reading the "What I Learned at NHC" sticky and find the Meadmaker of the Year handout to be extremely helpful. I do have one question though. The handout says that the water should have 250-500ppm as carbonate. I...

Thank you very much for all of your opinions. Very good points made here about headspace being filled with CO2, etc. I think I will add a little ascorbic acid for a bit of extra protection and manage SO2 the best I can. I've been curious to find a method of removing O2 from solution but have...

Greetings all! I am an experienced homebrewer (of beer) and I am just now getting into the world of winemaking. I made a Riesling kit from Winexpert and just got to the degassing stage. After reading the instructions that came with the kit, I "whipped up" the wine with a degassing wand, as...

Greetings All! I am aging my first sour ale right now. A month ago I brewed a Flanders Sour Pale recipe from an issue of BYO. I did a Flanders style mash and pitched Ardennes Yeast and Roselaire Blend, both from Wyeast. I transferred the beer after three weeks onto 1 ounce of medium toast...

Greetings! I have collected some Belgian bottles and plan to bottle, cork and cage some brett beer I made a year ago. It is a nearly 10% beer. It was fermented with saison yeast for a few days and then I transferred it and added brettanomyces. After a few months with the brett, I transferred...

Alright. I brewed outside today and it was really windy and snowy. At some point, a Cold-Eeze wrapper must have blown into the boil kettle because it came out of the kettle while I was pouring it through my strainer. It's not in the fermenter. It was still completely intact. Do you guys think it...

Can anyone suggest a good water profile for a berliner weisse? I've heard water profile can be a big deal with this style so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

What ions do you add back in? I'm looking for a water profile that would work nicely with this style.

Thanks for the wikipedia link, although I have read it already. I guess my question whether or not any of the salt ions are smaller than 0.1 nm. If they are larger, they will be filtered out. If not, they will pass though, or at least that's my interpretation. If RO water is essentially free of...

Greetings! I've been searching the forum for awhile now and I cannot find any definitive answer to this question. I currently build my water from distilled water and brewing salts. I would like to start using RO water due to the lower cost. Can I expect RO water to be nearly free of salt...

Well, I hooked the fish take aerator up and put the aeration stone to the bottom of the carboy. I couldn't see ANY bubble coming out of the stone so I made the assumption that the pump is just too weak. It's a very old pump that I had sitting around so I think I need to invest in something...

Greetings fellow homebrewers! I'd like some feedback on my current aeration technique. I built a fish tank aeration system but had no luck with it on my last brewday. I need a stronger pump. So I used my old technique. It goes like this: 1. Cool wort in the kettle with my immersion chiller 2...

What are your thoughts on taking it off the stir plate, cooling it and pitching it cold? Would that be better than leaving it running on the stir plate until it's time to pitch?

I am brewing today. My starter is krausening away upstairs on my new stir plate. I've been reading various posts about decanting the liquid off the yeast cake after chilling. At this point, the yeast are still in suspension. I don't have time to chill and decant. I'm making an American Stout in...

Greetings! I am brewing an American Stout this weekend. It's the one from Brewing Classic Styles. The recipe looks like this: OG: 1.072, FG: 1.017, IBU: 73, Color: 45 SRM 15lbs American 2-row, 1lb Black Roasted Barley, .75lbs Chocolate Malt, .75lbs Crystal 40L. 1.4oz Horizon 13% AA 60...