Recent content by josephort

As promised, here's a photo of the setup I used: The sour cream container was necessary to keep the hop bag from dangling into the top of the beer. I cut a bunch of big holes in the bottom and weighted it down so it would sink quickly. Even with this little innovation, the whole thing was...

Fair enough! I think of sugar as being kinda sluggish to dissolve in cold water and assumed the reason I had been taught to boil it was to ensure dissolution, but I believe your experience.

I think others are probably right that your slow times are just a function of low-ish temperature... ...but I have to ask, are you just putting undissolved sugar straight into your bottles? I've always primed using sugar that's dissolved in a small amount of boiling water and then gently...

I wound up brewing this recipe pretty much exactly as written above, opting for Briess Cherrywood for the smoked malt. I drank the first bottle last night and am basically satisfied with the result. It basically came out like a nice smooth easily-drinkable oatmeal stout with a prominent but not...

Do people generally recommend weighing a hop bag? I was just planning to drop mine into the fermenter and let them float- do you get more flavor if it sinks?

Yeah, I definitely think a lot of this might be overkill. That said, when I have been less careful in the past I have noticed NEIPAs and other dry hopped beers significantly degrade due to O2 exposure, and I think I might be at greater risk than some others because I typically take several...

Kegging, and doing a fully closed transfer to boot. So the only oxidation risk comes from late dry hop additions, hence my convoluted string-and-bag strategy. I just picked up yeast, grain, and 10 oz of Cashmere from my local Northern Brewer store. Will brew tomorrow and probably hang the bag...

Just to be clear, the way I'm doing this has the string running through the regular chambers of the S airlock, passing through the sanitizer. There's no additional hole.

Appreciate the input so far! Both of these arguments make intuitive sense to me, which is why I feel uncertain! Hoping to hear more from people with either a lot of experience with different dry hopping strategies or else very detailed knowledge of hop biochemistry. Or maybe someday the...

As I've continued to experiment with NEIPAs, it's become clear to me that minimizing oxidation is key to brewing excellent examples of the style. I'm not yet at the point where I'm worried about hot side aeration, but I'm trying to do everything I can do get cold side oxygen exposure as close to...

I love smokey beers. I've brewed a couple of rauchbiers in the past few years that came out fantastically. I've also brewed stouts and porters with small quantities of smoked malt to add a little bit of extra complexity. This time, I want to split the difference and brew something that's not a...

I'm planning to brew a BPA based on this article this weekend. I'm shooting for an easy-drinking fall beer; amber in color, ~6% ABV, reasonably well balanced with some maltiness, spiciness, and fruitiness but nothing over the top. So I want a yeast that's going to give the characteristic Belgian...

I repitch yeast pretty frequently, I always get good results, and I don't think I usually see activity in the jar as it warms. So this wouldn't worry me at all. That said, I typically repitch from low-to-medium gravity beers into bigger beers. Once a yeast has been used to ferment a big beer...

1.030, which means 10% ABV. That implies 78% attenuation (accounting for the lactose) which is slightly lower than I expect from US-05, but I think can be accounted for by the high mash temp.

After 6 years of brewing, I'm finally going to start kegging. (I know, I know.) Pretty much everyone who posts about kegging on the internet seems to have a slick kegerator or keezer setup that they invested a ton of time and/or money into. I have a different plan: I want to buy a 7cf chest...