Recent content by jpm5171988

Status update: After repitching yeast (starter) didn't work, I tried the dilution trick. Saw no changes after 24 hrs. I left town for 6 days and came home to find the airlock bubbling every 10 seconds or so. Seems to be going again, just slowly. I took a gravity reading and it's down to...

Status update: fermentation went well (used white labs sweet mead yeast) for the first week or so. SG was 1.105 and came down to 1.030 before getting stuck. I find this a little odd because the yeast I used can handle up to 15% abv, and I'm currently around 10%. Fermentation temps where kept in...

Made this tonight. For a 6 gal batch I used 10 cans of old orchards apple-strawberry-kiwi concentrate and 2 cans of strawberry pie filling. That with 11.5 lbs of sugar gave me an OG of 1.105. Used white labs sweet mead/wine yeast. Will keep everyone posted on how it goes. Thanks for the recipe...

Ok thanks for the info. I'm going to throw this together tonight. Using old orchards apple strawberry kiwi concentrate. I also found a couple of cans of strawberry pie filling I'm thinking about using. My only concern with the pie filling is the preservative used that causes the fruit to retain...

What kind of sugar did you use? Just regular white grocery store "table sugar" (sucrose I think)?

I pulled a sample last night. Beer is clear, so flocculation is pretty close to complete. My pallet is not accustomed to the taste of diacetyl, so I wouldn't know exactly what it would taste like. The beer tastes pretty good; super malty , so detecting the taste of butter seems difficult. If its...

I've been told various things about using a diacetyl rest during fermentation for lagers. My first lager has been in secondary for almost 2 weeks and I haven't done it yet. Is it still worth doing, or even necessary? Please explain.

Then what? I've heard Of a method where after the beer is carbonated you drop the temperature a few degrees a day until the beer is just above freezing, and age it at this temp. Does that sound about right?

Hello all. I recently brewed my first lager, an Oktoberfest. Just transferred it to secondary, and was wondering how exactly should I carbonate the beer after priming and bottling? Any info will help, as I am new to lagering.

I always go with secondary. I've tried it both ways and like the results of using a secondary fermentor more. In my opinion, it produces a "cleaner" beer in a shorter amount of time. What I do is ferment in my primary fermentor for as long as it takes the krausen to fall back into the beer, plus...

it took me a little while to get used to my boil off rate...it would be anywhere from 1 to 2.5 gallons. One thing that I do is keep a few pounds of light malt extract on hond for emergencies. If you don't hit your intended gravity, add some malt extract to the boil. From what I understand, for a...

When it comes time to tranfer, move the carboy to wherever it is that you are going to be working, remove the airlock to let the hops bag fall, replace the airlock, and wait for the sediment that may be disturbed through this process to settle out. Then just carefully rack the beer, leaving the...

Hello all. Just bought a dual tap beer tower for my keezer. I want to replace the beer line attached to the faucets because they are not long enough. The beer line that came with the tower has an inner diamter of 3/16" and an outter diameter of 7/16". I bought some more beer tubing from my local...

does that usually happen for you? this is the first time that it has happened to me.

today is the 8th day. the main fermentation process is pretty much over, but i usually leave my beer in primary for about 10 days to allow the yeast to clean itself up a little bit before i tranfer to secondary.