Recent content by Novims

1- Heady Topper (The Alchemist) - Whatever you can say, nobody can nail hop taste like this one. It's clean and you can actually taste every hop. 2- Chaman (Dieu du ciel!) - An very unusual style (Imperial Pale Ale loaded with Sterling) but one of a kind beer. Way better on tap and every batch...

The beer has been in the keg for a while now. The yeast (1084) dropped out and it gets better and better with time. The mouthfeel -and taste- is excellent for a 4% beer. Even my wife, who hates british beer, loves this one. The beer looks cloudy, but it's not: it's only condensation.

I brewed it with 1084 Irish Ale this time as I was curious to try this yeast in a pale grist. It's surprinsingly close to the 1968 version I made earlier this year. Cloudier, but very close. As always, a tasty english pint.

Almost every time I've removed a keg from the kegerator, it oxidised like crazy. I've ruined a beautifull Tripel that way, turning dark brown -and undrikable- in a matter of weeks, like if this process (from cold to hot) turbocharged the stalling reactions. It also seems hard on the keg's seal...

Juste another piece of advice: do it. My IPAs always lacked the hoppy goodness I was looking for. They were hoppy, for sure, but they all tasted the same. Then I started dry hopping short and cold: bingo! I brewed the Pliny clone from this site (2019 version) and it's the first time I actually...

I've found that I like 2.2 vol too for pale ales and IPA. I'm starting to detect carbonic bite on 2.3+ vol in hoppy beers.

Basically, no. They don't have the same purpose. Honey malt is a crystal malt with, you guessed it, honey flavors. A little goes a long way. Melanoiden is used to enhance maltiness or to mimic decoction. And I think it gives more reddish color, but that needs to be confirmed.

I brewed this one with dextrose instead of the syrup using 002. Best english beer I ever brewed. 74% attenuation. Simple. Thick. Tasty. I can only imagine how good it would be with the proper syrup.

I've never brewed with Carawheat. Is it what gives a darker shade to your IPA?

No experience whatsoever with all wheat beer, although it looks good. Wheat malt should be able to convert itself and a bit of flaked grain AND you mashed for 2 hours. It might be overkill, but you gave it plenty of time to convert. But I had to mention the glass you're using: Dieu du ciel! is...

I like the idea of the old days cross-contamination-that-gives-complexity fermentation, but I can't be that lucky forever. I don't think I'll burn the carboy, but I'll certainly bleach it to avoid surprises with future batches. Or keep it as is for sours.

I'll surely do. The beer is great. I don't think I would do a side by side though, brewing 5 gal with fresh clean yeast and 5 gal with old nasty yeast. I don't want to have to to grow this...thing again. It actually looked like a Kombucha Scoby.

What I did was not good handling. But it produced good beer. Therefore, good handling is just one of the things that contributes to good beer, but it's not mandatory. Or perhaps, I've just been lucky.

Never give up on yeast. I brewed a Best Bitter back in early december, a take on Miraculix Best, hoping to, once and for all, brew a perfect english pint, which I never succeeded to. Brew day went well until I opened the fridge to fetch the yeast. The only english yeast I had laid in two 500 ml...

It goes away but it takes some time.