Recent content by osagedr

I have won a couple of plastic conicals over the years...they are still in the boxes. 5g batches are fermented in 6g glass carboys. 10-12g batches are fermented in 15.5g Sankes. 1-BBL+ batches are fermented in 60g plastic barrels.

Package it - no benefit to waiting any longer.

I think you have some process things to address to help ensure future fermentations go more smoothly. Good luck!

Quite dry (low finishing gravity). My questions would be: (1) is your hydrometer calibrated? It should read 1.000 in distilled water at whatever the calibration temperature is (it will say on the hydrometer). (2) what yeast strain did you use? And what was your pitching rate? These things...

Looks perfect to me. No point risking a stuck fermentation. Takes most brewers awhile to learn to trust their lager yeast if they're used to ale fermentations. Rare to hear anyone complaining about a lager yeast going too fast... ...as an aside a lot of people HATE S-23 but I've always...

Blowoff tube is cheap anti-mess insurance. Fermenting 5g in a 5g carboy with no tube is asking for trouble, even with a lager. I am also glad to see you treating this properly with a cool pitch. I would have recommended well over 1.5 million cells per ml per degree Plato though. Good luck!

The NHC is definitely king. First-round judging is just complete, so you can either send your beer somewhere else or wait until next year. Personally, IMO there are very few (if any) comps that aren't worth entering because they are "...local or smaller competitions." Win some gold medals and a...

Some people just hate it. Denny Conn hates it. Interestingly, Denny's liquid strain is now my go-to for ales...

This. Always follow the product sheet instructions re: pitching rate and rehydration. Conventional wisdom is that there are about 20 billion cells per gram of rehyrated dry yeast so you get something like 230 billion cells out of an 11.5 gram packet. Two packets should thus be sufficient for...

I use RO almost exclusively. But you need to take care of your mineral additions. The EZ Water spreadsheet is pretty good! http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/

Crash it.

It's fine.

Propagate your yeast at room temperature. Pitch at high krausen or allow the starter to ferment then crash chill, decant and pitch. Pitching temp can be at or anywhere under the temp of the wort.

Bought the three-roller version of this with hardened steel rollers, base and hopper about 16 months ago. Very happy with it!

Another vote for OBK and beergrains.com