Recent content by poley

Aggressive dry hoppping can cause refermentation due to the enzymes present in hops. If you're doing a large dry hop addition, try adding it while you still have yeast in suspension to quickly chew up the new fermentables created from the enzymes in your hops. If you do not allow your...

I've had a lot of success getting 1968 over 10% on a regular basis. Keep your temperature under control early to control your ester profile, then let it rise to 72 to finish fermentation and clean up VDKs. That yeast is a beast and I haven't found an upper limit yet, though I haven't pushed it...

Aerate as much as you can before pitching yeast, however, not before lacto. Lacto prefers no oxygen, and if it's been aerated, and your sanitation isn't perfect, you may support the growth of things other than your lacto pitch and end up with the sweaty sock/dirty diaper smells. If you can use a...

Definitely support tasting it for sensory analysis over returning the sample. Risk of contamination and oxidation outweigh the benefit of returning 200mL of beer to your carboy.

That's London Ale III, which I personally like better than London Ale (1028). That beer style & yeast combination is killer, IMO.

If it's any consolation, mine was way too port-forward the first year I bottled it, but by year two it was absolutely killer. Just enough to get the fruit, but not bash-you-over-the-head with the port.

On purpose that the FG is high, or the stats are messed up on purpose?

Think of it more like staling than spoling.

If there was no additional O2 pickup during the bottling process, then yes. Most of the time there's additional O2 pickup during bottling, which the yeast will mitigate during bottle conditioning. Just try not to worry about it too much. The beer won't be ruined beyond repair, and you'll...

Well, of course there's that as well :)

An alternative which I didn't see mentioned above, is to make a lower gravity stout and blend them after it's done to cut the residual sugars. An even more radical approach would be if you have the fermentor space, brew a medium gravity stout, get into primary fermentation, and blend it with...

Depending on the style of beer, that O2 contact will have different effects. Some styles are OK with a little O2 contact, others will suffer more.

Hoppy beers are some of the worst beers to oxidize, O2 and hops are a bad combo. A red is probably one of the better beers to accidentally oxidize. If you racked to secondary before it reached terminal gravity, Kaz is right that the yeast might metabolize some of the O2.

I'd say minimum $250, unless someone is giving you a bunch of their equipment for free/reduced cost. Probably more. I got in for about that, back when I was able to get used kegs for under $20/ea, and found a free chest freezer in a local free swap publication.

You may have had some cell death during shipping, if they got too cold/hot. A long lag period is a sign of underpitching, the lag phase is when the cells reproduce.