Recent content by ryanmbeal

If you want a sour Flanders Red type beer you'll need to add some lactic acid producing bacteria, lacto and pedio are typical, you could certainly get some of those from the dregs of commercial sour beers. FYI, left as is you could have an interesting brett beer that you could be drinking in a...

Read through this: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Sour_Worting You shouldn't really be worried about acetic acid at this point. And general guidelines seem to say that keeping things sealed and purged with C02 is a good idea (I always make a point to do this) but it's not an absolute requirement.

Read this: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Lactobacillus#Starters_and_Pitching_Rate

Probably depends. I'd taste it and see if it has produced acetic acid. "Omega Yeast Labs reports that no noticeable acetic acid is produced if the oxygen is not purged with their OYL-605 Lactobacillus blend which contains L. plantarum, and brewers should not aerate wort during sour but purging...

And as for the foaming...I can't say I've seen that.

Some slight airlock activity typically happens. In my case it could just be off gassing of CO2 I purged the wort with or I've seen some of my wort with L. Plantarum from Swansons test positive for wild yeast. I'm not able to be sure if the Swansons pills were the source of wild yeast though...

Backpack, here's an example: https://www.instagram.com/p/BJLZZ7_BIJA/ These guys took a 1/6 bbl keg 5 miles and ~4000ft of elevation gain to serve beer to the Bridger Ridge Run participants. Makes a 5 min walk sound like a piece of cake.

Swanson L. Plantarum I get them from Amazon.

I'd definitely suggest a big starter. I made an average starter with 3711 in a kettle sour and got some serious acetaldehyde during fermentation. Corrected that in a second batch but was left with very little saison character, unfortunately neither batch had the saison yeast profile I was...

I learned that the Montana Historical Society had records from the Virginia City Brewery from around the 1860s and thought it would be interesting to try and recreate the beers. There were records of inventory/purchases from which I was able to gather that they used "malt" and "hops". Most of...

Just checked in on my Farmhouse Sour, 5 months old now, SG 1.000 and pH 4.18. Very mild tartness. I kept it to only 5 IBUs and tossed some flaked oats in for the last 15 mins to favor the lacto. Kept at ambient temp after primary but that has been at least 70, max 78 over the last few...

For the cost vs quality question you ask, I've decided myself on the OB honey morebeer.com sells. I've tasted more robust and flavorful OB honey but theirs does still have a very nice, clearly noticeable OB flavor in the finished product. I've done both meads and braggots with it. Drinking an...

Just now tasting my first Wallonian Farmhouse saison... The yeast definitely lends some earthy/spicy notes and some phenols that remind me of smoke but not quite exactly. Also some herbal notes that kind of remind me of bitters but much milder. Definitely a dry finish that some might say...

I was wondering this myself recently and I had the opportunity to test this just now. I pulled a sample of my cold crashed beer, and then quickly force carbed the rest to around 2.5 vol. Uncarbed: 4.57 Carbed: 4.58 I'm calling them the same given the margin of error.

I'm about to do the same with a stout. I add dried chipotles in secondary in a mesh bag. That way I can sample and remove the chiles when the heat and flavor are where I want them, usually takes about a week for me, but chiles always have a little variance based on the specific crop.