Recent content by Sparger

temp concerns were for bugs, not hops

I use a grainfather and side mangrove steel hop spider for hop additions. For IPA hop flame out or zero minute additions, is it advisable to dump out the hop spider and replace with flame out or zero minute hops? The wort will generally stay over 200F anyway for at least 20 minutes, so I have...

Brewed my 67th beer with my grainfather this weekend. All original equipment (except for the controller upgrade that came out a couple of years ago and two new rubber silicon hoses for the wort chiller). Extremely happy with this. Never used the safety spring and ball in the pump tube, and...

Swirled the fermenter around to loosen up some of the Kreusen. New Tilt SG reading is 1.014.

YES - it is a tilt! My second brew with it. The first brew (Lager), came dead on, perhaps because the lager didn't have the massive Kreusen as this brew does. Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to break out the glass reader :(

I think I miscalculated my starter and added 397 grams of DME instead of 297. Banked some, but pitched the rest anyway (Flagship A07, aka chico strain yeast) into OG 1.0525 IPA (scintering stone of 1.5 liters 02 per minute addition for 1 minute). 5.9 gal into fermenter (using Grainfather), 10...

I typically do this too. Going to hold off this time 48 hours after fining, then start charging the keg with CO2. Maybe this will give the gelatin some time to sink/settle and clear it faster.

In wine making, before fining, the instructions always say to stir out all CO2 before adding finings “degassing”. The instructions say that Failure to degas will result in wine not clearing. So, when transferring beer to a keg (and adding gelatin as a fining) is it better to just purge the O2...

Got an email from Ss Brewtech regarding their upcoming grain mill. Okay, so I was thinking it might be in the $300 range. Clicked the preorder button and found out it's only $799.

I don't use a brewers program and I got tired of relying on GF's water online water calculator that produces different results as compared to the formula equations in GF's written instructions. For example, using 110v, 12 lb grain, for 6 gallons batch, the US online calc has mash and sparge...

For my lagers, I use biofine clear and the gelatin method. With biofine I’ve read you mix it thoroughly in the secondary. The pros do this by inline dosaging. This makes sense - thoroughly blended fining will grab yeast uniformly through the beer. This is also the fining method for wine...

Since I store overbuilds in a single 0.8L jar, filling it to the top gets me a maximum overbuild. That usually gets me well over 100B (say 164B). For the next starter, I just input 1.64 “packets” into the yeast calc and get a new viable yeast count.

I dont really care about the overbuild cell count. I just want to fill my overbuild jar of 0.8L. No more no less. I then just put a label on it of how many cells and the date. Upping the starter to get a certain overbuld count is easy. The tricky part is realizing that you have to think in...

You would not “hurt” the beer by giving it a week before cold crashing, even if it seems done at day 3. Also, the only 3 day fermentations I’ve ever experienced is using turbo yeast on a sugar wash. Three days for a beer seems pretty fast.

I think you meant 3L starter. It should be pretty much done by 50 hours if you used two packs. It should be cream colored and little bubbles. Some extra time doesnt hurt. I would then cold crash and dump the starter wort. Swirl in some of your new wort and pitch. I also wouldnt be afraid...