Recent content by sutepan

Thanks everyone. I let it be, as advised. The beer is now on tap (after 20 days in the secondary). The FG came in at 1.010, which is way below the expected 1.016. I calculate alcohol at 7.3%! I've dry hopped in the keg with 45g Simcoe pellets, and will be serving it up at my wedding bash in 10...

Thanks everyone! I'll let it be.

Making a Simcoe IPA with an OG of 1.066. Pitched a good 1098 slurry on June 2nd, with noticeable action after 18hrs. After 5 days of a healthy fermentation and still lots of airlock action, I racked to secondary (I had to leave town for 5 days and wasn't comfortable with it in the primary that...

Tried first wort hop additions on my last two batches, a rye ale and a Simcoe IPA. Steeped my specialty grains in a small volume of water for 30 minutes @ 155, strained out grains, brought to full boil volume at 155, added liquid extract and hops, let sit at 155 20 minutes, then commenced with...

good to hear! Thanks!

Making a bit of a bastard beer tomorrow with ingredients I have laying around. I usually pitch 1056 for IPAs, but have a nice 1098 slurry I took out of the secondary from a pale ale 3 weeks ago and was thinking of just going with that. Any comments/ideas on how that'll affect this recipe...

This beer turned out very very well, definitely the best of all the times I've made it. The body and mouthfeel are spot-on for what I like. I can't really say how much this has to do with it, but I will continue to steep my grains loose in a smaller volume of water. The hop aroma on this one...

As I understand it a keg is a hermetically sealed environment that has been sanitized before pressurizing, and all air is purged, effectively like food in a can (or beer in a bottle for that matter). I may be wrong, I'm not a food scientist. I like my beer to be around 8-10C when I drink it.

I probably should have put this in the DIY forum...

I finally got around to looking at the temp control unit on my Whirlpool WAR449 keg fridge. At it's warmest setting it was sitting at 5C, far too cold for tasty brew! (All temp readings were taken at least 6hrs after adjustment with the thermometer in 2L of water.) The control unit is...

Thanks!

I have a conversion program that gives me two different imperial measurements for mass; troy or avdp. Which should I use when converting recipes to metric? For example, when converting hops, should I convert from troy ounces or avdp ounces to grams?

Great thread, forcing me to shake-up 10yrs of the same procedures! I've always steeped in a grain bag in the full pre-boil volume (5.7gallons for a 5g batch). This time I steeped loose in 1gallon, then transferred through a sieve with cheesecloth and rinsed the grains with extra water...

Just got back from my LHBS, talked to a guy there who's opinion has never set me wrong. He believes that ph during steeping of specialty grains in extract brewing is a non-issue, as you are not trying to pull sugars out of the grains as in a mash for all-grain. As long as temp is kept below 170...

This is a great thread. I have one question: If the issue with steeping in a large volume of water is the possibility of high ph extracting tannins, would it not be better to adjust the ph of the steep water rather than the volume? My water ph is 7.2. I add 2 tsp of gypsum to 5.7 gallons of...