Recent content by vespoli

Apparent vs. real extract is another big player. Hydrometers are great tools, but they are not anything compared to a digital density meter, refractometer or GC.

Ditto. Use a forced-diacetyl test to see whether you have precursors in your beer. Take a sample of beer (w/ ales, before you crash them; lagers, use the earlier poster's goal of making sure you rest before your yeast goes totally dormant) and: 1. pour it back and forth between two cups to...

Yep, just pitch a ton of yeast, and don't plan on reusing the yeast after the fermentation is finished. High gravity beers stress yeast (high osmotic pressure as well as the additional alcohol stress.) Plan on pitching 2 million cells/mL/degree plato for big beers (20P+) where you might...

This will only solve your issue if: 1. Your yeast is dead (too high of a cool-in temp or was stressed out otherwise). 2. Your ABV is above the yeast's tolerance (unlikely).

Just get a cheap thin tube. Graduated cylinders are better than beakers or flask for measuring volumes, but if you want to get accurate volumes, you need to be using volumetric flasks/pipets.

Short answer: lots and lots of sugar. Preferably candi sugar. Basically, it's a much bigger (higher ABV) beer. Using sugar allows for an increase in alcohol without a huge increase in body. The sugar helps "dry" the beer.

As IffyG says, if you're short bottles, it's a quick and cheap way to some -- and they are filled with average beer as an added bonus!

Yep. If the fermentation is finished (same gravity three days in a row), you will need to add more fermentables to carb in bottles. You can play with the amount, but the general rule is 5 oz (~3/4 cup) dextrose per 5 gallons. Cheers.

Sean O'Keefe's class, eh? Good stuff.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it contains both hops and malted grain.

Erlenmeyers are made of borosilicate glass and extremely resistant to temperature change. My concern would be how you are planning on distributing the heat throughout the flask -- stir bar?

I also find it too sweet. I live for Celebration.

What is your gravity right now? How does that compare to your OG? W/ sucrose (which you shouldn't have added, especially at 1 lb/gallon (holy cow!)) and that yeast, you should ferment out pretty dry. Remember, an airlock is worthless as an indicator of fermentation. Apfelwine gets better w/...

Probably no good (certainly there will no hop character left), but it shouldn't hurt you, so why not try a taste and see what you think? A lot depends on the style of beer, ABV and storage conditions. I would imagine garage conditioning to be incredibly detrimental to flavor, but who knows.

not a bad idea, but also want to make sure your temp correcting for the less dense hot liquid.