Recent content by VTBrewer

At 72 degrees, 280g of sugar will give 5.625 gallons (45 pints) a CO2 volume of 4.0. Thats getting up there....

You're best off adding the proper amount of sugar to your bottling bucket (after boiling in 2 cups of water for 5 minutes then cooling) then racking your beer on top of it. You can very gently stir with a sanitized spoon, though i never do. 5 ounces of corn sugar is the most often thrown...

You don't typically use dry yeast to make a starter, that's why it says you need two packets of it. You can make a starter with your one tube of liquid yeast that will create the proper amount that you need to pitch.

I'm not a huge fan of a test bottle, as its really not the same as testing your actual beer. With proper sanitation you're not in any danger of infecting your beer. So.... 1. I'd let it sit at least two weeks before I even took a reading. And that's because its a wheat, other styles I wait...

www.kegconnection.com seemed to be the lowest i could find when i took the plunge.

what were your carbing procedures?

What yeast did you use. A quick google search turned this up, which is an excellent pic of yeast rafts: https://cdn.homebrewtalk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=21192&title=1469-yeast-raft&cat=500

I think the x131 is the more commonly used one. It's in Papizan's book. I'm guessing howerever that all are well with in the margin of error of a calibrated hydorometer and the human eye.

Ah. gotcha. I check my numbers pre boil. You can find a calculator for brewhouse efficiency (theres one in my signature) and figure out if you're going to hit your gravity. Basically a 70-75% efficiency is going to result with you hitting your OG, depending how the recipce was calculated...

Can you explain the process you used? I'm not sure i'm interpreting strike water the way you're intending it.

Yeah, i kinda missed the bubbles on top. That's activity and its def fermenting, and probably just fine.

Hmm, IMHO 3-4 days is fair. If its at the same exact gravity reading on day 4 as it was on brew day, I'm not sure that waiting 2 weeks gains much of anything....but that's the beauty of this forum. Tons of thoughts and ideas, and all by people that brew great beer.

At three days take a gravity reading and see how it compares to your OG.

While Barleywine is an exmaple of an extreme, this is still entirely style specific. Belgians and IPA's are good after a few week, stouts usually at least 2 months for me, other styles it really depends on what adjuncts, grains, the yeast, etc...in my mind there's no definitive answer.

I usually go with 1 oucnce orage (sometimes a mix of bitter and sweet) at about 10 mins. The corriander I crush like crazy and add at 5 mins, but you might want a coarser crush until you get the hang of how much adds what flavor.