Recent content by wooda2008

That tiny airlock will get plugged and shot into the ceiling. You have 220 gallons of cider pumping out gas. Use a blowoff tube during primary fermentation.

These are definitely modified from their full scale batches to be homebrewer friendly. They do indeed front load all their nutrients. As for heating the must, they do heat their honey and water to 104*f. Enough to make mixing easier, but not hot enough to cook it. I think a lot of the flavor in...

Ladies and Gentlemen, The fine folks at Groennfell Meadery in good old Vermont have posted the recipes for their session meads! :ban::ban::ban::ban: http://www.groennfell.com/recipes No affiliation other than I love their meads and think that public recipes are awesome!

Turbo yeast is specifically to make the most possible alcohol from sugar water for the ethanol fuel industry. No matter what you do it will taste horrible. You would get a better brew from bread yeast, but order a dried ale yeast from an online Canadian brewshop. ETA: and post your question...

step 1.5: remove liquid and gas check valves from Sanke tap Depressurize your keg; you can't gravity feed into a pressurized keg. forget about the PRV because you've removed the gas check valve in step 1.5. Just pulling the PRV will take forever for it to siphon from the bucket. Step 3.5...

Another option is to vacuum transfer. Dip tube to keg's liquid out, pull a vacuum on the gas in. Saves CO2.

I missed Glintcap this year but will be entering next time around. Both of my farmhouse ciders from last fall were a mix of apple and just enough pear to add some body. I didn't want them judged alongside the crazy cocktails in the "multiple juice" categories.

Sorry, it's acetaldehyde that yeast produce, not acetone. Still a powerful solvent and much more of a problem than methanol. Where acetaldehyde is immediately toxic, Methanol in and of itself is not, until our body metabolizes it into formaldehyde, which is toxic. However; so long as there...

No idea. No. Your biggest concern is oxidation. The ratio stays the same. The risk of methanol is grossly overblown. The bigger problem is the acetone which also concentrated. MLF will not happen because the bugs won't survive that high of an ABV. You will still get some "maturing" as...

Longer fermentation, lower starting gravity, cooler fermentation temps. Yeast make nasties when they're stressed. Find and fix what's stressing them.

This won't work. There have been studies done on professional still runs that show methanol comes over throughout the distillation, not just the beginning. There are a lot of chemistry/science explanations for this, but I won't get into detail. Bottom line is all heating will accomplish is to...

2.5 volumes for me. 3 with champagne-y apfelwein.

The pressure relief valve is on the "keg side" of the gas check valve in the Sanke tap, so it will vent excess pressure from the keg so long as your co2 in is turned off. It's what it was designed to do. Save your back. Turn off all gas pressure, pull the pressure relief valve, relieve...

I can't stand the thought of all that fruit going to waste.

In my experience, it doesn't strip the apple flavor at all. It doesn't add any additional fruity flavors that might cover up the apple. It leaves my cider clean and dry. Have you even used ec-1118? If so, did you let it age for at least 6 months? The apple becomes more noticable around 3...