Recent content by YeastHerder

Had the little buggers twice. First time was many years ago, possibly my fault. Second time was about 6 months after that -- I saw them crawling inside the still sealed plastic bag from the LHBS, so not my fault. Since then, I ask my LHBS if they freeze store on their side before I buy. I've...

Some more SMASH results for the archives. My overall goal was to see which of Breiss' base malts might come closest to Crisp's Maris Otter, and also to try Simpson's Golden Promise. I used Simcoe as an early bittering addition only (19 IBUs) and US-05 fermented at 62F for 1 week, then 68F for...

Oh right I didn't quite hit your question. I do a 3 qt starter in a 1 gal jug and am probably a bit on the low side of pitch rate even with that. You'll need to cold crash, siphon off the starter beer, then add fresh starter and let it go again. How many times you have to repeat that depends on...

I like to do my starter about 10-14 days ahead of brew day so that I can cold crash the yeast down to the bottom, siphon off the 'icky' starter beer, add my fresh lager wort to resuspend the yeast, and then pitch. I like the extra lead time because if something isn't going right I have time to...

SMASH is a great way to learn all kinds of stuff. A variation I did was to do only a mild bittering hop addition (~20 IBU), then split the bittered wort to 1 gal jugs to ferment with different yeasts -- same basic ale background to let the yeast differences shine through. I also did a split...

Does OP recall seeing any still intact grain kernels? If you saw one in a handful, I'd wager your crush was not good enough. Low and variable efficiency, and variable grain crush via the LHBS mill, are the main reasons I bought my own mill. Now, I can go all tinfoil hat conspiracy theory here...

On BS accuracy: I make a belgian tripel to about 10% ABV that finishes up to 5 points lower than BS predicts, varying a bit from batch to batch. That is less than your difference, but just letting you know I see differences sometimes too. As for an explanation, both yours and mine must mean...

I vote for making a starter from it too. If you put the whole pack into a 2-3 qt starter you'll very quickly find out if its good or bad because the whole pack should ferment that tiny volume out in only 2-3 days. So, you can set up the starter a week in advance and if it turns out a dud, you...

154F should have been fine, I'll repeat what an earlier poster said though -- maybe your temp gauge is off. I know mine reads -2F from correct, so I factor that in as I do things. A simple calibration step for any thermometer (assuming the range on it goes high enough) is bring some water to a...

Lately I've been buying Breiss brewer's 2-row at $38/50lbs (morebeer) and using it as the base for everything. I've used their pilsen as base also, at only a $1 more, and it is visibly lighter than the brewer's malt, but I couldn't tell the difference otherwise.

I used to do partial mashes on the stove top and I got -/+ 1F stability from wrapping the pot in lots of towels (4 to 5 big bath towels). Don't forget to put towels over the top too - heat rises and you lose a lot through the lid if you don't wrap it too. I used to stack all the handtowels on...

I'm intrigued and going to try this with my vacuum sealer too. I've been using glass canning jars. I haven't had any bombs (yet) but release the pressure that builds in them, even at 4C, several times over the first few days before tightening them down for longer storage.

W-34/70 is likely the same thing as WLP830, which us reported to be from Weihenstephan and according to white labs its "one of the most widely used lager strains in the world," so its a pretty safe bet. I use 830 and have been cultivating it on my own for a couple years now. Seems stable over...

I'm currently using a 7 gallon plastic fermonster for primary. I have two glass 5 gallon carboys that I use as secondaries for lagers or when dry hopping. I picked up a used full-size refrigerator and converted it to a big fermentation chamber. Summers are a great time to pick up used...

My setup is all outside, no lid, aiming to maximize the boil off to get total vol back down after the sparge -- and as you point out, that approach came from my lagers where I didn't want even trace DMS left and now I just use it as my standard across all types for simplicity.