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One way I look at sanitation is that everything that touches the wort after the flame is turned off has to be sanitized. How do you cool the wort? Do not add ice from your home freezer or commercial ice. Immersion chiller goes into boiling wort before flameout. How do you aerate the...

I had a similar experience, except I pitched the WLP 545 first. After about 36 hours of no acticity, impatience set in and I pitched half a pack of the Belle Saison yeast. It attenuated down to 1.006 (after temperature correction) and tasted pretty good. I don't believe overpitching will...

The tastes you are decribing sound like the reult of oxidation. Air pickup can also darken beer somewhat. I feel your pain-- there is so much time invested in these beers that it's tragic to have such a result.

Welcome to the world of kegging! If you condition in the keg (add priming sugar) don't put the keg in the kegerator. The ale yeast will be dormant at kegerator temps. You will have to wait about 2-3 weeks for the yeast to consume the priming sugar. I like the kegerator because I can quickly...

It depends on how much oak character you wish to impart. For one gallon of beer, however, I would recommend about .5- 1 oz of oak cubes since they have less surface area than chips. Use medium toast oak. Boil them to remove the new oak character. 15 minutes or so. Alcohol will leach more of the...

I believe this depends on what you used to sour. If you used lactobacillus, it may be done. If you pitched pedio and brett, they can be super attenuative and it may get a lot lower. At any rate, they might take a while (like 1 year) for the flavors to more fully develop.

I haven't tried this, even though I have a mulberry tree in the front yard. Yes, mulberries are quite sweet when fully ripe, but most of the sugars should ferment out. Blackberries and raspberries are about 4% sugar while mulberries can be between 9-18%. You may want to either pick them a little...

It's true that the beer might just not be carbonated after 3 weeks at 70F. It's also possible that the OP somehow killed the yeast (or forgot to pitch it) and it might never carbonate. Crazier things have happened. I have tasted primed and not yet carbonated beer, and it is sweet, but not...

Thanks, Yooper. I have made several kits in the past and have followed instructions pretty closely. Thus, I haven't concerned myself with sulphur levels much. But, after reading more about free and bound SO2, and how these levels and their effectiveness also depend on wine pH, I guess it's time...

I started this kit 9.24.11 per the instructions. Allowed it to ferment from 1.096 SG to 0.996 on 10.9.11, when I added the sulphite package and stirred vigorously, then the potassium sorbate package and stirred vigorously. I degassed for 5+ minutes with my hand-drill degasser attachment, then...

It is almost impossible to miss your OG if you used all extract. Usually OG measurements that differ from kit recommendations are a result of poor mixing of wort and top off water. Unless you did a full boil and have 100% confidence that your OG measurement is really lower than the kit...

Are you sure your beer fermented at all? At what temperature did you pitch the yeast? If it is "super sweet", it may not have fermented and you might have bottled wort instead of beer. You may wish to get a hydrometer and measure the specific gravity of your bottled "beer". When you have...

I like Jim Liddil's "Cult of the Biohazard" page here. Also, there's Tom Gierman's "Anarchist's p-Lambic on the same site. As Calder says, you can make it really simple or as complex as you want. You can add maltodextrine down the road to feed the bugs, and bottle dregs from your favorite...

1-Carefully place a bottle in the fridge. Let it chill overnight. Measure the specific gravity of the bottled beer. You will have to allow the hydrometer sample to warm up and the foam to subside. Spin the hydrometer so CO2 doesn't suspend it and give a false reading. 2- Correct for...

Good rant, and point well taken. I figure to each his own. If I were going to rant, I'd start with Lindemans calling their fruit and sugar alco-pops "Lambic."

K. apiculata has a low ethanohol tolerance. This can be improved, according to what I've read, by lowering fermentation temperature to ~10C. I cannot give you numbers from experience, but it would appear that in mixed cultures, after about 10 days at 25C, K. apiculata populations decline below...

I do not personally feel offended at all! In many places in the US, we do not have any access to Belgian lambic, only gueuzes. I live in Cleveland, and locally I can get Cantillon (sporadically), Lindemans Cuvée René, Hanssens, Oud Beersel, Drie Fonteinen, Tilquin, and a blend called...

Did you get these lambics in poly containers? I have looked into bringing some lambic to the US in a poly container, and hadn't considered blending them! It is likely that the refermentation will be fairly slow. With the high proportion of young lambic, you should have plenty of activity...

How many gallons was this? For 5 gallons, you normally prime with 5oz of sugar or about 8 oz of DME. If you used a full pound, you may have over-primed, and you may have some bottle bombs on your hands. This is particularly true if the fermentation was not complete. The FG sounds pretty high...

How much lactose did you add? If it is about 35-40 points per pound per gallon, each pound you added would probably raise FG by about 7-8 points (for a 5 gallon batch). If you added 2 lbs, that would raise FG by 14-16 points, explaining the difference between expected FG and measured FG.