Kashue
Well-Known Member
So I started a stout a couple days ago. This is my first beer (and given my wife's reaction to the smell, perhaps my last) and I had some questions:
There is a LOT of sediment in my carboy right now (3 pounds of grain to 1 gallon of water will do that I guess). Do I need to worry about avoiding all that when I rack or is it okay if some gets through?
What's a good secondary ferment time for stouts? The recipe I have just suggests (unhelpfully) that the primary should take 3 weeks or so, then you should rack to secondary.
What's the best sugar to back-sweeten with for carbonation? Also, I've heard that some stouts are sweetened for taste with dairy sugars; Is this something I can fabricate by caramelizing milk (like perhaps a Mexican condensed milk caramel) or do I need to buy the pure sugars from a homebrew store?
I mostly make cider, and at the end of bottling, I pasteurize it by dunking my bottles in off-the-heat 170 degree water for 10 minutes. Will that work with beer, or will it totally kill it?
Thanks!
There is a LOT of sediment in my carboy right now (3 pounds of grain to 1 gallon of water will do that I guess). Do I need to worry about avoiding all that when I rack or is it okay if some gets through?
What's a good secondary ferment time for stouts? The recipe I have just suggests (unhelpfully) that the primary should take 3 weeks or so, then you should rack to secondary.
What's the best sugar to back-sweeten with for carbonation? Also, I've heard that some stouts are sweetened for taste with dairy sugars; Is this something I can fabricate by caramelizing milk (like perhaps a Mexican condensed milk caramel) or do I need to buy the pure sugars from a homebrew store?
I mostly make cider, and at the end of bottling, I pasteurize it by dunking my bottles in off-the-heat 170 degree water for 10 minutes. Will that work with beer, or will it totally kill it?
Thanks!