Brooklyn Brew Shop Edelweiss

Has anyone had success with this recipe? Googling, I found someone on this forum who had it come out too flat, and a blogger who had it come out over carbonated.

The recipe is unlike BBS's other recipes in that it calls for only 3 days in the fermenter before being bottled with no extra priming sugar. The idea is that fermentation continues in the bottles, creating a light carbonation.

My interest in this recipe is that I'm going to visit a friend and I thought it would be fun to give him an intro to home brewing. It's not feasible to do a standard recipe with 3 weeks in the fermenter before bottling during a 4-day weekend visit. So this edelweiss recipe, which goes from brewing to bottling in only 3 days seems like an attractive option. However, based on the lack of encouraging stories about this recipe, I'm thinking of scrapping the brewing idea, but I thought I would check here first.

Thanks, cheers!

Never brewed it. sounds like it calls for some strict temperature control in order to get the right amount of sugar left in the beer in order to get good carbonation. Waste of time in my opinion.

It's ultimately a matter of bottling at a target FG to get the right amount of sugar. I'd take readings every 6 hours or so starting at 48 hours after pitching. Very time intensive, and you'd have to be ready to bottle immediately anywhere from day 2-5.

Gelatin, that sounds like a reasonable way to get repeatable results. Unfortunately, the recipe doesn't come with instructions to that level of detail. I think I'm going to have to ditch this idea. /sigh

Well, I don't see why you couldn't wait around 5 days then do a normal priming and bottling. The taste shouldn't be that different and 5 days is plenty of time to ferment completely for a fairly low OG beer.

For an update on this, I ended up taking a 1-gallon fermenter and an Austin Homebrew Itsy-Bitsy IPA mix to my buddy's house instead of the grain I bought for the edelweiss. We brewed the IPA and I left it there to ferment. I'm going to try to get back for a 2nd visit and bottling after he recovers from his last round of chemo.

I brewed the edelweiss at home yesterday. I'm going to do a normal ferment and bottle with priming sugar in a few weeks.

And thanks for the replies and advice.


Cheers!

Well I went for it brother. 3 days of bubbling, two weeks in the Bottle... IT GREAT!

My beer guy recommended that once the bottle ageing was completed i should put it in the fridge (to stop the fermentation). It was a big mistake, once it hit the fridge i could not keep the girlfriend out of it.

I kept a couple in the closet and its been 5 weeks now (7 total) and they have not exploded. The level of carbonation was not unlike a regular home brew with 3 table spoons of honey as a priming sugar.

I will make a double batch this week.

I'll be brewing this one soon, too ~ I've got a couple of the malts that I need to get first, but I am looking forward to it!

This turned out very well - it tasted great and there was some definite carbonation in the bottle.

I would consider it just slightly under-carbed, but not by much. My fermentation temperatures (ambient temperatures in a closet in an old house during the peak of summer) were likely to blame. I am guessing I could have bottled it a few hours earlier, and the carbonation would have been better.

The flavours, however, were right there, and this might have been one of my most enjoyable beers. I'll give it a few more days before refrigerating, in the hopes that might carbonate just a bit more - but even if it doesn't, it will be alright.

If anyone is interested in how my brew went, here is the thread that I started on it:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=585203

In any case, I'll definitely be making this again.