Recent content by Aaron Beers

It definitely doesn’t “need” to be pressurized that high, but it’s quite refreshing and enjoyable with a high psi like that, served on ice. It definitely needs to be much more than the 10-15psi used for most beers.

Looks promising. You have/used one?

I’ve got a cocktail kegged up and sitting around 35psi. I don’t want to put it in an actual spot in my kegerator as I think it will take a long time to get through it. So I’ve got it in a spare fridge and connected a basic picnic tap to it. Don’t remember the exact brand I bought but I think...

What I'm hearing is the first few beers go down like water, until the buzz kicks in. But seriously, with beer that's being kept cold in a keg, I'd start by figuring out if it's carbonation related. Presumably you force carb in keg, and depending on the beer, if you just set it and forget it...

I don't think it was a fluke with the yeast, per se, and I don't think you'll know what the real answer is based off a one-off batch. But... You mashed at 149 which makes highly fermentable wort. The corn is going to provide mostly fermentable sugar and not much else compared to barley. The...

I personally don't have a taste for bitter + sour in one beer. It's a pretty common disposition. You can do things like citrus peels with an IPA if you're so inclined as they won't add acid.

If by medicinal alcohol, you mean isopropyl alcohol, don't. That's not for consumption.

If you're really serious about getting a specific flavor, I'd suggest you taste test 4 preparations: 1. Cold water, long extraction time 2. Cold alcohol, long extraction time 3. Hot water, short extraction time 4. Hot alcohol, short extraction time Generally, the purpose for soaking plant...

I would suggest you make the birch leaf tea in the same way you would make iced tea, e.g. add the leaves to water and store it in the fridge for a few days. Then before you intend to add it to your beer, add an appropriate amount of campden/sulfite to it to kill any micro ogranisms in it and...

The liquid nitrogen would boil when it hit the liquid water. The keg would overflow. I doubt very much you'd be able to seal the keg while it's overflowing. If you did seal the keg, you'd have to hope it doesn't explode since you have no way of knowing how much of that liquid nitrogen...

I'm presuming you were trying to get something like 6.5 or 7 gallons into the kettle. One quart represents 3.6% to 3.8% of the total volume. Theres a bunch of things that would account for that level of variance in a small home brew system. Are you really worried about it?

Just ordered a Tilt. Aside from getting a better picture of how fermentation is progressing, I'm also interested in seeing how helpful it is for estimating the change to SG caused by ingredient additions during fermentation. I have a base beer fermenting now and I'll be racking it onto a...

Do you have to have something (e.g. iphone running tilt app) within bluetooth range all the time in order to catch the readings? Or does the Tilt store the readings and then you can sync up your iphone to it whenever you want? E.g. I drop the tilt into the fermentor at 10AM and then I come back...

In my opinion, immersion chiller is the way to go, especially if you have a whirlpool setup in your kettle. However, I will caution that the jaded hydra is overpriced. It is a 50' immersion chiller. You pump cold water in one end and hot water comes out the other. There is literally...

I would suggest skipping the hops entirely. Cherries contribute a lot of acid, and high acid + bitterness is generally not palatable, though your palate may vary. And generally speaking, people expect sour when eating cherries, not bitter. For the lactose, I'd ad it all at once. I'm not...