Recent content by amaurer

I drank the whole case over ~2 months and various stages of age and refrigeration. The verdict is that it was good, but not perfect. Definitely tasted like beer, and definitely got you drunk... but it had a certain "extra" taste that was not quite welcome. I don't have the palette to describe...

2 weeks in bottles... reasonably well carbed, tastes GREAT! Definitely do not regret the sugar addition, I can't taste any negatives.

I bottled last Sunday. Tastes great. F.G. went down to 1.020ish; so apparently the sugar did wake things up and pull it down a few points, but didn't finish things out completely. So in short I went from O.G. of 1.041 to 1.025, then added 1.5lbs of sugar to bring me back up to 1.040, which...

I had rigged up a cheesecloth filter on my racking hose, and bought some paint strainers because I decided I was bottling today come hell or high water. I put the bucket in the coldest part of the house last night too. ... come this morning, zero floaters! I'll take it.

Should I rack first and then cold crash in the bottling bucket??

I hadn't intended to keep it in that long... like I said, it got stuck and I had to add sugar.

My red ale... disaster... is now on week 4 in primary. This is the bucket that finished at 1.025 so I gave it 1.5 lbs or extra sugar, and some more yeast. Its now refinished at 1.020 and I'm ready to bottle... ... but it has lots of yeast balls suspended in it. 1/16" globules of crapola...

Just an update for the interested... on Saturday I snuck in to take a reading because I was bored and curious. It was foamy as hell, but had nearly returned to the prior reading in the neighborhood of 1.025. Surprisingly, it continued bubbling throughout the weekend and through Monday...

I just sanitize my hydrometer and float it right in the bucket.

Understood. I'm not disappointed, any homebrew is an improvement over the zero homebrew I have right now... I expect this to be drinkable even if it doesn't come out as the Red Ale I was expecting. Even if the sugar does kickstart the yeast into munching up the original fermentables I still...

I could have been more patient, thats true... but I was pretty confident that I'd have seen some evidence of fermentation in 24 hours if indeed it was going to happen; be it airlock bubbles, or foam, or a gravity change. I know this forum is pretty relaxed about leaving beer on the yeast for 2...

Heh! I would totally do this, but for the fact that one of my friends brewed a Mr. Beer kit a month ago and everyone remarked at how not drunk they were getting... so they'll be on guard! :drunk: I have two more kits on deck here, so I can afford to ruin a batch... ... so I boiled up...

Not looking good - after 24 hours 99% of the Safale is gone from the top. No sign of bubbles or krausen. 1.025 still. Should I try sugaring it? If I bottle now I'd get what, 2.5% ABV? My friends probably won't even drink that.

I pitched a pack of Safale-05. Fingers crossed.

The temps were a little unpredictable. I pitched around 66 deg and it was constant there for a few days, before heat spell sent it up to 72 deg. Then things cooled way down and it hovered near 65 or so. On Thursday when it appeared to be stuck I swirled and brought it up to the 70's. Nothin...