Recent content by animus_divinus

hey... i have a question for anyone that may read this.. just checked my hydrometer readings.. comes out to about 1.5-1.8% alcohol by volume after 1 week, does this sound about right?

well.. ive finally finished my wee heavy, caramelized beautifully too... heres the recipe i used (for 1 gallon) 3lbs golden promise 2.5 ounces roasted barley .25 ounces fuggles hops half vial of white labs edinburgh yeast i steeped the grains for an hour to mash.. rinsed them off as...

ive noticed some topics on here of people discussing what they should do to agitate their fermenting beers and ales... some shake the bucket.. others twirl it.. i guess some might even try to stir it... anyway, many people on this forum have helped me, so im going to try to help people...

well, its done.. i put 3lbs of golden promise and 2.5 ounces of roasted barley into a grain bag.. steeped it at 150-160 degrees for an hour.. luckily i had a thermometer that i set into it, and every ten minutes id run the burner for about 10 seconds to maintain the heat... after the hour i...

ok, i get what the "runnings" are now, its just the liquid after an hour of steeping, it may be tough to maintain the temperature only having the top of my stove to do it right now... i guess when i go full scale i should invest in a 6.5 gallon keg to mount an electric burner and a hot water...

seems i have to "mash" the grains to extract the sugars for an hour... then take a few cups of this and caramelize it, pour it back in, then boil for another hour with the hops added, is this right?... so in the end ill be boiling for two hours?.. i just want to be sure im clear about this...

from what ive learned so far... people add the ingredients to a boil at certain intervals until theyve reached a certain period of time, at which point the grains and ingredients are removed and its put in to ferment.. so im confused as to what the "runnings" are, and how people get them

im making a simple wee heavy.. i have golden promise as my base malt, roasted barley as an additional malt, fuggles hops, and white labs edinburgh yeast... using beersmith ive come up with 3lbs of golden promise, 2.5 ounces of roasted barley, and .25 ounce of fuggles hops.. my goal is a 1 gallon...

quick related question.. since malts are sold by the pound, and i only need a couple ounces of roasted barley to get the flavor and color i need for the style of ale im making... is it possible to roast some extra golden promise grains, or do i need raw barley for this purpose?... if i can roast...

from what i could tell.. most recipes use heather, yarrow, mugwort, and sweet gale... sometimes mixed in equal proportions, and sometimes all equal except for the sweet gale.. i guess whats best for me is to study what each of these do and when to add them... then i could taste the product and...

well.. origionally beer and ale wasnt carbonated, nor refridgerated, since carbonated and refridgerated drinks dont set well with me anyway, i see no reason why i should change that.. just because coors, miller, budweiser says it should be cold?.. psh, beer has been warm since the dawn of time

the kind of ales i intend to brew are the kind that go bad after a few days of exposure to air.. so i may not even need to pressurize... if carbonization and pressure is not neccessary, and im able to preserve the ale simply by sealing it from air, i could easily just put a valve on a piece...

maybe i should get a glass carboy soon.. put a rubber stopper in it and put a ball pump through.. see which PSI it explodes at and then set the maximum at 50%-75% of that... im not looking for much pressure at all... and i may even consider rolling and welding some 1 gallon stainless steel jugs...

gruit is a mixture of herbs and spices to be used as a bittering agent before hops, the question is just how bitter is the mixture? it would be nice to find out so i know just how much gruit i would need to achieve the IBU needed in a recipe

is gruit supposed to be a direct replacement to hops?.. for example, 1 ounce hops = 1 ounce gruit, or do i need to add more gruit to get the same bitterness?