Recent content by Berlbrew

bernardsmith eats farts

Be sure you didn't try to bottle condition some of your beers in the fridge. Your bottles need to be between 65-75 (roughly) during bottle conditioning so the 34-40 you'll find in your fridge won't allow the yeast to do their job and carbonate the beer. I've found a lot of beginner home brewers...

The real question for me right now is whether to try one of these ways of adding nuts (making a liquor infusion, adding them to the mash, or "dry-nutting") or to just use some extract. Extract is definitely the easy path. I'm brewing this beer for a Category 23-only competition and I won't have...

I'd like to revive this thread because I'm planning a beer that will also utilize nuts. I want to soak walnuts in bourbon and add the bourbon to a porter either in secondary or at bottling. Anyone else who has attempted this have any advice in terms of quantities and techniques? I would love for...

Hey everyone, I thought you might appreciate seeing this. I work at the Sam Adams Boston Brewery which is the location where all of the in-brewery scenes from the commercials are filmed. The other day I showed up to work early and caught a glimpse of some filming so I snagged some pictures with...

The other day I was transferring my Milk Stout to a secondary and all of the sudden my auto-siphon started spewing bubbles that were seemingly coming from nowhere. I think the rubber ring around the piece that fits inside the larger tube was loose and it was sucking air from the top of the...

I am also curious about using orange blossom water. I find it hard to believe that no HBTers have used it before. Anyone?

As an employee at the SA Boston Brewery, I'd recommend using WLP008, 'East Coast Ale' as they call it, that is a strain derived directly from the SA ale yeast which we use in most of our ales. It will give you the best results for sure. Also, ferment closer to 60, the true nature of a Stock Ale...

This is something I've also struggled with. The first time I used pellets and a nylon hop bag, results were mostly good but the bag closed with a little tie-string which could not keep some of the pellets from finding their way out of the bag and into the beer. Another time I just threw them in...

OK, good to hear. I tasted that hydrometer sample and it was delicious so I don't think the risk was too high. The airlock is still bubbling mildly, about once every 10 seconds or so.

So, I brew at my parents' house in Plymouth, MA although I live at my apartment in Boston and I come to the house about once a week to brew, bottle, transfer to secondary etc... Today I came to the house and found that my Hoppy Weizenbock with an OG of 1.065 had burst through the airlock and...

The average OG for an IIPA is 1.075-1.090 as stated by the BJCP style guideline. Double IPA is similar. Ultimately the final ABV goal for those styles is between 7%-10%. As for your brew, there is no way to tell it's ABV without a hydrometer reading. I find it strange that your LME didn't...

Carafa special is great! It's got lots of delicious coffee/chocolate flavor at around 5% of your grain bill and because it's de-husked it doesn't give you any of that astringent, burnt bitterness that you would get from black patent or sometimes chocolate. I definitely recommend it in porters...

+1 on the Carafa Special. I love that malt, I use it in place of chocolate very often. It's de-husked and delicious.

Interesting idea, is there any known benefit to that over boiling? And honey malt sounds like a decent idea but I don't wanna go overboard here, it might not be necessary.