Recent content by biodarwin

I mostly brew belgians and hefeweizens. I was looking at bulk ordering some hops to save some money. What would you recommend for the beers above? I was thinking Hallertau.

Strawberry extract in the bottling bucket?

Wlp 530 on a 1.088. Took 19 days to chew through it.

Just to add to this as I forgot to mention. I do ferment my dubbel a couple degrees cooler for a reduction of esters compared to the BDS.

For the most part I brew my dark strong's and dubbel's pretty much the same way, just more of the ingredients. For those of you that brew lots of Belgians, what do you do differently on either one of the brews? I am having a hard time distinguishing between 2 other than alcohol content.

WLP300 and WLP530 are the only 2 strains I ever had issues with. Both of these are known to be aggressive right off that bat. WLP530 always get me on the second step when brewing HG Belgians.

Yep, this is called top cropping.

Some of the Belgian breweries have a special room where they bottle condition their beers at higher than room temp, something like 75-76 degrees. I was thinking of maybe building another contraption like my son of a fermintor for bottle condition to get them to carb more quickly. I was alot...

I have never used a secondary.

I use the son of a fermentation chamber. It works great, takes less space and energy. I rarely brew more than one batch per week so

Underpitching will help. I would also ferment a few degrees warmer as well.

I wouldn't pitch the sugar much past high krausen. If you are going to pitch the sugar, pitch it now.

I would save the dregs from the Duvels and brew a beer with it.

WLP500 is a beast! It is my house strain. I can brew anything from blondes, Dubbels, Trippels, and strong ales. My general rule of thumb is lower the gravity, lower the fermentation temp.

It is most likely the portion of the beer which the yeast have fallen from. Beer always looks much lighter when before the yeast flocculate and fall to the bottom.