Recent content by chinaski1217

This actually makes me feel a lot better! Thanks, man. Out of curiosity, how'd you come up with these numbers? Specifically, the sparge sg...

For clarification: I get that. I'm sparging with about 4.5 gallons or so. But, I'm still running 7.5 gallons of water total through a fairly small amount of grain. That was my concern. Thanks!

Yeah, I just don't like watering down my wort if i can avoid it. I thought about that though.... I'm thinking I may just go with the no-sparge technique on this one. Might make me feel safer, and if it produces a richer malt character, that's a bonus.

I want to brew a Mild for march madness, but I've got a question. I have a wide diameter brew kettle and tend to boil off about 1.25 gallons an hour. It's a vigorous boil, but not jumping out of the kettle or anything. My normal boil volume for a 6 gallon batch is around 7 gallons. But is...

I went through some pages of thread but couldn't seem to find the answer to this question: In the original recipe, are you using Briess chocolate malt or British? If British, which maltster? Thanks.

I think you're going to need to dilute for everything but really dark beers. You might even need to dilute to making something like a porter, but others with more knowledge will surely weigh in on that. Your sodium, magnesium, chloride, bicarbonates, and TA are very high. To make a lighter beer...

I like the idea of vanilla and oak. Any advice on contact time for these 2? Would it be overkill to DH as well?

So, I brewed a sort of Winter Warmer/Old Ale a couple of weeks ago. I tasted it tonight and it's OK, but I think it's needs some more character. Right now, it's just sort of sweet and slightly estery. I've added the recipe below, so I'm wondering if some of you might have some advice for...

OK, so this is what I've come up with. I'm not sure about hops for this beer. I've never used Summit, but think something a little less fruity and citrusy might work with this. I'd obviously add some more hops in the last 15 minutes. Any suggestions on hops? Double IPA-maybe 14-C...

So I've got some leftover grains from a recent brew sessions and I'd like to use them up. This is what I have: 4 oz. Special B 4 oz English medium crystal 12 oz English Chocolate 4 oz. Golden Naked Oats Ideally, I'd like to make something both hoppy and malty, maybe a winter warmer or...

I feel better now about the 007. It's just about settled out. I do, however, have a massive krausen on the 3L starter of WLP001. I find this odd in that, when I make a starter of wyeast 1056 (supposedly the same strain) I normally don't get a krausen at all. Anyone else experience this...

I do see that when I swirl. Looks very similar to 002. Still seems strange that I got no krausen.

I made two starters at once yesterday: 3L of 001 and 1.5 of 007, so 4L total of starter wort. The 1.5L starter with 007 and it never built up a krausen . None at all (it's been 22 hours ago now). The "best by" date on the 007 was October 20, 2012, so I think it was 6 weeks old or so. I make...

I can get from 68 to about mid-40's in a day, and down to 35-ish not much longer after that. I usually just figure 2-3 days for cold-crashing so that i can make sure everything drops out.

This is what I've done with success for darker beers. Also, try the bru'n water spreadsheets to figure out salt additions. Takes a minute to figure it out, but it's very accurate in my opinion: https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/. Martin Brungard, the guy who wrote the...