Recent content by CoTron

If its thumping, let it thump. No sense racking off of yeast that is obviously not about to die. Are you dry-hopping? Some people will move to secondary to dry hop, however it's probably not necessary. But obviously you don't want to dry hop something that is "thumping"

Hops lose their bitterness and flavor over time. Even vacuum sealed in a freezer they will lose power. I say brew it up and just add more hops than you otherwise would. No sense wasting ingredients even if they are old. As long as your expectations are in the right place I'm sure it will be...

I've done identical batches with Montrachet Red Star wine yeast and s-04. They both fermented to 1.000 in a week.

My FG came out at 1.009 OG was 1.046 I bottled after two weeks in primary. If you take gravity readings on consecutive days and the reading hasn't changed, you are safe to bottle. However, it's often considered helpful to give it a few more days to clean up some of the byproducts of...

Certain yeasts do better than others at higher fermentation temps. For example us-05 does better than s-04. There are a couple cheap and simple ways to control fermentation temps. Two of the easiest are the swamp cooler method and the water bath method. Swamp cooler: Put the fermenter...

Yes. I does not contain preservatives.

You can get a bag and do brew in a bag (BIAB). Or you can make a mash/lauter tun. This is usually done by converting a water cooler. Or you can convert a fermenting bucket by either adding a spigot with a braided hose filter inside, or by making a zapap (a bucket with 1000 tiny holes drilled...

You don't need a malt-based starter for cider because the yeast won't be consuming maltose as in beer. An apple-juice starter is fine if you are fermenting apple-juice. But you can't use an apple juice starter for beer because you are letting the yeast get lazy by giving them simple sugars...

Cider, more than beer, tends to improve when bulk-aged. I find that cider usually clears after a couple months at fermentation temperature but much faster, maybe a week when cold-crashed. If your cider has much added sugar it might need more time to condition. If you don't want to wait that...

+1 on adding O2 Inverting the sugar is a bit longer of a process than just boiling it until dissolved. I don't think you will change the flavor profile unless you actually raise the temp high enough for long enough to get some color to it. The other two advantages of shaking instead of...

The "oat milk" will not add body if that's what you are expecting. It will just add unconverted starches. Oats need to be mashed with another grain that has some diastatic power in order to break up those long carbohydrate chains into fermentable sugars. Adding the oats like this will just...

I'm doing mine with: 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp ginger 1/4 nutmeg All added at the end of the boil And then I have a jar of vodka-extracted spices which I will use to adjust the spices at bottling. It contains about: 3 cups vodka 2 cinnamon sticks 1 tsp ginger 1/2 oz orange zest

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Red Star Montrachet wine yeast vs S-04 ale yeast I pitched 2.5g of each of these (rehydrated) into two 5 liter test batches of the following recipe: 5 liters apple juice 1 cup strong black tea 1 tbs lime juice 1.050 sg fermented at 63 F I took gravity readings at a week and they...

Jamil recommends 1tsp total of spices right before flameout. Here's the link to the podcast about it http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Jamil-Show/Winter-Spiced-Beer-The-Jamil-Show-09-24-07