Recent content by Cousinz

Sounds good thanks... Using Malteurop 2 row i am currently getting 75% efficiency.

I guess I am wondering if I should always leave the water over the grain bed during the runoff until I get my 6.5 gallons, or at some point should i let the water fall down lower. Wasn't sure if either way would give me a better luck with my efficiency.

I am brewing a Barleywine on a 10gallon cooler system. Mash temp: 150F Water/grain ratio: 1.25 Water: 19qt Grain: 15lb After the mash at 150 for 75 minutes, I will be Mashing out with 10qt at 209F to reach 168. This will leave me about 9 gallons of water in the cooler. After recirculating...

Looking to setup a fridge for secondary storage for clearing the beer at a consistent temp, but need to keep the temp high enough to have some active yeast for carbonating in the bottle. At what temp will the ale yeast die off?

are you making a full 5 gal. boil or just boiling a portion of that then topping off with more water to get your 5 gal. i've found this to make a big difference in lightening the color when i went from a 3 gal. boil to 4 gal. boil.

when extract brewing i found that a late extract addition would help lighten the color but this will also increase ibu for the same recipe.

First time using Wyeast (american ale 1056) propagator, which the directions show to create a 2liter starter. Do I still make a 5 gallon batch and pitch the 2liters and what does this do to the OG of the beer? OG is usually taken before pitching the yeast, is this correct?

Any description on what the taste may be like? or smell? Trying to rule out a "sweetness" in the taste/smell of all brews so far...

Extract has a very distinct taste.. Used extract on a batch of vanilla porter in the secondary, and didn't come out quiet as we were hopeing.. This may settle a bit has it has only been bottled for 2 weeks, but thinking I would of rather of gone with the beans.

sorry for the confusion what i really meant to ask was how would i know if i burnt or caramelized the dme during the wort boil? would i be able to taste the difference in the beer?

What does caramelized malt taste like, and how could i be sure this is what I am tasting or not?

So Malt vs Hops, low IBU's? or is Fermentation temps? What steps would you take to try to correct this first? - late malt addition, or more hops to increase IBU's? - lower fermentation temps? Stay on the low end of the yeast recommendation? Thanks

The temp range noted above (66-70) was from the temp on the side of the glass carboy, was not actually the ambient tempature.. Ambient temp was closer to 62-64 degrees.

Our first guess was the malt to hop ratio, but the amber ale was a hopped up extract and 1 oz hops with 13HBU, and as this one is the best balance on taste, it still has the same distinct sweet smell that is hard to pinpoint what it is...

Fermentation has been around 66-70F.. As for following the Yeast temps on the liquid or dry yeast packs we have stayed close to the the mid range of the temps each time...