Recent content by dennis0

Unfortunately, I'm not much of a chemist or biologist, but I can program and I know some mathematics/statistics. I'm interested in applying computational optimization techniques to brewing science problems. I'm having trouble coming up with possible areas of research though. Any ideas of what...

Check out this article for tips on setting up a good taste study: http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2011/08/17/stop-fooling-yourself-a-better-blind-taste-test-that-can-help-you-save-money/#.Uo4UVaDnYtA

If I understand it correctly, this is caused by the fact that as the water leaves the plant, it will have the highest concentration of chlorine/chloramine, but as it travels through the pipe system, more of the chlorine and chloramine is neutralized by contaminants in the pipes. So I suspect the...

Thanks for the help! I have a few questions though. I don't really have any way of measuring pH right now. What would a recommended time be instead? Boil for the decoction? How long do you think that should be? More like 45 min to 1 hour? What do you mean by too aggressive? Would it...

Sorry, I'm resurrecting this, but it seems entirely unreasonable that nobody yet has figured out how to do decoctions with the mash designer. Just a simple example would be very appreciated.

You have to understand that the enzymes in the mash are denatured as the temperature rises. Denatured basically means that the enzymes are rendered inert or useless. So starting at a high temperature will just denature all the enzymes and as you go down in temperature, the enzymes normally...

You won't get too much oxygenation if you use a strainer. I wouldn't be terribly worried about the oxygenation from straining unless you are planning on aging this beer for a while. If you're going to drink it within a few months, you'll be good. This double mesh should work great to get most of...

definitely secondary, although one other option could be bottling with the juice.

I've never done a decoction mash, but I'm hoping it will give my dunkelweizen an edge and be a good learning experience. I need help with my decoction schedule though- I'm not entirely sure if I'm doing it right. I'd like to not have to do a 2-3 hour mash (2 being upper limit) so I've designed...

Thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for. I'm attempting a dunkelweizen soon and I'd like to use a decoction mash for it- although I've never tried a decoction nor have I tried a multi-step mash. From the research I've done, it seems advisable to skip the protein rest altogether...

Looks like a standard partial mash recipe. For your mash, you have 4.5 lb of malt and in general you want 1.25-2 qts of water per lb of grain. So by those calculations, you'll use 5.6-9 quarts of water for the mash-in. For sparge water, it will depend on the amount of wort you've already...

I came across this Dunkelweizen recipe (PDF file): http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-Dunkelweizen.pdf I was interested in the "traditional multi-step mash". What I've learned about traditional multi-step mashing up to this point (and I haven't learned a lot) is that...

Cracked the first bottle open today! I ended up going with: .5 oz Centennial (60 min) .5 oz Centennial (20 min) 1 oz Centennial (0 min) 1 oz Centennial (dry hop) My roommate and I were very pleased with the results. Bitterness was definitely present, but not overwhelming and the nice hop...

New homebrewer here. I received the Dead Ringer IPA recipe kit as part of my starter kit (Dead Ringer IPA PDF). From all accounts, it's supposedly exceptionally good. However, my roommate is not a big fan of IPAs at all. I'm not much of one either (I don't dislike them though), and don't...