Recent content by Dmoney1911

There's some things that require a better understanding of and will make better beer, and then there's things that can be waaaayyyy over-analyzed. The ability to know the difference comes with experience

Good points, but before you measure the surface area of your kettle, the humidity of your air, and the ionic strength and midi-chlorian concentration of your water.....just add more water. You can pre-boil it yourself, or buy bottled distilled water from the store that can be considered sterile...

Just use sterile top up water (with no chlorine). You're not losing any sugar during the brewing, just water.

I think you'd still get some sourness from adding lacto. There should still be a decent amount of unfermented sugar for them if only a sacch strain was used. If you wanted even more of a punch, though, you could add .25 pounds of maltodextrin in a small amount of sterile water to give them...

It's a good yeast, and would work with a porter. Just keep the ferment temp cold (less than 64 or 65F) or you will start getting esters. I don't use this anymore unless it's the right time of year and I know I can keep the fermentor temp down.

What about using Mosaic instead? They're pretty similar

Just looked up my notes from that batch, a kriek lambic (it was 5 gallons). I actually only used 4 oz: 2 oz styrian goldings (Hop Union), 1oz U.S. Goldings, 1 oz Willamette. I doubt the hops were the issue, especially since pedio is more hop tolerant and I think lacto is more resilient than it...

I'm not sure why I'm having an issue with Roeselare only, then. I have made a lactobacillus only beer, which was very sour, and have made a beer where I added Roeselare and Wyeast pedio which is also sour. The Roeselare only batch hasn't shown any hint of sourness. I made sure there was extra...

1.002 is definitely possible to achieve. Could just be a very high attenuation, especially if it tasted very dry.

I'm remaking a Kriek because the first one was nowhere near sour enough. Just tasted like Brett. I pitched a 1 or 2 packs of Roeselare blend in the first one, and this time I pitched a pack of pure pediococcus after primary fermentation and 1 or 2 packs of Roeselare blend after several months...

I would think they would vary. In the presence of oxygen, yeast produces water and CO2, not alcohol. Since ethanol has a gravity about 75-80% that of water, your final gravities will be different. Not to mention anytime you split a batch the final gravity could vary a little bit, because the...

Nottingham is my go-to yeast. Can withstand low temperatures for a cleaner beer, leaves relatively few esters at more common temperatures, can ferment just about any gravity wort you throw at it, does it's job and then flocculates well when it's done. Unless you want to target a specific yeast...

You probably will have acetaldehyde after 10 days, and it's one of the things that define "green beer". The yeast will convert it and take care of it on it's own. Let the beer sit in the primary 2-3 weeks and another couple of weeks in the bottle at your conditioning temp, at least. If you...

Yeah, very possible it just needs to mellow out more. Like Jim Rausch said though, if the vinegar taste doesn't go away, it is most likely an acetobacter bacterial infection or a wild yeast. Acetobacter can only grow without oxygen, so make sure the fermentor is well sealed except for the...

It could just be one of those things, if there wasn't any error with your equipment (thermometer calibration, hydrometer). You can use recipe calculators and not always hit the expected final gravity, which is why actual gravity readings are important. I would try to keep the fermentation...