Recent content by Gerry Nobody

Yeah it's garbage yeast. This beer was really more of an experiment/exercice in using up ingredients I had lying around. It was all grain, a mixture of maris otter and some dark malt, as well as the rice, mashed and then separated the wort from grains before the boil. Fermentation was at 20c...

Thanks, I have never tried dry hopping. This might be a good time to start. That is an interesting idea about root beer. I've only tried it once or twice (it's not common in this part of the world) but tastes great. I will see if I can find a shop that sells extract...

Not really. I live out in the arse end of nowhere in Sweden and the only other person who brews that I know makes really horrific mash just for distilling vodka with even more primitive equipment than me 😅 Actually the yeast I used for this beer I got from him, and it is possible that the weird...

Out of curiousity, what is that ashtray smell caused by? To be honest I'm 99% sure it wasn't scorching during the boil. I was fairly attentive this time and got a nice rolling boil going. I thought it was probably something to do with the rice but chemically speaking, no idea really!

Yes, a keg would be great. Operating on a very limitd budget at the moment so my equipment is pretty primitive, but I really should invest in one. Thanks for the advice!

So I like to experiment, sometimes it works sometimes not. In this case I added some gelatinised rice mash to the beer I was brewing. The result was not bad enough to throw away but not, to be honest, entirely pleasant. It has a slightly ashtray-ey smell/taste that I have experienced before and...

Temp was around 30c.

No, just a modest hydrometer.

Haven't tried drinking shitloads of it quickly to see how I feel no 🤣 but pretty sure it's somewhere between 2-3%. Have drunk enough 3.5% beer to know the mild buzz you get from that and this is even weaker! No doubt I made some mistakes, but what the hell, you live and learn. Next time will be...

Grain was milled by the place I bought it. First time I've done it so not much to compare it to but while not a fine dust (there were some particles) I would say pretty fine. Pretty clear at this stage that I simply didn't grasp the imprortance of the mash at all, just boiled the hell out of it...

Yes, I'm guessing I handled the boil poorly. Need to do some reading on that aspect!

Yes I read the whole thread. As I said I didn't ramp it up and down quite so steeply.

Yep, I thought so too. The recipe I went by recommended pimary fermentation ramped up over 7 days 26c, then secondary ending over a week or so at 15c, followed by 40 days at 10c. In reality though I never had it higher than 23c I'd say, and most of the time closer to 15-17c.

Right, no clearly I didn't understand that about temperature control. I just thought boiling the grain for a specified amount of time was enough. Will have a read of that. Thanks!

Thanks, that's all valuable info. I clearly didn't appreciate the importance of controlling the temperature. I would guess if anything it was too high during my boil. I was trying to keep it simmering, a few times it threatened to boil over, although apart from one minor spill near the start I...