Recent content by hefwit

From what I know it is best to keep the temperature while kilning the malt low. If you heat up the barley to above 160 while it is wet you will destroy the enzymes in the barley and it will lose it's diastic properties. Essentially you will be making crystal malt. The reason it was taking so...

I was beach camping in South East Alaska and a super high tide floated off an Action packer of my stuff during the night. The next day some friends went out in a boat, and not only did they find the Action Packer, but they found a case of Ranier (not ours) floating next to it. So not a partial...

An additional source for malting is the Alaska Bootleggers Bible by Leon Kania (available on Amazon). It goes into malting barley for home brewing, and it also has some other decent materials on some less than legal activities. I have malted about 50lbs of Alaska 6-row feed barley and have had...

update: I have decided that this is still a bit sour/acidic. I brewed another batch and left out the cranberry cocktail concentrate and substituted another 12 oz. can of apple concentrate. Currently bubbling away at about one bubble/ second. Second batch is in secondary with a SG of 1.00. should...

Brewed! 6lbs 6-row pale (home malted) (Delta 6-row barley seems to run about 2/3 as efficient as store bought 2-row pale substitute 4 lbs 2-row pale) 2lbs 2-row pale 1/2 lb biscuit 2lbs carapils 1lb munich 1lb vienna 1lb ESB mash in @150 for 1.5 hrs with around 4 gal. mash out w/ addition 4.5...

I had originally planned on brewing a straight marzen this friday, but I am thinking of trying a california steam version of it instead. I only have regular lager yeast though. Most of the steam recipes call for california lager yeast, how much of a difference can I expect between the two yeasts?

May have found my problem, searching before posting is a good idea. Judging from previous posts I am removing all of the beneficial calcium and magnesium from the water and replacing it with sodium. Crap, back to hauling ten gallons of spring water when I need to brew.

I have been brewing for a awhile all grain with good success, but lately I have been having slow fermentations and low carbonation in bottles. My initial gravities have not changed and I haven't changed anything else except that I installed a new water softener and started using my tap water...

I added the concentrate and then refilled the cans with water twice, which almost got me to 5 gal. I then pitched yeast and filled to top off the carboy. Original Gravity roughly 1.065-1.070.

Update, this is the best cider I have made to date. It was good enough at bottling that I made another batch. The second batch I did use a 12 oz. can of pulp free OJ instead of a 16 oz. can of regular OJ to tone down the citrus abit. This was clean, crisp and had just enough residual sweetness...

Recipe was 11 16oz. Cans of Apple juice, and 1 12oz. Can of cranberry juice for a little color and tartness, and then the sleeper OJ. So it shouldn't affect much, but I was curious if anyone had internationally tried it.

I was mid batch making cider from concentrate when I realized one of the cans was concentrated OJ. Has anyone else added a little orange juice to their cider and more importantly how did it turn out.