Recent content by House12

I happen to be a big advocate of late sugar additions like this. It will get you a higher attenuation. Although higher temps at this stage won't be as detrimental as higher temps at the lag phase, I would still personally keep fermentation temperatures below 70 until visible fermentation...

If you're thinking a tripel, just make sure you're fermenting with a good belgian yeast like WLP530, and boil about 80% pilsener extract, 20% table sugar and some sort of noble hops. The sugar will help get the FG dry enough to make it drinkable.

The rolling boil tends to increase hop utilization, and it also drives off DMS. However, what qualifies as a 'rolling boil' is a matter of some debate. All that really matters is that there is adequate H2O evaporation (for driving off dms) and some churning of the wort (for hop utilization). Hop...

Starters are for yeast growth, not full fermentation. Krausen is a good indication of healthy yeast, but you can pitch it now or cold crash it. You want your yeast to have fortified glycogen reserves, and 48 hours is plenty of time regardless of activity. This is especially true if you are...

Diminished hop utilization is not directly caused by higher gravities but moreso by the increased hot break matter onto which the iso-alphas tend to cling. The conventional wisdom has been that late extract additions would create lower gravities and would therby increase utilization. However...

Yes it is. Getting above 70 is ideal for carbing up a bottle. Just keep in mind that once conditioning is largely completed, temperatures that high greatly increase the rate of oxidation/spoilage. This is more worrisome with lighter beers and with beers that were brewed/bottled with less than an...

I'm assuming your hydrometer read out in degrees plato. That'd be about 1.053 OG -- a bit small for an American IPA, but good.

Pitch to your measured OG (gravity without sugar additions). That will promote the best rate of healthy yeast growth for getting through the bulk of your primary fermentation. Then add your sucrose once fermentation nears completion. Fermenting this sucrose does not require extra growth since...

It's a tough life that we live... Something else that comes to mind is that none of us likely has the ability to measure our IBUs. All we can do is compare our bitterness to our favorite brews, but even many great breweries don't bother to actually measure their IBUs. So with respect to...

Definitely not doing anything wrong (assuming your temps are in control). I have had a dark belgian strong blow off a carboy cap with a blowoff tube attached. Thick krausen plugged the tube, and the explosion was massive. That was fermenting at 65 by the reading on the fermometer. Just make...

The hop profile for Evil Cousin has changed numerous times since they started. The reason why it initially contained Summit was based mostly on hop availability. When they first started brewing, they hadn't started their hop contracts yet (i.e. Simcoe). They have since dropped the Summit due to...

I said it. The OP asked if moving to secondary would drop his FG lower. It won't. Not any lower than just leaving in primary for longer. The correlation between racking to a secondary and a drop in FG is simply not causal. The cause of the drop in FG is not the secondary, the cause is the...

You can add sugar now -- though you don't need to. I almost always add sugar additions directly to the fermenter after krausen subsides (granted, I'm talking about beers about twice this gravity). This could actually help to get a point or two down more than it otherwise will, but just realize...

I'm not saying it doesn't matter. What I'm saying is that what matters is how the beer tastes rather than how it calculates. If I consistently use the same Rager calculations, I know what I can expect my bitterness results to be. Whether my bitter is at 40 ibus doesn't matter...what matters is...

A secondary won't do anything to the FG, and in my opinion, racking to a secondary is just asking for trouble. What was your OG? And what yeast did you use? If your OG was higher than planned, it could be that your attenuation is just fine, or that your hydrometer is a bit off. Also, did you...