Recent content by KMOX

There's no need for a secondary fermentation, unless you're adding fruit or expect to age it for an extended time. In terms of temperature, once you're past the initial growth phase of the yeast cycle, you can let it warm up a little, especially at the point where you're at. If you let it go...

Check your gravity. It might have already fermented out. What is the recipe? What was the OG? Don't rely on your airlock to indicate fermentation. Is there still a kreusen?

Call me an unabashed capitalist, but I want as many half-ass homebrewers out there as we can get, since the increased volume will (hopefully) drive down grain, hop, and yeast prices. AHS was just able to move to a bigger facility, and then thereby drop their prices a bit. Hell, I might even be...

@ Tinga - Yes, I realized after I hit 'post' that someone would point out that gravity changes with evaporation. I had forgotten to say that one thing that is spot-on consistent is my evaporation rate, so I can easily do the math to get my O.G., even without measuring. You know - one problem...

I have been in the habit of taking the pre-boil gravity measurement lately, and I'll tell you why: 1) I make a lot of fine-tune adjustments to my system, and I vary the water/grist ratio of my mash, depending on the beer style. I also opt for mash out and switch back and forth between fly...

Like I said, I chilled down to about 80 or so, then cooled in the fermenting fridge overnight to 60. So it could have stayed relatively warm for a long period of time. I'm not concerned about boiling or grist, so it could likely be a bacterial problem, due to the incredibly slow yeast growth...

No, nor did the recipe have any pilsner malt. I just noticed last night that in The Homebrewer's Companion, Papazian also attributes the cooked vegetable flavor to long lag times.

I'm thinking of John Palmer's note in How to Brew that diacetyl can result from long lag times... ...in this case, I'm starting to think that the DMS flavor is a bacterial infection that's hiding behind the astringent dark malts. I'm thinking the bacteria were able to get a foothold because...

How did it taste?

Well, a long lag time would allow for a bacterial infection, I suppose. I've just read in a couple of places that DMS can result from long lag times. I'm wondering if the other poor fermentation practices (on my part - I can't blame the yeast) contributed.

You could always re-boil it, to be safe.

Here's what I've been doing: Maintain an inch or two of water above your grain bed until you've used your pre-determined sparge water, then let it drain completely. Alternately, you can stop running off when you hit the appropriate ph...or hit your target boil volume. I always use BeerSmith...

Nobody seems to want to weigh in on problem #2 - when you say "juice," do you mean it has a green apple flavor? If so, there could be a number of causes. One could be a minor bacterial infection. Another could be that your bottle conditioning isn't complete yet, and you're still tasting...

I've read something to this effect in a couple different sources, but I want to confirm that one of the hazards of a long lag time is a serious DMS problem. To point: I had a chocolate rye brown ale into which I re-pitched some 1056 that had been sitting in a quart jar under beer for about a...

Update - the beer came out pretty acrid. The combination of the chocolate rye and the roasted barley is pretty overwhelming. I hope some extended cold aging will do it some good. Oh yes...and there's a DMS problem, but that's a gripe for another thread. [and thanks for the reply, Michael -...