Recent content by Lateralus

I'm thinking of brewing up a strong, dark wheat ale this winter. I want a lot of maltiness, so I was going to go big on the Munich malt. I am having trouble, however, finding out the diastatic power of the base malts I intend to use and their suitability for full starch conversion in my...

So I've read through this entire thread and I'm trying to nail down the exact figures for this beer in order to get it as close as possible to the real thing. So far I have the OG as 1.064, and I think the dry hops should be more than usual. Several pages back I think I read that there's no...

I'll explain my reasoning for each. I'm not arguing; please correct me if I'm wrong about any of them. Just trying to learn. AFAIK, it's a debittered chocolate malt. So it will give a nice chocolaty, coffeeish flavor and aroma similar to UK chocolate, but with more smoothness because it's...

So I'm working on a recipe for a strong winter stout. I have a long list of malts which I would like to utilize, but I'm having trouble slimming the list down to a practical level. I'm not sure how much specialty grain is too much. I've heard that anything above 20% of the total grain bill is...

When should I take a gravity reading?

Bloody hell... I stirred after 30 min and the temp shot up to 165 degrees! The deeper parts of the grain bed must have been too hot. I added some cold water to bring it back down, but it went all the way down to 146. I turned the burner back on to bring it back up, but it sat there and sat...

It's just luck, really. I'm just guessing on the quantities of mash water and sparge water since my system is so weird. I don't have a MLT so I'm mashing in my kettle with the false bottom in. That means that some of the foundation water is not in contact with the grain, so even though I...

Well, today is brew day. I just doughed-in 12.5 pounds of grain. Strike water was 164 degrees, gave it a good stirring and hit my target mash temperature of 152 exactly. :rockin: I was nervous, and it feels really good for that to work out. Now I'm relaxing with a beer for a few minutes...

Okay, call it an american-style amber ale.

I read this here: Is this true? I was thinking of adding some Victory, maybe 4-8oz, and scratching the Crystal 20 and the Carapils and upping the 120 and 2-row a little. Maybe 6-6.5% ABV instead of 5.3%. But I won't delete the Carapils if the 120 won't cut it for body and/or head...

Thanks for the replies. I'm still thinking about how I want to do things. I think I'll stick with my hop choices, although I might change the schedule. I've been reading good things about late-addition hopping, and about using more than one type of hops in each addition. I think I'll mix...

So I'm doing my first solo all-grain brew sometime soon (maybe this weekend). I've done one before with a friend and it was fairly straightforward, although the final beer isn't as good as I hoped. I'm going for something better this time. I want to make an American-style pale ale - a nice...