Recent content by Mat Strong

Wondering if you ever received feedback on this water profile idea. I’m looking to brew a Tribute, Tribute; but want to mimic Cornwall water as much as possible. Anyone have any ideas?

This too is finished up, and has been in bottle for well over two weeks now. It turned out OK... I'm thinking it was the S-23 Lager yeast, because the beer has a noticeable fruity backbone to it, which I suppose could be the result of too warm in the lagering phase, but who knows. I'm now...

Racked it a week late as I ran into a similar krausen issue with the Mango Milkshake a few months ago - I'm starting to think the Mango flavouring is part of the issue. I let it do its thing for about a week, the bottled. We managed to get 46 bottles on the money, and it is drinking well now...

FestaBrew West Coast Mango Grapefruit IPA started on 12 Apr 20 So... this COVID-19 Quarantine has us, like many others, consuming A LOT more adult beverages than the before time... which means, for the first time in many years, I have two beers on the go at the same time. Unlike the Mango...

Well, I racked on 9 Apr to a 23 L carboy, and man is it good! Classic Lager flavour, good clean crisp taste with a nice malt backbone - looks like the home brew store guys made the right call, one packet of Saflager S-23 did the trick, didn't need two packs like Palmer suggests. FG is estimated...

FestaBrew Blonde Lager started on 24 Mar 20 We have a small cold cellar in the basement, with two concrete walls and some rough shelving. During the fall, winter and spring months, the temps in this room are significantly cooler than the rest of the house, so of course I got the idea to...

Update 1 April 20 Primary ended up sticking and stalling a little, so around the 19th I made the call to do a gravity test. Turned out it was still quite high (1.030) which didn't make sense given the aggressiveness of the primary once it kicked off. In any case, I decided to rack to secondary...

Update: 15 Mar 20 Fermentation took a little longer than normal for this batch (just over 48 hours from pitch); but once it started, it went off like gangbusters! Had a small blowout as a result, but now things are on track. I lifted the lid and did a quick visual check this morning, and saw...

Mango Milkshake IPA started on 8 Mar 20 Last evening I started a FestaBrew West Coast IPA kit, doctored with 1 Lb Lactose, about 5 oz Mango flavouring, and approx 1.75 oz Enigma hops (pellets), as a first shot at dry hopping - all adjuncts/hops were blended using 1 litre boiling water from an...

Thanks for the info, I'll search out the warm lager thread to get a better handle on the concept, but yeah, I'm with you, I want to get that crisp lager flavour/profile, so will likely need to come up with a way to cold ferment/store/age. hmmm...

Great idea, and thank you for the advice. I'm one of those weirdos who still prefer to rack to secondary - my attitude toward the process is I want to pull the beer off the yeast to prevent any issues, also I like the batch aging/settling for the extra week. I'm usually fairly careful with my...

Hi all (aka the 3 people who may read this), I managed to bottle PB Milk Stout a few weeks back, my bad for not updating the thread sooner (I ended up getting pulled away to Alaska for work... some solid breweries up there if you're interested in checking them out!). So yeah, I bottled using...

So here goes! 25 Jan 20, I started a FB Oatmeal Stout in a 25 L plastic pail; I added 1 lb Dry Lactose, and approx. 6 oz of Peanut Butter extract. That's right, I made a PB Milk stout! Procedure: Obviously I cleaned and sanitized everything (Starsan is awesome!!). Then, I diluted the lactose...

Hello everyone. For some time I've used this resource to glean amazing tips and tricks for my home brewing habit. I've dabbled in extract brewing, and kit brewing for many years, but only recently have settled on the FestaBrew line of kits as my go to option. Never satisfied with the status quo...