Recent content by Matthew Nelson

I started developing a version of this beer back in 2014 and settled on the final version in 2016. I'm now in the process of developing a 3% version so I am very familiar with this beer. It'll never win any awards but it's the beer everyone wants to drink. I use the same yeast, only Wyeast's...

Not necessarily if you use FermCapS to kill the foam. About 10-15 drops will do depending on how aggressive the yeast is. Kegs are pressured with CO2 (or Nitro) to prevent oxidation yes, to preserve flavor yes, but its also used in order to maintain the beers proper carbonation level from first...

I'd double check your blow off system to make sure it's actually blowing off. A fermenter with a properly working blowoff should have only a little, if any, dissolved CO2. If it were me I'd degas in the container it's currently in. Making sure the airlock or blow off is working and unobstructed...

Are there door shelves in your kegerator? Are you using them? I ask because by removing them I was able to go from a three keg capacity to four in mine.

The problem is in using a spigot filter and not a false bottom. The fluid dynamics of that setup does not allow even flow of sparge water across the entire grain bed. I bet if you tasted the grist in direct line with the spigot and then tasted the grist along the sides the latter will taste very...

Once I had a mostly blocked airlock due to an aggressive ferment. It deceptively bubbled, but only because it was under extreme pressure. When I pupped the bung to rack it, I was greeted with a 5 foot geyser of beer erupting out of the carboy. Lost a good 2 gallons. The saving grace was that I...

I've got two carboys happily bubbling away with Wyeast 2124 in the basement. Which is now a brisk 36 degrees thanks to the vortex. This is the coldest I've ever fermented at. My standard is 48.

The keys to a english bitter are maris otter malt as base, burtonized water, english yeast (I use WY1318), and english hops (I use East Kent or Fuggle). I ferment in the low 60s, lager for two weeks and cask condition for 0.8 volume CO2. Best served at 50º.

This part of your process seems unnecessary and is probably counter productive. At this point agitating the keg creates cavitation which provides the CO2 an easy way to come out of solution. You can test this with a simple experiment. Next time you have a can or bottle of beer, vigorously shake...

The idea behind feeding gas to the liquid side is to give more opportunity for the gas to interact with the liquid as it bubbles up from the bottom and therefore more quickly dissolve into solution. It's the same technique used in brite tanks but minus the stone. As to the effectiveness of this...

For me I only float a hydrometer to get OG and FG for abv estimation. For all other tests I use my refractometer. But if you are really obsessed you can drop one of these into your ferments and watch the gravity change in RT on your phone. https://tilthydrometer.com That's way more information...

You can keg before the end of fermentation but the reason to keg after terminal gravity is so you can control the amount of CO2 that is dissolved into your beer. If you keg prior to terminal, the yeast are still producing CO2 and the amount would be based on current gravity at the time you seal...

When CO2 dissolves into the beer each molecule is suspending by the surrounding water molecules. It is very similar to dissolving sugar or salt into water. The only difference is at the volumes of CO2 we need to create the effervescent bubbles we recognize as carbonation, requires pressures...

I have to say I'm not a fan of the whole high pressure shake and bake way. For me the results were, at best, inconsistent. The last time I did it the results were over foamed, undercarbed beer. Force carbonation is not about force it is about dissolving a certain volume of CO2 into the liquid...

When considering switching to kegging the equipment you will need is a dedicated refrigerator (Yes a picnic tap will work the same way a cooler keeps your food cold when camping, but no one lives their everyday lives out of a cooler. Check out craigslist. Someone is always selling an old frig)...