Recent content by McKinley

carafa special II is around 450 L or so. It gives me a more brown color than red. Anyone use the special III?

Just finished one of these up. You get different opinions because people like different amounts of brett character. Just decide what you want. Pitch the brett earlier or feed MD for more character.

What do you think about the phenolic/clove flavor + sour?

Looks like film yeast.

I just did a six-way side by side with different wine yeasts and standard juice. D47 was my wife and I's second favorite, behind 71B. It left a fuller mouthfeel than the others. A little bit of a slower start. Good choice.

You can also make a "spice tea" and add to taste post primary ferment.

Someone has won the cider category at the National Homebrew Competition using a lager yeast. The recipe is over at the American Homebrewers Association in their forum. What temp are you fermenting at?

I made something similar to the "champagne" style you mentioned. I don't think you need to use a clear cider, it will clarify if you give it enough time. You may also add pectic enzyme if you start with a cloudy product. I like a white wine yeast such as EC1118 or redstar cote du blanc. I've...

I used 565 and it ended up tasting very similar to JP's product. I think the souring bugs end up dominating the flavor profile.

I have this concern as well. What I ended up doing is saving my "spent tubing" for sours. For example, I use a racking cane 5-6 times for non-soured beers. If it gets a little funky, I'll set it aside, use it once or twice for a sour beer and then throw it away. I use kegs for bottling, they...

What is it they say: Malt and yeast WANT to become beer?

Why not top crop? Do you have to brew these both on the same day? Seems easier than all this math.

Now do you have melomel, or apfelwine? Its all semantics, I bet that will taste good. Ken Schramm did a mead interview for "The Jamil Show" which is really good and gives all the basics. I also read his book which is worthwhile.

Sorry, I forgot to check back with this post. I transferred the beer off the primary into a secondary and pitched the bugs at that time. Fermentation restarted well and I let that go for about a week before I added the dry hop. Then I think it was about a week later that I bottled. In...

Just brewed this up last night. I'm not much of a hops guy, so I was surprised that I had to basically add a coffee mug full of hops to this one, and I still have 114 g of dry hopping to go.