Recent content by Moonraker

Ah, this I was not aware of. Excellent, thanks. My faith in physics may be restored.

I read somewhere here that you get more flavour out of the hops if you let them roam free. I used to use hop bags and still got a fair amount of sludge. Now I just pour everything through muslin into a bottling bucket before racking to a carboy. I figure anything the muslin doesn't catch will...

Sorry, I should have at least said thankyou for the response - was in a hurry to get out the door and to the pub.

The 1.058 is after the mash, so mash time, grain mill size etc not a factor after that point. I had 77% mash efficiency , which I'm happy enough with. I did forget to factor in loss to hop sludge, which I measured at a little over half a quart. Even calling that a whole quart would mean I...

Mash today gave me 6.25 gallons at 1.058 (1.041 @ 145F). Before pitching I had 5.0 gallons at 1.064 (1.062 @ 80F). I would have expected to get 1.072 (i.e. 58 x 6.25 / 5). Is there a rational explanation for where the sugar is going? I'm as careful with the hydrometer as I can be, and getting...

So, I was brewing what was supposed to be an Imperial IPA a couple of months back and in a moment of madness, threw in all the DME I had on hand in an improvised attempt at pushing the envelope. Lesson learned: don't improvise. Anyway, OG measured at 1.125, but I only had WLP001 Cali Ale...

Awesome, thanks guys. I'll grab some tincture.

Planning my first mash tomorrow and I went to the pharmacy to get some iodine so that I could test for remaining starches after conversion. There were two alternatives - tincture of iodine (2% iodine)? and 'decolorized' iodine. Are either of these good?

OK, I've moved my tank out onto the (shady) deck and stuck a small plastic table over it, that should keep it protected from the worst of the elements and out of direct sunlight. I'm not convinced there's any real danger of storing in the garage, I just know how much trouble I'd be in with SWMBO...

Does anyone have a recipe for that?

So ... uh ... I shouldn't keep mine in the garage?

I always get foam when bottling, but that's due to using StarSan to sanitise the bottles before filling them...

Carboy hadn't been opened. I try to minimize exposure.

Aaaaaaaand it tastes fine. Nothing sour or vinegary or cheesy. Panic over; I just hadn't seen anything quite like that floating on top of the beer in any of my previous batches, and that combined with the lengthy lag had me worried...

It smells pretty bad, kinda rotten-fruity, although that got better after a couple of days, but I read somewhere on HBT that I shouldn't worry about the smell from WLP530. Thanks for all the advice, I'll take an SG reading later today and see how it tastes - any particular flavors I should be...