Recent content by moors

I'll give S04 a shot. This stuff is really easy to make. It's easier to make a batch than do a bunch of reading and research. Grape must doesn't have the complex sugars and nutrients familiar to beer wort, so I'm not sure what Ale yeast will do. Wine yeasts are more suitable for low nutritional...

I made a batch of Federweißer using Welch's White Grape Juice (Niagara grapes) and Lalvin yeast EC-1118. Going for the true southern German style, I let it ferment a few days, rapidly chilled to halt/slow yeast activity, and consumed within a week or so. The Federweißer style calls for: -...

Hops: I only used 2 oz of hops in a mesh hop basket. Only a tiny portion of the overall hop mass made it into the fermenter. Besides, I've done 9 oz hop brews, tossing them straight into the kettle (before I bought the mesh basket), and it was more compact than this. Proteins: I used 1.5 lbs...

I had a huge sediment on one of my brews: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=580992. I only got 3.5 gallons out of this batch, even after two days of cold crashing at 30°F. Still haven't figured out why it happened. Making another Hefeweizen as soon as my LHBS gets their Imperial...

I have a 4 oz bottle of Zatarain's Root Beer concentrate. I have been looking at recipes for fermented root beer. Most of them have beer-like ingredients (malt, hops, yeast). I don't like the current crop of commercial "hard soda" offerings at the grocery store, so I'm looking for a more...

Unless you're preparing starters in a barn with livestock, I'd use it. I switched to open fermentation altogether and never had a sour beer yet. Your starter is in a container with a 1" opening and it's actively out-gassing (pushing outwards). In addition, the Krausen itself provides a physical...

During the first week of fermentation, Wyeast Weinstephaner Hefeweizen fumigates my entire basement. It smells like dog farts. This can be normal for some Weinstephaner strains. After several trips to Germany and visiting breweries, I've switched to open fermentation when making Hefeweizens. The...

I'm interested.

I have a long (28") plastic spoon. Sometimes my conical gets clogged with highly flocculating yeasts. So I sanitize the spoon and give it a good stir. I've also used this method to rouse Hefeweizen yeast to get the cloudy suspension. I also have an old refrigerator box with a 100 watt light...

Pretty much why I read these forums.

Mostly because of poor sanitation, presumably, allowed souring bacteria contamination:

You can probably expect some good beer. Ramping the temperature near the end of fermentation is a good thing. I usually ramp my brews to 85°F for the last few days. This gives the yeast the opportunity to consume undesirable fermentation byproducts that they ignore at lower temperatures. This...

Remember that beer has been brewed for millennia. You can consider Martin Luther (1483 AD) a "modern" beer brewer compared to the Sumerians (3900 BC). None of these people had temperature controllers and carboys. They brewed open-fermentation in whatever conditions they could manage. There...

There's plenty of beer down there. Usually by the end of week 2, the trub is a compacted cake at the bottom an inch or two thick. In contrast, this trub is a delicate floating cloud in suspension. Compacted, it may only be an inch or two. During normal fermenting process, what mechanisms...

I have a brew fridge presently at bout 36°F. I'll toss the carboy in the chamber for a cold-crash. I'm not optimistic. I stirred the trub a bit again, and it's settling down exactly the same. What type of filter do you use? A steel mesh? Or something more sophisticated?