Recent content by NeedsMoreHops

i agree with woozy. take the gravity reading, oxidation risk is extremely minimal. if you don't stir it up you're not adding oxygen. if there's a krausen ring, you really don't need to worry. taste it, smell it...no rotten eggs or other nastiness and you're probably fine.

Just started drinking it, its fine.

Haven't seen a lot of mention about the "cost" of your time. I spend about 10 hours over several weeks to produce a 5 gal batch (brewing, cleaning, dryhopping, bottling). If I took a part time job for 1 saturday a month to pay for my drinking habit of 2-3 craft (or homebrewed) beers a day...

Well, I left it alone for 3 weeks in primary, opened it on 3/30 and it smelled like every other beer and no weird stuff floating on top. I transferred to a bottling bucket, tasted it and it seemed fine, so I bottled it up. Another week or two, I'll give it a taste and post again.

Fair enough, but i'm more interested in making drinkable beer than experimenting (at least at this point in my brewing life), so why not just stick with yeasts that work for me? I gave it a shot, made the only beer my wife has declared undrinkable out of 30 batches, so i'm okay with not using it...

From what i read, most of the issues with high temps occur in the first 72 hours of fermentation, so that by the time its in bottles, high temps shouldn't matter. At worst, you may get some off flavors, but I think its unlikely at this point. At best, carbonation process will be quicker and...

read some threads and you'll see that most likely you will end up with a drinkable beer. Since you had it in primary for about 4-5 days before transferring, you're gonna be okay. Sure, it would be better if you had an airlock, left it in primary 2-4 weeks, etc., but you will most likely have...

I don't know if i'm to blame or the yeast is to blame, but i probably won't use this yeast again: the batch i made with it has a terrible "chemically" flavor. I don't do a good job of controlling fermentation temps and I suspect that I've let them get too high, which has caused some flavors...

You'll be fine. The yeast did not leak out with the foam, most of it was still in suspension. What was the timing of all the things that you described? For instance, did the pressure build/leakage occur in the first 0-48 hours? How soon after did you transfer to secondary? Ideally, you...

if you mean conditioning in the bottle, you'll be fine. In the fermenter, that's getting a little too high...but you'll still be okay.

lol, we have 2 cats, a dog and a horse...i'm pretty sure every batch i've made has had a little cat hair in it, but i've never had a problem. I started out overly cautious about sanitation and have realized that I can relax a little with each batch. So, i'm gonna roll with it, but I've never...

Well, I'm right at 4 gallons, plus a few inches of foam from all the splashing around. I have a 3/4 inch hole a few inches from the bottom of the bucket, so I found a 3/4 PVC cap with female threads and a wide enough edge to seat a gasket. That was the biggest problem I had searching the...

thanks for the fast, encouraging replies. I just got back from home depot and, no, they don't sell anything like the plastic spigot i got at LHBS. But, they had some 3/4 pvc pieces i think will work. Gonna try it out now...like most said, might as well keep it til bottling...good experiment...

Tomorrow when the LHBS opens, I'm buying an autosiphon and a new bucket. Now, I'm off to Home Depot for something to stop up the hole, when I return, I'll decide if I'm actually going to use it.

After 30 extract batches over 2 years, I just had my first real catastrophe and I'm wondering if I should just dump it. Quick version: The plastic spigot on my ale pail cracked and I just let it drain into my brewpot. Long version: 2 days ago (Saturday) I finished brewing what promised to be...