Recent content by PHDrunk

I was thinking of doing a beer with WLP644 (saccharomyces "bruxellensis" trois) as the primary strain. I do not have dedicated sour/funky equipment, and I'd like to avoid going down that road (at least for now). I've been reading that WLP644 is not actually a Brett strain, it is in fact Sacch...

@ jceg316 --- yup, same wort with different mashing temps should only effect FG, not OG. For Belgians, generally people mash pretty low as I understand it. For Saisons, you want really high attenuation for an easy drinking, delicate beer. With darker Belgians, from what I've read people still...

You've got the gist but your amylases are switched. Alpha activates at warmer temps, beta at lower. Some approximate numbers --- mash between 145-160F. 151F and lower favors beta, 155F and above favors alpha. Alpha converts faster than beta, but given a good mash pH, a good crush, and decent...

I've never used a false bottom, but I'm surprised the runoff got stuck with only the addition of the bag. I use a rectangular cooler and PVC manifold for my MLT. My first AG brew resulted in a terrible stuck sparge, so I started putting a voile bag around the manifold. Works like a charm -- no...

You could dilute the wort using boiled water or spring water in the fermenter to up the volume. Or, if you start to build your own recipes, you can design them for 5 gallons. Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

I plugged the recipe into Brewers Friend --- it's designed for 5.5 gallons into the fermenter, 75% efficiency (OG 1.050). Often times "5 gallon" recipes are designed with an extra half gallon in the fermenter to account for the wort loss when you siphon off the yeast cake. Seems like you ended...

I've been thinking of doing this to my own cider, but from what I've read, I would think you would need a lot more contact time with the oak cubes to give it a noticeable flavor (months)? Chips are definitely faster. Is it possible that in your case, the oak flavors are from the bourbon itself...

Funny enough, the relevant physical phenomenon is called Beer's law Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

I wouldn't worry about a 45 minute boil on most grain bills for removal of DMS compounds unless your bill is 100% pilsner. Even still, many brewers have good luck with no boil Berliner weisses which can have a high percentage of Pilsner in the bill. Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

I'm Also planning my first Dubbel. I found this article from BYO to be a good resource: http://byo.com/stories/item/1525-trappist-ale Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Personally, I would ignore IBU contributions from any hops that spend less than 30 min in the boil. In my experience, these late additions don't add much in the way of bitterness, only flavor. IBU is kind of a poor indicator in that regard. Use your 60 min addition to balance the beer, then use...

SRM is not the best indicator for redness unfortunately. It's more accurate as a measure of total luminance. That being said, I think 17 SRM is going to be verging on too dark to see any redness in the beer. 13 is a number I've heard tossed around. People say good things about carared, and a...

Hard to tell without pics, but what you're describing reminds me of a lacto starter I made (~ 1 gallon of dark brown wort, 1 handful of uncrushed grain on a hot plate at 110F). It developed a whitish-gray layer of liquid about 1/4" deep on top of the otherwise brown wort. Stayed that way until...

(Off topic, sorry) @FourSeasonAngler, how do you fill your bottles with CO2? Do you need a fixture separate from a typical quick disconnect?

I've never actually worked with Brett, but I've read fairly extensively about it (and drank plenty of beer with it :drunk:). My go to reference for all things funky and sour is The Mad Fermentationist. The most recent post is actually about selecting wort characteristics for expression of either...