Recent content by Redmond_Fil

Great questions. I only waited another six hours, then prepared the yeast for pitching. The yeast had been thoroughly and properly washed and carefully stored. I've frequent good experience with this approach and my fermentations reliably start with in 6 hours when pitching according to...

Reasons I *sometimes* use a secondary - I want to harvest the yeast before I add something (hops, fruit, molasses, spices, etc.). By moving the beer off the yeast cake I avoid contamination of the harvested yeast. - I need to use the fermenter for a new batch but want to continue...

I brewed 10 gallons of an Amber Ale on Saturday. Split the batch in into two 6 gallon fermenters (when I say split - I mean I used a tee junction so it really is exactly the same wort in both fermenters). Into each fermenter I pitched one vial each of WLP005 that had warmed to room temperature...

1,503.25 + 10 gal. Minute Man IPA = 1,513.5

I wanted to wait till the jury was in. After dry hopping and kegging the beer I'd say I have a winner. The yeast settled out just fine. I harvested this batch as well. Clarity looks ok at this point in the conditioning phase. (I keg and condition at the same time as once the keg is in the fridge...

I recently had a batch with a less than impressive krausen but all else was fine. I attributed it to stressed yeast (different story in another thread), moderate OG, cooler fermentation temps, and a different fermenter (6g. Better Bottle vs. 6.5 carboy).

I'm of the "Yeast are tough" school - but I have brief story where I'd like some insight. I harvested WL002 yeast on November 8th from a 10 gal. batch after two weeks of work on a 1.080 IPA. Washed the yeast with room temp previously boiled water and stored at 34F. The result was about 8 oz...

Hit Submit to fast! Anyway - I measure pH at 7.8 at my tap but I'm not concerned with that. The Alkalinity/Hardness I'm given to can be converted to Bi-Carbonate by multiplying by 1.2 - so about 69 ppm. This is quite consistent with my Alkalinity test but I need to understand the water...

Good news! I contacted the UHWA and they sent me a water report. Calcium (Ca) 11 ppm Magnesium (Mg) 7.5 ppm Manganese (Mn) 0.045 ppm Alkalinity 58 ppm hardness Sulfate (SO4) 0 ppm Chloride (Cl) 0 ppm Potassium (K)...

Hi There. I started brewing about 3 years ago with a 4 gallon pot and a recipe kit. Currently the 15g HERMS brew house comes out to play about every other month on top of our kitchen range. The Palmer book is a dog-eared mess and Beer-Smith is my friend. A refractometer changed my life. As a...

I do continuous sparging using a temperature controller w/ HERMS. For this batch I did a Mash Out at 168 which I don't usually bother with but this was an imperial IPA and my mashing tun was at the limit. The final running's were at 1.012 (which should be ok with the pH but as I said I didn't...

So I've become an over confident and lazy home brewer and it's time to put the old thinking cap back on. I brewed what I and my friends thought was a pretty darn good IPA - but I got a few comments that it was leathery - some claimed to like it (?) thinking it was part of the bitterness from the...

All very interesting. So I've used havested yeast (W.L. California Ale) from the bottom of the primary) for my last three batches and done nothing more than let it warm up while I'm brewing. In all three cases fermentation is started with in 12 hours and vigorous by 24. In each case the yeast...