Recent content by Retroviridae

I'm trying the Magic Hat Pistil dandelion beer right now. It's ok. Light, easy to drink on our first warm night of the spring. Aroma is lemony, yeasty, cut grass, and a little sour. But I think I can detect the bitterness from the dandelion, and I don't think it's very pleasant. It's sort of an...

Update on how this one turned out for me: I did a partial mash adaptation of jkarp's recipe. At first, hydrometer samples tasted awful - boozy with ketone/aldehyde flavors - but that is normal and it mellowed out after a couple weeks in the primary. Next problem was that the ferment stopped at...

#1 on munich, not caramunich. But I always used munich in a mash. Anyone want to weigh in on how well it would work steeped in this extract recipe?

dried Hibiscus are used to make tea in latino cuisine - but it is very sour like lemon. Usually the hibiscus tea is sweetened up and served like lemonade - "agua fresca de jamaica". In spanish, hibiscus is "jamaica". If you have access to any mexican or latino food stores there, look or ask for...

I doubt Clostridium. It's very oxygen sensitive, and like you mention, low pH sensitive. So that would leave only the tiniest window of time between the yeast consuming all the oxygen, but not yet dropping the pH. It probably isn't Clostridium for the same reason we don't have to worry about...

Old LME is fine for starter as long as it isn't growing mold or something. Use enough for an OG of around 1.035. Read the starter tutorial on mrmalty.com.

I think boils (ha punny!) down to the difference between sanitize and sterilize. Drinkin' liquor (80 proof) is not strong enough to truly sterilize. We use 70% (140 proof) in the lab to kill bacteria, and still don't consider that truly sterilized. And especially since wood is very porous, that...

Oh, if the actual thermometer part is ok and you only lost some of the weights that keep it upright, then by all means fix it. Make sure the epoxy or whatever you use can withstand high temps if you use it to measure mash/after-boil wort chilling.

I about to start a 3 gal / week progression of British ales. I'm going to make an ordinary bitter, brown, porter, sweet stout, and dry stout, in that order, all derived from highly rated recipes here on HBT. I'm following your recipe as a template for my ordinary bitter. It's my first all...

Nope. If you lost fluid from the thermometer, it will definitely be out of calibration if you were to try to fix it.

I had this happen to me once with an english bitter made with S-04 yeast. Once the yeast flocced out because the temp was too low, it took forever to finally prime the bottles. Taking the bottle out of the fridge won't make it go bad. If the yeast have flocculated to the bottom of the bottle...

Well, you're right, after a month in primary the boozy alcohol flavor and solventy esters have dissipated. It tastes good , except... ... the fermentation has stalled at 1.018 and tastes clearly too sweet. I've tried all the typical recommendations for restarting stuck fermentations (swirling...

Sounds mostly normal to me. Those smells can be normal and should go away with age. Cloudyness could be your yeast still working, or even with UV pasteurization, you could have some normal wild bug action - like a spontaneous malolactic ferment going on - which isn't bad. Let it secondary and/or...

Underoxygenation shouldn't be the problem, as dry yeasts have their glycogen reserves built up before drying and 1 packet should be enough that they shouldn't need to replicate much. Did it take off quickly after you pitched, or was there a long lag? If there was a lag, maybe you had a bad batch...

If you lookup CaraAmber on the Weyermann website, they say use it at max 20% of the mash. That's because it lacks enzymes, like any caramel/crystal malt. So either steep it to get color/flavor, or add base malt to provide enzymes.