Recent content by Rhetoric

k1ngl1ves and ShareBrewing, thank you for the support! I am very interested in where this will go, as I had not expected it. I intend to see how low the sg will drop and decide whether or not to boost it with Wlp 644 to dry it out more. If nothing else, maybe it will be a bit of a cautionary...

I opened and poured 4 caps into 1 L of apple juice and let it go for a week. I brewed up my wort and added all of the "starter" to it at about 110 F and let the temp fall to ambient in my garage, about 85 F. At 24 hours the co2 that was off gassing generated enough foam to push out of my air...

I'm with sharps, as I too use a bazooka screen in my MLT. I grind my grain via corona mill. I find that if I'm grinding too fine that it is very difficult to get a nice, clear wort out of the mash tun. On the other hand, I have good efficiency and have no problems get my beer nice and clear...

I have been using beer smith PC edition for a year, and I do agree that it takes a lot o information to get accurate predictions for your brew. However, I would rather take the time to input more detailed information to get accurate results rather than the more vague results from beer calculus...

I find that if I bottle carb my beer higher than 3.0 volumes I get the acidic taste of carbonic acid. This could due to over carbonating due to improperly measured priming sugar, bottling before fg is reached, and of course a possible infection in the bottle.

Honey is highly fermentable, and it will dry out the beer more than an all malt recipe. How much honey did you add? Typically when honey is added to the primary prior to fermentation the yeast will gobble it up, and leave you with very little honey flavor, if it is noticeable at all. So, you'll...

I've never worked with molasses ire treacle, but I have a bit of experience with honey. Honey has an extremely high sugar content versus a very low water content (10-15% I believe). Also, it has very low nutrient count. This inhibits the growth of bacteria and fungus. It is not necessary to...

It's a dark beer, but did you vourlauf or check for grain particles as you drained your mash tun? Also, I have had big time trub issues before due to not properly straining the hot/cold break, as yooper mentioned.

Heck yea, if it tastes good/decent/not horrible then bottle it and I'm sure someone would be happy to drink it for you :D

I second this. I recently began using a bazooka screen versus a ss braid. The braid tends to float around in the mash while stirring, which is annoying. However, the bazooka screen, atleast the one I started using, has inferior filtering ability. I now use cheese cloth as an additional filter...

Put some water in the cooler, drain it off via your braid. When the drain stops, pour the rest back out into a measuring cup or something. That should give you a good idea of your dead space area.

Without seeing your grain I would hazard a guess that your grain was milled to fine. If your husks are too shredded/too much flour present it can cause a stuck sparge. It isn't as big of a threat while batch sparging, but is something to keep a close eye on if fly sparging. If your lbhs milled...