Recent content by ronzonie7

Gonna give this one a whirl, with some slight modifications. What gravities should I be expecting out of this? I also can't ferment quite that cold...more like the high 60's.

Yeah, I guess you are right...how do we ramp up carbonation and avoid blowing up all over my fridge?

What do you mean, 'carbonate it like a Saison'? I don't recall the recipe being much different from standard priming...

That's what we're hoping...we've had it in the secondary for a while now. Probably getting close to time to bottle it up.

Also, that quality was not there when we tasted a sample before fermentation. It definitely 'developed'.

Would I have noticed on the bottom of the pot if the honey burned? Our pot does have a scorch spot, but it hasn't effected any other beer we've made, at all.

We brewed a Saison a couple of weeks ago...Recipe can be found here, if you care to see it. Everything went pretty well, but we had a couple of issues. When we sampled this beer at racking time, we noticed that it had a savory/meaty/smoke-like character that is pretty out of balance for the...

We racked this last night...fermented down to the range we were shooting for. Surprisingly, the 'winter' spice wasn't very prominent. We opted to steep some additional spices in the secondary, to see if things got a little more seasonal. What it did have, however, was a bitter bite to it...

Thanks, guys. Confirmed some of my suspicions and sent me off on a couple of different paths that should help us refine our process.

Would calibrating for less efficiency reduce the volume of water used in the mash/sparge?

That's an interesting suggestion. I'll certainly remember that one. Seems like a reasonable fix, if you really need to boost it. We're not overly concerned with the ABV's, as much as we want to be sure we are getting maximum bang for our grain buck. I feel like the mash went very well, but...

We brewed our third batch last night, opting to move away from extracts, over to the Boil in a Bag Mash/Sparge method. Things, generally, went well. We mashed at around 152-155 degrees, pouring 3 gallons in and getting about 1.67 gallons out. The sparge water went in at around 170-172, again...

Crisis averted. Shook it up last night, and the airlock let out a big burp. A few bubbles of krausen appeared. This morning, things are chugging along.

Hydrometer reading taken... Exactly the same figure we had at OSG reading. At what point do we act to salvage this, and what do we do? I've got some yeast of a different strain that I could throw in...or maybe yeast starter or yeast nutrient?

Looks the same today as it did yesterday, as it did the moment we carboy'd up. I'm going to measure the SG in a bit, to see if this thing is moving at all.