Recent content by stuknkrvl

Hey all, Buddy asked me to brew him a witbier. Haven't done this one before, so I'm researching for the recipe and I'm torn between two yeast strains - Wyeast Belgian Witbier (3944) or Wyeast Forbidden Fruit (3463). Both are listed as great for wits, both seem to express good flavor, so...

Mostly agree with what @McKnuckle had to say - brewing a low gravity, light colored ale (1 to 5 SRM) that is still flavorful and well balanced is quite a challenge, especially for inexperienced brewers. There's a lot that can go sideways. The best advice I can give aside from that is to get five...

My process for fermenting a batch is simple - two weeks in the carboy, temperature controlled in a keezer for whatever yeast I'm using, and then cold crash for 24 hours and into the bottle, never a secondary unless I want to rack it onto some vanilla beans or whatever. So my questions are...

Hey, good people! I have a four ounce bag of dark toasted French oak chips and I've been thinking about pulling a gallon from my next batch and putting it on the oak to see how it turns out. Any advice on best spirits to use to sanitize the wood (vodka? light/dark rum? bourbon? and why is it...

How confident are you in your brew house efficiency? I realize that shouldn't matter an awful lot where kits are concerned, but it took me a long time and a lot of trial and error before I finally figured out the efficiency of my most frequently used equipment. I like BeerSmith and I use it...

Anybody ever tried adding vanilla beans to the kettle at the end of the boil? My guess would be that since it's such a delicate flavor it would all be driven off by time the beer is ready to drink, but I thought I'd check and see if anyone out there had ever tried it and what kind of results...

@eric19312 - Agreed on toss when in doubt, but I'm 100% certain this is silicone tubing. Thanks all for the advice so far. I'll snag some new O-rings at the LHBS and do a solid hot rinse on the rest of the equipment. Any other advice is appreciated and will be well received! Thanks!

@tr08 - Thanks! Will do! What about silicone tubing? I'm cleaning out my fermentor fridge right now, so I have a few spare gallons of PBW solution to spare for clean-up. Think I could get away with giving my tubing a good soak and hot rinse?

Okay... before you roast me, understand that I started grad school a couple months ago, so my time has been pretty well dedicated to reading articles and writing papers. Long story short, I threw about five gallons of hot water with PBW IN solution into my bottling bucket and tossed in some...

Given the wide variety of cherries out there, has anyone noticed a particular strain that does better than others? Does the beer make a difference? I.E., a Bing cherry for a wheat beer versus a golden sweet cherry for a stout? My grandmother loves, loves, loves cherry cordials, so I've been...

Hey all, I cold crashed a batch Friday morning with the intention of bottling this weekend, but one thing led to another and now it's likely I won't be bottling until this Wednesday. Is that going to cause any issues? Could being that cold (37*F) that long stress the yeast and cause off...

@Kent88 - Yeah, it's been painful. I was actually pretty proud of that porter. No plans for another parti-gyle any time soon. Combination of three kids and the holiday season has me hurting for brewing time and cash. Probably give it a go again in a couple months so I can let the barleywine...

@thaymond - Brewing the wee heavy today. Gonna take a shot at doing the concentrated wort addition that you suggested. Thanks for the tip! I'll keep you posted!

@mbobhat - Sadly, it's destined to be dumped down the drain. Seems I had some kind of insidious, slow working infection somewhere in my equipment (guessing my bottling bucket or bottling wand) and I've had to dump everything I brewed since January - DIS, porter, small beer (second runnings from...

Good to know! 🖒