Recent content by TheBrewingChemist

Second that.

Flavors produced by wild yeast vary widely. That being said, here is a few things I would look at if I were in your situation. How do your hops smell that you are using for dry hopping? If they are oxidized and going to impart undesirable flavors in your beer, you can usually smell it...

This can definitely happen. If they look ok then I wouldn't worry about it. Keep in mind that honey has antibacterial qualities and can inhibit the growth and/or health of the mother. In general I use honey only when I don't intend to harvest and reuse the mother. I haven't tried repeated...

I believe most kombucha mothers will contain lactobacillus, but you won't know for sure unless you test for it or add some yourself. If you want to favor lactic acid vs acetic acid the key will be to limit oxygen, which the acetobacter needs in order to convert ethanol to acetic acid.

Color contribution is pretty close between hot and cold steeping, but hot steeping some of the very high lovibond dark grains can sometimes extract some more astringent tannic flavors. If you are looking for color without these flavors I would suggest trying some of the dehusked wheat malts...

Cigar City definitely rules Florida! Awesome brewery tour if you can ever make it. Got to taste some Humidor Series beers straight out of the fermenter.

I did a brew in a bag setup to make wort on the stove instead of using beer for a brine. It's a lot cheaper and quicker than a beer brine, and also let's you optimize for the brine flavor profile rather than adapting a finished beer for food use. I used 100% beechwood smoked malt, and the...

I make a lot of yogurt and fermented vegetables, and I use star san in a spray bottle to sanitize all my jars and containers. Get a sprayer with a fine mist and it is a super cheap sanitizer around the kitchen.

Definitely do not go with the average fermentation temperature unless they are within a degree or two of each other. You will just end up with two batches of beer that don't come out as intended. Since you are about to go into a lagering phase on the cal common I don't see a way of fermenting...

If you cannot cool past 80 with your tap water, you may want to put a pre-chiller coil in ice water prior to your wort chiller. Alternatively you could wait to pitch your yeast until the wort gets down to fermentation temperatures. I generally never like to lower the fermentation temperature...

Yes, the cell counts were for a nano size but from what I know about the pure pitch process the yeast is cultured in the same packaging it is shipped in. Based on this it is very likely that the cell density per mililiter would hold pretty closely to the home-brew size versus a seperate...

You got me curious, so I looked in to it. The following is from the white labs website. Essentially the pure pitch packaging has a higher cell density than the vial. "What sizes are available? PurePitch is available to order in the same sizes you are used to seeing. The exception is that...

One potential negative I could see is if you had very little headspace and blew off a significant portion of the yeast and significantly reduced your population. This would need to be an extreme case to effect the beer though. Another unique case would be if you added hops or other solid...