Recent content by westchesterBrewer

Can you elaborate a bit more on how you made your starter? Such as starter size for how big of a batch? How many pills you used? I just got my L. Plantarum pills in the mail and am eager to make a starter. Thanks!

My google skills are failing me today. A couple years ago I read a really great post on someone's blog or website about taking old yeast, autolysing it on purpose, then using that autolysed yeast as nutrient for a new yeast starter (with fresh pitch of yeast). Has anyone ever stumbled...

Wanting to do a 2 bbl brew on our club's large system next year to fill a 60 gallon wine barrel. Shooting for an OG of 1.072 and producing around 62 gallons. Yeast calculations are coming in at around 3 Trillion yeast cells for a proper pitch. How on earth can I can produce a yeast starter...

Just read the article on the front page about NE style IPAs and in the comments was reading about adding hops to the fermenter while Fermentation is pretty active. I can imagine the krausen must be at peak at this point, and with all of that foam, what would be the best method of adding...

Question (and mostly curious): Have you noticed a higher than usual amount of CO2 off gassing? I believe that baker's yeast has been bred and selected for creating more gas, for leavening bread better.

I caught a wild yeast off of some apple skins from my backyard this past Fall. It made some really really awesome cider. Before attempting to plate out the yeast I decided to build up the yeast count a bit more via a starter on a stir plate to store the strain as a backup and also do a small...

The last time I used this yeast I did a crazy step mash schedule where I mashed in @ 113 and raised the temperature 3 degrees every 5 mins for a 90 min mash. I think this is what Saison Dupont does, if I read that from the Farmhouse Ales book? I used my HERMS system to achieve such mashing...

With proper mash temps, oxygenation, and yeast cell count, how long does it take your brews to reach full attenuation for an all grain batch? Since finally paying attention to all of the above, I am seeing by around day 4 (vs day 10) I have reached my expected final gravity, for beers in the...

Hello, I have been tasked with revamping my homebrew club's web-site. It is out of date (both design & info) and kind of hard to navigate and hard to find membership information. Does your club have a great and successful club website that is well traffic-ed that you would be willing to...

That yeast is the Saison DuPont yeast I believe. I have used it numerous times and have used east kent goldings as bittering hops and Styrian goldings or saaz as aroma hops.

Thank you everyone for your input. Hops are heading to a friends house in the area and I will be starting fresh next year on the west coast.

The title says it all, except that I will be moving at the end of June. I currently have 3 planters (homemade earth boxes) that are easily moveable. Except by the end of June, the plants will be VERY tall. Is it possible to just cut the bines down to the crown, and move them? And hope they...

With these belgian strains I like to keep the ferm temp constant. I use a ferm wrap heater hooked up to a temperature controller all inside of an insulated box. Then I can crank the ferm temp up to 92 for 3724 :) And it still stalls out on me after a week, before magically reigniting itself...

I am researching building up my brewing water by taking distilled water and adding my salts to hit my exact water profiles. Let's take this profile for example: Amber malty: Ca 59 Mg 6 Na 14 SO4 50 Cl 45 HCO3 76 Where do I find each of...

I'm attempting to make chica. I currently have 12 lbs of corn sprouting (it smells wonderful!) and should be done in a few days. For the mash I want to avoid using powdered amylase enzyme (I'm too muh of a purist) and rely solely on the diastatic power of my malted corn. Here is my worry...