Recent content by Zoltan

No dry-hopping, though now you mention it I made a couple of hop substitutions this time, as the store was out of my usual. Instead of Citra, Warrior. Instead of Strisselspalt, Sterling.

I'm making the high-gravity IPA I always make (O.G. 1.078, F.G. 1.018). Usually I leave it in the fermenter 3 weeks, and the end of which there's no evidence of further fermentation. This time, however, at the end of three weeks the gravity was still about 1.019-1.020 and on day 25 now that...

Please report! Boiling dissolved DME does create some Maillard reactions and flavor (perhaps too much?) but I suspect the boiling is mainly for hop extraction. My intuition tells me an hour may be overkill, but my intuition is often wrong!

Likely it's one or the other. Maybe if you're tasting it, it's chlorine. I agree that the Cambden treatment is easy, so why not?

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area and have never experienced a Band-Aid taste, though I'm not sure what a Band-Aid tastes like! But taste can be subtle, and I'm always looking to improve the beer, and this seems like a simple thing to do. If what day_trippr says is true and the band-aid taste...

I misspoke above. What I read was that heat destroys Campden, not chloramine, which I think you're saying is true. I get you now that chloramine can affect the wort at boil time, so you want to do it early. I appreciate your information and patience.

I only boil about 3 gallons, adding the other two to the fermenter along with the wort from the nicely-aerating tap. If heat destroys chloramine (one of the rumors I read), then those two added gallons wouldn't get treated. If heat doesn't destroy it, then I guess it would still be around when...

I think they were saying it's hard to dissolve, so soak the night before. What does that mean, "before the mash"? I boil hops and DME in about three gallons, cool that, then add cold water to make the 5 gallons, then pitch. Most convenient would be to add it right before pitching.

Did some Googling on campden tablets and found advice all over the map: necessary vs. not needed, 1 pill per gallon vs. 1 pill per 20 gallons, throw it in the boil vs. heat destroys it, dissolve it the night before because it takes a long time to dissolved vs add it right before pitching vs...

Not using prehopped kit. Briess pilsner DME, hop pellets. What's wrong with Briess?

I have never gotten irredeemably ruined beer with a medicinal taste (Palmer), but I will try Campden tablets next time. It could be that my water doesn't need as much chloramine; either that or I don't have very discerning taste!

My water: hardness 19mg/L; total dissolved solids 43.3mg/L.

That would probably be on the 12th of Never, but I appreciate the note. The water tastes good, and is sanitized with chloramine, which has no taste, instead of chlorine. Surely the taste is the main thing. I could find out the minerals from the water company's website, but as far as I know...

Tap water. I live in the east San Francisco Bay Area; our water comes from the Sierra Nevada and is very good. I'm sure the water quality make a huge difference in beer, and some places I've been have terrible-tasting tap water; I'm lucky to live here. I pitched before going to bed and the next...

Thanks to all who answered here. I bottled the beer today and it seems great; the final judgement will be in a few weeks when it's fermented. I only make two or three 5-gallon batches a year, and always the same kind now (a west-coast IPA), but I've gradually simplified things over the years...