Search results

Pour the beer aggressively, that lets the aroma come out of the beer and the head to form. Give the beer more time and if you have the bottles in a box, take them out if you can and space them out. This lets air circulate and puts the beers at the right temp for carbonation. Like cageybee said...

No, you should be fine. Any O2 that is dissolved into the beer will be taken up by the yeast and the rest of the O2 should be pushed up by CO2 coming out of the beer. Besides, it takes a while for O2 to make beer taste bad and you'll probably have it drank well before that will happen.

Congratulations on your first beer, welcome to the club. Is the glass clean? Did you get a head when you poured it? How did you pour it? How long has it been in the bottle and at what temp are you carbonating? Did you filter out the chlorine before boiling the water? I would suggest making the...

You got a lot going on there. I think you may end up with a muddle puddle of flavors with all the spices your adding; vanilla, bourbon, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, molasses, that's quite a lot. Think of this: take a piece of pumpkin pie, cover it with molasses, vanilla, bourbon, espresso and eat...

Don't blame the yeast, they can only work with what they are given. You may not have had the perfect pitch of yeast, it still is close enough to ferment properly. I think its a wort issue and not a yeast issue. What FG are you expecting? Do you know what the extract you used is supposed to...

You can't get rid of the band-aid flavor. If its really undrinkable, dump it. If its tolerable, just drink it. The typical cause of plasticy, band-aid flavor is chlorophenols. They are caused by having chlorine or chloromines in your water. They can also be caused by wild yeast. So be on the...

Yeah, check the gravity. The bubbles could be CO2 coming out of the wort. 8 weeks would be the earliest I would start tasting you beer. You gotta give the beer time to mellow.

Yes, bring yeast and starter wort up to room temp.

I think a week would be ok. Just leave the foil on and keep it in the fridge. About 3-4 hours before you pitch, add about a pint of starter wort to the decanted yeast to get them fired up before you pitch them.

That makes sense, thanks for the education. :pipe:

Did you run the water through a charcoal filter or use campden tablets? If you didn't remove the chlorine or chloromine from the water you can get chlorophenols like Yooper said.

I don't think you get the "normal" krausen you get with ale yeast because the lager yeast are bottom fermentors. The only way to tell is take a gravity reading when you get a hydrometer.

It should. The bugs would eat the sugars that the yeast couldn't.

6 gals of ordinary bitter 9529

Does it taste like soap or cleaning chemicals i.e. like a plastic, band-aid flavor? To me soap and chemicals have two different tastes.

Most of cocoa is not soluble? I would think at a boil you could get most of it into solution. jman added 8 oz, and it was the only deviation from the recipe. Something added 5-7 points to his OG; I gotta think its the cocoa. 8 oz is an entire container, maybe it was enough to raise the OG...

I would let it bottle condition for a couple of months. Then start tasting them. I've found big dark beers need a good long conditioning period to get them right.

Did you hit your numbers; preboil gravity, preboil volume? You used Beersmith, did you set your mash type to "single infusion, batch sparge"? I batch sparge and get about 82% efficiency. Maybe that's why you had some much sweet liquor in the mash tun. Try to calculate your efficiency and see...

Those are yeast and yes its normal.

I think its done. Those 6-10 extra gravity points are probably from the cocoa powder. I tried to run it through BeerSmith put it didn't have cocoa powder. Cocoa powder is probably made of unfermentable sugars. I bet it will be one tasty, thick beer.