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I would disagree with those advising against mixing your own, for 2 reasons: The blends you buy are not guaranteed to work, nor is the ratio guaranteed to remain "ideal". Once in your fermenter it is the environment (e.g. pH, gravity, oxygenation, temperature, temperature stability...

In a word No. I do not actively maintain my stocks in the sense of scheduled re-streaks/cultures. I "withdraw" under the assumption it will always work. If it doesn't grow then I start a liquid culture from my -80c stocks that I then re-freeze as my -20c "working" stock. That is the advantage...

I'm doing a double-header; partigyling an imperial IPA and a brown ale of some sort (session porter, perhaps). Bryan

I maintain a large yeast bank, with my day-to-day vials in a -20C and my backups in a -80C. In my experience with this bank, 2 years is actually a pretty accurate estimate of how long the stocks last. According to my notes, I've never had a sub-culture from the -20C tubes fail in anything less...

Indefinite storage requires -80C or liquid nitrogen storage - at conventional freezer temps (-15C to -20C) frozen stock are stable for ~2 years (the exact time depends on how stable your freezer is, and how many times you remove the tube from the freezer). Freezing is easy - a low gravity...

I don't know about packman, but the old-school way of storing yeasts (on a slant, underneath mineral oil) reportedly allowed recovery of yeast that were 20-30+ years old. This wasn't normal, as these cultures were typically expected t last 2-3 years. Bryan

If you have bacteria present in any significant numbers you would know it due to off flavours. Proper clean techniques & sanitization removes the need for anything "extra" to control bacteria. Using antimicrobials to cover up bad sterile techniques is not the route to go - especially given that...

In England at least, isinglass is pretty commonly used in beers - especially in the "real ales". The institute of brewing has published a number of papers on the detection of isinglass in commercial beers, and (assuming I remember correctly), its in a pretty large portion of UK-sourced beers...

I'm not sure that is such a sound assumption. Animal products such as isinglass have been common in commercial brewing for a long time (100+ years, I think). Bryan

Microbiologist and yeast-rancher here. Bacterial contamination is not normal for yeast culturing. I maintain a large yeast bank, and my tolerances for non-mixed cultures is zero culturable bacteria. Generation times for bacteria are generally much shorter (20-60min) than yeast (2+ hours)...

Since this is your first all-grain I would actually recommend not worrying about the pH. Getting your temps, timings and volumes right is more important than mash pH. It may take a few times to get those numbers dialed-in, and adding complexities like water adjustments may make the "dialing-in"...

The sweet/fruity flavors are esters, and were produced due to the higher fermentation temperatures. This is a common off flavor, but can be controlled with a combination of proper fermentation temperatures, oxygenation and yeast pitching rate. The good news is that your washed yeast should be...

Beersmith gives you equal volumes of runnings, not additions. So your first addition is smaller as your first runnings will be the liquid part of your mash + the first sparge addition. You're second addition is larger as you have drained the mash, so it is effectively "dry". Bryan

There is no real drawback other than the minimal time required. Even if you cannot cold-crash the gelatin helps - but it works much better in cold beer than room-temp as you've already desolubilized a lot of proteins through cooling. Bryan

I see someone has linked to my old blog post. Just to answer the OP's comment directly, no, gelatin will not strip out hop oils any more than protein/yeast precipitation otherwise would. Gelatin accelerates this process, nothing more. That said, it is pretty well accepted that hop compounds...

It doesn't really matter when you pull your wort for the starter; so long as its gravity is in the range of 1.035 to 1.040 it will work as a starter. The best argument for removing it before the addition of hops is simply that a strongly hopped starter wort will carry those flavours over to the...

You didn't keep your sour mash hot enough, and as a result a bacteria that produced exopolysaccharides (bacterial snot) was active in your wort*. These carried through to your wort which is now goopy. Ideally, you want to be over 100F/39C; preferable in the 104-108 (40-42C) range. *some "wild"...

Its unlikely gelatin/isinglass will do much about mineral haze, as gelatin/isinglass work by binding to hydrophoibic (water-hating) stuff, while minerals are generally hydrophillic. I'd still love to see the end-result of this, either with the new beer or old. B

Interesting idea. Your beer is super-hazy though - any idea why? I'm wondering if its something more than the protein haze + yeast haze that gelatin/isinglass normally works on. Bryan

I throw hops & trub into or compost bin.