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Most flying insects probably carry acetobacter, especially those that feed on fruits, but luckily acetobacter requires oxygen to convert ethanol into acetic acid and also doesn't do well in the presence of sulfites. Keep oxygen at bay and add a little sulfites (~50ppm) when racking if you want...

I put the toasted nibs in a nylon hop sack that is weighted down with stainless nut. When the flavor is right, I pressure-transfer to a CO2-purged keg. Keep in mind that the first samples off the nibbed keg will have strong flavor as you're pulling right from the beer immediately in contact with...

To play the Devil's advocate... if larger bottles have a proportionally smaller headspace than smaller bottles, it would hold that they have a proportiontely greater volume of liquid to carbonate relative to the priming sugar dose, which is calculated off of the full volume of the bottle (i.e...

Agreed, no sense in wasting pure O2 while your yeast is rehydrating and exposed to oxygen in the carboy headspace. You can add O2 once the yeast is actively bubbling away in the first ~24 hrs for a big beer (>1.100 OG) where you want to give the yeast a boost by promoting sterol synthesis...

There is no immediate relationship between AE and head retention. AE specifically targets carbohydrates and head retention is largely due to protein. There may be another factor like fatty acids released from autolized yeast (due to the extended time in primary), grain bill, etc.

Thanks, I'll look into the Inkbird PID settings some more. I have an EZBoil on hand in case I can't get the Inkbird dialed in to my liking.

Thanks, this was helpful as my Ctl parameter was set to 120! I still am not achieving the desired result and am getting cycling on/off by the controller, resulting in "boil pulsing". I'm trying to set the element power to just barely boil the wort enough to generate steam, and my temperature...

Wheat is quite hard, so a rolling pin is going to be inefficient for crushing. I use a standard cheap coffee blender to make "dust" out of midnight wheat to get the maximum color contribution with the smallest amount added. I add the wheat dust to the mash.

YES. Either way works. It is important to let the blend sit for a while before bottling in case any fermentation kicks up, which is a definite possibility when using mixed cultures. I usually blend in a keg and let the keg sit at room temperature for 2-12 months, then prime and bottle, adding...

You can caramelize any sugar, honey, or syrup in the manner listed in the threads above. I've had awesome luck with caramelized honey in several beers. Molasses may have too strong a flavor and I think that golden syrup is just a light sugar syrup. I'd not waste effort and expense caramelizing...

I had a similar result entering my 18% barrel-aged imperial stout into a comp. I felt like the bottles were wasted on the judges given all the effort I put into it and the feedback from friends and even professional brewers who tried it. Some beers are just not going to do well in the context of...

come on, I have a small modicum of common sense! To quote myself, "LESSON: don't stomp on glass while wearing flimsy shoes."

Broke a 5-gal carboy full of freeze-concentrated apple juice and learned a lesson about personal protective equipment. The back end of the carboy slipped as I was pouring the juice into a new carbon for fermenting in. Carboy smashed in slow motion and I watched the thick, syrupy juice go down my...

Blending seems more certain than using hop-resistant bacterium. I said a very non-specific "somewhere around 10-20 IBU wort..." intended as an approximation, not a hard statement of "20 IBU." That said, here are some references: Here's a purported "<30 IBU" resistant L.brevis...

Sounds like you're looking to dissect my semantics and prove me wrong, and the OP has decided on blending, so I won't spend the time finding the relevant podcasts and information from Milk the Funk. If you're actually interested, I'll look it up.

It's more a factor S.cerevisiae used for beer brewing having a very low tolerance for SO2, whereas wine yeast (S.cerevisiae var. and S.bayanus) and Brettanomyces have a documented high tolerance that was developed as a competitive mechanism. Since the OP asked about sour beer, I'm assuming that...

L. brevis is probably your best bet, the hop tolerance is somewhere around 10-20 IBU depending on the strain. You can do a set of sequential starters to build up hop tolerance if you really want. Check the Milk The funk wiki on the subject: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Lactobacillus#Hop_Tolerance

wine dosing will probably be low for beer because sulfites can be bound (and inactivated) by organic matter, and there is a lot more organic matter in beer (proteins, polysaccharides, etc) than in a finished wine. As a result, the concentration of free SO2 will probably be lower than expected...

My 2016 brew is tasting great.... except that it never fully carbonated in the bottles. Time to re-yeast and see if it can be resuscitated. Might toss in some active Brett in half of the bottles and active wine yeast (DV10 or EC1118) in the other half as an experiment. Nothing to lose at this point.