Search results

I brew 2.5 gallon batches. Starters are by no means necessary (though with that OG, you'll likely be under pitching without one). But regardless, I generally do starters for liquid yeast for a few reasons. It reduces lag time on the beer, it ensures the yeast is viable, and it makes sure I have...

I've got some bottles of a west coast ipa and my first milk stout sitting in the fridge. I'm thinking the stout will be perfect with dessert. As far as commercial beer, I have a six pack of Three Taverns Night on Ponce IPA, which is my favorite local beer. We're bubbling with another family for...

Agree with everyone else, give it more time, particularly if there still seems to be some active fermentation happening. I'd bet that it will have dropped lower the next time you check it. But if in a week, your gravity hasn't moved down at all, you can consider options at that point. If it...

If you're generally letting it sit 14 days on the yeast, that's fine. I wouldn't be too concerned about getting it off the yeast. There are a lot of threads on here about the benefits of skipping secondary and letting beer sit on the yeast for a bit so it can clean up byproducts from...

I wish it were, but I've seen this stuff recently. A thread the other day got sidetracked by someone negging BIAB and spouting some of these arguments. You may have missed it because the mods had to come in and delete some things after it got a little heated. Most folks on here are respectful...

Do you forage your own or buy them? How does one get their hands on spruce tips? I've always been interested in brewing with them but assumed I wouldn't be able to get them.

Oh and put hose clamps on your siphon! It's a small thing, but you can sometimes get oxygen ingress where the tubing meets the racking cane. If you see bubbles there while you're transferring, it means air is coming in.

I have a similar process. I ferment in carboys, so no transfer port for me. I use a sterile siphon to minimize the aeration I was getting from an auto siphon. Like nreed, I make sure the tubing is curled into the bottom of the bottling bucket with the priming solution already added. Then I use a...

There's no need to purge with co2 and all that with almost any other beer. Sure, it might improve your brews marginally, but you can make excellent hoppy beers without owning any co2 stuff. I've dry hopped within an inch of a beer's life using my normal bottling process without issues. Go as...

My understanding is that nobody is quite sure why NEIPAs are so extremely oxygen sensitive. I think it's more than just the sheer amount of hops and may have something to do with the biotransformation going on when people dry hop during active fermentation. Other hoppy beers are also oxygen...

Third that! My faith in humanity was going to drop another few points if there was a recipe for a hazy pineapple milkshake lager in here. Phew!

Looks perfect! I really love Amarillo, so I bet this will be a good one.

Yep, just try not to check it much more than that because each time you open your fermenter, you expose your beer to oxygen. Checking gravity twice won't introduce enough oxygen to kill your beer (unless you're brewing a NEIPA), and when you're new to brewing, it's better to err on the side of...

If you didn't make a starter, then you should expect the lag time to be longer. With starters, you may get active fermentation in as little as a few hours. But with directly pitching yeast from a pouch or vial, it may take 24-48 hours to see signs of active fermentation. I expect two vials for...

I wanted to update, in case someone runs across this in the future. I have taken a few more gravity readings now, and it was still sitting at 1.020. ordered some yeast nutrient, but Amazon lost it and my LHBS is back ordered. Given my time constraints, I went ahead without the yeast nutrient...

I feel you on toddlers making off with brewing equipment! At least two of my airlocks are somewhere in my kids' room; I just haven't figured out which bin yet. Odds are, this will be your best beer, and you'll never be able to replicate it.

Those are great ideas. You can also get a refractometer that's useful for checking gravity and mash efficiency. If you want to get fancy, check out SS Brewtech's brew buckets. They're pretty and a real step up from plastic or glass.

I went with Biab when I switched to all grain years ago, and I've been very happy. I also have space constraints, so that's a big factor, but I mainly love how simple it is. I feel like I can focus on dialing in other aspects of brewing, like mash temp and water chemistry, when I don't have to...

If you want to try and get it unstuck, Jamil and John Palmer just did an episode of Brew Strong about stuck fermentation that I found really valuable. Often just adding more yeast won't do much because there is some sort of issue that prevented your current yeast from finishing up, whether...

Yeah that's much too fast to get off flavors. It's still not the optimal process from the yeast's perspective, I would think. Temp increases generally signal to them that it's time to wake up and start eating, while temp decreases signal that it's time to go dormant. It's probably still too...