Search results

What was your chilling process like? How did you pitch the yeast? It could be something from the honey or lemon, but I doubt it. Honey doesn't carry much of a microbe population even if it's unpasteurized as far as I know. It's more likely that it came from the lemon, but at boiling temperatures...

My understanding is the refractometers are not reliable for FG, only OG. Am I mistaken?

Just estimating, 8 oz is in the right ballpark, maybe as little as 6 oz. It's less than a bottle of beer but still a fair amount. I sometimes put the sample in a glass and chill it in the fridge, and it looks like a half-pour. In the future I'd recommend using the 6 gallon carboy as your...

The headspace will fill with C02, which will protect it from oxidation. Your beer will clarify whether you use a secondary or not. All that is required for clarification is time, whether in the primary, secondary, or bottle. The only thing that may change is if you bottle before the beer is...

Not to be pedantic, but why do you need a secondary? If you're planning to do a secondary, you'll want to transfer it into a 5G container (or be prepared to flush the headspace with C02) to prevent oxidation from the air left in the headspace. If you don't truly need a secondary (i.e. you're not...

There's not really a difference between a small tube coming out of a stopper and pushing gas through sanitizing fluid and a large tube coming out of a stopper and pushing gas through sanitizing fluid. A blow-off tube is just a big airlock, and there will be no problem treating it as such.

This is a really good idea. Also, it's exciting to hear that this has worked for you and that some Brett character does develop.

I think rexbanner is right. Plus, it's a decent amount of work to go through the whole washing routine compared to just saving all the slurry. Washing does a relatively poor job of separating dead yeast from good yeast anyway. Mostly it does a good job of throwing away yeast. As to whether or...

I've thought of doing this also, because I only have one fermenter and can't afford to let any one beer take up more than a month or so in there. I'm no expert, but the impression I've gotten is that there is an element of risk in this. Since Brett can eat more complex sugars than Sacc (that is...

I'm not really sure what you're saying here, but I think under rolling boil the mixing (achieved by a combination of large scale flow and diffusion) is sufficient that a hop spider versus free hops will see little difference. The only danger I can imagine is a pocket of stagnant flow (that's an...

I agree with Yooper about only using .25 pound of biscuit malt. I am currently drinking a brown ale in which I used 6 ounces of aromatic (it's like biscuit), and when it was young it was a little astringent. By the time it would age out the astringency like mine has, the hoppiness of your APA...

If you go to "Add-Ons" and click the "Add" button, you can actually import Briess malts into your ingredient list. The fact is that the SRM and SG contribution of extracts with similar labels (e.g. Light LME) don't differ very much anyway. In the Briess malts add-on, it lists Golden Light LME...

I'd suspect that was the most likely possibility if it weren't for the fact that I only bottled this two weeks ago. I did a quick sour, with a week of half the wort on lacto, pasteurizing, and then a week with the full wort on yeast. At bottling it wasn't puckeringly sour, but it was definitely...

Is it possible for this to happen? I recently threw a bottle of my Berliner Weisse in the fridge (after one exploded, probably from too much carbonation for a weak bottle in 80 degrees) and tried it today. It seems less sour than it has in the past. My guess is that one of two things is...

I've never brewed a saison and the only example I've tried is Ommegang Hennepin and a few homebrews, but with the temperatures climbing I thought it might be worth giving it a shot. I'm also interested in brewing with pomegranate, and there's no better time for an experiment than the present...

Oldsock/The Mad Fermentationist recently tasted a sour he brewed using Brett and a high percentage of acid malt to good results. I'm interested in using a similar approach to make slightly tart, citrus-forward bier de table for my SWMBO. I've got a recipe below that I formulated, but I feel like...

This is the pellicle on my lacto starter for a Berliner Weisse. It was made with half DME and half apple juice, which I inoculated with a handful of crushed grain. I pitched it into half of the wort yesterday and a similar looking pellicle has formed in the carboy. It's amazing how fast the...

I completely dissolved the DME in boiling water, continued to boil for several minutes, cool the solution, add it to the bottling bucket, and then rack the beer on top. This particular bottle had been in the fridge for at least two weeks. I'd be very surprised if the sugars were unevenly...

So I just cracked a beer from my third batch and all kinds of weirdness happened. This was the first batch that I'd carbonated using DME instead of sugar. Same as when I used sugar, I boiled it in water for ten minutes, cooled it a little, added it to my bottling bucket, and racked the beer on...

I am hoping to employ the same solution, but I wanted to make sure that I should be getting a 1/2" coupling. I just bought a Rubbermaid MLT off of another homebrewer (it was cheaper than assembling it myself), so I'm not sure what parts he used. When I measure the pipe on the false bottom, it is...