Search results

My vial of Brett L from WL never really 'showed' activity in 1 cup of 1.030. I think after three days I doubled up the started to 2 cups. Eventually it formed a pellicle after a week, but no krausen, etc. The FG of the starter in the week only dropped like 10 points. Then when pitching, it...

HAH! I always used a screwdriver from the back to force the plate out, and always thought there had to be an easier way. Needle-nose pliers make way too much sense.

I doubt that racking some of the krausen off would do anything, and you're already going to have some of the flavors from that unknown yeast/critter. You should tuck this fermenter in a dark corner and just let this beer do its thing for ~9 months and see what you get. May end up pleasantly...

Eh, there are more expensive hobbies. Coming from being a guitarist and mountain biker, home brewing expense is the easy justification on the budget. And since I drink mostly Belgian beer, I've probably made back my cost in equipment with beer savings by now. It is a drain of a perfectly...

I kept worrying about how much it would suck to wait a year for it to be an oak bomb, so I ended up pulling the beer out and removed about 2/3 of the cubes. I was worried about the oxygenation, but the fruit still had enough sugar to have the beer chugging away only 1 hr after re-racking with...

So I just threw a 1.090 dark beer that's going to be aged for a year on fruit and 4 oz of medium toast oak cubes yesterday. I'm now thinking that I went overboard on the quantity, and that I should have done 1-2 oz, but the oak is already in the secondary. The beer has brett in it. Do you...

Okay to finish the oak calculation. The cubes I have are about just shy of 1/2" cubes. I measured three and the average surface area comes out to about 1.06 sq inches per cube. This makes our target about 236 cubes. 10 cubes weigh 8g. So to get our 236 cubes, we're looking at 189g...

Well a 60 gallon rain barrel is 24" diameter by 28" high. That's: Two discs of 12" radius squared * pi = 452.16 sq in. each 1 rectangle of circumference (24*pi) * height (28) = 2110 Total surface area = 3014 2014 sq in/60 gall = 50 sq in per gallon. So a 5 gallon batch needs ~250...

Has anyone tried maintaining their own wild yeast culture? What's the 'shelf life' of brett or lacto/pedio in the fridge? I don't have an easy time getting living dregs of sour beers, so I've been buying brett, lacto, pedio separately and pitching. That's a fair amount of money wrapped up...

Or use Wyeast packets which expand full of air, and a tear will let the air escape without the yeast foaming out of the package.

I brewed somewhat of a Curiex clone a few months ago. BeerSmith Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com Recipe: Oak Allagash Tripel Brewer: stevehollx Asst Brewer: mjk Style: Belgian Tripel TYPE: All Grain Taste: (35.0) Spicy and phenolic @ 3mo from brew day. Mellowed out by 9/1. Super...

I'll let you know in a year. Made this last night. 2 of my planned 4 sours are now chugging away (trying to stagger 4 across 1 year and repeat to have a cyclical pipeline.) I chose to throw all the bugs in the primary (instead of Sacc->Brett->Lacto/Pedio like RR does), in fear of it not...

Your boil sounds too vigorous. You just need a rolling boil, which will not cause volume fluctuation in the sight glass. I love my sight glass and thermometer. Would not go back.

Regarding rousing the yeast--isn't disturbing the pellicle a bad thing to do, since it will expose the Brett to more oxygen (and potentially create higher levels of acetic acid)?

What about transferring to the carboy, but transferring the trub along with it so that it's essentially still a primary fermentation?

Brett produces more off flavors in the presence of Sacc, since it competes with Sacc and stresses the Brett.

I'm got an itch to try taking a Belgian Strong Dark Ale and doing a 100% brett fermentation with it. I've got a recipe that's somewhere in the middle of a Rochefort 8 and a Trois Pistoles to use with it. I think the funk and cherry flavor of Brett L would be an interesting attribute to this...

In my experience oak chips contribute a strong flavor fairly quickly. I had 3oz oak chips in a primary (added when the airlock settled down) for 1 week. It took 2 months in the secondary and 6 weeks in a bottle for the flavor to mellow to where it was balanced. So yeah I think 1-2 weeks with...

It's inevitable that wort makes its way onto the vinyl floor. Regardless of cleaning it up afterwards, it always seems that I have super sticky spots the next day which attract dirt. Anyone have any suggestions on deep cleaning a vinyl floor that probably has dried wort/dirt embedded in the...

That is the nectar of the gods, oh my. I know Vinnie is pretty liberal on sharing his recipes, so I'm wondering if someone has something close. I'm assuming some sort of Flanders Red recipe with Roselare and currant would get close? Anyone have any closer details?