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nice! i've been too lazy to bottle my helles that I called Warschau Original ;-) I'll leave it in a fermenter for one more week. good luck with your czech pils!

you could try harvesting the yeast during high krausen, and adding the suger after that. adding the sugar later during fermentation is by the way a very good practice. unfortunately there's a higher risk of contamination when harvesting, so I've never tried that.

the yeast can't reproduce endlessly, and the amount of yeast that end up in the beer depend on how much you pitch. In some beers underpitching will cause underattenuation (it can happen if you pitch too low in belgian strong beers). also you want to pitch the right amount of yeast to have...

yes, let it age in a secondary, preferably in a cold place - about a month of lagering in a very low temps are what belgians do. after that you have to add new yeast prior the bottling.

if the fan doesn/t start without pushing it, the current is probably too low. also you need some rheostat/voltage regulator, you could try to use somethig like this:https://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=EQP52181

don't go with dried, the real secret of nice witbier is adding fresh citrus (orange/grapefruit/lemon) skin at the end of the boil. you have to only add zest (the thin layer of skin) without the white part. you can use a sharp knife, or a zester/grater to take the peel off. zest of about 4...

i used gelatin several times and my beer carbonated fine.

I agree, in general starter smells and tastes bad, especially if it's oxidized on a stirplate. I once experienced the difference between the starter that smells bad and the one that smells so bad that it makes you puke ;-) It was the smell of cooked and rotten cabbage and corn with a high...

Ok, I get it, sneezing over my starter is not a good idea ;-) But what if I had some bacterial infection? Like i.e. sinus inflamation? Would such bacteria contaminate my beer?

I also heard that too vigorous boil (15%/hour boil-off or more) can create DMS. The "perfect" boil-off is about 8-10%/hour.

sorry for the little OT question, but I was just wondering if bacteria that cause colds, running nose and stuff could contaminate beer? I have a cold right now, and was making a starter a couple of days ago and it was contaminated (it had strong dms "aroma"). Yesterday I made another starter and...

I'd subsitute crystal with wheat - I don't think you want caremel notes in the belgian blondes. I'll bump up the amount of sugar to about a pound or even more - to dry it out - it should finish around 1.012. For the hops one 60min addition should be fine - at least if you want to make something...

Hi all, I made a 100ml starter from one vial, and then stepped it up to 1l. now it sits on a stirplate, and it smells awful! I don't now which one it is (pils or esb), but it smells like cooked cabbage or corn - it seems that it was infected and the DMS comes from the bacteria. I don't know...

I measured gravity today and it is now around 1.012, so I'm planning to put it to secondary, probably tommorow. the beer tastes quite good, but the smells sulfury, which I think will disappear during lagering.

thanks for the info, actually i've been listening to the show for a while, and i've listened to the munich helles episode before brewing it. it seems it was not enough for me ;-) Now that I look at my process during this batch, I'm pretty sure that the huge underpitching was the cause of my...

Of course you could use mason jars or glass milk bottles. Basically you have to make a 1.035-1.040 wort, - you can do this by adding 100g of dme to 1000ml of water (the basic rule is dme/water ratio should be 1g/10ml). than cool it and add yeast - one whitelabs vial or one wyeast smack pack is...

it's been for three weeks in a primary (cold: 42-49F), now it's for three days in warmer place, and gravity dropped to 1.016 from 1.028 since I've brought it from the basement. I hope it'll go lower ;-) to 1.012, because there's still a lot of krausen on the top.

Actually it could've helped your weizen. There's a rule of thumb (heard it on JZ show), that pitching temp and fermentatnion temp should sum up to 30C, to make a good weizen. If you pitched at 55 (~12C) and fermented at 66 (~18C), you're in a sweet spot. I'll be making weizen next week, and...

Like someone said earlier it's not possible to sterilize the fermentor, that's my only doubt. And I think that sterility plays bigger role, when you start with a small cell count in a starter. On the other hand, according to what you say about calculations from mrmalty.com, if the pithing rate...

I put erlenmeyer flask on a gas stove and boil water in it for a couple of minutes. Probably it's not as sterile as it could be after boiling in a pressure cooker, but I think it's enough. I then decant water, and pour in boiling wort. It's also possible to use wort instead of water from the...