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I started out with dry yeast because it was simple and available. I make a lot of yeast driven Belgians and wheat beers, and I could see the improvement when I went to liquid yeast with those. I’ve been blending liquid yeast strains for a while now and really like the results. My old dry yeast...

I completely forgot about that idea. Thanks, I’ll give that a try and have another go at commando dry hopping.

I tried dry hopping commando style in keg once and it all packed down at the bottom of the keg and made transferring out of the dip tube almost impossible. I like the idea of dry hopping with loose pellets, it just didn’t work out when I tried. So I went back to the hop tube. I did 2 identical...

I just won my first champion brewer of show with the help of my Weissbier. It came second in last years Australian nationals, so it's not a bad beer, though I'm still tweaking. I use wheat malt, pilsner, flaked wheat and carahell. I've always used a touch of munich but I'm experimenting with...

I dry hop at the end of fermentation and again in keg using a hop tube. I use a lot of hops to try and get that huge hop aroma, and even split the hops into 2 and use 2 hop tubes in the keg. But still I'm not sure I'm getting as much aroma as I should for the amount of hops I'm using. I was...

So I fed the fermentation 1.7kg of Dextrose in 3 doses over a period of 6 days. It's pretty much finished now at around 1.019, which is 16.5% ABV. That's perfect. I could have easily kept feeding it and pushing up the alcohol. But I believe at these levels you don't gain anything by the extra...

I didn't find much info about using WLP 099 to make high ABV beer, so I thought I would continue with my journey using it for the first time. I brewed my Barley Wine, without adding any dextrose on the day. OG was 1.110. Pitched a blend of Wyeast 1028 and 1098 from big starters, at 18C. Five...

It makes me smile to hear of a 3 hour brew day. I just did a Barley Wine that had a 3 hour boil. Plus a re-iterated mash at 90 minutes each, plus two sparges. I'm over 7 hours with just that. Add in prepping, milling, heating water to mash temp, whirlpool, chilling and transferring into...

Yes I’m thinking I should send the starter in when it’s still active.

That’s great to know you had success pitching the WLP 099 without having to oxygenate. All the way to 22%, that’s huge.

Just bumping this as I’m about to brew the Barley Wine. I’m stuck on one part of this process and hoping someone can chime in with some help. So I’ll mostly ferment the wort out with my usual yeast. Then I want to pitch the WLP 099 starter and start feeding the dextrose. There will be no O2 in...

I make a lot of Imperial Stouts and Barley Wines up to 14% using standard yeast. Recently started barrel aging batches as well. I want to push a Barley Wine up into the 18% area for an extended barrel age. I’ve never used WLP 099 and want to know if I’m on the right track with this yeast. I can...

I hear you. Though I tried a Barley Wine in competition last year. It was 95% Maris Otter and 5% Dark Crystal with about 3 years bottle age. It was one of the best Barley Wines I’ve ever tried, and it made it through to the Australian Championship and did very well. So that’s a useful experience...

Ok, I might go with the UK medium then which is 154 EBC. I really like Caraaroma, and I like layering crystal malts in a lot of my beers, so I might try 4% UK medium, 2% Caraaroma, some Munich II and the rest Maris Otter. I've done 2 hour boils in the past and might just stick with that again...

I have the choice of UK light/medium/dark crystal and Caramunich I/II/III and Caraaroma to use in a Barley Wine. I’ll probably use around 6% to 8% crystal malt, and choose from the darker end of the scale. Has anyone tried both the UK and German crystals in their beers, and have a recommendation...

That’s good points. Thanks Martin. Fortunately I’m making lots of Imperial Stout at the moment as I age them in different types of spirit barrels. I’ll try doubling the amount next time to 8g Sodium Bicarbonate and see what that gets me.

Interesting. I’ve never brewed with colour in mind. I build recipes based on flavour and aroma, and just accept whatever colour I get. This Imperial Stout has 5% chocolate wheat and 3% roast barley, which is on the very low end of dark malts typical in Imperial Stouts. If I reduced that any...

Ok, well thanks for the idea. I need to learn more about this stuff. It would be great to see someone who does this in their brew process post some more info.

Is there a downside to using pickling lime? From memory there was a reason I decided to use Sodium Bicarbonate instead, but I can’t remember why.

Sorry, to be clear, the mash volume is 34 litres. Finished volume will be a fairly standard 22 litres.