New brewer stuff

[Zadkiel]

All seemed to be going well, it slowly over 4 days worked away and got to 1.020 and then got stuck. After 2 days stuck at 1.020 I gave the fermenter a good 'swishing' to try and rouse it a little but that doesn't seem to have helped any

So, small update - mostly I wanted to post this here to help anyone else struggling with this yeast, when I researched this I found a LOT of forum posts here and elsewhere with people reporting MJ M20 getting stuck at 1.020, and in only 1 case did the poster say they left it for a few weeks and it came back and finished.

Well, after 4 days fermenting down from 1.050 to 1.020 and then 16 days stuck at 1.020, it finally went back into action. 2 days ago it was still 1.020, today it's 1.016 - and such a small gravity change has made a huge difference in the flavour, before it was noticably too sweet, now it's nice and dry.

Slightly annoyingly, I measured it because I just took delivery of a pack of fermentis Safale WB-06 that I ordered 2 days ago. When it was stuck for 2 whole weeks I decided to give up on it and pitch a new yeast to try and finish it - new yeast arrives and I find the M20 decided to start working again. I guess I scared it back into action heh.

I'm hoping it'll continue down to 1.014, to hit my target ABV.

 

[jwr0201]

Try using different liquid yeast strains. Wyeast is a great company and offers many different yeast strains for beer & ales. Using different yeast with the exact same recipe will result in very different beer/ales taste.
I have not brewed in a few years, but do remember formulating a favorite porter recipe and did the fine tuning with various yeast strains from Wyeast. If I remember correctly, my favorite was the London Ale yeast.
Find a recipe for a tasty English pale ale, use some caramel malt and use the London Ale yeast.
The caramel malt will add body and sweetness. Also, stick with Noble Hops and English hop varieties. Many others are much too bitter if you do not like IPA's.
Important Note: Do Not steep your grains over 170 degrees F. Over 170 will result in releasing tannins from the husks of the grain - makes your beet very astringent and earthy. That's the greatest improvement in my batches I remember learning. Happy brewing from Sarasota, FL.

 

[DaveDiamond]

Thanks, but that sort of volume isn't possible for me. You talk about a 5.5 gallon kettle, which is about the same capacity as my fermenter, there is NO way I could get even close to fitting a pot of the same capacity as my fermenter on my stove, not even close, not even half that capacity. I really can't overstress how tiny my kitchen is, and how much the area above and around my stovetop is covered in cupboards I mean, I could go for much smaller brews, I could look at doing say 1 gallon brews as all-grain tests, that might just about be doable, but I thought mini-mash would be simpler as then I'd be using my same fermenter and stuff. But that's why I'm asking people's opinion, I don't know how representative of all-grain, a mini-mash is.

Yeah, I'm aware of Brewers Friend, I even signed up for it a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to figure something out, but sadly it's no use to me yet, as it makes no accounting at all for all-extract brewing, until you enter values into fields such as mash water, sparge water, grain weights etc, it won't output anything. I'm sure it'll be useful one day when I get to that, but right now it's useless.

RO and Distiller water isn't something you can buy from the store here in the UK. Well I think you can get distilled water from a hardware store or garage maybe, for people wanting to use it in their car radiators and windscreen washer tanks, but supermarkets only carry spring water I'm pretty sure. Which means if I want to go that route I'd need to look into making it myself, which only adds to my storage space woes heh.

I don't know if you've since had a look, but here in Australia the supermarkets stock distilled water in the laundry section, usually tucked away on the bottom shelf in the least most prominent position. You need to add distilled or demineralised water to an iron, so it would seem odd to me if you couldn't buy it when you buy your washing detergents and fabric softeners. I use it for my scorpions, tarantulas, ants etc so I've had to hunt it down. It's not easy to find but I bet it's there. Another spot you find it is on a bottom shelf alongside Metho, Ammonia, Turps etc, and that can be anywhere. The laundry section is most likely though.