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They should work. Wort/water takes a long time to change temperature in large volumes unless you are pumping in or pulling out excessive amounts of energy (putting on a burner or in a freezer). Its been a long time since I learned chemistry, but a 20 degree swing in either direction isn't that large and would cause a pretty slow change, enough that the liquid would only go up or down maybe 7 degrees (bs number, no clue really). The way the no electronic belts work is that they are just insulators, though the wort can't produce it's own heat, wrapping it in an insulator slows the loss of the heat it already contains. If you think about getting under a blanket, it's usually cold at first but warms up because your body produces heat, on the flip side, if you leave for 5 minutes and come back, it's still warm under the blanket because the space under it was still insulated despite not having a heat source. It's just warm relative to the outside cause it already had the heat and there was an insulator to protect it.
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Feb 13, 2012 22:09
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wattershed posted:Just bought the KAB6 and it arrived Saturday. I placed it on the most level part of my patio, and then put a level on the bars that hold the pot/keggle/whatever. While it wasn't 100% level, it was pretty drat close, and there wasn't any rocking when the 10-gallon pot was full and on the bars. My wife just bought me the whole AG setup with the orange coolers + conversion materials for my birthday, but it seems like it would be a lot cheaper to go to Home Depot, buy the coolers and stuff to convert it on your own. Edit: She did get me 5 gallon coolers, which seems too small to fit the amount of grain necessary to brew higher gravity stuff, so make sure you figure that out. I don't suppose there's any reason I can't just scale down to ~3 gallon batches for higher gravity stuff and just ferment them in the 5 gallon glass carboys, is there? Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Feb 13, 2012 |
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Feb 13, 2012 23:15
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Angry Grimace posted:Sounds like you have some of the stuff you need for AG anyways, like a big enough burner, although I don't recall how big your brew kettle is. That's right, you can also make 5 gallons of ~1.060 wort and then add DME to hit your OG for big beers. It's not totally ideal, but from what I hear you can hardly tell the difference between a batch that is 100% AG and one that is 70% AG and 30% extract. Also, read up on decoction mashing - the very technique was invented with volume limitations on mash tuns in mind - it may allow you to max out how big of a beer you can make 100% AG.
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Feb 13, 2012 23:55
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Super Rad posted:That's right, you can also make 5 gallons of ~1.060 wort and then add DME to hit your OG for big beers. It's not totally ideal, but from what I hear you can hardly tell the difference between a batch that is 100% AG and one that is 70% AG and 30% extract. I've also got the other option - have her return the set she got me, get the stuff for 10g coolers and get those (plus those 10g coolers are like 1/2 as much at the local hardware store). I normally just want to do 5 gallon batches of medium gravity. Suggestion?
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Feb 14, 2012 01:05
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I started with two 5gal coolers and quickly upgraded to a 5gal and a 10gal. Its nice having one of each size, and I use the extra 5 gal to store extra grain.
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Feb 14, 2012 01:08
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j3rkstore posted:I started with two 5gal coolers and quickly upgraded to a 5gal and a 10gal. Its nice having one of each size, and I use the extra 5 gal to store extra grain. What do you mean by a 5g and a 10g? You just use the 10 as an MLT and the 5 as a sparge water tank? Is that essentially no different from having 2 10g tanks?
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Feb 14, 2012 01:10
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Angry Grimace posted:What do you mean by a 5g and a 10g? You just use the 10 as an MLT and the 5 as a sparge water tank? Is that essentially no different from having 2 10g tanks? Yes, but it's highly unlikely that you should need more than 5gal sparge water. I would recommend upgrading at least one of the coolers to 10gal. My MLT is a 12.5 gallon rectangular cooler and I've definitely gotten it over 50% full several times. My sparge tank is just a 5gal cooler.
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Feb 14, 2012 01:16
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So I assume the whole double cooler system is for fly sparging? I just recently built a 10 gallon mash tun with a false bottom and was just intending to dump in the sparge water from my old aluminum pot.
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Feb 14, 2012 01:29
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Super Rad posted:Yes, but it's highly unlikely that you should need more than 5gal sparge water. Yeah, this. Also I noticed that the 10gal cooler loses heat faster than the 5gal, so when im brewing small or medium beers that don't require a ton of infusions I use the 5gal as the MLT.
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Feb 14, 2012 01:31
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Daedalus Esquire posted:So I assume the whole double cooler system is for fly sparging? I just recently built a 10 gallon mash tun with a false bottom and was just intending to dump in the sparge water from my old aluminum pot. It's definitely necessary for non direct-fire fly sparging as the process is very slow and you want to minimize the heat lost by your sparge water. You can definitely store your batch sparge water in an old pot, but consider that it will lose more heat this way - it can easily take 10 minutes to get a good clean drain from your first runnings and your sparge water will be losing heat the entire time.
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Feb 14, 2012 01:59
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Super Rad posted:It's definitely necessary for non direct-fire fly sparging as the process is very slow and you want to minimize the heat lost by your sparge water.
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Feb 14, 2012 02:35
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Its always seemed to me everyone here leans toward batch. You need to vorlauf a few extra times compared to fly, but you don't need to worry about fluid dynamics when you can get perfect contact by stirring the mash a bit. Fly seems more attractive for large batches when the volume of water is a pain to dump manually and stir 30 pounds of grain and is begging for it for push button enthusiast stuff.
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Feb 14, 2012 03:08
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A lot of people claim better efficiency from fly sparging as well, I was just curious as most videos I've seen of people batch sparging consist of just dumping a pot of sparge water into the grains, stirring it up and letting it drain off the same as the mash. So I was thinking about another of the categories for the beer contest I'm entering. The requirement is to use both fruit and spice in the beer, so I was thinking of doing a pilsner & carapils base then adding figs and cloves in the secondary and possibly even souring it. The guidelines say to really focus on getting the fruit & spice flavors through so I thought the use of pilsner as the base would really highlight that. Has anyone here ever done anything with figs? Would it be better to buy a bunch to puree or should I use juice?
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Feb 14, 2012 03:52
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I did an alt recently, and it turned out very, very good. I'm pretty much in love with it. Haven't even pitched gelatin yet.
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Feb 14, 2012 03:53
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Hypnolobster posted:I did an alt recently, and it turned out very, very good. I'm pretty much in love with it. Haven't even pitched gelatin yet. Got a recipe?
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Feb 14, 2012 04:38
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Speaking of alt, I just lost half of my alt to a loose beer hose fitting on my keg and them me not checking on it for a couple of hours. NOTE to anyone buying keg setups from Keg Connection: Just because they say fully assembled doesn't mean fully tightened. Not saying it's their fault, just saying don't do what I did.
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Feb 14, 2012 05:02
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Sirotan posted:Using one of those portable burner things, how quick would you expect to go through one regular sized propane tank? A 20-pound tank of propane gets me through three to four ten-gallon, all-grain batches. Hypnolobster posted:I did an alt recently, and it turned out very, very good. I did an alt a while ago, and it's a phenomenal style that doesn't get nearly enough appreciation, IMO.
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Feb 14, 2012 05:11
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Daedalus Esquire posted:Has anyone here ever done anything with figs? Would it be better to buy a bunch to puree or should I use juice? I'm not sure how relevant it is to beer but I put rough chopped dried figs in a cyser and couldn't taste them at all. On the other hand orange (peel and all) came through really strong in a mead with cloves, so that might be a better choice. edit: Sorry, it was dates, not figs. Fresh fig puree or juice would probably come through better. Cpt.Wacky fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 05:37
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icehewk posted:Got a recipe? I just kegged my favorite beer to date - an impromptu alt where I just guessed the grain bill and hops while in the LHBS since I didn't prepare a recipe ahead of time. And then I almost lost the recipe when beersmith failed to save it! Fortunately I found the receipt from my LHBS  5# Belgian pale malt 2# German light (10L) Munich malt .5# Melanoidin malt .5# British crystal 135L/165L (swap out cyrstal 120L if this is unavailable) .5# CaraMunich malt .25# Carafa Special II (special I/III will also work) Mashed at 152* 2oz Santiam Hops - added 1oz @ 60min, .5oz @ 10 min, .5oz @ flameout WLP German Ale / Kolsch yeast (I wasn't a huge fan of the last Alt I brewed with the WLP Dusseldorf Alt yeast, and this one came out great) It tastes like wonderful malty candy without being too sweet (thanks to the more attenuative yeast).
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Feb 14, 2012 17:18
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If I add 1.5 lbs of honey for a 5 gallon batch after flameout at about 110*, do I still need to use the regular amount of priming sugar when bottling or does it depend on the FG? edit: Not referring to that brew, but this one: 
icehewk fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 20:15
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icehewk posted:If I add 1.5 lbs of honey for a 5 gallon batch after flameout at about 110*, do I still need to use the regular amount of priming sugar when bottling or does it depend on the FG? All the fermentation that is going to happen between pitching the yeast, and when it reaches FG. Your initial gravity should have nothing to do with how much priming sugar you use. Bottle bombs can be created if you somehow shock or stop fermentation half way through, and the priming sugar sets it off again; but usually this is from trying to bottle too early or wracking to a secondary vessel before fermentation is complete. vvvv - Yes, probably. Might be a bit cold, but should be fine. SoftNum fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 20:22
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I was planning on a single primary fermentation for 3 weeks and then bottle conditioning for 3 more. The temperature will be between 62-67*. Is that enough time on the primary?
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Feb 14, 2012 20:26
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icehewk posted:If I add 1.5 lbs of honey for a 5 gallon batch after flameout at about 110* I don't like using honey this way. If you're going to use honey do so after a few days once primary fermentation is waning or nearly complete. Yeast tend to like to eat honey over some of the more complex sugars produced by grains. That can make your yeasties get lazy and peter out before finishing up all those complex grain based sugars which will inflate your FG. If you let them chew all they can on the wert before introducing honey your more likely to get a more complete ferment. YMMV ofourse, but I generaly like to add honey later. Be warned though, adding honey late after the yeast had reproduced in the primary ferment will cause some yeasts to turn into a krausen volcano. Be prepared with a blowoff.
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Feb 14, 2012 20:35
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While on the topic of honey... if you want to have a hint of honey flavor in your beer is it better to use that as the priming sugar (or at least partially), add it during fermentation as drewhead suggested, or add it during the brew process?
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Feb 14, 2012 21:34
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^ I'd like to know this one too. So I've got a bunch of ingredients that I've put together without a real recipe in mind, and I'm not sure what to brew specifically yet... Anyone have any ideas for some combo of these ingredients?: 3lbs extra light DME 3lbs wheat DME 1lb clover honey 2oz Zythos blend pellet hops 2oz Amarillo pellet hops 1oz Citra pellet hops 1oz Warrior pellet hops 1oz Sirachi pellet hops White Labs WLP060 American Ale Blend liquid yeast I guess I'm looking at some kind of American pale or IPA... not really sure.
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Feb 14, 2012 22:10
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ChiTownEddie posted:While on the topic of honey... if you want to have a hint of honey flavor in your beer is it better to use that as the priming sugar (or at least partially), add it during fermentation as drewhead suggested, or add it during the brew process? The amount of honey you would use for priming five gallons would be unnoticeable in the final beer's flavor. You would have to add it as a significant portion of the fermentables, ideally without boiling. Drewhead's method would work well.
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Feb 14, 2012 22:26
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ChiTownEddie posted:While on the topic of honey... if you want to have a hint of honey flavor in your beer is it better to use that as the priming sugar (or at least partially), add it during fermentation as drewhead suggested, or add it during the brew process? Honey malt maybe? Also goes by the name Gambrinus I think? Another brewer at the homebrew shop one day was in buying some ingredients and brought in something of a pale ale he brewed with 2 row, light chocolate, and honey malt, forgot what hops and stuff. I'd never heard of Honey malt before that but sure enough it's there at the shop and it tastes pretty much just like honey. The flavor seemed to come through nice in the beer. So I don't know how much to use or anything having not used it myself (yet!) but I know it exists and adds a good honey flavor to beer.
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Feb 14, 2012 23:47
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I actually just cracked open the first bottle of a beer I brewed a few weeks ago w/ Citra and 2# of Canadian Honey Malt + 7# DME, and the honey flavor does come through nicely in it.
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Feb 15, 2012 03:44
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Question on pellet hops storage - I assume I can just keep them in the bags they come in? They look like sealed vacuum seal bags, but they aren't totally vacuum sealed (i.e. there's some air in the bags). I do have a vacuum sealer so I can pull all the hops I have the freezer out and put them in big bags and suck all the air out of it, but I don't know if that's something you're supposed to do or not do. Just like four pages ago, we were talking about shortages of Citra, Amarillo and Simcoe, but I've seen quite a bit of all three at both LHBS and online in pellet form, it just seems overly expensive compared to all the other varieties. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 03:57
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This has been my thought/education process the last few days: 'I think I'll wanna move to AG brewing shortly' > 'I'll have to buy a lot more gear' > 'Brew In A Bag, that seems like a possibility, wonder what the downsides are' > 'with BIAB, efficiency with higher gravity beers is apparently a concern' > 'hrm, BIAB efficiency has been addressed with batch Sparge In A Bag' That brings me to my latest question... Who's done this BIAB with SIAB method? I've been reading success stories, even medal-winning beers being concocted via this method, so I know it's legit, but efficiency concerns still seem to be a topic of conversation. This seems to be addressed by milling grain to a finer than usual size to take advantage of the easy filtering, so it's assuaging my concerns a bit. I know me, and I know I'll want to focus more on RISs, IIPAs, BSDAs, etc so finding a way to keep the efficiency up on the bigger beers is important before I take these techniques for a spin. Secondly, generally speaking I'm seeing a 50/50 split (give or take a few %) on mash water vs sparge water; if you've done BIABSIAB, do these figures change a whole lot? I'm only finding calculations based off a traditional mash/sparge and not for this newer approach.
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Feb 15, 2012 04:10
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Here's a neat little paper on the oxygen permeability of different airlocks from the Better Bottle people, if anyone is interested: http://t.co/qC9ikmb2
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Feb 15, 2012 04:30
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RiggenBlaque posted:Here's a neat little paper on the oxygen permeability of different airlocks from the Better Bottle people, if anyone is interested: Well poo poo I just switched to the plastisol topper with a thermowell to use with my temperature controller. Oh well, hopefully the positive pressure will keep most of the oxygen out.
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Feb 15, 2012 04:41
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Woah, that's a drat good paper.
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Feb 15, 2012 04:42
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Iiinteresting. Thanks for the heads up on Honey Malt guys. I was just planning my recipe with too much honey, but Im going to keep a look out now at the brewery shops around me. I think I need to completely reevaluate my recipe hehe (in a good way).
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Feb 15, 2012 04:49
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wattershed posted:This has been my thought/education process the last few days: 'I think I'll wanna move to AG brewing shortly' > 'I'll have to buy a lot more gear' > 'Brew In A Bag, that seems like a possibility, wonder what the downsides are' > 'with BIAB, efficiency with higher gravity beers is apparently a concern' > 'hrm, BIAB efficiency has been addressed with batch Sparge In A Bag' I got all the stuff for a 10g round cooler mashtun and it cost like 60 dollars and 66% of that was the cooler (and I guess it's even cheaper if you just get a rectangular one, although I didn't see anything that looked like it would work when I looked at stuff locally) That carboy airlock article is just way too  for me to understand.
Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 05:33
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RiggenBlaque posted:Here's a neat little paper on the oxygen permeability of different airlocks from the Better Bottle people, if anyone is interested: What I gather from the paper is "Buy our ridiculously overpriced piece of plastic right now." Seriously... why the hell does their airlock cost $15 or more? That being said... I want one.
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Feb 15, 2012 05:46
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Angry Grimace posted:I kind of had the same line of thinking, but at the point at which you're wanting to do really big beers plus wanting to sparge a BIAB, I'm started to wonder why I didn't just get a mashtun and such. Then my wife bought me a pre assembled MLT and HLT tanks, which I figured out was too small, so I returned it to get 10g ones - but then I did some interneting and figured out could build one and batch sparge it for very little money. I just wonder if I'm necessarily missing out or limiting my abilities by considering brew/sparge in a bag. I see the modified coolers, see what they're used for, then wonder how - be it gauged by scientific fact or sheer results - it's any better. I know there's bound to be people inherently defensive of their current traditional AG setups because they know it works and they've invested plenty of time & money to improving their craft given their existing equipment, so I guess I'm looking for answers to the previous post plus an opinion on the pros and cons as free of bias as possible.
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Feb 15, 2012 08:02
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Welp, had my first infection. Pretty sure it's acetobacter since it smells like vinegar. I put a few drops on a microscope slide and I could clearly see the bacteria far outnumbering the yeast cells. Luckily it was only in a 50mL starter. The yeast used was a 1.5mL eppie of WLP 530 from my yeast bank. I've thawed tubes from this batch 4-5 times with success, so I suspect it's something on the wort side. I've had a lot of success stepping from 1.5mL to 50mL, then to 400mL and finally ~2L depending on the beer and never had contamination problems before. There are a couple of potential sources for the infection. It of course could be my sanitation procedures while prepping the yeast to be frozen. One possibility is my stirbar. While boiling a flask on the stove I put the foil cover on the counter, make it into a kind of cup, then fill the cup with starsan and drop the stirbar in. I usually keep my stirbars stuck to the fridge and this particular one fell on the ground and rolled under the stove right before it got sanitized. I just washed it off and put it in the starsan thinking that it would be OK. I use a (new) toothpick in my flask boil to provide nucleation sites and prevent boil-overs, so perhaps this was a source of contamination. I'm going to drop this in the future, it seems risky. The starter also could have been infected while cooling. 50mL cools pretty fast in ice water but anything's possible. I just re-started another tube from the same batch, so we'll see what happens. This time I put the DME, water, and stirbar in first and put the foil on top as usual. The whole thing went into my pressure cooker to be autoclaved for 25 minutes. The starter was chilled in the ice bath with the foil on and only opened for a few seconds to dump the tube of yeast in. The autoclaved wort was about as clear as any I've ever seen. I really like this method and may adopt it from now on for starters from yeast pellets. If the infection occurs again I'm going to have to take a closer look at my pre-freeze procedures and see if there's anything I can improve. edit: wattershed posted:I just wonder if I'm necessarily missing out or limiting my abilities by considering brew/sparge in a bag. I see the modified coolers, see what they're used for, then wonder how - be it gauged by scientific fact or sheer results - it's any better. I know there's bound to be people inherently defensive of their current traditional AG setups because they know it works and they've invested plenty of time & money to improving their craft given their existing equipment, so I guess I'm looking for answers to the previous post plus an opinion on the pros and cons as free of bias as possible. BIAB is interesting and I'll admit i've never tried it. That said, there are a couple big advantages to using the standard insulated cooler. First, it holds temperature well. Modulating temperature in a pot on a kitchen stove, or worse, a propane cooker, is quite difficult over a long period of time and takes attention to keep it within a degree or two. A standard infusion mash in a cooler can be walked away from. You really only need to stir a couple times over the hour. I routinely leave the house to run errands for 1-2 hours while mashing and have never had an issue with temperature. Also, a cooler is easy to clean, you just dump out the grain and give it a quick hose out. No cleaning grain bits out of a bag. The cooler also doesn't wear out like I suspect a bag would after several uses. I'm going to be ditching my cooler fairly soon for a temperature controlled direct fire RIMS so I don't have any real attachment to the cooler but I'm quite glad I used it to get going all grain Bruinator fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 08:06
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wattershed posted:I just wonder if I'm necessarily missing out or limiting my abilities by considering brew/sparge in a bag. I see the modified coolers, see what they're used for, then wonder how - be it gauged by scientific fact or sheer results - it's any better. I know there's bound to be people inherently defensive of their current traditional AG setups because they know it works and they've invested plenty of time & money to improving their craft given their existing equipment, so I guess I'm looking for answers to the previous post plus an opinion on the pros and cons as free of bias as possible. As said above, it seems like the biggest drawback beyond size is that it's very difficult to hold temperatures in the brew kettle. Of course, 5 gallon coolers are 10 dollars and I don't suppose there's anything preventing you from just putting the strike water in the cooler and then putting the bag into the cooler. But I have to imagine the reason coolers became popular as MLT's was due to the difficulty in controlling mash temps, which is what coolers do very well. Don't dwell on it though, it's like 8 bucks for the bag, just try it if you have an open fermenter and see if it works out for you. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 08:55
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God drat. Just racked my first-time-brewing cider. I assume that gets easier with practice, but even with an autosyphon I was fighting the whole time. I'm not looking forward to bottling. I might need to go down to chemstores with some cash and buy some glass pipets, double hole stoppers, stopper locks, and a glass valve, and assemble some sort of valve-system pressure-based rig so I have some degree of control.
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Feb 15, 2012 16:24
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