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I doubt it would work at all but a beer gun could probably be made to dispense black & tans.
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Aug 24, 2012 18:56
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Bad Munki posted:On the other hand, if your actual goal is perhaps closer to just being able to carb one keg while serving another, you can just plug the carbing keg into gas, pressurize it, and then disconnect it and let it stew under the pressure until you're ready to swap kegs out. No reason you can't carb at room temp, either, you'll just need the pressure a little higher. But with that mechanism, you can carb as many kegs as you have: just pressurize, and let sit. You may have to re-dose the carbing kegs once in a while, but that's not such a big deal, just re-apply pressure every couple days until it stops taking more. This sounds like something I might do.
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Aug 24, 2012 19:09
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Given that Splenda is just a twisted sugar molecule, do any yeasts eat it?
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Aug 24, 2012 20:46
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Nope, the sugar alcohols are not accessible to yeast so far as I am aware. Certainly not beer yeast, which is why people use it to backsweeten beer and cider that turned out dryer than the brewer intended.
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Aug 24, 2012 21:11
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Is there a full list of "Use this for backsweetening a batch of X" or "This yeast eats these sugars but not these sugars" out there?
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Aug 24, 2012 21:24
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LaserWash posted:I think it would be a reasonable investment to go ahead and get a glass or plastic carboy since NB has a sale this month. Reasonable, but not required. I do nearly all of my beers as single-stage ferments in buckets without issues, but if you are going to grab a carboy anyway, dollars off never hurt anything. I suggest the plastic (PET) carboys. They are lighter, less slippery, stronger, and just as good as glass. Never use a carboy brush on them, though - PBW and hot water is all you need. quote:I noticed that the kit doesn't come with the hydrometer and test jar. I should just go ahead and get this right? I understand you can use an auto siphon to get samples similar to the way you use a thief, right? A hydrometer is a very good tool. Just be aware that they are made of thin glass and like to break. In my experience, a thief is a little different than an autosiphon. In particular, the thief has a valve on the lower end that allows you to drain to the hydrometer test jar much more easily. quote:What about a good stirring spoon? Is a wooden paddle from a sporting goods store okay or should I buy that too? If the wooden paddle you are thinking of is made of hardwood and is not finished, you can use it for brewing, but only during the boil. Once the boil is over, any stirring should be done with a nonporous spoon, such as one made of stainless or dense plastic. It's not a bad idea to pick this up from the brew store, but if there is a restaurant supply near you, they might have something nice for a few bucks less. quote:What about a blow off hose? I don't see it in that kit? Is that something I should buy? Most ferments don't need blowoff rigs. Those buckets have good headroom for a 5-gallon batch, and I see that they include an airlock. No reason to avoid buying tubing, as it has a million uses, but I would not call it required. quote:What about a container to hold sanitized water? Should I store the sanitized water in the bottling bucket and "juggle" when I start transferring to from vessel to vessel? My understanding is that the sanitized water lasts a while, so I should probably buy a lid from NB too, right? Really, about the only time you will need to hold sanitized water is while you are boiling, and then only assuming you are doing a concentrated boil and you will be topping up with that water. It's just as easy to buy a couple of gallons of spring water from the grocery store and put them in the fridge until you need them, IMO. You could indeed use a sanitized bucket and lid as you describe if you wanted to, though. quote:Is there any glaring omissions that I don't have here? Should I just go ahead and buy little things like extra bottle caps, bungs, cleaner, bags, carboy drainers, thermometers, etc.? I live in the middle of no where Texas (College Station, uggh) where you don't exactly make a quick run to the "local" homebrew store. What am I missing here? Nothing glaring. I like to have a couple of extra stoppers and airlocks around. Get a spray bottle and a gallon of distilled water from your local grocery store for mixing up sanitizer. Star-San (the sanitizer that is provided with that kit) is great stuff and keeps for weeks when mixed up with distilled water and kept in a sprayer. You will also need a way to measure small quantities of sanitizer concentrate - a children's medicine dropper works well. I use a syringe. 6mL of concentrate to make a gallon of sanitizer, 1.5mL to make a quart. If you sanitize fermenters by spraying them down rather than filling them, you won't need a drainer and you will use WAY less santizer. Just spray them until good and wet, let sit ~30 seconds, and dump out any accumulation. Smaller items can be sanitized as they are needed. That kit comes with some caps, it looks like. I would just order caps when you order ingredients, and that way you will always have some.
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Aug 24, 2012 21:33
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I have found it very valuable to have a couple extra grommets around for the airlock hole in the lid of a fermentation bucket. They only ever come apart at a bad time and a couple spares for peace of mind will run you all of 50 cents. The thief I use is sized to hold a hydrometer, get one of those. 
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Aug 24, 2012 21:41
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LaserWash posted:Is there any glaring omissions that I don't have here? Should I just go ahead and buy little things like extra bottle caps, bungs, cleaner, bags, carboy drainers, thermometers, etc.? I live in the middle of no where Texas (College Station, uggh) where you don't exactly make a quick run to the "local" homebrew store. What am I missing here? If you plan to bottle for a while before getting into kegging then a bottle tree and sanitizer injector is a big time saver.
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Aug 24, 2012 21:42
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Splizwarf posted:I have found it very valuable to have a couple extra grommets around for the airlock hole in the lid of a fermentation bucket. They only ever come apart at a bad time and a couple spares for peace of mind will run you all of 50 cents. Or just ditch the grommets altogether, use a 1+1/4" holesaw to make the holes in your lids, and use #7 stoppers instead. The stopper will never fall in, and you don't have to pull the lid to get a thief or an autosiphon in there.
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Aug 24, 2012 21:51
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I'm a genius. Why couldn't I could just keep my sanitized water in a bucket bought from the home depot or lowes? I assume those would have lids.
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Aug 25, 2012 12:06
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Jo3sh posted:Or just ditch the grommets altogether, use a 1+1/4" holesaw to make the holes in your lids, and use #7 stoppers instead. The stopper will never fall in, and you don't have to pull the lid to get a thief or an autosiphon in there. This is good thinking.
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Aug 25, 2012 13:00
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Does anyone use a "gun style" laser thermometer? If so, what do you have?
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Aug 25, 2012 13:16
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They don't work well on liquids. 
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Aug 25, 2012 15:21
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The ones I've been by have a margin of error of 2,5%, which is too high for brewing.
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Aug 25, 2012 15:32
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LaserWash posted:I'm a genius. Why couldn't I could just keep my sanitized water in a bucket bought from the home depot or lowes? I assume those would have lids. Assuming the bucket itself has been sanitized first, sure. But I'm not getting what you're planning to do with large amounts of sanitized water.
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Aug 25, 2012 19:20
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Docjowles posted:Assuming the bucket itself has been sanitized first, sure. But I'm not getting what you're planning to do with large amounts of sanitized water. To drop siphons, bungs, caps, bottles, etc in before I start using them. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brewing/beer-equipment-starter-kits/essential-brewing-starter-kit.html I'm just doing what the video on nb says to do. Are you meaning to tell me that you can "spray"the equipment and then it is sanitized?
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Aug 25, 2012 23:10
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You put them in a bucket of sanitizer which is ideally made up for distilled water and star san. Sanitized water won't stay sanitized for very long on it's own and will do nothing to sanitize anything. However yeah star san made with distilled water will last for a long time in a bucket covered with a mostly air tight lid. Get some ph strips so you can check the solution. If a solution of star san and water has a ph of less than 3 and is clear then it's still good. If it's above 3 and clear add more star san until it's below 3. If it's cloudy then dump it. Galler fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Aug 25, 2012 |
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Aug 25, 2012 23:46
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Docjowles posted:Shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't plan to reuse the yeast from the primary I'm not really, no, as I put quite a bit of baker's chocolate in with the boil and I assume some flavor from that would carry over as well. I soaked 5 cayenne peppers in a small jar of vodka for 12 hours, tasted it and it was pretty drat spicy, so I went ahead and threw the vodka and peppers in the beer. Can I expect any fermentation to happen with respect to the peppers being in there? If not, how long should I leave them in there before bottling?
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Aug 26, 2012 00:39
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I have a feeling the heat would carry over.
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Did you pitch the peppers at the same time as the yeast? I don't know if capsaicin limits the yeasts fermentation, but just to be safe I'd throw it in after 4-5 days.
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Aug 26, 2012 03:23
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Fermentation is long done, it's been about 2 and a half weeks.
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Aug 26, 2012 03:40
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LaserWash posted:Are you meaning to tell me that you can "spray"the equipment and then it is sanitized? That's what I do. Rather than making up bucketsful of sanitizer, I use spray bottles. Get things good and wet with the diluted sanitizer, and it's just as effective as filling a bucket and way more economical. Use distilled water to mix it up. Contact time is 30 seconds or so, and no rinse is needed - just dump out any accumulated liquid.
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Aug 26, 2012 05:32
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LaserWash posted:To drop siphons, bungs, caps, bottles, etc in before I start using them. The confusion here is that you probably mean "sanitizer solution," but used the term "sanitized water," which means something else. Sanitizer solution, or "sanitizer," is usually tap water mixed with star-san or Iodophor to create a solution which sanitizes stuff it comes in contact with. "Sanitized water" in brewing parlance usually means water which has been sanitized so as to be safe to directly pour into beer (e.g. when you are topping up to 5 gallons). Because you don't want to use star-san in such large amounts directly in beer, you would usually get "sanitized water," by boiling it and then cooling it. As has been said, Star-san solutions work by lowering the pH to levels which are inhospitable to bacteria and wild yeast that are on everything and kill them in around 30 seconds of contact. Star San does not stay acidic for long, so you can't just leave it around unless you use distilled water because particulates in tap water will cause the pH to rise above the acidic level required for sanitizing fairly quickly (i.e. a day or two). Since its cumbersome to keep huge buckets of expensive distilled water, many of us just make up Home Depot spray bottle sized batches of star-san solution and spray them on stuff since it keeps for a long time and because Star-San is expensive. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Aug 26, 2012 |
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Aug 26, 2012 06:06
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Galler posted:Hmm... Plus the fact that it's not mixed (the bubble water + syrup) until it hits the end of the gun. The lines are pretty dang thin too (save for the carbed water). Gerblyn posted:Ok, that makes sense, thanks! IIRC champagne yeast works slowly - so my question would be, how long have they been carbing?
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Aug 26, 2012 12:49
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Jo3sh posted:That's what I do. Rather than making up bucketsful of sanitizer, I use spray bottles. Get things good and wet with the diluted sanitizer, and it's just as effective as filling a bucket and way more economical. Use distilled water to mix it up. Contact time is 30 seconds or so, and no rinse is needed - just dump out any accumulated liquid. Yup, this is the way to go. A spray bottle of sanitizer is one of those things that--like an auto-siphon--I have no idea how I brewed without. It's just so convenient.
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Aug 26, 2012 19:09
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Could someone point me to a good resource for a first time cider brewer? My parents have a lot of apple trees (traditional Cox Pippins, plus a Bramley) in their garden and I'm hoping to produce some cider to hand out at my degree show next summer. I know the starting bit- harvest apples, smash up apples, smoosh apple pulp between boards held with clamps to get out juice- but from there I'm lost. I don't even know what equipment I would need to get started. Any help much appreciated.
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Aug 26, 2012 22:02
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Technically that is all you need. There will be wild yeast present to start things fermenting as the juice sits around unrefrigerated. Someone else can probably suggest a more scientific way of doing it though.
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Aug 26, 2012 22:39
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Home Brewing really should be called hurricane preparedness. Potable and nutritious beer on hand in large quantities? Check. A variety of food safe buckets, carboys, mash tuns to keep extra water? Check. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
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Aug 27, 2012 00:23
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Good luck, zed. Remember that beer is a valuable commodity when your neighbors want to swap.
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Aug 27, 2012 00:47
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I may have finally figured out why my mash efficiency is always terrible--I bit the bullet and bought a cheap pH meter. The pH of the mash was like 6.2, which seems way way too high. I wonder if that's making conversion really difficult. Tap water is sitting at about 8.1. I had no idea our water was so alkaline. Now to figure out what to do with this information...
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Aug 27, 2012 03:02
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My latest batch of mead is down to 1.004 from 1.110. I was hoping it would end a little sweeter, but I have no complaints about the ~15% ABV.madlilnerd posted:Could someone point me to a good resource for a first time cider brewer? My parents have a lot of apple trees (traditional Cox Pippins, plus a Bramley) in their garden and I'm hoping to produce some cider to hand out at my degree show next summer. Single variety ciders generally work OK but they can be a little plain. Ideally you want a variety of apples blended together. I've seen lots of different ratios recommended but you want a good amount of base juice from something plain and then a smaller portion of high tannin, astringent apples and another portion of aromatic apples. Cox Pippin and Bramley should both be good for cider but I'd go easy on the Bramley and try find something else to make up at least a third of the mix. As far as fermenting you can either go with the wild yeasts or a white wine yeast like Lalvin 1116 or 1118. Wild yeasts can make great cider but they can also make terrible cider. Wild yeast may take a while to get started too. Commercial yeast is more of a sure thing. You can ferment in 5-gallon buckets or glass/plastic carboys. Temperature control is a good idea too, just like you would do for beer. Measure the gravity until it stops changing and give it a few more days. Then rack to a carboy and let it bulk age for however long you feel like. You probably want to rack it again after 3 months or so to get the bulk of the solids out.
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Aug 27, 2012 04:33
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Docjowles posted:Yup, this is the way to go. A spray bottle of sanitizer is one of those things that--like an auto-siphon--I have no idea how I brewed without. It's just so convenient. The one thing you can't do with a Auto-Siphon that you can do with a regular racking cane is that stainless steel racking canes with hi-temp tubing can rack boiling or otherwise hot liquids. Otherwise, yeah, there's no real benefit to sticking with a regular racking cane other than additional mess and frustration.
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Aug 27, 2012 09:24
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madlilnerd posted:I know the starting bit- harvest apples, smash up apples, smoosh apple pulp between boards held with clamps to get out juice- but from there I'm lost. I don't even know what equipment I would need to get started. Building your press around a hydraulic bottle jack is the way to go for supplying pressure. There's also rentable fruit presses if you live in the right area.
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Aug 27, 2012 13:39
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I get the feeling that this is definitely something that I'm going to have to trick my dad into helping me out with. Here I was thinking I could just smash a bunch of apples up, put them in a bucket in the shed and forget about them. Okay, so now I have a slightly better idea of what to do: -wash apples to remove wild yeast, pulp apples, get juice, put in demijohn, add commercial wine yeast -measure the gravity with one of those floaty stick things (what are they called?), when it stops changing wait a few days and then transfer to another clean container (that's what racking is, right?) -leave to age -put in bottles with pretentious arty label. Call it CSM Cider. -serve to people at degree show. Hope they get drunk enough to invest in art. If I'm doing this in buckets instead of a demijohn, am I right in thinking that they need to be open/lidless, otherwise the pressure will just pop the lid off? Bear in mind when I said I was a "first time cider brewer" I meant I'm an idealistic starry eyed idiot with grand visions of conjuring up alcoholic magic.
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Aug 27, 2012 15:21
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madlilnerd posted:-wash apples to remove wild yeast, pulp apples, get juice, put in demijohn, sulfite the must to further reduce the wild yeast and pave the way for the commercial yeast, add commercial wine yeast What you would probably do in a bucket is to cut a hole in the lid and use a stopper and airlock. This will allow the CO2 generated by the ferment to bubble off without exposing the cider to outsider air and microbes.
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Aug 27, 2012 15:30
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Awesome, thanks. Next weekend it's back to my parents' house to turn my old bedroom into a brewery. 
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Aug 27, 2012 15:44
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Angry Grimace posted:The one thing you can't do with a Auto-Siphon that you can do with a regular racking cane is that stainless steel racking canes with hi-temp tubing can rack boiling or otherwise hot liquids. Otherwise, yeah, there's no real benefit to sticking with a regular racking cane other than additional mess and frustration. How does a racking cane even work without an auto-siphon?
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Aug 27, 2012 17:50
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Fill it with sanitized water and use a line crimp to get it started. As far as I can tell, though, most people just suck on the end.
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Aug 27, 2012 17:55
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madlilnerd posted:Awesome, thanks. Next weekend it's back to my parents' house to turn my old bedroom into a brewery. This might not be important but I've found that it's better to have whatever's fermenting close to hand at least during the first few violent days in case anything goes wrong (such as a blown airlock). I hope you'll be able to check on it fairly frequently.
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Aug 27, 2012 17:57
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Whodat Smith-Jones posted:How does a racking cane even work without an auto-siphon? Come, child, and I will speak at you of times of old when we used to start siphons with water in some tubing.
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Aug 27, 2012 18:11
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Made some great pear syrup over the weekend and want to add some to a hefe I'm bottling this weekend. Recipe calls for 5/8c table sugar for priming. If I make the syrup proportionately based off of that (5/8c sugar, 16oz water, / about a cup of pear) should that be sufficient or do I still need to do additional priming?
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Aug 27, 2012 18:28
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