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Son of a bitch! I was going to finally bottle up some beer for my really really late secret santa shipment this weekend, but my keezer seems to have died while I was out of town for 2 weeks. It absolutely refuses to chill down below room temperature  Everything's pouring as a warm foamy mess. Guess I'll either try leaving the kegs outside to get cold or just send my santee a ton of hops and gadgets. I do have one nice surprise beer already in bottles, at least.Any suggestions for saving a potentially dead freezer? Everything sounds normal when I plug it in, it just hasn't dropped even one degree in almost a week. I did try giving it a break for a bit unplugged but that didn't help. The thing's old as hell and I only paid $20 for it but it's going to be a nightmare to haul away 
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Jan 4, 2013 16:50
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FYI Lowes will deliver and haul off your old freezer for free. I don't know if Menards will do that but they will take your old dead one for free if you buy a new one there.
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Jan 4, 2013 17:56
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Galler posted:FYI Lowes will deliver and haul off your old freezer for free. I don't know if Menards will do that but they will take your old dead one for free if you buy a new one there. Home Depot will do this as well.
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Jan 4, 2013 17:58
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Good to know, thanks. I don't think we have Menards in CO but we definitely have Lowes and Home Depot. Just a bummer to have to sink even more time and money into this stupid project.
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Jan 4, 2013 18:08
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Docjowles posted:Any suggestions for saving a potentially dead freezer? Everything sounds normal when I plug it in, it just hasn't dropped even one degree in almost a week. I did try giving it a break for a bit unplugged but that didn't help. The thing's old as hell and I only paid $20 for it but it's going to be a nightmare to haul away That happened to me last year and I pitched it. Home Depot had a sale that I managed to get a new freezer and they took away the old one for free.
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Jan 4, 2013 18:35
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Although in theory some freezers and fridges can be recharged, I think consumer-grade stuff is effectively disposable, or more expensive to fix than it is worth. So yeah, find one of a size and price you like and rebuild your collar on the new one.
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Jan 4, 2013 19:26
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If a freezer is really old, it may well be using R-12. If there's a problem with a unit like that that's related to the compressor, coils, or anything else directly touching freon, there won't be a cost effective fix.
eviltastic fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jan 4, 2013 |
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Jan 4, 2013 19:49
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Docjowles posted:Son of a bitch! I was going to finally bottle up some beer for my really really late secret santa shipment this weekend, but my keezer seems to have died while I was out of town for 2 weeks. It absolutely refuses to chill down below room temperature My Santee hasn't posted in this thread since, like, March, so I don't know if I'll even get feedback on what I admit wasn't one of my better beers...that said, if my Santa is reading this, I hope I get something from you soon  (and Docjowles if it happens to be you, I'd welcome the hops, I'm looking to brew up a shitload of IPAs this month)
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Jan 4, 2013 21:15
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wattershed posted:My Santee hasn't posted in this thread since, like, March, so I don't know if I'll even get feedback on what I admit wasn't one of my better beers...that said, if my Santa is reading this, I hope I get something from you soon I have word from Wattershed's and digitalhifi's santas that shipping was delayed until new yearsish due to holiday travels and whatnot.
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Jan 4, 2013 23:48
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wattershed posted:My Santee hasn't posted in this thread since, like, March, so I don't know if I'll even get feedback on what I admit wasn't one of my better beers...that said, if my Santa is reading this, I hope I get something from you soon I just happened to not think about Secret Santa this year and not happen to have anything I'd be proud to send out, so I didn't sign up. Just bad timing I guess.
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Jan 5, 2013 00:23
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wattershed posted:My Santee hasn't posted in this thread since, like, March, so I don't know if I'll even get feedback on what I admit wasn't one of my better beers...that said, if my Santa is reading this, I hope I get something from you soon Fear not, I will drink and post about your beer soon. I was out of town for a while for New Year's, but it's chilling and I'll probably drink it tonight. Nice packaging, by the way!
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Jan 5, 2013 00:52
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Magua I tried your Belgian Tripel. I've never had one before, and I've fallen in love. Very crisp and pleasant to drink, exactly what I love in my beers. When my Secret Santee gets his/her beer please let me know how it turned out! Also I got a batch of those custom bottle caps from BottleMark. They look incredible.
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Jan 5, 2013 02:29
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Magua I tried your Belgian Tripel. I've never had one before, and I've fallen in love. Very crisp and pleasant to drink, exactly what I love in my beers. Awesome! Glad to hear it. Belgian tripels and saisons are my favorite, glad I can spread the good news. Let me know how you like the other two.
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Jan 5, 2013 03:00
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Beer4TheBeerGod - got your package! We killed the cream ale in one sitting it was so good! When was your Noel brewed? My girlfriend refuses to let me drink it until she knows (since ours took forever to carbonate properly). Also we have the note you packed with it on our fridge with the Christmas cards  E: I'm still waiting for my Bottlemark order that I placed on Dec 12 
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Jan 5, 2013 03:04
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Magua posted:Fear not, I will drink and post about your beer soon. I was out of town for a while for New Year's, but it's chilling and I'll probably drink it tonight. Nice packaging, by the way! Received, and about to reply to your PM, thanks! Those Spirited Shipper boxes are extremely rad, and I just happened to get a package from Amazon the day I shipped which fit the boxes great. I'm not a lovely shipper by nature or anything, but yeah, those bottles could have made it around the world in there. In other news, ANGRY GRIMACE, I loaded up supplies for two recipes at The Homebrewer, as per your suggestion. Awesome grain selection, flush with hops, and the owner? guy who works there all the time? whoever he was, was really nice and helpful. He homebrewed an oatmeal stout and gave the few of us in the store samples, as one of the customers was throwing together a similarly profiled recipe and wanted to get an idea of how the oats would translate. They also had a tantalizingly large amount of 8-gallon used bourbon and rye barrels, the former of which I'm sure will end up in my house by the end of the year. Good trip.
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Jan 5, 2013 06:43
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fullroundaction posted:Beer4TheBeerGod - got your package! We killed the cream ale in one sitting it was so good! When was your Noel brewed? My girlfriend refuses to let me drink it until she knows (since ours took forever to carbonate properly). Awesome! The SOS was brewed before Thanksgiving and bottled on the 14th. How long did yours take to get carbonated? I've had a few and they seem fine.
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Jan 5, 2013 14:34
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Ours fermented out fast and furious but it took about a full month to carbonate. Our version clocked in around 9% so that's probably why. ----- My favorite local-ish brewpub in Wilmington NC is having a homebrew competition next month and even though I know I have no chance of winning I want to enter just to get some objective feedback on where my brewing is. If I brew something like [a simple low AVB blonde with a few additions] is six weeks enough time for it to be DRINKABLE for "competition"? I've never brewed under time constraints before so I'm hoping I don't hand over something that tastes like carbonated wort to the judges. Also: does anyone have any suggestions for intermediate level books on homebrewing? I got a ton of stuff for Christmas but it's all either about the current business and how "EXTREME" American beer has gotten, or "there are 4 main ingredients in beer, lets get you started on your first batch!" Need something a little bit more advanced than that, or is there nothing else but hop charts and hardcore yeast bio theory? fullroundaction fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 01:47
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That cream ale I gave you was done in six weeks easy. It's the BB Cream Ale kit with WLP080 yeast.
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Jan 6, 2013 01:52
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I just got done with disassembling, cleaning and starting to soak 8 corny kegs and now I'm much more determined to actually do some research on keg/carboy/line cleaners. Any of you screwed around with making one? The general idea is a vessel with a submersible pump in it, a couple gallons of cleaner and the kegs/carboys can sit over a spike with a sprayball (or something that's effectively a sprayball) and the solution just recirculates. For kegs you usually can throw on two QD's to attach to the in/out lines as well. A couple barbs to attach lines and recirculate PBW through them would be useful too. This is a pretty good picture of what looks like a well designed one. Attach the disconnects and flip it upside down and let it recirculate.  I would want a drain port so I can set it next to my utility sink and drain out the solution to replenish every few kegs, shutoffs on the spike, keg lines and then another line with a shutoff to a hose barb to clean out siphon tubing and the like. Possibly also a port and shutoff to effectively disconnect the pump and then force fresh water through the same lines and then I can just leave the drain open and rinse the whole keg too. Hypnolobster fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 02:56
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Just brewed my second batch of beer today (a white house ale kit) and was wondering if the boil temperature is supposed to decrease as it goes on. By the end of the hour it was only around 190F but it was still churning and boiling. I had to add a decent amount of water to the carboy to get it back to a gallon so I definitely lost some to evaporation. Does the fact that the wort was becoming more concentrated mean that it would boil at a lower temperature as time goes on? Also, when I upgrade to 5 gallon batches and am boiling that much wort will I be losing like a gallon of water due to evaporation?
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Jan 6, 2013 05:46
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wargamerROB posted:Just brewed my second batch of beer today (a white house ale kit) and was wondering if the boil temperature is supposed to decrease as it goes on. By the end of the hour it was only around 190F but it was still churning and boiling. I had to add a decent amount of water to the carboy to get it back to a gallon so I definitely lost some to evaporation. Does the fact that the wort was becoming more concentrated mean that it would boil at a lower temperature as time goes on? Also, when I upgrade to 5 gallon batches and am boiling that much wort will I be losing like a gallon of water due to evaporation? You probably have a problem with your thermometer or the temperature probe wasn't submerged in the liquid. The temperature of boiling wort isn't going to go down unless the atmospheric pressure inside your home happened to change during the boil (i.e. your house magically was transported to the top of a mountain). If anything it would go up, not down since the boil becomes more concentrated as water boils off. The boiling point of wort is something like 215 due to the dissolved sugars in it; adding one mole of sugar to one mole of water raises the boiling point from 100C to 100.52C.
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Jan 6, 2013 05:53
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Okay, super fermenty beer finished. It ended up blowing out my FG calculation (1.019) and went from 1.074 to 1.010. It tastes a bit heavy... my wife called it cough syrup. After doing a quick inventory, it appears I used my pack of 3711 instead of the ale yeast I was intending on using, so that might be it. Anyone have any thoughts on what the saison yeast would do to an IPA?
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Jan 6, 2013 10:32
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Paladine_PSoT posted:Okay, super fermenty beer finished. It ended up blowing out my FG calculation (1.019) and went from 1.074 to 1.010. It tastes a bit heavy... my wife called it cough syrup. Make it delicious and tasty, that's what it would do. Although for it to end at 1.010 using 3711 is pretty drat high, that yeast is beastmode. High mash or lots of caramel malts?
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Jan 6, 2013 12:28
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fullroundaction posted:Also: does anyone have any suggestions for intermediate level books on homebrewing? I got a ton of stuff for Christmas but it's all either about the current business and how "EXTREME" American beer has gotten, or "there are 4 main ingredients in beer, lets get you started on your first batch!" Randy Mosher - Radical Brewing. It isn't very complex on techniques, it's more of a rough guide to ingredients and styles and full of ideas. Don't be fooled by the title - it's not really an Extreme Crazy American Craft book. I've had it for years and it's still the first thing I reach for when brewing and planning recipes. ---- It's been a bit more than a year now, and I just love the hell out of my Braumeister. It's compact, it's easy to use, and the beer comes out fantastically. It's an electric, single vessel, mashing and boiling system - essentially a heated RIMS-type setup. I throw some water in, program a mash schedule, and hit go. It beeps to tell me when to add the malt, then it beeps when the mash is done. Pull the malt up and hang it above the kettle, a quick batch sparge, then set it to boiling. Then all I need to do is watch for the boil-over attempt, and add hops. My coil chiller fits the kettle, and I can run the pump to circulate wort and speed chilling. A hell of an easy brew day - and now that I'm in a small condo apartment with a ceramic-top stove, all-grain would be next to impossible without it. I set up a 5-rest mash this morning (including glucanase and protein rests for the oats in the recipe, alpha and beta amylase rests, and the mash-out) in a couple of minutes. I would never have even attempted a complex mash schedule when brewing with the cooler and stove in the old days. The best part is - I can brew with a consistency that I never could before. Hit all the temperatures and times, dead on, and there's no more of the little, niggling, not-quite-right flavours that always used to cropped up when I didn't have this kind of control. The beer is noticeably better. So call this a ringing endorsement. Speidel Braumeister: a good system.
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Jan 6, 2013 17:42
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fullroundaction posted:Also: does anyone have any suggestions for intermediate level books on homebrewing? I got a ton of stuff for Christmas but it's all either about the current business and how "EXTREME" American beer has gotten, or "there are 4 main ingredients in beer, lets get you started on your first batch!" In addition to Radical Brewing, I also like Designing Great Beers, by Ray Daniels. It is pretty dry, but will help you design great beers as advertised. It's mostly an analysis of what went into recipes that performed well in judging, but it doesn't have any recipes in it per se.
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Jan 6, 2013 18:53
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the42ndtourist posted:Randy Mosher - Radical Brewing. It isn't very complex on techniques, it's more of a rough guide to ingredients and styles and full of ideas. Don't be fooled by the title - it's not really an Extreme Crazy American Craft book. I've had it for years and it's still the first thing I reach for when brewing and planning recipes. How big is your Braumeister (batch-size-wise) and what are the power requirements? I can't imagine doing full boils on 5 gallon batches is going to be achieveable on a single 120v 20A wall socket...
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Jan 6, 2013 18:53
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Angry Grimace posted:You probably have a problem with your thermometer or the temperature probe wasn't submerged in the liquid. The temperature of boiling wort isn't going to go down unless the atmospheric pressure inside your home happened to change during the boil (i.e. your house magically was transported to the top of a mountain). I lost a lot to evaporation so the probe was probably out of the wort by the end of the boil, thanks.
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Jan 6, 2013 19:12
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I brewed a witbier with lemon zest (0.385 oz) and tangerine zest (0.750oz) and just a hint of coriander. The burps out of my carboy smell like overly carbonated Sprite. I'm not sure what to make of that but I'm making sure to keep the ambient temperatures in the room around 62 with the Forbidden Fruit yeast I'm using. I'm hoping that will be a nice middle ground with low ester production so the beer isn't overly fruity. Next I plan to rack it onto 5 pounds of peaches, I want to go light on the fruit though most of what I've read seems to indicate that 1lb per gallon is too light, I'm making a puree any suggestions?
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Jan 6, 2013 19:26
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crazyfish posted:How big is your Braumeister (batch-size-wise) and what are the power requirements? I can't imagine doing full boils on 5 gallon batches is going to be achieveable on a single 120v 20A wall socket... Braumeisters require 220v sockets to be installed in your house, last I heard. They're also like 2 grand.
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Jan 6, 2013 19:47
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fullroundaction posted:Ours fermented out fast and furious but it took about a full month to carbonate. Our version clocked in around 9% so that's probably why. Throw me down as another disciple of Radical Brewing. I think it really has a transformation effect on the very basis of how you look at brewing. Its also got a lot of useful tables, especially the fruit/spice reference tables.
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Jan 6, 2013 20:56
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I'm really enjoying reading Brewing Classic Styles even if I'm mainly using it as a guideline for each style I brew. I like how it goes concisely into how to brew each style and an included recipe. Edit: Designing Great Beers seems a bit intimidating to me right now. I own it, but I feel like I need a chemistry background to understand it. Midorka fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 21:00
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Yeah I'd call Radical Brewing, Designing Great Beers and Brewing Classic Styles (in no particular order) the three books you really should own if you want to get serious about creating your own recipes. Each is really great in its own way and they don't really overlap much.
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Jan 6, 2013 21:04
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Anybody used Weyermann's abbey malt in large quantities? I'm going to brew a saison sometime this week that's 50% abbey malt and 50% Vienna, just wondering what to expect since I've only used it to about 10% before.
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Jan 6, 2013 21:44
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crazyfish posted:How big is your Braumeister (batch-size-wise) and what are the power requirements? I can't imagine doing full boils on 5 gallon batches is going to be achieveable on a single 120v 20A wall socket... It does a standard 20L (5.something gallon) batch. The heating element is 2000W, I run it from a standard socket through a 3000W voltage converter. It boils ~23L (what I usually start with) just fine. Yeah, it's 2 grand, but that's noticeably less than off-the-shelf gas-powered setups like MoreBeer's Brewsculptures. And, again, I couldn't run one of those in my apartment.
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Jan 6, 2013 22:04
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So I have a first time brewer question. I decided to take a gravity reading on a brew in primary fermentation. A milk stout originally brewed about a week and a half ago. When I opened the fermenter there was some residue on the surface of the brew. I just wanted to make sure that this is normal and not an infection of some kind.
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Jan 7, 2013 02:17
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Totally normal looking, no worries. Thanks for the book suggestions guys, ordered all 3!
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Jan 7, 2013 02:32
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Yup, that's beer.
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Jan 7, 2013 02:32
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Fantastic! I love beer! Thanks for putting my mind at ease. Now I just have to continue the waiting game.
lifts cats over head fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jan 7, 2013 |
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Jan 7, 2013 02:40
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Jacobey000 posted:Hahahah, I had the program open and the webpage pulled up and still somehow missed that. Oy Vay. The sour is my interpretation of Jolly Pumpkin Bam Bier. The grist is based on RageSaq's The Muse. The grist was about 51% Belgian 2 row, 22% Marris Otter, 7% flaked oats, 7% Vienna, 7% wheat malt, 3% Caravienna, and 2% acid malt to balance the ph. Hops were 28 IBU of Styrian Golding at 60. I fermented first with WLP 550 in the low 70s and then pitched a 1L starter built up from the dregs of a relatively fresh bottle of Bam Bier. This set in secondary for 2 months before I added a small amount of medium toast French oak (only 3-5 cubes). It's important to boil the oak for about 5 min in some water in the microwave to reduce the oak flavor. The water is discarded and the oak added to secondary. This sat for another 2 months until the oak is barely perceptible. I then added some more of the original yeast and some priming sugar and bottled. FG was 1.005 at bottling. It took another 4 months in bottles before the Brett character became evident though. Sourness is present within weeks of adding the bugs though. I really think the large starter is important to get the sourness. I started with only a cup of wort and the dregs. This fermented for a few days before I added 1L of fresh wort. This sat for a few weeks until the starter dropped clear. I decanted before pitching it.
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Jan 7, 2013 06:25
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This is only my second batch, so apologies if this is totally normal for beer. I brewed the white house honey ale yesterday and 8 hours after I pitched the yeast it was already fermenting pretty actively. This morning there the glass I'm using for a blow off assembly was almost full to the brim; a bunch of liquid had been forced out of the carboy by the escaping guess I gas. My first beer only ever had gas come out of the tube. Is it normal for some liquid to get pushed out during the start of fermentation?
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Jan 7, 2013 07:52
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