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Most people I've talked to condition their beers in the fridge for a week, well those that do cold crash. I usually do 3-5 days my self, but it couldn't hurt it.
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Feb 25, 2013 03:52
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Porkchop Express posted:drat, im gonna need a bigger pot cause my poo poo is almost overflowing as it is before putting a pound of sweet potatoes in it! You'd do the mash with the sweet potatoes and grain first, in a relatively small amount of water. You can do a pretty "thick" mash and still get good results. Put 'em in a grain bag or cheesecloth or something, along with the steeping grains your recipe calls for (if any). After 30 min, pull the bags out and hold over the pot, run some hot water over them to get up to your normal boil volume and rinse off all the sugars. Then heat to a boil and add your extract and hops etc. Mikey Purp posted:You can't cold crash a beer for too long, can you? My IPA has been sitting in primary at 32* for a week and I meant to keg it this weekend after brewing but never got around to it. Aside from losing another week of freshness before drinking, would it hurt it to sit in the fridge until next weekend? Nah no problem with that.
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Feb 25, 2013 03:55
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Mikey Purp posted:You can't cold crash a beer for too long, can you? My IPA has been sitting in primary at 32* for a week and I meant to keg it this weekend after brewing but never got around to it. Aside from losing another week of freshness before drinking, would it hurt it to sit in the fridge until next weekend? It'll be fine.
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Feb 25, 2013 04:08
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I went to keg my latest "oops no-hops" batch and I found out that when I moved I apparently didn't properly prep my kegs. I cleaned them and washed them before moving but all but one smelled musty and had some spots of mold at the bottom or sides. I sanitized and kegged in the one "good" one and have a double-strength iodophor soaking in the others. One also has a noticeable brown staining in it from a chocolate infused stout. What is the best way to bring them back into top condition? PBW soak and dis-assembly to really clean diptubes and the like? Also what is the best way to store empty kegs? What about disused tap lines in a kegerator?
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Feb 25, 2013 05:52
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Shifty Pony posted:What is the best way to bring them back into top condition? PBW soak and dis-assembly to really clean diptubes and the like? Also what is the best way to store empty kegs? What about disused tap lines in a kegerator? PBW and dissasembly is the way to go. After you clean them store them with like 5 PSI on them to retard any bacterial growth. For tap lines not in use I generally flush them with clean water and leave that in the line. Them before you use them again just flush the lines with more water, then sanitize them before running beer through them.
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Feb 25, 2013 05:56
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First decoction mash complete and holy moly did I overshoot my gravity. Strangely easy mash out though with 50/50 2row and wheat. I can't tell if I'm getting better at all-grain or if I'm just really bad at math. Fingers crossed that this cake comes back to life and my BW ferments 
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Feb 25, 2013 06:31
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I've always overshot with decoction mashes, and I've still never nailed down exactly why. Decoctions are really simple to do and really hard to master.
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Feb 25, 2013 06:55
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Brewed a batch of Caramel Apple Pie Cyser (Mead with apples or apple cider) on Saturday. Here's my recipe for those interested; -1 Gallon Batch- 3 lbs mesquite honey 5 Granny Smith apples minus the cores, chopped 1 cup brown sugar, NOT Packed 2 cinnamon sticks 3 cups of apple juice .5 oz French Oak chips medium toast Red Star Cote des Blancs 1 pound of honey into the pot. Cook it until it starts to boil. After a couple of minutes of foaming action throw in your chopped apples. It will stop boiling. When it starts to boil up again, add your apple juice. Keep on heat just until the apples start to get soft. Once the apples are soft, strain them from your must into somewhere to cool for just a bit. Add water and brown sugar. Now that the must should be a bit over room temperature, dissolve the rest of your honey. Pitch the yeast and add one cinnamon stick. Oak will be added before moving to secondary Put your soft, chopped apples in a freezer safe container and well, freeze em. They will be added in the secondary along with the second cinnamon stick (if you don't like cinnamon you may want to use half a stick in primary and the other half in secondary). Edit: Forgot about the oak and Starting Grav 1.113 Marshmallow Blue fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 16:27
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I think something is wrong with me. I check the OG about once every 5 batches. I simply never remember. I really want to try making that cyser though, sounds amazing. How long are you going to sit on it?
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Feb 25, 2013 16:48
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I Just bottled a 4 month old cyser that's still pretty hot so this might end up aging out a bit more. That was a different recipe and a stronger yeast so it might be ready earlier this one. Waiting is not too much an issue either though, Ive got a strawberry raspberry melomel about ready for bottling, a maple blueberry mel the next month and a bochet to be bottled the month after that. I have a rolling schedule of 1 gallon meads so ill never run out and the overflow gets to be aged real nice.
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Feb 25, 2013 17:09
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ChiTownEddie posted:I think something is wrong with me. I check the OG about once every 5 batches. I simply never remember. I'm pretty bad about it myself. I think I need a refractometer.
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Feb 25, 2013 17:10
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Angry Grimace posted:I'm pretty bad about it myself. I think I need a refractometer. Refractometers are nice and I like mine, but speaking from experience, it doesn't prevent lazy.
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Feb 25, 2013 17:43
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I honestly can't remember the last time I checked either OG or FG, I just don't really care anymore. v v
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Feb 25, 2013 17:50
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If you like the beer that's in your glass, you win every time. OG and FG are nice to know, but hardly required. I check them when I think about it or remember, but if not, meh, it tastes good so no worries.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:34
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Jo3sh posted:If you like the beer that's in your glass, you win every time. Its a bit different for wine. Its good to know where your batch is at for adding nutrients at the appropriate time and to see if your batch is done or stuck. The last thing you need is to have a stuck fermentation find new life inside your bottles and wake you up at 3 A.M. to exploding bottles. Its also nice to tell people the abv when folks ask.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:40
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Marshmallow Blue posted:The last thing you need is to have a stuck fermentation find new life inside your bottles and wake you up at 3 A.M. to exploding bottles. Dude, two words: KEGGED. WINE.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:41
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If I started making wine, I would totally keg it. I'd have to get a wine fridge to hold at 55 or whatever, and use low-pressure nitrogen to push through those wine faucets, but I would totally do that. And the fact that the faucets exist shows that you and I are not the first people to think of this, Munk. To be fair, SG readings are very useful when bottling beer, too, to prevent those same exploding bottles. But yeah, kegs rule. They're rated for 130PSI and they have pressure relief valves that will bleed excess pressure if you get anywhere near that anyway.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:47
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And the ABV? Anyways not all of us use Kegs or want to. If you can drink 5 Gallons of wine before your next batch is ready to be bottled / Kegged... You ain't brewing enough. Or you have a ton of space and a ton of kegs.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:47
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Jo3sh posted:If I started making wine, I would totally keg it. I'd have to get a wine fridge to hold at 55 or whatever, and use low-pressure nitrogen to push through those wine faucets, but I would totally do that. And the fact that the faucets exist shows that you and I are not the first people to think of this, Munk. The thing I like most about it is that it's effectively DIY boxed wine.  Seriously, though, now I want to make it happen. Awesome that there are wine faucets. I might have to split a couple kegs off my 8-way and put them on nitrogen. My kegerator lives in my basement, it'd be pretty darn close to just the right temperature year round. Question on those faucets, though: they look just like regular cheap beer faucets, aside from the fact that they're plastic. Is that material clutch for wine or something? Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 18:48
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Bad Munki posted:The thing I like most about it is that it's effectively DIY boxed wine. http://www.midwestsupplies.com/wine-on-tap-from-fermtech.html Sometimes you can't invent everything Munki =[. Ive looked into these but haven't tried them out.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:52
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Marshmallow Blue posted:And the ABV? I know pretty close how the ABV of the beer goes from the predicted OG and FG. Close enough to tell the difference between a 4% session beer and a 9% skullsplitter, anyway. If I'm shooting for 1.065, I can tell people 'it's around 6.5 or 7%' and be good enough. You're not wrong. If your process and desired level of knowledge requires those things, by all means go for it. Kegged wine under a nitro blanket would keep essentially forever, so drinking it fast or slow would make as near to no difference as could be imagined. Munki and I are only saying that for us and our processes it doesn't matter so much. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 18:52
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Is that a plastic wastebin?! Oh my god, it just gets better.  Re: ABV, I shoot from the hip and gauge the % of my beers as "one pint," "two pints," "three pints," etc. as in, "You'll only need to drink one pint." It gets both points across pretty well, those being the rough alcohol content, and the low level of accuracy in the measurement. So far, there haven't been any major surprises. Except the one time we had a big party and the gals present were all drinking the peach wheat, which we didn't realize had found a cold spot in the fridge and frozen most of the water out. There were some drunk ladies that night. 
Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 18:53
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Bad Munki posted:Is that a plastic wastebin?! Oh my god, it just gets better. Holy poo poo, it is. It probably says Office Depot underneath.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:54
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I've been to a couple restaurants that sold draft wine, it's definitely a thing, though rare. The selling points are kinda the same as cans for beer, plus dramatically reduced environmental impact.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:58
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Bad Munki posted:Question on those faucets, though: they look just like regular cheap beer faucets, aside from the fact that they're plastic. Is that material clutch for wine or something? What do I know about it, I'm a beer guy. But my uninformed guess is that they are intended for use instead of the plated brass ones. I think wine has a lower pH than beer does and that the cheap metal ones might leach a metallic taste into the wine. My other guess is that if the components in your system that touch the beverage are all stainless, you could serve wine through them just fine.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:01
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That's fair, I've definitely seen wine eat some cheap chromed stoppers alive. Red wine seems to be more aggressive than white. Mead would probably be pretty darn harmless all around. I've got all stainless perlicks anyhow, but I'd hate to ruin them, since they're the slightly older style that has the tips you can actually unscrew from the faucet.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:03
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Docjowles posted:I've been to a couple restaurants that sold draft wine, it's definitely a thing, though rare. The selling points are kinda the same as cans for beer, plus dramatically reduced environmental impact. There's a tasting room near me that does that. I kinda want to see the back end of the setup just to see how it all works. I can't imagine that good wineries (and they do pour good wine there) is packaged in sixtels or something (but I've been wrong before), so I wonder if there's some mechanism to just put a dip tube in a regular wine bottle and put a couple pounds of nitrogen on it to keep air away and push it through the lines.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:06
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I religiously take OG/FG measurements and but I almost never bother to do the ABV math unless it itself is notable for some reason. I'm not sure why, but it's strangely liberating to me to not know the exact ABV of my beers. Could be because I still have friends that use that as a quality metric, as I think a lot of people do when they first get into craft beer.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:09
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fullroundaction posted:... I'm not sure why, but it's strangely liberating to me to not know the exact ABV of my beers. Could be because I still have friends that use that as a quality metric, as I think a lot of people do when they first get into craft beer. Yeah Its nice to get a giggle cause you hit 19% but its probably not going to taste half as good as a nice and smooth, well made 13-15% mead. I had a 15% bourbon stout beer that actually was really good but its an exception. Edit: crappy wording.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:16
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Did my first brew the other day, an Irish Red extract kit from Northern Brewer. Of course, I've got plenty of questions now! -What's a good way to measure gallons of water at a time? We came up a bit short after all the boiling because it was mostly guesswork. -My hydrometer broke before the boil so I had nothing to measure OG. Since I'll have a replacement in a few days would it still work to measure FG at that time and compare to others who have brewed this same kit, assuming that it's similar enough? There's a possibility that the yeast was pitched a bit warm and we may have done a poor job aerating before adding yeast, but aside from that I'm confident with it and excited to give it a try. It seems like primary phase went through fairly quickly so I'll leave it to condition for a week or two before deciding if I want to rack to a secondary or just bottle it because I'm impatient with my first batch.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:24
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Teeter posted:-What's a good way to measure gallons of water at a time? We came up a bit short after all the boiling because it was mostly guesswork. Get a pitcher or something with volumetric markings. I have some large Cambro tubs that have markings for quarts and liters that I use. For measuring more water than that, I have a 5-gallon water bottle that I marked with gallons. Some fermenters are also marked with gallons up the side. Teeter posted:-My hydrometer broke before the boil so I had nothing to measure OG. Since I'll have a replacement in a few days would it still work to measure FG at that time and compare to others who have brewed this same kit, assuming that it's similar enough? Well, since your volume may be off, you don't really have a good way of knowing your OG. If your volume were known to be correct, you could assume that you were within a few points of the OG given on the kit, just because extract (I assume it was extract) does not vary much if at all. As it is, it sounds like you have kind of a crapshoot on your hands.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:34
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Jo3sh posted:Get a pitcher or something with volumetric markings. I have some large Cambro tubs that have markings for quarts and liters that I use. For measuring more water than that, I have a 5-gallon water bottle that I marked with gallons. Some fermenters are also marked with gallons up the side. Those Cambro tubs look great, thanks. Nothing else I've seen has had much in the way of markings on it. And as for volume, I'm estimating that it's about 4.5 gallons. This is totally a crapshoot however, as the only thing I'm going off of is some tip from someone that said where the 5 gallon mark should fall on a 6gal carboy. After sticking some tape there I saw that my batch is about an inch or so short. It is an extract brew and I'm fine with ballpark figures given the circumstance so mostly I was just wondering if comparing my FG would even be worth it. Teeter fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 19:41
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In a addition to what Jo3sh said, if you're looking to measure water in your kettle or tun (and you're using the same ones every time) you can put notches or markings at known levels on something like a stirring spoon or mash paddle and measure out that way.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:46
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Since you know what the projected gravity was, and you have a guess what your actual volume is, you can make a guess at your OG is (if, as discussed above, you want to, I would not want to push you one way or the other). For example, let's say the expected OG was 1.054, just to pick a number out of the air. The water is 1.000, so the added sugar is the .054. You could express that as 54 points per gallon. Since the projected volume was 5 gallons, you'd have 5*54 total points of added sugar, or 270 points. If you have 4.5 gallons, you'd have 270/4.5, or 60 points per gallon, or an OG of about 1.060. But that's basically a SWAG.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:50
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Thanks for the tips. I should be doing another batch real soon, and while the first one went over well enough I'd like to get all of this down for the sake of consistency in the future. Waiting is the worst part of all of this because while I know everything wasn't done absolutely perfectly, now I just need to see what effect that may have had on things so I can adjust accordingly.
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Feb 25, 2013 20:16
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Jo3sh posted:Refractometers are nice and I like mine, but speaking from experience, it doesn't prevent lazy. Nothing will ever prevent my lazy but the least effort possible can't but help 
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Feb 25, 2013 23:02
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I just use a cleaned and sanitized gallon milk jug to measure out gallons of water.
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Feb 25, 2013 23:49
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Jo3sh posted:I wonder if there's some mechanism to just put a dip tube in a regular wine bottle and put a couple pounds of nitrogen on it to keep air away and push it through the lines. That's what a few places near me do. There is some slight variation from place to place, but generally something like: 
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Feb 25, 2013 23:54
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So I made this cream ale and it tastes like a pina colada. This isn't really a bad thing, it's just really unexpected. How the hell? I'm guessing some crazy temp flucuations I had due to no dedicated fermenting chamber, but... pineapply citrus and a hint of coconut? Danstar Nottingham Ale yeast, pitched one packet at 68F. Temp flew down a bit fast to 60F in 6 hours. Temp at 66 next day, then 72 the day after, then down to 60 again the fourth day. Continued at 68-70 degrees for 4 weeks. Recipe: 5gal 6lb 2-row 1lb flaked corn 1lb flaked rice 8oz carapils 1lb DME 1oz Willamette 60min 4g Liberty 30min 10g Liberty 10 and 5 min
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Feb 26, 2013 02:17
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Ugh I hate coconut flavor in my beer and I know what you're talking about. I kind of associate it with bourbon barrels but it's worse.
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Feb 26, 2013 02:52
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