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I recently brewed my second beer, and it has a metallic after taste. I let it ferment for a month and it has been in bottles for the past 3 weeks. The first beer I made was a Belgian White and it turned out really great, so I don't think it is my equipment or water. Any ideas?
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Jul 28, 2013 00:07
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Daedalus Esquire posted:I don't know, I've had ciders that move pretty slowly. I'd wait for Marshmallow Blue to weigh in. He's the mead king around here. Cider is very similar to mead in that it's a nutrient deficient environment, unlike beer. He said the nutrient was added although we don't know how much or what kind, and the temperature control sounds fine so I would start looking at the yeast. Even though Wyeast Sweet Mead may be prone to stalling (it never has in my uses) there's no way it should take nearly 3 weeks to get down to 1.092. If he wants it ready by October it's going to need more of the same yeast or something more aggressive.
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Jul 28, 2013 02:21
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Fair enough. I've never done a cider that has been less then 8 months old at kegging so I've never actively monitored gravity readings. I still think marshmallow blue would be a good person to weigh in however, seeing as he does a crazy amount of meads.
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Jul 28, 2013 02:28
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Kolta posted:It was slashed as a promo. Only the summer wheat kit. The others no. Ok, I was just concerned it might be very old or something. I've never used a Brooklyn kit, but i don't see any reason you can't make very good beer with it. I would personally find the 1-gallon size a little frustrating, because you're going to get about ten bottles at the end of it all. Read through the directions a couple of times and let us know any questions you have about process, and then brew it up.
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Jul 28, 2013 04:42
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Totally stoked because I bought my lagering freezer (GE 7.0 CuFt) at Sam's last night and unboxed it in the garage last night. Now I need to get myself a temperature controller because I have a Kölsch that I want to lager in secondary this week. Thinking of getting an STC1000 on Amazon and building the rest in a project box. Anyone have experience building one of these and want to tell me what kind of project box you bought? I want to have space to build it nicely, I saw a nice schematic that has an "always hot" pair of plugs in addition to the hot/cool plugs, but I also don't want to make it take up an entire shelf in the garage. Or if you could tell me the size of box I need, that could help too. Also, for the power cord, couldn't I just take an old computer power cord and cut and strip the wires inside it right before the spot where you plug into the computer to make the power goes into the box? LaserWash fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Jul 28, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 17:40
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Last night I took my White Labs yeast vial out of the fridge because I thought I'd be brewing today. I decided not to brew after all; will it be okay to put the vial back in the fridge?
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Jul 28, 2013 18:12
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illcendiary posted:Last night I took my White Labs yeast vial out of the fridge because I thought I'd be brewing today. I decided not to brew after all; will it be okay to put the vial back in the fridge? Yeah no problem
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Jul 28, 2013 18:31
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For anyone that encounters a sudden grain storage dilemma, I just found out that a 5 gallon better bottle can hold about 25lb of unmilled grain comfortably.
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Jul 28, 2013 20:33
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Planned to brew today, so naturally it's one of the like two days a year we get all-day rains in CO. I was pretty bummed until I remembered that I now have a garage!  Garage brewing owns, pretty sure I'm never venturing outside to brew again.Of course no brew day can be perfect. The garbage bag busted open as I was doughing in and probably a pound of grain spilled onto the floor before I could stop it. My homebrew shop uses the shittiest, thinnest bags of all time. I really need to remember to triple bag those bastards.
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Jul 28, 2013 21:45
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Building a cooler mash tun today. Looking at Palmer's guide and http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Converting_a_cooler_to_a_mash_tun#Rectangular - anyone have any other guides or advice that might be helpful. We are total idiots when it comes to this stuff, so advice is appreciated.
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Jul 28, 2013 22:12
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Turds in magma posted:Has anyone here cloned a unibroue beer? I want to try la fin du monde, but wyeast isnt currently making their canadian/belgian strain. Anyone had any luck culturing from the bottle? Secondhand - when a friend and I were discussing beers we like he mentioned he'd cultured dregs - it starts slowly, like a day or two without much activity, but really takes off after that. It works fast and cold crashes pretty well.
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Jul 28, 2013 22:16
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A friend gave me some old all grain 5 gal equipment,so all I need is a propane tank and I can brew away. I want to leave the porter kit in the fridge and brew up a quick,easy batch in all grain. Thinking a simple wheat beer with some cherry/something other additions I want to keep careful notes to really get the process down,and step one is getting a filter for my water.
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Jul 28, 2013 22:26
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Linco posted:I recently brewed my second beer, and it has a metallic after taste. I let it ferment for a month and it has been in bottles for the past 3 weeks. The first beer I made was a Belgian White and it turned out really great, so I don't think it is my equipment or water. Any ideas? One of my books says with Metallic taste: Metallic flavours are usually caused by unprotected metals dissolving into the wort but can also be caused by the hydrolysis of lipids in poorly stored malts. Iron can cause metallic flavours leaching into the wort during the boil. The small amount could be considered to be nutritional if it weren't for the bad taste. In larger than trace amounts excess metals are injurious to yeast and may also cause haze problems. Nicks and cracks in ceramic coated steel pots are a common cause, as are high iron levels in well water. Stainless steel pots will not contribute any metallic flavours. Aluminum pots usually won't cause metallic flavours unless the brewing water is alkaline, with a pH level greater than 9. (Not very realistic.) Shiny new aluminum pots will sometimes turn black from boiling water due to chlorine and carbonates in the water. The protective (grayish) oxides of aluminum can be enchanced by heating the clean pot in a dry oven at 350F (176C) for about six hours. Sorry if this isn't any help its all that I can find. 
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Jul 29, 2013 02:29
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Well, I did that nut brown with the extra hop addition Friday night and finally had a brew where I felt totally comfortable and in control, and didn't do anything stupid that I could look back on and worry about (like last time when I brain-farted and threw ice from my freezer directly into my fermenter to cool the wort down. Oops.) That is, until I got to the pitching stage. I'd cooled the boil down to 100 fairly quickly in an ice bath, but that used up all my ice and I had a hell of a time getting it down to a good pitching temperature after adding it to the top-off water in my fermenter. Unfortunately, I had already rehydrated my dry yeast, and it ended up sitting for a while. I fed it a little bit of wort at one point because I felt bad for the little guys and then pitched at ~80. Not ideal, I know. Now I'm pushing 48 hours and haven't seen the activity I expected. I'm using a blowoff tube on a plastic bucket, so I detached it briefly and peeked through the hole. There was some light bubbling going, and I could see some movement in the liquid, so I'm not too worried about it, but there was no krausen that I could see, and I'm definitely not getting the blowoff activity that I had on my last batch. Anyway, sorry for babbling, but I know if there's anybody I can share this specific brand of stress with, it's you guys. Lessons learned: don't fuss with the yeast until pitching temp is actually achieved, and don't run out of loving ice.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:26
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RDWHAHB
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Jul 29, 2013 12:31
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Jacobey000 posted:RDWHAHB
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Jul 29, 2013 12:56
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Skitz posted:Well, I did that nut brown with the extra hop addition Friday night and finally had a brew where I felt totally comfortable and in control, and didn't do anything stupid that I could look back on and worry about (like last time when I brain-farted and threw ice from my freezer directly into my fermenter to cool the wort down. Oops.) That is, until I got to the pitching stage. I'd cooled the boil down to 100 fairly quickly in an ice bath, but that used up all my ice and I had a hell of a time getting it down to a good pitching temperature after adding it to the top-off water in my fermenter. Unfortunately, I had already rehydrated my dry yeast, and it ended up sitting for a while. I fed it a little bit of wort at one point because I felt bad for the little guys and then pitched at ~80. Not ideal, I know. 80 isn't high enough to kill the yeast, and leaving your rehydrated yeast out for a couple hours shouldn't be a big deal. Its possible that the krausen has already sank. Unless you have a gravity reading indicating stuck fermentation, I wouldn't worry.
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Jul 29, 2013 13:14
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Paladine_PSoT posted:At 19 days, the mead has gone from 1.114 to 1.092. I added all the nutrient in the first three days, though. Should I consider adding more at this point because it's chewing through it so slow? Should I maybe consider pitching more yeast? Airlock activity is good, but slow. Really constant. I'd like it to be drinkable by Oct 5th if possible. 1) Did you add any kind of acid at all? Citric acid, acid blend, even just starting your yeast in orange juice? One of the things that has always helped me in the 4 five gallon batches I've made is adding a teaspoon of citric acid to the honey and water as well as starting in 12 ounces of OJ with the nutrients and energizer. Like Cpt.Wacky said, repitch, add more nutrients, and make sure you aerate well. 2) Mead brews slow. I've always left my primaries for a month and haven't had a bad batch yet. 3) I have bad news for you. Mead ages like wine. You'll want to leave it in bottle for at least a year before it starts to get good. Now, if by "drinkable" you mean "not actively fermenting", October 5th is a perfectly acceptable date. I still wouldn't bottle it, though, unless you like glass shards and sticky patches on the floor.
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Jul 29, 2013 13:26
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Jacobey000 posted:RDWHAHB You fools are just trying to make him feel better about his deadly sacharomyces cerivisae infection. I guess I should specify this is a joke as one time we were flippant in this thread we killed 5 poor gallons of beer.
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Jul 29, 2013 13:56
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actually crap i need to get a cooler to hold hot sparge water. Regardless of 5 or 10 gal all grain, a 10g cooler just to hold sparge water is plenty big, right ? edit: what fittings are required to convert a cooler over? a simple 3/8" valve will screw right in ? Roundboy fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 14:10
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Roundboy posted:actually crap i need to get a cooler to hold hot sparge water. Regardless of 5 or 10 gal all grain, a 10g cooler just to hold sparge water is plenty big, right ? The cooler valves are generally proprietarily sized so you need to span the wall, whether you doing with the valve or nipple if your valves female, then oring, then female fitting of your choice to seat on the oring and seal. Has anyone ever noticed how dirty pipe fitting sounds?
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Jul 29, 2013 15:01
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Pitched 7am Sunday, first brew with my new equipment. hosed up with the chill worts as I was brewing in the middle of the night as I couldn't sleep and couldn't find the hose for the water into the wort chiller (had to wait for people in the house to wake up to and ask where the hell they moved it) but couldn't wait so had to make a ice cold bath and put it in there (however it being electric had to move it into the fementer first, lucky the glass didn't break from the shock) and took about 2hours to cool it down to pitching level with freezing cold water from the shower spraying all over it with wet towels in the bath etc. Next time I will be able to use the wort chiller, I know I didn't do the cold break anywhere near I hoped but heres what it looks like as of 2hours ago: hosed up 1 bubble airlock because I was half asleep then remembered, blowoff hose . Atleast now I know not to brew when half asleep ahaha. (Its at 18c because  weather at the moment.)
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Jul 29, 2013 16:48
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ItalicSquirrels posted:1) Did you add any kind of acid at all? Citric acid, acid blend, even just starting your yeast in orange juice? One of the things that has always helped me in the 4 five gallon batches I've made is adding a teaspoon of citric acid to the honey and water as well as starting in 12 ounces of OJ with the nutrients and energizer. Like Cpt.Wacky said, repitch, add more nutrients, and make sure you aerate well. Mead isn't some mystical process. The fermentation mechanics are the same as beer. Sugar, water, yeast = alcohol and CO2. The starting gravities are higher and the yeast strains are different but everything else is pretty much the same. "Mead takes a long time" whether it's referring to fermentation or aging is just like "Rack to secondary" in the beer world. For a long time no one understood the importance of yeast nutrients to avoid stalled or prolonged fermentations. Those conditions (and probably no temperature control) stressed the yeast causing off flavors that needed a long period of aging to get rid of them. When I went to visit Sky River Meadery here in Washington the owner said they only need about 3 months to go from pitching yeast to bottles.
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Jul 29, 2013 17:21
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LaserWash posted:Thinking of getting an STC1000 on Amazon and building the rest in a project box. Anyone have experience building one of these and want to tell me what kind of project box you bought? I want to have space to build it nicely, I saw a nice schematic that has an "always hot" pair of plugs in addition to the hot/cool plugs, but I also don't want to make it take up an entire shelf in the garage. Or if you could tell me the size of box I need, that could help too. I did exactly the same freezer and controller for my keezer, here's my box:  Just a random electrical box I found at Lowes. It was actually sort of hard to find something deep enough with an actual back on it, most of the boxes the home improvement stores had that were large enough were open back or otherwise unusable. Adding an always hot pair would be trivial in a larger box, it might be a bit tight in this one. I just used an old computer cord with the end cut off. It and the sensor wire run out the hole in the bottom.
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Jul 29, 2013 17:56
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Mead isn't some mystical process. The fermentation mechanics are the same as beer. Sugar, water, yeast = alcohol and CO2. The starting gravities are higher and the yeast strains are different but everything else is pretty much the same. "Mead takes a long time" whether it's referring to fermentation or aging is just like "Rack to secondary" in the beer world. For a long time no one understood the importance of yeast nutrients to avoid stalled or prolonged fermentations. Those conditions (and probably no temperature control) stressed the yeast causing off flavors that needed a long period of aging to get rid of them. When I went to visit Sky River Meadery here in Washington the owner said they only need about 3 months to go from pitching yeast to bottles. That's fine, but every person I've talked to face-to-face who has brewed mead has run into the same thing I have. We all add nutrients, we all brew in the right temperature, all of that. And every time it's taken a year or so for the mead to not have a "green" taste. Did your guy at Sky River say how long it was until they put the bottles out for sale?
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Jul 29, 2013 19:44
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ItalicSquirrels posted:That's fine, but every person I've talked to face-to-face who has brewed mead has run into the same thing I have. We all add nutrients, we all brew in the right temperature, all of that. And every time it's taken a year or so for the mead to not have a "green" taste. Did your guy at Sky River say how long it was until they put the bottles out for sale? Moonlight also is brew to bottle in about 4 months. Lets not forget that many commercial meads don't run dry (a few rare exceptions but those may be aged more). They are usually on the sweeter side which will help mask the flavors. They also likely use high grade filters which helps in the clearing department. Maybe any backlogged meads get to age but they are shelf ready in that 4 months I think.
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Jul 29, 2013 19:49
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ItalicSquirrels posted:That's fine, but every person I've talked to face-to-face who has brewed mead has run into the same thing I have. We all add nutrients, we all brew in the right temperature, all of that. And every time it's taken a year or so for the mead to not have a "green" taste. Did your guy at Sky River say how long it was until they put the bottles out for sale? She said it was 3 months to bottles in boxes, shipped out to distributors and ready for sale. They make a straight mead in dry, semi-sweet and sweet along with raspberry and blackberry melomels. The melomels aren't racked onto fruit though, they just add juice to the meads. They also started making a sweet mead aged in whiskey barrels last year but I don't recall how long. I wasn't able to grill her too much on process details but she was proud of using a very minimal amount of sulfites. I imagine the commercial operations are able to use more sophisticated methods of measuring things like pH, gravity, residual sugar, total acidity and so on to really fine-tune the process and get things finished as soon as possible. The worst parts of young mead are going to be avoided by nutrients and temperature control but I agree there is still a benefit to aging to mellow out and meld flavors. Not doing that stuff is almost guaranteed to make jet fuel that needs a year or more of aging.
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Jul 29, 2013 20:10
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wolrah posted:STC1000 talk How do you cut the plastic box without a dremel tool? I don't want to buy a dremel (however useful it may be) just so I can cut two rectangular holes out of a plastic box. I ended up with an 8x8x3" box (too big but whatever) from radio shack for $9.
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Jul 29, 2013 20:43
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LaserWash posted:How do you cut the plastic box without a dremel tool? I don't want to buy a dremel (however useful it may be) just so I can cut two rectangular holes out of a plastic box. I ended up with an 8x8x3" box (too big but whatever) from radio shack for $9. A lot of plastics you can just score repeatedly with a utility knife and eventually get through.
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Jul 29, 2013 20:57
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Jo3sh posted:A lot of plastics you can just score repeatedly with a utility knife and eventually get through. Would a box cutter work? Thinking of taking an electric drill with a bit drill bit and trying to do a bunch of hole until it mercilessly cuts how I want it. Tested out the Kölsch that we brewed two weeks ago as I moved to secondary. Awesome.
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Jul 30, 2013 00:47
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LaserWash posted:Would a box cutter work? How about a coping saw or something like that? Mark out your cuts and score them with the box cutter, drill holes in the corners, and use the coping saw (or a keyhole saw, just thought of that) to make the cuts. Clean up as needed with sandpaper and/or the box cutter.
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Jul 30, 2013 01:01
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Good idea on the keyhole saw. I think I'll pick one of those up tomorrow after work. I get the temp box tomorrow evening, so I'm super stoked about putting this together and crashing that Kölsch.
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Jul 30, 2013 01:05
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Jo3sh posted:How about a coping saw or something like that? Mark out your cuts and score them with the box cutter, drill holes in the corners, and use the coping saw (or a keyhole saw, just thought of that) to make the cuts. Clean up as needed with sandpaper and/or the box cutter. Or go super primitive and start it with a nail with a big enough gauge you can get the saw started.
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Jul 30, 2013 01:08
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Just in case anyone was on the fence...getting a keg was the best piece of equipment I've purchased for homebrewing so far. I just got home from a long game of Ultimate and poured a bit of my raspberry wheat beer so I could drink it in the shower. So convenient and makes the turnaround so much better since I don't have to psych myself up for bottling then wait for carbonation. And on that note, Mmmmmmmmmm raspberry light beer is so effing perfect for the summer.
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Jul 30, 2013 03:10
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So i happily realized i bought 5 stoppers vs the 3 i originally thought, so i was able to transfer all my 5 gal cider batch that sat in a primary for 4 weeks into 5 one gal batches: 1 plain cider 1 hopped cider 1 hopped cherry cider 2 cherry cider the hopped i used .25 oz centennial in each just dry hopping for probably just a week. The cherry is a 3lbs can of cherry puree split between 3 gal THe plain cider i added a bunch of brown sugar too, because in tasting it seems that this cider yeast ate all the cider sugar and the 2lbs of honey i added.. leaving a very bland taste. It seems a lot of the apple flavor goes with the sugar. I'll carb with concentrated apple juice to help that along as well. All that being said, i think i am done with ciders for a while. I have an all grain setup to play with. and i need to transition to kegging so i can cold crash this yeast and maintain some apple flavor. Unless i need to switch to a sweet mead yeast and do... something. Am i missing something basic in cider making ? Is there a good resource for practical cider making that isnt 'use only the freshest apples picked in the moonlight' to 'pitch yeast, come back in 1 year?' Roundboy fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 03:47
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Jacobey000 posted:RDWHAHB I know, I know. That's what I'm doing. I did go ahead and switch over to a 3-piece airlock from the blowoff tube, so that gave me an opportunity to peek inside and take a quick reading. It's fine, of course. Down to 1.021 from 1.049, so I'm not worried at all. And there was a krausen ring around the sides, so I guess bengy81 was right and it already fell back in. I didn't know that could happen so quickly. Cool. zedprime posted:You fools are just trying to make him feel better about his deadly sacharomyces cerivisae infection.
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Jul 30, 2013 08:48
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I keep forgetting to make mead. I've literally got a mountain of strawberries in my freezer that need to be turned into a strawberry currant melomel. I'm thinking 6-9 lbs in 1.5 gals.
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Jul 30, 2013 15:36
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zedprime posted:You fools are just trying to make him feel better about his deadly sacharomyces cerivisae infection. If you recall, it was the exact same joke and that guy never came back either. Guy came in and said "why is there bubbles in the airlock" and someone said "Saccharomyces infection" and a couple of us rolled with it and he's like "okay I dumped it all" and then he never showed up again.
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Jul 30, 2013 16:10
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Angry Grimace posted:If you recall, it was the exact same joke and that guy never came back either. Guy came in and said "why is there bubbles in the airlock" and someone said "Saccharomyces infection" and a couple of us rolled with it and he's like "okay I dumped it all" and then he never showed up again. I think I homebrewed for close to / slightly over a year without knowing that sachh was regular yeast  . But I always knew bubbles in airlocks were good.
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Jul 30, 2013 16:15
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LaserWash posted:How do you cut the plastic box without a dremel tool? I don't want to buy a dremel (however useful it may be) just so I can cut two rectangular holes out of a plastic box. I ended up with an 8x8x3" box (too big but whatever) from radio shack for $9. I used a dremel with the rotary cutting bit, which wasn't exactly great on this material but was what I had available. The normal cutting wheels probably would have been better, but when all you have is a hammer and such. I'd agree with the keyhole saw suggestion if you really don't want a dremel, though they're pretty much second in line behind a plain drill in my list of power tools one should have so I don't get not wanting one.
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Jul 30, 2013 16:25
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