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Sublimer posted:Curious, why do you recommend CA001? White Labs only rates it a 2/4 for imperial stouts, but I guess that doesn't matter too much.
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Jun 19, 2014 23:22
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Discomancer posted:I use it because it's clean, ferments well, and I always have a jar if it from some batch or another. From a taste perspective, the malt and the bourbon are going to run the show anyway. I don't know, I've always preferred how my stouts came out with CA001 vs a true "stout" yeast, it comes out a little thick and cloying otherwise, but that could be because of what some of the people earlier were saying, that 154 degrees is high for a mash of this size. Second/third generation stout yeast will suck the paint off of your hockey stick. Build up to it, do a session beer, then a medium gravity beer, then a high gravity beer. Treat the yeast like they are living organisms, because they are. Remember the first time you drank alcohol or smoked your first hit? You gotta build that tol up bro!
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Jun 20, 2014 00:07
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Do you really think that will make a big difference? I've never reused yeast, mostly because I go quite a while between batches. I haven't brewed since November, but that one was high grav (10%) and it turned out well.
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Jun 20, 2014 01:02
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Let's talk bananas. This is the first beer I've fermented at home, as opposed to rolling out to my friend's place after week three and racking my brew into a keg. It's a pretty heavy porter (OG 1.083, actual). I mixed up a yeast starter three days prior to pitching. Fun Fact: The starter hung out on my counter, where temps fluctuated between 70*-80*F which, in retrospect, is a pretty dumb oversight. After flame out I chilled my wort to 70*F, added yeast nutrients, shook to aerate and pitched the whole starter without chilling & decocting, etc. I put the fermentor into a cooler filled with 66*F water at about 6pm and came back a few hours later to obvious signs of fermentation. Eight hours later I had krausen beginning to flow into my blow off tube. The next morning the star-san jar had overflowed and I set to cleaning it up. I swapped jars and on my way to dump out the mess I took a wiff and was confronted with a banana reek so strong it could ruin any attempt at simile. In a panic I checked the temp on the fermentor. It was up to 72*F so I added some ice to bring it back down. Over the next couple of days I added ice to the water to keep the fermenting wort as close to 68*F as I could. It got as cold as 64*F and as hot as 72*F. By day four the banana reek at the jar with the blow-off tube has mellowed significantly, but so has the bubbling. I'm afraid the the reduced reek is proportionate to the reduced bubbling and not representative of a reduction in banana esters. I'm hoping that the esters formed in the first blow-off jar, since a fair amount of strong wort was blown into it. Easily doubling the liquid volume in the jar, which was not in the ice bath and may have hit temps in excess of 75*F. This is the first batch I have babysat and actively checked up on, day to day, so IMBR? TL;DR, Is a scary-strong ester reek common in a blow-off jar in a too warm garage, or did I introduce a bunch of esters/precursors into the wort via the yeast starter I made in too warm conditions? TIA
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Jun 20, 2014 01:02
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Jo3sh, do you typically use Thames Valley for all of your English beers? What do you like about it?
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Jun 20, 2014 01:20
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BLARGHLE posted:So, I went ahead and did this thing Holy poo poo do I want to see how this turns out.
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Jun 20, 2014 01:39
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1 weirdo question and 2 Belgian questions. Anyone done a beer with mushrooms? Thought about doing something with chanterelle. T-58 is it really capping out at 23C temperature wise? Anyone played with odd grains? Want to try something with some puffed buckwheat we have in Korea. Or maybe the Job's Tears.
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Jun 20, 2014 02:34
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ScaerCroe posted:Jo3sh, do you typically use Thames Valley for all of your English beers? What do you like about it? I have one specific recipe where I use it (or its White Labs analog, Burton Ale), the Colt .177. For some reason, in that particular recipe, it leaves behind an amazing malt character I have never had with any other yeast. But while it's fine yeast and I like it a lot, I don't use it as a GP English yeast. I have an Export Stout, for example, which I use London Ale (WLP013) for, and a strong red I use English Ale (WLP002) for. In short, I usually pick the yeast for the recipe based on what I want it to do. I think using one yeast for everything is kind of limiting and makes everything taste the same. It's why I stopped drinking very much Rogue - they use the Pacman strain in everything (or at least lots of things) and it all kind of blurs together.
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Jun 20, 2014 02:42
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Holy poo poo do I want to see how this turns out. I agree. That color is going to be so cash money!  Edit: Does anyone know if 100% Brett produces fusel alcohols at higher temperatures? Marshmallow Blue fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 02:46
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Jo3sh posted:Early trip report on GigaYeast: Whew. I had to dig back 9 pages to find my previous post about the Vermont Ale yeast so I could follow up. The beer started pretty normally. I must have gotten unequal halves from the starter into the two fermenters, because one started faster than the other. There was no blowoff, even though I had probably 5.5 gallons in 6 gallon Better Bottles. Sorry to disappoint anyone who was looking for stories or pictures of yeast goop coating the inside of the ferment fridge, but it was a pretty nominal ferment. I may have been a little low on the ferment temp, as it seems to be leisurely throughout (and so was the cyser I had fermenting alongside). The beer is coming online for drinking now, and it's delicious. I don't think it's quite as bitter as the same batch would have been with, say, US-05, but there's some good hoppiness there. The malt does shine through, and there's a nice soft fruit ester complex to the beer - peach and apricot and maybe some pineapple, rather than the dark fruits I usually get from yeast esters. You may remember that I used hop extract of unknown variety(ies) for this beer rather than specific hops, so I can't really say for sure what comes from the yeast, though. Nice smooth, round mouthfeel and good malt character. I haven't had Heady Topper (the beer that this strain is reportedly from), but I'm happy with the batch. I picked it up on a whim and brewed without a clear result in mind, so it's hard to say that I hit my target or that the yeast fulfilled my goals for it - but I'm happy anyway. There aren't any signs of infection or poor quality from the yeast, so there's no reason to complain about the GigaYeast product. I'll probably try more of their strains next time I feel experimental. I do wish I had more information about comparisons with Wyeast and White Labs, so I could use a GY product as a direct replacement in some of my existing recipes.
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Jun 20, 2014 20:31
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Hey all, posting again in the hopes I can get an answer. This is the first time I've used a blow-off tube. The jar full of star-san that the tube is set into stinks of banana esters. But the jar is not in the cooler I am using to cool my fermentor. Is it possible that the overflow from a vigorous fermentation has produced the esters I'm smelling in the jar? Or is it more likely that my blunder with the yeast starter temps (maybe as high as 80*F) has turned this whole batch bananas? I'll be taking a sample tomorrow for gravity and I'll know for sure then. I'm just a big babby who needs his hand held I guess. Thanks.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:12
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Yeast does funky stuff during the ferment that doesn't necessarily end up in the beer. I would not worry about it overmuch until you have beer that's packaged and carbonated - or at very least reasonably settled/cleared and ready for packaging. Even if tomorrow's sample has a banana ester, wait for the yeast to settle out before you get crazy and dump it. Yeast has its own flavor. Even if it did make esters from high temps in the starter, that doesn't mean it would continue to do so in the main ferment. What strain did you use, BTW?
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Jun 20, 2014 21:19
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Wyeast #1084, Irish ale yeast. I'm not going to dump it, even if its gone bananas. "Forcing" myself to drink it should hammer the temp control lesson home nicely I think. Needless to say I don't want it to be bad and more so, if it has gone bad, I want to know exactly why.
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Jun 20, 2014 22:18
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Lord_Brand_X posted:Wyeast #1084, Irish ale yeast. I'm not going to dump it, even if its gone bananas. "Forcing" myself to drink it should hammer the temp control lesson home nicely I think. Needless to say I don't want it to be bad and more so, if it has gone bad, I want to know exactly why. I've never understood the mentality of people drinking their homebrew that went wrong, life is too short to drink lovely beer. E: your beer is going to be full of banana I'm sorry to say, 27c is way too hot for any non saison yeast. The lesson to take away from this is that yeast health and as a subset of that, fermentation temp control, is 90% of brewing great tasting beer. This is not aimed at you, but talking as someone who works in a homebrew store, people put far too much emphasis on the recipe and then underpitch and dont control temps. They then come to us and wonder what they did wrong. Flea Bargain fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Jun 21, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 00:30
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wildfire1 posted:E: your beer is going to be full of banana I'm sorry to say, 27c is way too hot for any non saison yeast. I don't think this is a foregone conclusion. First, the 80/27 degree notation was during the starter, not the ferment. Second, the catch jar is outside the temperature controlled area, so it's possible that the yeast/wort in the catch jar is what's actually generating the banana ester. He's smart to wait to taste it before deciding it's all poo poo.
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Jun 21, 2014 02:43
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wildfire1 posted:This is not aimed at you, but talking as someone who works in a homebrew store, people put far too much emphasis on the recipe and then underpitch and dont control temps. They then come to us and wonder what they did wrong. Or they need to brew seasonally. My house is generally 63-66 in the late fall/winter/early spring. That's when I brew the clean stuff. Then saisons and belgians all summer when I'm hovering between 73-76.
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Jun 21, 2014 03:01
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I used to brew seasonally, but then I figured out a way to control my fermentation temp within +/- .5 deg C for a total equipment cost of less than $50...
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Jun 21, 2014 14:18
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I'm brewing today and just realized setting is wrong with my 5 gallon bucket. I have some uncovered buckets can I just ferment this with a towel over the top? Or a piece of plastic with a stopper hole drilled in it?
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Jun 21, 2014 14:51
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Jo3sh posted:I don't think this is a foregone conclusion. First, the 80/27 degree notation was during the starter, not the ferment. Second, the catch jar is outside the temperature controlled area, so it's possible that the yeast/wort in the catch jar is what's actually generating the banana ester. Yup, I pulled a sample today and after a week the FG is down to 1.029 from 1.083 (69*F) and while I can dectect faint esters in the sample I pulled, they are too minor to bother me or to notice unles you're searching for them in a panic because your catch jar smells like an ape's wet dream. Ideally I'll have a temp controlled fermentation chamber in a week so this will be a non issue movng forward. My takeaway from this is to treat my starters like I treat my beer (duh) and to not panic if a bunch of wort from a vigorous ferment does crazy poo poo in non-chilled catch jar. And to not be an elitist jerk... not aimed at anyone.  I kid.
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Jun 21, 2014 16:22
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Punzilupo posted:I used to brew seasonally, but then I figured out a way to control my fermentation temp within +/- .5 deg C for a total equipment cost of less than $50... I did that too... free fridge plus a $35 STC-1000 build. What did you do?
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Jun 21, 2014 16:29
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Jo3sh posted:free fridge plus a $35 STC-1000 build. There's the rub.
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Jun 21, 2014 16:39
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Jo3sh posted:I did that too... free fridge plus a $35 STC-1000 build. $25 STC-1000 build, $12 aquarium pump, tubing, blue tape, and 2 liter plastic bottle ice blocks in a tub of water. Less dedicated floor space than a fridge, too. Just change out the ice every 12 to 24 hours depending on the weather, etc. previously - Punzilupo posted:I bought one of these, it works great! I was able to wire it up pretty cheaply, with a short extention cord from monoprice and an electrical box and cover plate that I bought at the hardware store for less than $3.
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Jun 21, 2014 18:00
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I just inventoried my homebrews in the basement: 159 12-oz bottles and 23 growlers from 12 different batches. I guess I need to drink more beer 
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Jun 21, 2014 18:30
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Thufir posted:I just inventoried my homebrews in the basement: 159 12-oz bottles and 23 growlers from 12 different batches. I guess I need to drink more beer post this in Goon Meets...
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Jun 21, 2014 18:58
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LeeMajors posted:There's the rub. True. I lucked into it, but you can scour garage sales, Craigslist, etc., and find something for cheap if you try. Ask around. Someone you know will upgrade someday, and if they know you want a fridge, they'll probably give the old one to you. That's how I got both of my beer fridges. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jun 21, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 21:05
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Hey home-brew thread, long time no see. (I've been out for, like, >3000 posts now?) Can we talk jockey boxes real quick? I'd like one with two taps, but man, they jump up to like $300 bucks at that point. Any preferred sources? I can assemble it myself from parts, too, that's fine, just not sure if that's the best route. Also, is a 50' coil basically required, and these cheaper 25' options I'm seeing a foolish thing to consider?
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Jun 21, 2014 21:13
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Starting my first makgeolli batch. Feeling too lazy to manage temp.
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Jun 21, 2014 21:31
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Bad Munki posted:Hey home-brew thread, long time no see. (I've been out for, like, >3000 posts now?) Welcome back. I've never used a jockey box myself, but what I read around the net tells me that 25' of tubing is probably not enough unless the beer is already chilled. Maybe build a 1-faucet rig for now and add another coil/faucet later on?
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Jun 21, 2014 23:42
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So I've been learning about specific gravity and measuring the alcohol concentration in a brew. Is there anything wrong with just measuring the weight of your container before/after and then using basic chemistry to calculate the ABV instead of using specific gravity? C12H22O11 + H2O --> 4 C2H5OH + 4 CO2 Say that you measure the mass of an open container of wort before sealing it up for a brew and you find that you have 1 kg of liquid Some time later, you decide that the brew is done and you want to find the alcohol concentration. You measure the mass again and find that you have 0.950 kg of liquid. That lost 0.050 kg should mostly be due to carbon dioxide. 0.050 kg of CO2 is about 1.14 moles, meaning that you also have 1.14 moles of ethanol, which is about 0.053 kg. 0.053 kg / 0.95 kg = 5.6% ABW, or about 7% ABV. This is napkin math, but is there anything wrong with calculating ABV in this way? The other "napkin math" formula that I've seen is ABV = (OG - FG)*131, which requires calculating the original and final specific gravity, which requires knowing the PPG of your malt, your efficiency, etc. Uncertainty in any one of these values can throw off your measurement, whereas masses are way easy to measure and then you just plug two numbers into a spreadsheet. tl;dr: Basically is there anything heinously wrong with using: ABW = (m_initial - m_final) * 1.045 / m_final ABV = 1.25 * ABW QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jun 22, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 00:12
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You could just get a hydrometer for $6 and measure your OG/FG, that's pretty drat foolproof.
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Jun 22, 2014 00:18
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Jo3sh posted:True. I lucked into it, but you can scour garage sales, Craigslist, etc., and find something for cheap if you try. Ask around. Someone you know will upgrade someday, and if they know you want a fridge, they'll probably give the old one to you. That's how I got both of my beer fridges. Unfortunately, I don't think my wife will abide the same monstrosities my old roommates would.  I've got a small dorm fridge that won't really fit a fermenter. Maybe i'll sell it and look for a small chest freezer on CL.
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Jun 22, 2014 01:05
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QuarkJets posted:tl;dr: Basically is there anything heinously wrong with using: A 5-gallon/19L batch could weigh as much as 23-24 kilograms, I'd guess. Most inexpensive scales I've seen with that kind of capacity don't have gram or sub-gram resolution, so you'd have to buy a pretty good scale for that method to work. You'd also have to account for the trub and any hop particles that made it into the fermenter, which do add mass but won't figure into the alcohol calculations. But when you've siphoned the fermented beer out for packaging, the trub and yeast cake will be wet with beer that did ferment, so it's going to be awfully hard to tare that mass out of your figures. There's a whole lot of error accumulating in this process, if you think about it all. Meanwhile, a hydrometer is immune to all of these limitations and costs a few bucks. Another thing I just thought of: Even if you were somehow able to filter out or account for every scrap of trub and hop goop that gets into the fermenter, the yeast reproduces in a ferment, and you get more at the end than you put in. How do we account for that? That error alone is likely tens of grams. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Jun 22, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 02:00
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Jo3sh posted:Meanwhile, a hydrometer is immune to all of these limitations and costs a few bucks. Yep. There is literally no reason not to use a hydrometer. It's easy, accurate and you get a beer sample.
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Jun 22, 2014 02:27
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ieatsoap6 posted:If you convert to Brewtoad, don't forget to join the Something Awful group!
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Jun 22, 2014 02:27
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Syrinxx posted:I am a stupid extract brewer but I joined anyway. 
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Jun 22, 2014 02:58
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I don't know what but I joined because someone quoted a thing and here I am again so *toot toot* all aboard.
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Jun 22, 2014 03:12
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Is there a way to calculate fancy water additions with brewtoad like in BrewSmith? Starting to really like that feature.
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Jun 22, 2014 04:16
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Two months of bottle conditioning has done wonders to my Rauchbier Style Ale. Its like liquid bacon around a campfire. The one with Hefeweizen yeast didn't work so well in my opinion though. I'll post the recipe if anyone is interested. Batch Size: 40.00 l Original Gravity: 1.042 SG Est Final Gravity: 1.002 SG Alcohol by Vol: 5.25 % Bitterness: 22 IBUs Colour: 3.3 SRM Mash PH 5.2 Grains: 70% Beech Smoked Malt (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM) 30% Oak Smoked Wheat Malt (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM) 250grams rice hulls/oat husks if 5gallons, 500grams if 10gallons. Single infusion mash at 66C (150.8F) for 90 minutes. Mash out at 75C (167F). Boil for 90 minutes Hops: Hallertauer Hersbrucker (1.6%) [But whatever AA you get just try and hit 22 IBU] 90 minutes. Yeast: San Diego Super Yeast (Whitelab #wlp090). Fermented in Primary at 18c transfered to secondary and left for 4 weeks (but to be honest you can just keep it in primary for two weeks then bottle it). Make sure to give it atleast a month to condition though. After a month the difference from 3 weeks is really noticeable. I carbed it to 1.8 CO2 levels but its up to you.
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Jun 22, 2014 13:53
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Holy poo poo do I want to see how this turns out. Me too! Marshmallow Blue posted:I agree. That color is going to be so cash money! This is hopefully an indication of what the final color will be:  Also, time to change the airlock!
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Jun 22, 2014 16:45
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Fluo posted:The one with Hefeweizen yeast didn't work so well in my opinion though. Had a friend try a smoked Hefeweizen - ended up 'going bananas' and being way too weird to drink.
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Jun 22, 2014 17:35
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