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McSpergin posted:And as a coffee stout, how was that? I'm debating what to use but it will likely be a single origin. And what water:coffee ratio did you concentrate at? I've used between 1:3 for making bulk iced coffee to 1:6 for normal drinking up to 1:14 for actual French pressed coffee I thought it was great. I used a 1:4 ratio on a Nicaraguan bean.
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Jan 10, 2015 17:02
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McSpergin posted:And as a coffee stout, how was that? I'm debating what to use but it will likely be a single origin. And what water:coffee ratio did you concentrate at? I've used between 1:3 for making bulk iced coffee to 1:6 for normal drinking up to 1:14 for actual French pressed coffee I added whole beans to the secondary and that worked out really well. No volumetric changes, no sludge at the bottom, and only took 24 hours
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Jan 10, 2015 17:14
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Blood oranges are showing up in grocery stores here, and I've always wanted to make a blood orange beer. Anyone have a go-to recipe? Or maybe some tips on using the blood oranges best? A local brewery does a blood orange beer once a year, and it's really good: http://bellwoodsbrewery.com/product/omerta/ But I'm more than up for trying something different and experimental.
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Jan 10, 2015 18:50
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ReaperUnreal posted:Blood oranges are showing up in grocery stores here, and I've always wanted to make a blood orange beer. I've never done this, really, but here are my thoughts: I don't think you want blood orange juice in your beer, pretty as the color is. I think, much like Omerta, you want to use zest. You could do this by putting the zest right in the boil at knockout, or you could peel or zest the oranges, optionally dry them, and make a tincture to add at packaging. Whatever you do, don't waste the fruit, for the love of all gods. Make blood orange curd with it, or something. Or just juice it along with some limes, and make blood-orange sunrises, or something.
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Jan 10, 2015 22:21
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Has anybody seen this happen to their mash? This was after my sparge and draining of the mash tun. My OG and volumes came out fine when i was done, but this weird column of wet grains kinda threw me off a bit when I saw it. It was 12 pounds of grains, 1.25q/lb. My mash temp was 147. Just curious if this is an indication that I may be doing something incorrectly. 
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Jan 11, 2015 00:09
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Seems fairly normal to me. Unless it tastes hideous, you've done things right, and the meeting your OG and volume are good indicators of not loving it up.
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Jan 11, 2015 00:23
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Jo3sh posted:Seems fairly normal to me. Unless it tastes hideous, you've done things right, and the meeting your OG and volume are good indicators of not loving it up. Cool, thanks. I've done maybe 6 or 7 all grain batches now and haven't seen it behave like that yet.
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Jan 11, 2015 00:35
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Has anyone used Danstar belle saison yeast? How does it compare to the saison dupont strain? I'm thinking about using it in a peach saison.
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Jan 11, 2015 02:04
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internet celebrity posted:Has anyone used Danstar belle saison yeast? How does it compare to the saison dupont strain? I'm thinking about using it in a peach saison. Dad did a patersbier on it and it was pretty good, nice dry and slightly tart finish
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Jan 11, 2015 02:23
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McSpergin posted:And as a coffee stout, how was that? I'm debating what to use but it will likely be a single origin. And what water:coffee ratio did you concentrate at? I've used between 1:3 for making bulk iced coffee to 1:6 for normal drinking up to 1:14 for actual French pressed coffee If there's one thing I've gotten really good at it's my coffee vanilla stout. Here's what I do, adjust for batch size: For 5 gal, I drink 32oz straight. I try to keep track of that as I go. When I hit 4.75 gal, I cold brew 32oz water in 5oz of a 50/50 mix of fine and coarsely ground Trader Joe's Wake Up beans. Just let it sit in a French press carafe overnight. Press in the morning and pour into the keg. Drop some co2 on top if you're kegging to ensure it'll keep oxygen-free after pouring the coffee in. I'm actually having a pint of mine right now, it's been in the keg since the summer and it's still got a huge coffee nose/taste.
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Jan 11, 2015 03:06
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internet celebrity posted:Has anyone used Danstar belle saison yeast? How does it compare to the saison dupont strain? I'm thinking about using it in a peach saison. It's nice, but not as complex as the Dupont yeast which I admit I have a special fondness for (3724/565 is good but culturing from dregs is even better). It tastes like a wit yeast to me, tart and clovey, and it flocs slowly even compared to other saison yeasts. It ferments fast and attenuates super dry at normal temps, although it might give more esters when done warmer. I'm going to try a tripel with it sooner or later.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:49
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While we are on discussion of yeast, has anyone tried that Vermont IPA Gigayeast? I want to try something new this season, and this sounds like a good different yeast for summer pales and IPAs
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Jan 11, 2015 17:01
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I currently brew 2.5-3 gallon BIAB batches due to limitations from being in an apartment. That said, depending on the style, I can fairly comfortably do beers with OGs in the 1.080-1.090 range. Is there any reason I couldn't take one of these big beers and just dilute it to 5 gallons to get a bunch more somewhat weaker beer? Would that throw anything off, such as IBUs or FG? I'm assuming it'd work just fine because it's more or less what extract brewing with top-off water is, isn't it?
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Jan 11, 2015 18:52
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Yep, diluting a heavy wort to make larger batches is a pretty normal thing to do, particularly for extract brewers as you point out. If you boil the heavy wort and then add it to boiled/cooled water in the fermenter, you will get darker color and lower hop utilization than you would from a full-volume boil. That's not the end of the world, but you will need to tweak your recipes to account for it. What I usually suggest to extract brewers is to put in only part of the extract at the start of the boil and then to add the rest at the very end - last ten minutes or so. I'm not really sure how that would play with BIAB, though. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 19:21
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Sweet, thanks!
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Jan 11, 2015 19:27
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You could correct for the different hop utilization by inputting the original recipe in Beersmith (or whatever) to see what the IBUs are supposed to be, then editing it to include the late extract addition and bumping down the hops quantities until you get the same IBUs as the original recipe.
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Jan 11, 2015 20:11
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ScaerCroe posted:While we are on discussion of yeast, has anyone tried that Vermont IPA Gigayeast? I want to try something new this season, and this sounds like a good different yeast for summer pales and IPAs I'm on my 2nd and 3rd generation of it; it's pretty great. I've done an APA, a DIPA, and a coffee stout with it so far. It flocculated more than I was led to believe it would.
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Jan 11, 2015 23:42
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ScaerCroe posted:While we are on discussion of yeast, has anyone tried that Vermont IPA Gigayeast? I want to try something new this season, and this sounds like a good different yeast for summer pales and IPAs Yeah I've used the yeast bay one which is the same strain. Attenuation is awesome, 76 points in 4-6 days quite comfortably, flocs well, he one trick I've learnt with it from reading up is to ramp up to about 22c toward about day 5-6 to finish it off. I hit 1.090-> 1.020 within 4 days, it sat for 2 at about 19c then ramped to 22 and got down to 1.012. Also raising temp accentuates fruity esters and hop character in ipas
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Jan 12, 2015 13:53
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Hey Paladine also I haven't got secret Santa yet but I'm having issues on my iPad and phone accessing messages so I gave no idea if you got my PM
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Jan 12, 2015 13:54
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I need some help troubleshooting efficiency. I've made 15 all-grain batches now and have had consistently low efficiency. My last batch came out to 64.2%. I know it isn't a big deal and it is easy enough to just buy another pound of grain or whatever, but I feel that an efficiency this low indicates a problem with my process somewhere. I'm going to try to outline what I did most recently and hope I can get some advice. The recipe: code:I made a starter and let it go on my stirplate. I crashed and decanted it. I ordered the grains from my LHBS's website and picked them up in the store. I crushed the grains, minus the corn, with my new Cereal Killer mill gapped at .030". I ran the grains through twice. I then tightened the mill down to .025" and ran the flaked corn through once. 1st potential issue: I did not weigh the grains I got from the LHBS. I heated my strike water (16.88 qt) to 168 and added to it: 1/2 Campden tablet, .3g Epsom salt, .1g calcium chloride, 1.7g chalk, 2.9mL 88% lactic acid. I used the Bru'n Water spreadsheet to calculate these additions. I drained the kettle into the mash tun and added the grains. I stirred with a wooden paddle for about 60 seconds, until the consistency was even and no lumps or balls were left. The water to grain ratio was 1.25 qt/lb. I checked the temp of the grains with a Thermapen and it was at 148F. I closed the lid and left the tun alone, except to stir every 30 minutes and check the temp. I heated the sparge water (21.3 qt) to 170F and added 1/2 Campden tablet, .3g Epsom salt, .1g calcium chloride and .3mL lactic acid. After 90 minutes, I opened the tun and measured the temp at 146F. I drained the tun after vorlaufing 2 qts. I poured the vorlaufed wort back into the tun carefully but noticed a divot in the grainbed once the wort drained. I drained the wort into my clean fermenting bucket which I have marked volume measurements on. Potential issue here: I can't accurately measure the total wort collected except to the nearest half gallon or so. I checked the sparge water temp (172F) and drained about half into the mash tun and stirred for about 60 seconds. I lidded the tun and left it for 10 minutes, then vorlaufed and drained as before. I drained the rest of the sparge water into the tun after heating it back to 170F. I stirred as before, let it sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed and drained. I'm not sure if it is important, but once I get the 2nd batch of sparge water into the tun and the brew kettle is empty, I put the wort (1st & 2nd runnings) into the kettle. I then run the last batch of wort from the tun into the fermenter bucket since it has volume markings on it, giving me some idea of how much I've collected. Once the 3rd runnings are in the bucket, they go in the kettle. I stir well and pull off a sample to chill and get a hydrometer reading. After chilling to 70F, it read 1.046. Efficiency 67.5%. From here, the boil is straight forward: burner on full, lid off and start the clock once a rolling boil is reached. I added fermcap-s since I had 7.2gal (theoretically)in an 8 gal pot. I added the hops on schedule, whirlfloc and yeast nutrient at 10 minutes. Chilled with my homemade counterflow chiller into the cleaned and sanitized fermenter bucket. I took a sample of chilled (58F) wort and measured it at 1.060. Efficiency 64.2%. So thanks for reading this. I tried to include a lot of detail. If anyone can offer some advice I would appreciate it. My thoughts so far are to weigh my grain next time and to find a way to more accurately measure exactly how much wort I collect. I think there must me something though, because I regularly read the some people get efficiencies in the 80s.
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Jan 12, 2015 19:34
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How fast do you run off? I found that slowing down my sparge helped my efficiency by like 5 or 6 percentage points. Edit: also it might help to use something to evenly distribute your vorlauf over your grain bed. I have a foil pan that I poked holes in that rests in the top of my mash tun.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:02
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Economic Sinkhole posted:
How did you get the measurement for the final wort volume? Is that also from the fermenter bucket? Assuming you got the 5.72 gallons in your recipe @ 1.060, I'm seeing 67% efficiency. I would consider 70% +/- 5% to be normal for batch sparging, so I don't think you should be too concerned. If you want to increase your efficiency, I think the #1 thing you need to do is make sure your volume and grain weight measurements are accurate, because without that information you really don't know what your efficiency is. Once that is in order, you can try getting a smaller crush on the grain. It sounds like you have mash pH under control.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:48
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It's also worth pointing out that you're worrying about brew house efficiency, whereas most numbers talk about just mash efficiency because brew house changes more based on the recipe because of trub losses in the boil.
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Jan 13, 2015 00:53
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A while ago I froze 2 kegs on accident because my temp regulator in my fridge is poo poo. Apparently I kept drinking the APA when it was slushy a bit too much because what's left behind is the most 'session' pale ale I've ever seen. Check out the sweet coloring  : 
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Jan 13, 2015 00:56
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Very little talk of it here, but any kombucha brewers in this thread?
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Jan 13, 2015 03:48
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Who Dat posted:Very little talk of it here, but any kombucha brewers in this thread? 
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Jan 13, 2015 09:40
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Economic Sinkhole posted:Efficiency 64.2%. Here is my 2 cents: Milling sounds good Work everything and measure everything in metric units as it's easier to measure 5.6 litres compared to 5.6 gallons, and you're not dicking around with pounds and ounces. Get a refractometer for anything pre fermentation Measure everything next brew. By measuring properly I've dialed my BIAB system down to 81%.
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Jan 13, 2015 12:36
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Thought you guys might get a laugh out of this but I seem to have brewed by accident, A few months ago I obtained a juicer capable of juicing the sugarcane I have growing in my garden, cut to Christmas day and somebody removed a bottle of juice I was keeping in the freezer and left it on my veranda where I found it on new years day, since I live in  the bottle was hanging around 32c for a week and 22c since Jan 1st. It has become very very very carbonated, perhaps If I get my hands on a teeny tiny still I could make rum for a rat 
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Jan 13, 2015 13:40
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Last night I had a pale ale made with Falconer's Flight for all additions and dry hopping. This was me:  Need to get some of dis and make a smash
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Jan 13, 2015 16:53
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Falconers flight really is awesome. I use it in just about all my IPAs to round out the hop character.
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Jan 13, 2015 16:55
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Hey now I brew beer too. 
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Jan 13, 2015 17:03
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Syrinxx posted:Last night I had a pale ale made with Falconer's Flight for all additions and dry hopping. This was me: <pedantic>It's impossible to make a Falconer's Flight SMaSH</pedantic>
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Jan 13, 2015 17:28
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Who Dat posted:Very little talk of it here, but any kombucha brewers in this thread? I'm working on growing a mother from dregs right now. My partner is dead-set on helping which leads to not a lot being done in a timely manner.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:55
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internet celebrity posted:How fast do you run off? I found that slowing down my sparge helped my efficiency by like 5 or 6 percentage points. Glottis posted:How did you get the measurement for the final wort volume? Is that also from the fermenter bucket? Assuming you got the 5.72 gallons in your recipe @ 1.060, I'm seeing 67% efficiency. I would consider 70% +/- 5% to be normal for batch sparging, so I don't think you should be too concerned. If you want to increase your efficiency, I think the #1 thing you need to do is make sure your volume and grain weight measurements are accurate, because without that information you really don't know what your efficiency is. Once that is in order, you can try getting a smaller crush on the grain. It sounds like you have mash pH under control. McSpergin posted:Here is my 2 cents:
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Jan 13, 2015 18:18
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Economic Sinkhole posted:I appreciate the comments. I've been putting off the refractometer since it looked like I would need to spend a lot to get a quality one. Is that not true? If you keep an eye on HomebrewFinds, they pop up for about $25 pretty regularly. I'd hold out for one that's got a "corrected" SG scale -- most of them give SG as a linear scale from Brix, which isn't quite accurate after you get into the higher gravities.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:24
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Who Dat posted:Very little talk of it here, but any kombucha brewers in this thread? I was doing kombucha for a while but eventually quit because it got a bit annoying to time each new batch properly to keep the mother happy. Overall, it's extremely easy though. I bought a mother from someone on Etsy for like  . The process itself is really just a matter of brewing a gallon of tea, cooling it, chucking the mother in, loosely covering the vessel and watching it ferment. The tricky part is finding the sweet spot for how long to let it ferment to reach the acidity that you want. I also messed around for a little while with using fancier teas with fruit additions in them, but honestly I would probably hold off on that until you've got your timing and everything more dialed in to how you like it, as the fruit flavorings can sort of throw things off. If you like Kombucha, another cool thing to look into is water kefir, which are little grains of symbiotic yeast and bacteria cultures which are used to ferment sweetened water. The best application I found for water kefir was fermented coconut water, that poo poo was the bomb.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:46
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Economic Sinkhole posted:The final volume is basically an estimate from sparging into my fermenter bucket in batches, then adding the volumes together. Can you recommend a good, accurate way to measure the wort volume in the boil kettle? It looks like my choices are either a sight gauge or a "calibrated stick" marked with volumes. Neither choice seems terribly accurate though. About a year ago I got a decent scale and started measuring all my volumes by weight. It's so much easier than eyeballing questionably accurate tick marks on a bucket. Basically I measure my strike & sparge water (I start with RO) in kilograms where 1 kilo = 1 liter. To measure the final volume divide by the starting gravity, ie 18 kg / 1.065 SG = 16.9 liters.  ExtremistCow fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Jan 13, 2015 19:37
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Who Dat posted:Hey now I brew beer too. Oh that was meant to be a point to my name. To indicate Me! Me!
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Jan 14, 2015 01:47
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Economic Sinkhole posted:I sparge wide open. It would be easy enough to try a slower sparge. I'll look in to the pan idea for the vorlauf. Or maybe I'll just skip it since I sparge through a mesh strainer anyway. Yeah I spent like $20-30 on eBay for one. Also for a point of discussion I have a sourdough starter currently culturing with a mix of dregs from my farmhouse ipa blend, which is yeast bay Beersel Brett, saison blend, and Conan. It smells loving amazing 3 days in on the rye flour I've been using
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Jan 14, 2015 04:10
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ExtremistCow posted:About a year ago I got a decent scale and started measuring all my volumes by weight. It's so much easier than eyeballing questionably accurate tick marks on a bucket. Basically I measure my strike & sparge water (I start with RO) in kilograms where 1 kilo = 1 liter.  Holy hell, I need to do this for my next batch. Thanks for the tip!
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Jan 14, 2015 18:46
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