|
I think I mentioned it here but my keezer controller had an issue and ended up freezing two keg. I cleaned everything out and man the beers were completely different. So much so I ended up dumping both. At least my Hendricks inspired saison came out really tasty, just need to let it carb.
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2020 15:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 16:28 |
|
|
I brewed another batch of saison on Wednesday. Only change was Willamette for bittering and I had 2oz of Loral I wanted to try for flavor. I’d ended up bottling the last batch instead of barreling as the sample tasted great and it was already at 1.000. The Brett in the blend can do its thing while bottle conditioning. I bottled for 3.6 volumes of carbonation, so hopefully it’ll have some actual whip this time. That’s the part I’m having the most trouble with, and there’s 30% wheat in the grist. Hopefully all the trouble of corking is worth the while this time. I’ll need to brew again next week, I’ve run out of things I can actually drink soon again. I’ve two sachets of Safale T-58 and I don’t think I’ve used the strain. If anyone has, what worked for it for you? Death From Above posted:Ok let me see here - I have my mill set to just higher than 0.03 and that’s served me very well over the years. I’m pretty sure I measured it with a quarter to set it originally. 0.06 sounds a little big of a size, but that would lead to lower original extract and not a high finish. So if you’re dialed in okay on the front end, don’t change it. A smaller crush size is more likely to get you more extraction, but will give you other things to adapt too. The biggest flag for me is you didn’t measure your mash temp, and this is probably where you’re having issues. Make sure you’re hitting 152 or whatever the recipe is calling for so you can adjust your water temp and dial in that end of things. Preheat your tun if you’re losing too much heat, or lower your mash water if it’s too hot(still preheat though if you can, it’s one less variable when weather changes). Going too hot with mash temp could lead to a high finish, but so could being too low. If you dial this part in well you won’t need to add amylaze unless you’re doing a Brut IPA.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2020 17:30
|
|
|
Death From Above posted:Ok let me see here - .06 is a huge mill gap, and would definitely lead to reduced extraction. I would definitely dial that down to .035-.040. A credit card is a pretty good gauge for a gap, if you don't have a set of feeler gauges. As long as mash temp is in the range of ~148-160, you're probably fine, but you should measure that as well. If you want to dial in your system, it helps to take measurements at multiple points in the process and write them down. So take a sample of your first runnings (when you drain the mash tun the first time), and get a gravity reading and volume (the more accurate the better, but ballpark numbers are better than nothing). Do the same thing with second runnings, and make sure your pre-boil volume and gravity (once everything's evenly mixed) pass a sanity test. Also, just make sure you're thinking about volume, too. When I first started, my gravity numbers would be inconsistent, and my volume numbers would be inconsistent, too. "Hey, sweet, looks like I have an extra gallon of wort, no need to worry about getting trub in the fermenter! But why is my gravity so low?" or "Wow, my gravity is higher than it was supposed to be! I must be killing this efficiency thing. Shame I only got 4.5 gallons in the fermenter, though". Volume and gravity are inversely proportional, so if your volume is higher, your gravity is lower (assuming the same extraction), and vice versa.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2020 17:50
|
|
|
Edited - Totally revamped this crappy post.... Sounds like I have some work to do yet. Next batch - 3 Floyd's Zombie Dust Clone (planned for next weekend), I'm going to adjust the grain mill to be no thicker than my credit card and try that as well as using a digital hand thermometer that I have. Any port in a storm I guess. I always pre-heat the mash tun, to me that's a no brainer. Never thought about crush size though, but it makes sense. The larger the pieces, the less starches would be released due to less surface area to allow release. I can see the other things that would need adapting is the higher possibility for stuck sparges with a false bottom, but I already use rice hulls in every mash, so I might have to add more, or add them first before I add the grain to the water. There's a couple of other things I should probably do as well that I have seen. One is to put quart measuring marks either on my boil pot or get a piece of metal as long as my kettle is high and make the marks on there, so I can measure my final boil volume as well. I'm starting to get to the point where making beer is great, and I do make consistently good beer, but I want to start competing in competitions, and to do that, I think I need to fine tune my rig and increase my efficiency more. I think seeing the 3rd run of this beer having the same OG, really lit a fireunder me to fine tune my system. Thank you to all who weighed in. I'll post the details on the progress next weekend once I change some things up, and make the beer. Death From Above fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Aug 8, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2020 17:57
|
|
|
Jhet posted:I brewed another batch of saison on Wednesday. Only change was Willamette for bittering and I had 2oz of Loral I wanted to try for flavor. I’d ended up bottling the last batch instead of barreling as the sample tasted great and it was already at 1.000. The Brett in the blend can do its thing while bottle conditioning. I bottled for 3.6 volumes of carbonation, so hopefully it’ll have some actual whip this time. That’s the part I’m having the most trouble with, and there’s 30% wheat in the grist. Hopefully all the trouble of corking is worth the while this time. I can never bottle condition that high without the beer creeping out of the bottle, maybe it's okay as long as you don't get any trub or hop particles in there to serve as nucleation points. I would love to push it up there but I keep it safe around 3.0 for now. I have not done it, but I hear that straight Pils grists, a bunch of late hops and ibu:og ratios over 1 (think xx bitter) work well with the strain.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2020 22:59
|
|
|
thotsky posted:I can never bottle condition that high without the beer creeping out of the bottle, maybe it's okay as long as you don't get any trub or hop particles in there to serve as nucleation points. I would love to push it up there but I keep it safe around 3.0 for now. I’ll keep that in mind about the hops, I hadn’t thought about it as helping with head retention. I have really soft and mineral free water again so I can really load in the hops and it still goes smoothly bitter. I’ve been using the wheat because I like how it turns out for a lot of things, but I also bought 25kg sack of it and need to use it for something. Most will get used in the late autumn for spontaneous season, but 4 batches at 40% grist is still not even half of the sack. I’ve had good enough results doing only pils with French pils malt, but I’m using Canadian grown Euro pils and it’s not quite the same. 3.5vol works in the champagne bottles easy, and it’s very clear going into the bottles. So I’ll see tonight as it’s been long enough to try. I’m sure they’ll be even better in another 3-4 weeks. Batch 2 is fermenting vigorously, and it just seems a summer of trying to nail down my house recipe and microbe selection. I think the Blaugies strain I have is probably going to be the base, but I want to isolate the yeast in my spontaneous from years past maybe and add it into the house culture too.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2020 23:21
|
|
|
And since this is a beer thread.... This is my first attempt at building a keezer. I want to post images of this thing, but I'm having some operator error. I haven't realy been on here in years, has something changed? Usually I thought it would be something like [i mg] [ /i mg] (remove spaces) and a link to a hosted image like imgur or something, but I must be mistaken. How are you all posting images?
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2020 15:15
|
|
|
Death From Above posted:And since this is a beer thread.... This is my first attempt at building a keezer. I want to post images of this thing, but I'm having some operator error. I haven't realy been on here in years, has something changed? Usually I thought it would be something like [i mg] [ /i mg] (remove spaces) and a link to a hosted image like imgur or something, but I must be mistaken. How are you all posting images? Yeah, that's how. Make sure you're getting the link to the actual image on imgur and not the webpage the image is on. The URL should end in .jpg. If not, right click the picture and do Copy Image Address. The bbcode is (replacing () with []) (img)https://link.to/your.jpg(/img). If you paste an Imgur url in the post box, it should auto-add the img tags, too.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2020 15:24
|
|
|
   Score big time! Thank you!!
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2020 15:31
|
|
|
That's a hell of a first keezer. Looks awesome.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2020 16:21
|
|
|
I should switch to all red air hoses like that to simplify things, looks really nice.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2020 17:07
|
|
|
Death From Above posted:
What's going on with the pvc pipe on the side in the second picture? Is there a fan in there or something else? It looks really nice and now you just need to fill it with kegs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2020 18:02
|
|
|
honda whisperer posted:That's a hell of a first keezer. Looks awesome. Thanks H.W. it was my first keezer build. I have two more dorm fridges that I want to convert into single kegerators for 3 gallon kegs. Don't know yet if I want to put a tap on top or one in the front yet. Still researching on that. This keezer will be sold when I build my bar in the man cave and I'm going to build in a 10 kegger. I dont drink that much, but I do love variety.  Jhet posted:What's going on with the pvc pipe on the side in the second picture? Is there a fan in there or something else? It looks really nice and now you just need to fill it with kegs. That is a 3" boat duct fan for air circulation. It feeds airflow from the top to the bottom and there is a base of inteconnected PVC pipe with holes to allow air to push the dead moist air to the top to be circulated again. You also cannot see is that there is a plastic jar of dessicant to assist in ridding the air of moisture. That container will be changed out with a custom piece that I am making that will be a piece of PVC capped with screen and filled with dessicant so that 100% of the air flow passes over the it to dry it out. I did not post pictures of is what is inside of those panels. I have a 12V DC power supply, the temperature controller, all of my ancillary wiring, and all of the extra lengths of beer line coiled under the doors. It keeps it nice and clean looking, and also allows me to narrow down tweaks to one side or the other. When I do it again, I'll add something to keep the beer/gas lines all neat. The kegs have to be in just the right position in this one. If I had not put the doors on the top of it, it would not have been an issue.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2020 20:59
|
|
|
more falafel please posted:My apologies, and congratulations on having a society. If you could invade any time soon, that would be great. Thank you, that's reassuring.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2020 00:59
|
|
|
After 5 years of brewing I'm attempting my first pale ale... a good buddy of mine asked if I'd brew him an APA after seeing the Dubbel I did for the wife. Figured it was about time. Everyone calls him Cojo, so figured I'd incorporate that as best I can. Haven't figured out the schedule yet, but hops are: COlumbus, Jester, and Olicana. The rest is pretty straight forward: 90% 2-row 5% Munich II 2.5% Wheat 2.5% Crystal 60 My lhbs was out of WLP001, so I'm gonna give WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast a shot.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2020 02:35
|
|
|
I'm going to try for 2.5 gal batches, ordering a kettle and an SS fermenter ( ). Also I like how that emote is called homebrew.I'm going to start with a red ale and try out kveik yeast since I won't have temperature control. Probably not ideal for the style, but I'm just going to go simple with the first few brews to get used to everything. For 2.5 gal, I was going to use 3 lbs light DME 8 oz 60L Crystal 2.5 oz Roasted Barly 300L 3/4 oz East Kent Goldings, 60 minute boil (or 1 oz 30 minute boil), ~25 ibu I might be on the high range for the crystal, I think that comes out to about 10%? Usually when I think of a red ale it's noticeably sweet, but would that be too much?
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 00:42
|
|
|
Anyone done hard seltzer? Is it really as easy as water dextrose yeast? I was thinking I'd make a berry jam and dissolve it for flavour plus priming. Bad idea?
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 01:12
|
|
|
field balm posted:Anyone done hard seltzer? Is it really as easy as water dextrose yeast? I was thinking I'd make a berry jam and dissolve it for flavour plus priming. Bad idea? Hard seltzer is a distilled spirit alcohol made usually from rice thats diluted and carbonated.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 01:36
|
|
|
Jeffrey Dahmer posted:Hard seltzer is a distilled spirit alcohol made usually from rice thats diluted and carbonated. I'm fairly sure there are also fermented hard seltzers, which is what i was asking about
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 02:02
|
|
|
I made some seltzer just to try it. Just boiled some distilled water for 10 min and added sugar and yeast nutrient, then chilled it and mixed in raspberry extract and some kviek yeast. It was fine, I don't really get the point of hard seltzer but I had 7 or 8 people try it and they all liked it. My only caveat would be any off flavors will be very apparent so use yeast nutrient, a lot of healthy yeast and keep it at an appropriate temperature. I've seen some recommendations to do staggered yeast nutrient additions. I didn't do that I just did double my normal nutrient addition and oxygenated longer than usual. No idea about bottling it since I keg, I'd probably add fresh yeast at bottling.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 02:11
|
|
|
There are lots of them that are essentially just mikes hard lemonade, but with better branding. The ones at craft breweries are fermented like beer and not distilled. I haven't made one, but I can say based on my pro brewer friends that have been troubleshooting them, that water profile and getting a good fermentation is the most important part. Flavoring is the easier part by far if you can get those worked out.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 03:10
|
|
|
field balm posted:I'm fairly sure there are also fermented hard seltzers, which is what i was asking about Normally you’d use some sort of concentrate for flavoring. Any fruit is going to color it, but otherwise you can do it with water, dextrose/sucrose, and yeast. A great idea to add nutrients too. Pretty sure someone in this thread may have done one, as this question came up a few months ago too. Adventures in Homebrewing had a whole bunch of flavor concentrates at that time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 04:31
|
|
|
So I tried fermenting ginger beer for the first time but after a week it still tastes much too sweet, a lot of the recipes online say a week is a long time but mine doesn't seem to be doing much.  I used 250 grams of ginger and 1 kg of sugar. if you're wondering what all the debris is at the top and bottom, I blended the ginger, skin included. Can't see anything nasty in there. For the yeast I used a ginger bug, about 1 cup. It seemed to be very healthy when i put it in, lots of bubbles and yeasty smells. Cant see any bubbling in the airlock, it's been sitting at room temp for 1 week which has been about 15-25°C(59-77°F) here which I know is a little cool so I expected it it be slower but not this slow. Did my yeast die? Has this got a chance of still working? I'm thinking maybe the bug wasn't strong enough.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 04:48
|
|
|
Eeyo posted:I might be on the high range for the crystal, I think that comes out to about 10%? Usually when I think of a red ale it's noticeably sweet, but would that be too much? I'm a firm believer in the less Crystal the better, but I think 10% is a good place to start here. I wouldn't go above that though, at least not the first batch. While you're right about the sweetness, I also think of a dry finish with Reds.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 04:54
|
|
|
EDITED.
BaseballPCHiker fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Feb 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 13:13
|
|
|
I did a hard seltzer with store-bought citrus vodka and lime zest, + filtered water force carbed in a keg. It didn't come out very good and it was hard to get that effervescent carbonation out of the same kegerator as my other beers. I might try a fermented version. I like having something really clean on tap and it'd be fun to bring to (hopefully) future beer festivals as a beer alternative.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2020 17:04
|
|
|
So I too finished building a 4 keg keezer! I used a chest freezer I bought at a garage sale, some lengths of weather damaged/warped wood I found in the shed and some incredibly amateur woodworking skills.  Feels pretty great to pour a pint.  more falafel please posted:My apologies, and congratulations on having a society. If you could invade any time soon, that would be great. Thank you, that's really reassuring.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 01:16
|
|
|
I have cases of commercial hops. Anyone want to buy 22# commercial bags of 2019 hops? Mosaic? El Dorado? GR Mandarina Bavaria?
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 06:13
|
|
|
Dude Sweet posted:
It's also pretty funny. I'm soon done conditioning my fourth ever beer, a german style dark lager. I cannot believe how well it turned out, it's drinkable immediately and very full and rich, almost overwhelming with flavours. This type is gonna be a staple for me going forward. Overshot my target OG for this one a little bit but the attenuation was pretty spot on. Also bottled a strawberry mead, turned out okay but not as strawberry forward as I had thought. Gonna see how this one does, might add more strawberry or better quality next time. Secondaried a nagoonberry and wild raspberry honey sweet mead, and brewed a cyser with Gravenstein apples and summer flower honey. This hobby is incredibly rewarding.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 06:27
|
|
|
Dude Sweet posted:So I too finished building a 4 keg keezer! I used a chest freezer I bought at a garage sale, some lengths of weather damaged/warped wood I found in the shed and some incredibly amateur woodworking skills. Offset taps are the real champ here. Esp on that model where the hump is on the right side, it'd be so much easier if I'd built mine like that instead of wrestling things around the center-mounted taps. I could rebuild mine but 
robotsinmyhead fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Aug 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 15:05
|
|
|
robotsinmyhead posted:Offset taps are the real champ here. Esp on that model where the hump is on the right side, it'd be so much easier if I'd built mine like that instead of wrestling things around the center-mounted taps. I could rebuild mine by I did offset so I could expand the number of taps. I started with 4, then got one on the hump for seltzer. I've also thought about adding a sometimes-hooked up stout faucet.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 15:18
|
|
|
gamera009 posted:I have cases of commercial hops. Anyone want to buy 22# commercial bags of 2019 hops? Mosaic? El Dorado? GR Mandarina Bavaria? I'm cautiously interested. What do you think you might charge for Mosaic, shipped to Southern California?
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 17:03
|
|
|
Jo3sh posted:I'm cautiously interested. What do you think you might charge for Mosaic, shipped to Southern California? Haha, I almost asked last night. Then I realized I remembered that I can’t fit 22# of even pellet hops into my kitchen freezer if I ever wanted to put anything else into it. It would let you throw a pound of Mosaic into 22 different IPAs, which is a win in my book.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 18:00
|
|
|
That's a good point that I didn't even think about. I could find a home for 22# of pellets, and that's how I generally buy hops, so I neglected to consider that they might be whole flowers. Well, we'll see what the response is.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 18:23
|
|
|
Don’t get me wrong, it will make some great beer. And I’d put my money on t90 pellets. I don’t have a keezer anymore though, so I’ve no where to store them. I do think it would be hilarious and awesome to brew something (5 gallons) and just drop in half a pound for whirlpool and then another half for dry hop. I’d worry about oxidation though, holy wow.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 18:36
|
|
|
Ordered ahead and asked my brewshop to double crush the grain for the first time, suddenly biab mash efficiency goes from ~60% to 90%. I checked gravity about 20 mins into the mash and it was bang on where I was expecting it from my previous mashes, stirred a bit, then by the end of the 60 min mash the gravity had sky rocketed, which doesn't make much sense to me as I thought most conversion happened within 20 mins? I'm using US-05 for the first time and there doesn't appear to be any krausen or air lock activity after nearly 36 hours, gravity has dropped from 1.059 to 1.055 so I assume something is happening.
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2020 23:56
|
|
|
Well, conversion is a different thing than extraction. You can convert starches in 20 minutes, but if they are trapped in the granules, they aren't in your gravity sample or your ferementer.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2020 00:46
|
|
|
Jo3sh posted:That's a good point that I didn't even think about. I could find a home for 22# of pellets, and that's how I generally buy hops, so I neglected to consider that they might be whole flowers. Well, we'll see what the response is. It’s T90 pellets. All of it is T90. I have a large number of varietals I’m trying to offload.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2020 02:53
|
|
|
So I dropped a (probably galvanized) hex nut in my boil tonight. I use a block and tackle to lift my mash basket to drain, and when I took the block and tackle down, something fell into the kettle. I dug around for it for a while before giving up, but when I drained everything out, there was a hex but, maybe 1/4" or 5/16" threaded. The rest of the body and bolts look like they're galvanized, so I assume this is too. I know galvanized isn't ok for brewing/food use, but is a single nut in a 5 gallon batch anything to be concerned about? edit: for reference. Thread tape for scale. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2020 05:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 16:28 |
|
|
Question about cleaning valves. The kettle I got has a 1/2" 3-piece ball valve, which I'll disassemble and clean. The fermenter has a smaller 3/8 "mini" ball valve that I'm not sure if I can get the ball out of. If I can't disassemble it fully, should I just soak it in PBW and open/close it a few times? I guess I'm concerned about trub or yeast cake working its way into the body somehow. Also, for NPT connections, should I be using teflon tape on all of them? The kettle valve has a nut on the inside, do the threads inside the kettle also get some teflon tape? An o-ring goes on the outside of the kettle, so the inside threads won't be providing the leaktight seal I think.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2020 20:20
|
|