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Toebone posted:am I going to end up clogging my lines or getting terrible vegetable flavors? Possibly the former but you can pretty much count on the latter. At least make some way so you can remove it after 3 weeks. Dry hopping at cold temperatures also has a lower effect as well. Just dry hop in your primary once fermentation is about done.
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Dec 30, 2011 00:30
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Prefect Six posted:So I'm looking at picking up a blichmann boilermaker kettle, but wanted to see if anyone had used them and could comment. They seem to be rock solid (and should be fore the price) and I really like the rotatable dip tube, the sight glass and the ball valve that come with it. I have two blichmann pots and I love them. 15g and 10g. The rule of thumb that works really well is get a pot that is double the size of your final batch size and you should be golden. On my 10g pot I can do a mash for up to about 1.110 OG for a 5.5g batch but it isn't easy, I regularly boil 8-8.5g for some styles in it just fine. Obviously would be too small to boil for a 10.5g batch and would not be a good candidate for doing a mash for a 10g batch unless it was really low gravity (1.050 or under). On my 15g pot I can easily handle any kind of mash I throw at it for a 5.5g batch, which is what I mainly use it for. I think I can pull 1.085 OG for a 10g batch without much work, but I don't normally brew big batches of high OG stuff. Even if I do a lowish OG (1.050) for a 5.5g batch mashing in my 15g is easy, but a lot of that is due to my setup and not being reliant on the temp gauges in the pot. Boiling 12.5-13g (for a 10g batch) in a 15g pot isn't too bad, you have to keep an eye on how strong of a boil you are running and use a little fermcap and then you'll probably be fine. If you plan on doing mostly 10g batches I would probably go 20/15/15 (mash, kettle, HLT) but 20/15/10 wouldn't be a bad way to go either as you probably won't need super huge sparge infusions from the HLT, and you would have a pot that can handle boils for 5g batches pretty easily. If you plan on mostly doing 5g batches I would go 15/15/10 and just not plan on doing high OG 10g batches. The only thing you'll want to keep in mind is the temp probe on the kettles has a minimum fill volume to work, IIRC correctly its 4.75g for the 10g pot, 6.5g for the 15g pot and 7.5g for the 20g pot. All of that said the pots are awesome, their false bottom is awesome, plumbing them for pumps, rims, etc etc is just a dream.
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Dec 30, 2011 19:53
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Prefect Six posted:That's good to hear. It sounds like even if I wanted to do 5 gallon batches I'd be ok in a 20, I'd just have to use a glass floating thermometer to watch my steep temp. Start off with a 15g pot with false bottom and a 10g. Mash in the 15g, runoff into the 10g for boiling and use your 7.5g as your HLT. Get a 20 or 15 in the future depending upon if you are primarily brewing 5gal or 10gal batches.
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Dec 30, 2011 21:03
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indigi posted:If I want to go to a RIMS setup, what are some good resources I could check out to learn about what parts I need, what the process is, etc. Like one question I had is can I just keep the mash tun on the ground since the heating element is in the tube, or am I way off base? Does it matter what kind of vessel I mash in? Should I wait to convert til I have a brewstand (and if so, why?) The way I have a rims setup doesn't really have anything to do with the location of the pot. You are going to want your pump below your pot so you get good flow but as long as you can maintain decent pressure the rims can go anywhere after that. There's a pretty decent thread on HBT on building a RIMS setup that was more or less the basis for how I put mine together. My rims tube was made by https://www.brewersequipment.com that I got as part of a bundled year end sale when I ordered my brewstand, I don't think they offer it anymore. My rims setup is basically Pot -> Silicon hose -> pump -> silicon hose -> rims tube -> silicon hose -> back to pot I have a 1500w 110v element controlled by an auber PID and I use RTD sensors. Electric element near the inlet and the sensor on the outlet. Works pretty awesome.
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Dec 30, 2011 23:27
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Jo3sh posted:All of the Bayou Classic burners are well-liked by homebrewers. Perhaps the most popular is the SQ14 model. I would disagree. 50-60k BTU = weak and you will spend a lot of time waiting for your water to get up to temp. I started off with a 55k BTU burner and eventually the regulator died and I upgraded to a SP10 which is 185k BTU burner and I cut probably an hour off my brewday. I would get either a KAB4 burner or a SP10 though there are worrying reports on Amazon that the SP10 is coming with a 10psi regulator (weak) as opposed to the 20psi regulator it is supposed to come with. One person said he contacted Bayou classic because the box said it was supposed to come with a 20psi regulator and it didn't, and they sent him a 20psi one for free.
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Jan 6, 2012 16:39
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Irish moss fines out particulates in the boil. Wits are cloudy from high wheat content (wheat is much higher in protein and much more likely to stay cloudy) and from yeast.
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Jan 16, 2012 02:53
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Posting my brewing setup. I bought the brewstand from https://www.brewersequipment.com whom also made the eRIMS tube and control panel arm mount. I made the control panel based mostly off the designs that http://theelectricbrewery.com/ put together, modified to my own spec.  I do an initial strike heating with both propane and the RIMs tube, gets me up to strike temp in about 5 minutes, then I turn off the propane and let the Auber PID tune in and stabilize the mash temp to what I want it to be. I recirculate during the entire mash after I do a 10 minute rest and on most beer styles I'll step the temperature up to 165f for 10 minutes for a mashout.  After my mash is done I drain off to the kettle by moving the lid and then batch sparge since I don't have a third fancy pot with a drain valve etc. I recirculate for another 20 minutes and then drain to the kettle again.  Boil for 90 minutes or so while recirculating through my plate heat exchanger and then start cooling. First with some (generally lukewarm) ground water from a hose that I spliced the QDs I use into, and then with some cold water & ice to get it down to temp nice and fast. I have a copper tube drilled in through some pipe elbows with a QD on it to get a nice whirlpool going in the kettle and once I get down to temp I let it rest for 5 minutes to let the trub cone form and get a pretty clean draining to my fermenter.  Just move the hose and turn the pump back in, letting it run nice and slow as to not disturb the trub cone. I ferment in a 7g Blichmann conical that I regulate in a chest freezer with a Ranco dual stage temp controller. After that I keg and put it in this bad boy.  I can fit about 8 kegs in there, a little free space for whatever and about 220-240 commercial bottles. I just put a 3 line and 4 line co2 distributor in there because all the hoses were a huge mess, cleaned things up a lot. I hope sometime in the coming year to finally get my last 15g Blichmann kettle and have a 15/15/10 setup that I can do all kinds of fun stuff with, the least of which is getting back to fly sparging which should reduce my overall brew time.
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Jan 16, 2012 05:55
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Alleric posted:Or he has friends who drink a lot of beer... but I wouldn't know anything about that... no, sir. Not me. You left too soon yesterday. You can see a list of beers we opened. Good times.
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Jan 16, 2012 17:03
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Yeast produces heat during fermentation, so your in-fermenter temp will also be higher than what your ambient is, typically 6-7f. Keeping a steady and optimal fermentation temperature is one of THE most important steps when making beer. A chest freezer or small fridge with a temperature controller is the best time tested method for controller temperature fermentation. If you can't swing this method your best bet is to just brew with yeasts that like warm temperatures and don't mind inconsistent temps which is basically going to narrow you down to some belgian strains and saison strains. After that you get into a lot of really half assed inaccurate methods involving tubs of water and changing out frozen bottles of ice. Google son of fermentation chiller and you will see what I'm talking about, IMO they aren't really worth the hassle compared to the two above methods.
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Jan 20, 2012 17:09
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Toebone posted:What do you guys do for cold weather brewing? My kettle doesn't fit on the stove, and it seems that the cold weather will suck away my heat make me use a ton more propane. I'm considering going up to my parents house and seeing if I can brew in their garage, that should at least cut down on the wind some. There isn't an appreciable difference in the amount of propane it takes to brew in hot or cold weather seasons. I still get about 4-5 brews out of a propane tank in the summer (110f) or winter (30f).
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Jan 21, 2012 19:55
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digitalhifi posted:Hey Rage-Saq (or anyone else really) I'm going to be brewing your "The Muse" 100% Brett L beer this weekend and was wondering if you had any advise or anything you would change about the beer. I saw your note on HBT that you would add a bit more Caravienna to get a bit more residual sweetness in the final beer, so I was considering bumping that up from .25 to .5 lbs. Nah, for what it is the Muse was pretty much perfect. Though my latest trip on the Brett side, The Flower is drinking pretty loving awesome right now. You could do a 10g batch of either and then treat it with yeast as either of them are and have two great kick rear end beers. The only thing I'd change about the flower is to drop the saaz hops and double it up with Styrian goldings. I hate saaz and its now dead to me, but my batch of The Flower has pretty much faded the saaz character out to where I don't mind anymore. Making a starter from a White Labs brett tube takes a lot longer as there are a lot less cells, give it at least a week. However brett doesn't go through the same kind of stresses-related-bad-flavor-and-poor-health under this kind of lengthy reproduction cycle that normal sacc would.
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Jan 25, 2012 04:18
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wattershed posted:Indoor cooking question - a 20,000 BTU rangetop burner should be sufficient to reach & maintain a boil of 6 gallons, yes? 20k BTUs is probably on the low end of "just barely able to bring it to a boil" and it will likely take you an hour or more to get there.
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Feb 6, 2012 21:36
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wattershed posted:So...buy something like Prefect Six mentioned a few posts back? From that product's Amazon description, "This powerful, high-pressure outdoor propane stove features a 10-inch cast-iron burner that emits a minimum 210,000 BTUs" - my math skills suck but should that equate to around a 6-minute time to boil? Yes buy a KAB6 if you have the budget. The SP10 is also a good lower budget item. I used one of those for a long time but wish I had some KAB6 heads on my brewstand. 6 minute time to boil might be a little fast but you are probably looking at 10 minutes or so and then turning it down a lot to maintain a healthy boil.
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Feb 6, 2012 23:57
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Saw a few starter questions that I don't think got proper attention. You REALLY want to use dme/lme at minimum if not real wort and its not just because of the sugars. Honey has next to 0 nutrients in it for yeast, whereas dme/lme/wort have tons and tons in comparison. One of the reasons meads can take a long time is because there is almost no nutrients available, and you can definitely speed meads up a lot by doing an aggressive nutrient addition schedule on a continual basis. Getting some cheap yeast nutrient to add to a starter is still a good idea to help saturate the yeast with more nutrients so they pick up strong during fermentation. With regards to stir plates: their positive effects on yeast population really can't be emphasized enough. A good 24-36 hours on a stir plate can yield four to ten times as much yeast compared to no starter or just a standing starter. I don't think your average person "intermittantly shakes" a standing starter enough to get the big population benefits a few scientific studies have shown. This may seem like a lot but its actually not, unless you are brewing 5 gallon low gravity beers you are probably massively underpitching your yeast. The way to tell is that if you aren't getting quick and extremely vigorous fermentation that makes you think you are about to blowover then you probably didn't have enough healthy yeast to start with. Check out this compound yeast growth calculator which helps you figure out populations with steps and such if you don't have a ton of flasks, its the best one out there that I have seen. http://www.yeastcalc.com/ rage-saq fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Feb 18, 2012 |
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Feb 18, 2012 20:08
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Midorka posted:Question, dry hopping adds no bitterness, only aroma correct? I know the nose accounts for a lot of taste so dry hopping with a more bitter smelling hop could add perceived bitterness, but it won't effect flavor yes? Dry hopping does not add bitterness in the sense of IBUs but the flavors can be powerful nonetheless. Hop oils are pretty intense and if you eat a hop pellet you might feel like it tastes bitter but it does not, its just a massive hop acid attack that just obliterates your palette. Hop acids/oils need to be boiled in order for them to convert into IBUs, since you are not boiling in fermenter you don't end up with any bitterness compounds. Dry hopping does add a more pronounced hop flavor as well as aroma. The best example of this is New Belgium Le Terroir, which is a sour blonde beer with almost no hops in it until it is nice and sour and then they dryhop the poo poo out of it with Amarillo hops. It shows up not only in the aroma but also big time in the flavor as well.
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Feb 24, 2012 17:48
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Putting an airlock on a stir plated starter is fairly counterproductive. You want air to sanitarily come into the flask to help evacuate the CO2. Evacuating the CO2 is about as important in making a starter as is keeping the yeast in suspension so they are tricked into thinking the population density is lower than it is communally safe to be.
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Mar 9, 2012 06:37
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Just two things because its one of the most tired arguements that I totally hate. 1: inverting white sugar to make clear "candi sugar" is totally pointless. Just add white sugar (beet if you want to be really anal) to the beginning of the boil and let the boil and the yeast do the work for you 2: You can't make dark candi syrup like the pros do at home on the stove, its not anywhere close
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Jun 27, 2012 00:45
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zedprime posted:Did you ever try that add yeast nutrient to promote maillard browning method that was floating around this thread a couple years ago? It was some blog post by someone else suitably annoyed by people calling caramel candi sugar. Yes, as per previous post its not even close to the same product because its not even close to the same way its made by these companies.
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Jun 27, 2012 01:05
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digitalhifi posted:Its not that you can't do what they do. Its a matter of getting the proper maillard reactions to occur, rather than just simply inverting the sugar. This requires various additions of DAP (a yeast nutrient containing free nitrogen and ammonia) as well as lye, and or citric acid and cream of tartar. Here are some HBT threads that delve pretty deeply, although one of the guys seems to have figured out a new perfect recipe than flaked out before telling anyone. Its kind of a bummer, but will get you in the park. From reading Saq's posts on here and on HBT I think he feels he doesn't want to spend the time making the syrup, and instead would rather spend the time making the beer. It makes sense to me, as the Dxx stuff is pretty drat good and making the stuff is pretty time consuming (a few hours per batch if you don't screw it up, which is easy to do). Like I said in my other posts I didn't want to say much on the issue because I hate going over this really tired argument. Sugar + DAP is not the answer and while some of the experiments with different pH raising/lowering methods are probably a step in the right direction they are all missing an important piece of the process which is a vacuum cooker. The CSI guys have some food grade vacuum cookers and one of them has a Phd in food science and it still took them over 200 trials to get D90 to where they thought it was "good". And again, I've tried making it many times on my own and the time investment is not much of a concern its that when you compare it against the "real" stuff its like comparing a Big Mac and a fancy french restaraunt that makes the most amazing duck a l'orange, they aren't the same thing because they aren't making the same thing.
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Jun 28, 2012 06:04
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Angry Grimace posted:A head brewer at a well known brewery who taught me to homebrew stated that fermentation on all regular beers is usually done in three days, but that they let it sit in the tanks to day 7 before packaging just because. Fermentation at a homebrew level and a commercial level are two totally different things, with one you can't easily equate: Pressure. In a 15bbl fermenter the psi on the cone part of the conical is pretty drat high (~18psi iirc) from all of the weight of beer on top of it, this doesn't exist at the small batch level. Pressure causes yeast to behave a little differently, it makes the yeast ferment a little more active and it also reduces reproductive and fermentative ester/phenol development at a given temperature, for better or worse. This can mean you can ferment some yeasts at a higher temperature with less negative (or positive) flavor effects, which also speeds the yeast up some more. Pressure is also the (rightful) cause of concern professionals have for autolysis of their yeast after a few weeks which can really ruin a batch. Remove the pressure problem and autolysis is several months to possibly over a year out. There are many problems with trying to rush your fermentation, as the yeast can be doing many beneficial tasks (like cleaning up diacetyl or sulphur compounds) even when it *looks* like its done after 6-7 days. I don't really think about racking off the yeast for 2 weeks, with 18 days probably being the most common. Don't rush your beer.
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Jun 28, 2012 18:17
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Did some brewing over the weekend. Was thinking of doing a Hair of the Dog Adam clone inspired by my recent trip to Portland that resulted in some trips to HOTD and consumption of more than a few bottles of Adam, but the recipe provided to The Homebrew Chef by Alan Sprints makes me scratch my head. Its a 10% ABV beer (with AFTW and CAFTW being 12% and 13% respectively) that has its OG around 1.094, but this recipe very clearly makes a 1.134 beer which is more like 13-14%. I'll figure this out and brew it one day, so instead I put together a Rye IPA (finally!) based on an IPA recipe I made for a new local brewery that turned out awesome and slightly inspired by SN Torpedo because thats practically my daily drinker IPA. Brewday went pretty good and hit my targets, the smell is pretty fantastic and I look forward to the finished product! code:
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Sep 4, 2012 05:47
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Just started cold crashing my Rye IPA I did almost 3 weeks ago. Hit its target OG and FG and smells amazing! Chinook + Citra is seriously the best hop combo, its got this crazy citrus (grapefruit and lime) + tropical fruit (mango and passionfruit) thing going on that I just can't get enough of. Kegging this thing Saturday seems like a long time to wait. The rye (14% malted rye) seems a little subdued but the sample was still really yeasty, I seem to recall WY1450 floccing a lot better than this. 36 hours cold crashing should drop it nice and clear.
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Sep 21, 2012 08:36
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Angry Grimace posted:This is correct. An Acerglyn is technically a mead/maple mix, but I've seen the term used for full on maple fermented drinks too; full maple fermented beverages doesn't seem to be a "thing" yet so its just calling it whatever you want. That it hasn't caught on yet is somewhat eyebrow raising to me given that fermenting practically everything is popular now. I was mainly talking about the yeast, I watched it settle in the sample that I poured. I'm sure with the rye and the dryhopping it wont get totally clear like other beers do.
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Sep 21, 2012 19:30
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