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I'm working on putting together a recipe for stout that I'm aiming for an oatmeal cookie type of taste and I'm hoping to get some input. 8 lbs 2 Row 2 lbs Flaked Oat (I'll probably toast these) 1 lb Black Patent 1 lb Crystal 90 1 lb Lactose .5 lb Dark Brown Sugar .5 oz Magnum (60 min) 1 oz Goldings (30 min) Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale I also want to start making yeast starters for my batches. How much does a stir plate really help in the process?
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Jul 30, 2014 16:56
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^^^^ Wow, that's super helpful, thanks. So it seems like it's more than you just need to make a much bigger starter if you just do a simple starter vs shaking or a stir plate. I'm not really against buying a stir plate, I was more curious what the real gain was. Jo3sh posted:Just my suggestions, I'm not trying to suggest your recipe is wrong. Thanks, I actually did think about using roast barley and chocolate malt so I'm glad to hear that suggestion. The black patent was mostly in there to keep it dark. I might keep half a pound of it in just to make sure it doesn't stray into the brown range. I had an ounce of the Magnum in there at first, but it had the IBUs up at 46, which seemed high to me, so I dropped it to half an ounce which is putting me at 28 IBUs. I might go with .75oz and settle in the middle. That seems to put me at 37 IBUs which I think should be good. rockcity fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 19:26
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ChickenArise posted:They're very easy to make, also. I went with http://www.stirstarters.com/instructions.html (but an 8V source since thats what I had to spare from old broken stuff) and the most difficult part was adjusting the magnet's position vertically (which I made adjustable, but it wasn't obvious at first that I needed to change where it was initially). I did consider building one too, I found similar plans online. I might give it a go if it ends up being much cheaper than the $45 or whatever StirStarter ones go for.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:18
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Jo3sh posted:I think mine cost me about $15 plus a bunch of crap I scavenged from my parts heap. Yeah, I'm thinking I have a handful of things I might be able to use lying around. I might have a spare fan and I know I have a power supply I can use. I do have some magnets, but I don't think they're strong enough though and they might be a bit heavy and weigh down on the motor. rockcity fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 22:13
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Napoleon Bonaparty posted:My first brew, the English Brown Ale, officially turned out great (at least for a first attempt). It was a bit bitter for my tastes but nowhere outside a normal English Ale. There's a bit of a sediment problem but I hope to alleviate it in my next brew with a second bucket addition. That poo poo at the bottom is absurdly pungent. It likely wasn't mixed enough. That happened to my last batch. Nearly all of my 22oz bottles which I filled first are barely carbonated even two months later and my 12 oz bottles that were great after a couple weeks are now over carbonated.
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Aug 1, 2014 13:33
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minstrels posted:Finally got my stir plate working: At least that's one of us. Mine spins, but the magnets I used were pretty small and just aren't strong enough to keep hold of the stir bar once I add the Erlenmeyer flask into the equation. I ordered some larger magnets that are 4x as strong so hopefully these will work. Without the flask it seems to be working well enough though. The problem is I'm brewing on Saturday so I had to make my starter anyway. I'm giving it a swirl every 30 minutes right now though to keep things moving a bit.
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Aug 7, 2014 22:09
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20 degrees Celsius is really warm for a lager yeast. I'm not sure what the range on the one is, but it's higher than any lager yeast I've seen. Edit: yeah, you're definitely well over the temp range for that yeast. rockcity fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 18:09
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internet celebrity posted:Other than the obvious choices (C* hops, Simcoe, Galaxy, NZ hops, etc), I really like Ahtanum and Palisade as dry hops. Ahtanum has a great orangey character and Palisade has a fruity floral character kind of like hibiscus. I bet either of those would go great in a saison. Seconding NZ hops. They're super citrusy and awesome. My best IPA was a mix of all NZ hops.
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Aug 16, 2014 03:44
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Adult Sword Owner posted:Pumpkin season approaches and I plan to have a 5 gal ready for a Halloween party: this means I have at least one test 1 gal batch to do. If I'm dumping in canned gush is there any way to deal with the solids beyond treating it like a yeast cake and cold crashing, will that even work? I've done two pumpkin beers in the past and both times I did a partial mash with pumpkin inside of a bag at 155 for half an hour. I chopped up the pumpkin and roasted it in the oven ahead of time to bring out some of the sweeter flavors. Worked pretty well. I also found out that homemade pumpkin ice cream with a pumpkin ale makes possibly the best float I've ever had.
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Aug 18, 2014 20:58
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RoofieMyselfForFun posted:So I actually just got into brewing and i went to Barnes & Noble to get some literature on the subject and I ended up walking away with a book specifically on clonebrews. I figured I'm just starting out and I don't really know what I want to make so why not use beers that i know as a reference point and experiment from there. I noted this earlier in the page, but when I've done my pumpkin beers, I buy a whole pie pumpkin (like a 2-3lb one) and I chop it up into 2" pieces and roast that in the oven until it starts to caramelize. Then I put that into a grain sack and steep it at 155F for about 30 minutes to pull out the sugars. Remove the bag and then start your boil. I put my spices right when I turn off the boil so the heat pulls out the spice oils, but doesn't destroy them. I really can't remember how much I used though and I can't seem to find my recipe. I know I used nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and allspice though. Go easy on them or it will completely mask the pumpkin flavor. One of mine I also added about a 1/4 cup of molasses at the end of the boil as well.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:41
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HatfulOfHollow posted:You won't get enough fermentable sugars out of a 2 pound pumpkin. He just skipped the mash/extract steps and only covered the modifications you'd make to a normal recipe since the original questionw as "how do I modify this recipe I like into a pumpkin beer?" Yeah, sorry for not noting that. Those were just the pumpkin/spice steps. The rest was a partial mash/extract recipe. Though now I'm wondering if you could physically do an all pumpkin mash and have it ferment well. I'm guessing you'd need a ludicrous amount of pumpkin.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:06
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Jo3sh posted:I agree it sounds like that, but I'm trying to eliminate variables here. Have all your hops been coming from one source? Maybe they've been old or not sealed well. I have yet to have that problem, though on the aroma front, I dry hop everything that I want to taste hoppy which would certainly help there.
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Aug 22, 2014 15:05
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So my toasted oat milk stout has been fermenting away in the primary on a blowoff tube at 64 degrees for 13 days now and I was ready to move it over to a secondary for a bit to settle out, do a cold crash and then keg. I sanitized my secondary and went to take a gravity reading beforehand just to check on it and clearly my starter wasn't big enough to handle the task as it's sitting at 1.030 right now, down from 1.068 OG. Brewtoad had it calculated to finish at 1.018 with the Wyeast Irish Ale yeast that I used. I've yet to not have a beer finish close to where it was supposed to and I'm not quite sure what I should do at this point. Do I raise the temp in my fermentation freezer to see if that can kickstart the yeast cake into doing some extra work? Do I pitch another smack pack to try to finish the job? I'm a bit worried that another smack pack would dry it out more than I'd like it too, but I have no experience in this so I'm really not sure.
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Aug 22, 2014 20:11
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Jo3sh posted:How much lactose did you use? My uninformed guess is that you actually are finished, but that Brewtoad goofed up the FG calculation, not taking the unfermentability of the lactose into account. 1 lb. I wouldn't think 1 lb of it in 5.5 gallons or so would keep it that high though. I did move it over from a blowoff tube to an airlock and there does still seem to be some activity though. Maybe I just need to give it another week. If I give it more time, should I keep it at the 66 degrees or should I maybe bump it up a bit to try to get it to clean things up some more.
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Aug 22, 2014 20:39
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Jo3sh posted:That ought to bump your FG by about 5 or 6 points, meaning (if my assumption about BrewToad not accounting for it correctly) that you would not be expecting 1.018 but more like 1.024. So you're still a little higher than planned, but not way out of bounds or anything. Leaving it a few more days at your current ferment temp or maybe just a few degrees warmer before cold-crashing seems like a good bet; if it hasn't changed after that, I'd just package it as normal. I have to imagine they'd know how to sort out unfermentables when calculating the FG, but I could be wrong. I did some digging around and other people who've been a bit shy did raise the temp a bit and gave the yeast a gentle stir, so I bumped it up to 72 degrees and used the back end of my long spoon to get down in there and gave it a few light swirls. I'll check it again on Monday to see if things moved at all. Either way, it tasted pretty solid, just a touch sweeter than I was hoping for.
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Aug 22, 2014 22:00
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HatfulOfHollow posted:Is there a preferred program for building and sharing recipes? I was messing around with brewersfiend and brewtoad and the same exact recipe came out with different OG and FG values. And when I brewed it the wort ended up being about .005 higher than the highest estimate. I'd prefer to work with something that's going to give me as close to real as possible. In the last page or so we're starting to realize that the Brewtoad FG values are likely not being calculated correctly, at least when it comes to beers with lactose. I might just plop down and pay for Beersmith 2. Also an update on my toasted oatmeal milk stout that was stuck at 1.030. I checked it again last night before moving to the secondary and it barely movied. Maybe 1.029 now. I moved it over and started the cold crash. I'll let it sit there for a couple days to settle out then keg it. It's a touch sweet, but not to a ridiculous amount. I think all of the toasted notes in it help balance that out a bit. I'm glad I upped the bitter hops a bit too, I think the original 30 IBU's I had would have been a problem with this high of an FG. 1.020 on a high OG IPA is not bad though. Unless it's cloyingly sweet, I'd just call it done and move forward.
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Aug 29, 2014 16:55
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Jo3sh posted:Well, that's disappointing: Seriously? It would be like two lines of code to make it calculate no fermentation for lactose. That's ridiculous. Guess I'll be moving to something else. Anyone have any other recommendations aside from Beersmith 2?
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Aug 29, 2014 23:06
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Jo3sh posted:How about the "wife's ashes" beer thread? I didn't hear about that one, but it honestly doesn't surprise me. There was an episode of the TV show "My Strange Addiction" where a woman was eating her dead husband's ashes. She'd lick her fingers and dip them in the ashes and then lick the ashes off. The only reason she was contemplating stopping was because she was almost out.
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Sep 4, 2014 13:50
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life is killing me posted:Okay so I just finished my first foray into homebrewing last week and with the help of a couple more experienced friends I think I managed to not gently caress it up. I've been a big, big fan of craft brews for a while and am a supporter of the craft breweries in my area and THINK I know a bit about beer. I'm definitely wrong about this. Anyway, said friends had been doing it awhile, one servers his from a Kegerator and makes a couple batches a month and wants to start a brewery with us. He has invited me over in the past to help him brew and I've gladly gone because I was thinking about doing it myself and figured what better than to get some hands-on knowledge? I'd let it go longer than 7 days, but once fermentation activity has come to a halt, there really isn't much to stop you from bottling it. Letting it sit longer can definitely help flavors settle though.
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Sep 6, 2014 02:11
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Go for the citrus flavored hops, they work really well in hopped up wheat beers.
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Sep 6, 2014 07:04
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All you guys growing hope make me super jealous. They won't grow in Florida.
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Sep 6, 2014 23:18
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Zaepho posted:Rehydrate your dry yeast before pitching! If it's already fermented, most of those sugars are gone though, so I doubt this would be an issue.
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Oct 8, 2014 14:20
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crazyfish posted:I need to figure out a heating solution for my chest freezer because right now it's sitting around 66 in my apartment and it's not gonna get a whole lot warmer. Maybe I'll just put a pot of hot water in there or something and change it out until the temp goes up, at least until I can figure out some kind of better heating solution. I'd use a fermwrap, but I've got two carboys in there. How about a heating lamp, like from a reptile terrarium?
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Oct 9, 2014 04:29
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hey santa baby posted:For those who use Brewtoad (I think Brewer's friend as well): it expects weight units for liquid extracts. When I do extracts, my LHBS gives me quarts, so I have to convert. I suppose I could pay attention next time and actually weigh the thing they give me, but until then, how many pounds are in a quart? That sounds fairly close, though I think it could be closer to 3 lbs. The 1/2 gallon extract containers at my shop at labeled as 6lbs.
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Oct 26, 2014 16:43
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Josh Wow posted:Get a tank and stone or don't bother with anything fancier than pouring vigorously between two buckets. Using atmospheric techniques like a mix stir, one of those small pumps or pouring between buckets all have the same upper limit to how much oxygen you can get into the beer so you may as well go for the cheapest ime that works for you. My homebrew store just taught me to put the plug in and cover the hole and shake the crap out of the carboy for like 30 seconds.
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Oct 29, 2014 15:18
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Economic Sinkhole posted:On the advice of the thread, I've replaced the o-rings in my kegs and have had one of them half filled with StarSan and sitting on 30 psi since last night. I checked it briefly this morning and everything seems OK- no liquid on the floor and there's still gas in the cylinder. If I strain to listen, I can hear a tiny buzzing leak somewhere. Spraying with StarSan doesn't reveal any bubbles though. I'm thinking about just slathering more keg lube on the lid seal and calling it good. Have a long enough tube to where it sits at the bottom of the keg so it just flows out smoothly and stays under the surface once the first inch of beer is in there. Plus if you flush star san through first, your keg is already full of CO2 and has no air in it.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:51
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ZIGfried posted:You just have to convince her that she benefits from it too. Or you need a bigger house (I went this route).
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Dec 9, 2014 06:06
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Yeah, thirding that it didn't finish fermenting. Sweetness is generally related to one of two things, unfermentable sugar additions during the boil or an underfermented beer. I'm guessing you under pitched your yeast and it took a little longer for things to get moving and you racked to your secondary too soon.
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Dec 11, 2014 17:36
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nmfree posted:Regarding spent chiller water, the other suggestion I usually see is to run the output into a washing machine to do a load of laundry. I'll usually let the first ~2.5-3 gallons pump right onto the grass, then I refill with more cold water and ice packs (it helps to have a case of them) and let it recirculate while swapping out ice packs periodically. I'm not really in a hurry to cool, as long as it gets done eventually. I only use ~10 gallons of water total to cool, and when I'm finished I just dump the pail into the flower bed. I use mine to water plants too. I have a 5 gallon bucket that I let it flow into and pour out into our fruit tree beds. I do need to start using to cool the incoming water first. I say this every time and then forget until I'm already part way into cooling.
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Dec 23, 2014 16:08
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Has anyone done any beers with chai tea or mulling spices? I've done some pumpkin beers in the past, but I think I want to do something more in the mulled/chai flavor range. Maybe a brown ale or a winter wheat?
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Dec 29, 2014 23:59
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Jo3sh posted:A few years ago, I did an oatmeal pale ale (see Radical Brewing) that I dosed with vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg via tincture. I goofed somewhere and the spice was too strong when taken straight, but it was simply amazing when mixed 50:50 with cider. I actually skimmed my copy of Radical Brewing looking for ideas and saw that one in there. I might do something similar with the chai or mulling spices, though I'm debating if I want to do it as a tincture or just toss it in at flameout. I did think about something with oatmeal, but my other beer on tap right now is an oatmeal milk stout, so I don't want to get too similar.
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Dec 30, 2014 01:42
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Alright, so he's what I'm thinking for the recipe. 5 gallon batch size, estimating 70% efficiency 7 lbs Pilsner Malt 5 lbs Wheat Malt 2 lbs Vienna Malt .5 lb Crystal 80 .5 lb Flaked Oats (I'll probably toast these) .25 lb Chocolate Malt .5 lb Rice Hulls 1.5 oz Saaz at 60 min .5 oz Saaz at 10 min White Labs WLP410 Belgian Wit II Yeast I'm still debating on how to incorporate the Chai, but I'm leaning toward making a strong tea and tossing it into the secondary when I rack it over.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:23
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Just finished up brewing the chai spiced winter wheat that I posted about a couple days ago. I decided I'm going to go the make tea and add it to the keg route so I can test the strength. I'll make a cup of it and toss some in the keg first and then taste after racking to decide if it needs more. Really happy with how things came out. I hit my efficiency dead on and got my 1.077 OG that I was shooting for which if my yeast starter does it job should knock it down to about 1.022 and give me 7.4% ABV. I picked up my tea the other day for it too. I bought both a white chai and a rooibos chai and I'm debating which one to go with. The white tea should have low tannins and the rooiboss should have none. I'm sort of leaning toward the rooiboss because of that. Edit: Man am I glad I started with a blowoff valve, this thing is taking off like a rocket. rockcity fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 01:53
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MickRaider posted:Yeah that's what happens. I'm just confused because it's never happened until this keg. I have no real knowledge of anyone who has experienced it, but I'd be curious to know what in the hops causes the allergy. Maybe a small amount of high alpha acid hops early in the boil to add some bitterness would be ok if you cooled quickly to try to get them out of suspension and then did a cold crash and secondary to clear it up more. Maybe even some fining adjuncts?
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Jan 8, 2015 05:06
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Kenyan might not have been the best choice for that beer. Kenya is one of the more acidic, bright tasting coffee regions which is pretty contradictory to a milk stout. I'd have used something more mellow and chocolate-y like a Brazilian. It'll help that you're essentially cold brewing which helps keep acid levels low, but I think the flavor profile is the opposite of what would work best with that style.
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Jan 8, 2015 16:07
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McSpergin posted:Speaking of coffee stouts and porters, I had found a local roasters in town. I had a cup of their "crowd pleaser" blend and I've only done one coffee stout, but I made a cold brew concentrate and used about 8oz of in in the secondary of a 5 gallon batch.
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Jan 9, 2015 15:05
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it was absolutely loving amazing. Super mellow character, no bitterness at all. So good that I went back after work and got a bag of coffee. Now I'm thinking what I can make! Imperial coffee porter sounds good.
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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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Axe Master posted:Well I felt silly yesterday. Despite smacking the drat thing for about an hour, when I went to pour in the smack pack the nutrient packet didn't open! Cracked the nutrient packet open and poured it in too and fortunately it's been off like a rocket since this morning. My home brew shop showed me a trick that I use. Shake the pack to get the nutrient pack down to one of the corners so you can feel it. Then hold it there and lay the pack flat on the counter. Put your palm on the nutrients and put your weight into it and it will pop.
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Jan 20, 2015 01:39
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j3rkstore posted:
I read that as dildo and had to ask myself a lot of questions.
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Jan 21, 2015 22:38
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:17 |
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Jo3sh posted:I've just stuck the probe under the fermenter, in the punt space. That seems to work pretty well. Yeah, that's probably fine too, since there won't be any significant air flow under it. I'd still think that taping it to it is better because it's in direct contact, but that's probably pretty close. People just forget that A. Liquid holds temperature much more stably than gas and that B. Fermentation itself generates heat. You could have the air in your fermenter at 70 degrees, but the beer is at 75 degrees because of the exothermic reactions in the beer. So if you've just had your probe inside the chamber your beer is probably doing the major stages of fermentation several degrees higher than you think it is which could cause that phenol problem.
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Jan 22, 2015 18:29
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