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honda whisperer posted:1.062 og - 1.011 fg * 131.25 = 6.7% abv? The gunk is the krausen created by the yeast. It's a mix of proteins, yeast and some other things. You'll be left with a ring around the fermenter of it after most batches. It's also hard to gauge how the final beer will taste if it's been under a week since pitching. Most beers need some more time to mellow out as they have some harsh flavors that will subside letting the true flavor of the beer come through. Carbonation also affects more than mouthfeel as it's adding carbonic acid to the beer in addition to bubbles. Some beers taste real bland when taking readings but then really wake up after carbonation. As for the chemical taste, hard to say. It could just be those "green" flavors needing to settle down or it could be something else. What water did you use and did you treat it at all with anything?
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Oct 5, 2019 01:04
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honda whisperer posted:Tap water no treatment. I've got a water softener if that helps/hurts. It could be green or it could be chlorine/chloramines. You want to try to filter that out and/or use campden tablets to counteract them.
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Oct 6, 2019 05:42
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honda whisperer posted:Actual questions Unless you put a good 6 gallons or so into the fermenter you’re not going to get 50+ bottles out. You’re going to lose a minimum of half a gallon in trub and yeast. Back when I bottled I usually got around 40-42 bottles out of a 5 gallon batch, so you’re not far off. What size fermenter are you using and do you know how much volume of wort you actually put into it? Another suggestion is after you rack your beer onto the priming sugar in your bottling bucket. Give the mixture a gentle stir. Sometimes priming sugar solutions don’t full mix and you can get inconsistent carbonation in your bottles.
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Oct 10, 2019 15:19
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funkybottoms posted:yeah, Magnum is a German bittering hop and shouldn't be anywhere near a NEIPA You can use it for a 60 min addition just fine. I wouldn’t use it for anything other than that though. I always keep low cost high alpha hops on hand for bittering. A bit of nugget makes it into almost every beer I make at the 60 min mark.
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Oct 20, 2019 02:39
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funkybottoms posted:the recipe for the kit in question stated that there was no bittering addition, only whirlpool Yeah, then definitely don't use magnum in there.
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Oct 21, 2019 13:04
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Scarf posted:Entering my festbier and baltic porter in a competition next month! I gave up bottling a long time ago and only keg now, but here's how I plan to fill my submissions... Chill the bottles before filling. I give my bottles a rinse, throw in about an ounce of star san in each bottle, shake it all around and then throw it in the fridge for half an hour. I then shake the sanitizer around some more when I take them out and dump the star san and cap into a small glass. Then fill the bottle and immediately cap it. I use one of those growler fillers with a bottle filler wand and stopper. Works pretty well and I generally don't lose much carbonation.
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Oct 28, 2019 14:57
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Jo3sh posted:I looked back at my notes, and it had been eight weeks since I brewed. My kegs are running dry. I need to brew more in a hurry to refill the pipeline. I know the feeling. My last two batches that I brewed were for serving at an event that I went to this past Thursday and I killed both kegs there. I want to brew, but there's a chance I could be relocating for a new job and I don't know what the transition is going to be like at the moment, so I probably have to wait to get that sorted out first. I also built my kegerator into my kitchen so that probably has to stay with the house too.
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Oct 28, 2019 20:56
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calandryll posted:I think that's my error. For batch size I put in 5.5 gallons and the recipe is based on 5 gallons. So yeah about 3 quarts off. I'll have to remember that next time I do an extract brew. Yeah, volumes are almost always the reason for OG being off with extract batches.
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Nov 20, 2019 04:04
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ChiTownEddie posted:Nice! Here's my most recent one. Brewed this for an event and it went quite fast. 6 Gallons OG 1.051 FG 1.012 IBU 24 SRM 17 4.5lbs Pilsner 4.5lbs Munich I 1lb Vienna .75lb Melanoiden .75lb Caramunich 1oz Tettnang at 60 min 1oz Tettnang at 5 min Wyeast Bavarian Lager
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Nov 26, 2019 02:56
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Bread Set Jettison posted:Any advice on adding coffee in the secondary? Its a 5gal batch of American stout and I was planning on 4-5oz of medium-dark roast coldbrew (hopefully some fancy single source kenyan beans if I can get a good one.). Im guessing that'll give way less astringency or weirdo flavors than adding some coarse beans in the carboy. I've done three different coffee beers. One with cold brew, one with freshly pulled shots of espresso and one that was "dry beaned" (added whole beans into the fermenter after primary. The best coffee flavor came from the one that was dry beaned. This seems to be the new way people are doing it and it seems to be pretty well received across the board. I think I did something like 3oz of coffee beans in a hop bag and left them in there for just 24 hours.
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Dec 3, 2019 04:45
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robotsinmyhead posted:I don't have much to add to mead talk since it tends to be too sweet for me (dry meads notwithstanding), but there's a world-class/multi-gold medal winner Mead/Melomel guy from my tiny Indiana town and he's blown my mind with some of the stuff he makes. Honey pollen source definitely has a huge flavor impact in both the honey itself and on mead. In Florida we have no shortage of apiaries and it’s awesome getting to taste all the different versions out there. Hell, I have one they call swamp honey and it’s a wild honey with some form of bacterial culture in it. Pretty drat good. And tupelo is a great honey so I’m not surprised it makes great mead.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:43
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Scarf posted:Does anyone use cam-locks for their hoses and fittings? Is it worth the cost? Yes and I cannot recommend them enough for that type of use.
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Dec 24, 2019 22:14
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Try brown malt. I use it in a lot of my porters and it adds a nice dark chocolate note. As for body, I’m surprised it was lacking it with the lactose. I’m wondering if your beer just needs a little more time in the bottle for the carbonation to fully develop.
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Jan 24, 2020 08:22
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honda whisperer posted:Brewed Sunday with a hop strainer. What a quality of life improvement. I built a hop spider a few years ago with some lag bolts, a PVC coupler that acts as a funnel and a mesh bag. I’ll never go back.
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Mar 3, 2020 16:22
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Yeah, I have a big one I got as a gift - I had wanted it for ages but actually find it's just as annoying to clean as the hop residue in the kettle, and it doesn't even prevent 100% of that. I did it mostly to keep more of the hop matter out of my pump.
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Mar 5, 2020 02:40
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I just tape mine to the fermenter.
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Mar 13, 2020 18:05
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After about a year or so hiatus, I finally have a batch going again right now. I took a new job in another state about a year ago and the move and subsequent large home renovation put brewing and buying a new kegerator on the back burner. I finally slowed down enough to where I could get a new kegerator (picking that up today) and brew a batch this past weekend. I’m trying to get rid of some hops in my freezer so I went with a hazy IPA. 6 gallons 11 lbs Golden Promise 1 lb Spelt 1 lb Flaked Wheat .5 lb Golden Naked Oats .5oz Summit at 60 min .5oz Azzaca at 5 min .5oz Bravo at 5 min .5oz Citra at 5 min 1oz Azacca Hop Steep for 10 min 1oz Bravo Hop Steep for 10 min 1oz Citra Hop Steep for 10 min Imperial Juice Yeast 4oz dry hop on day 4 using a blend of the above.
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Dec 11, 2020 18:08
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Jhet posted:I’ve done spontaneous cider before and it should do fine with everything except the backsweetening. It’ll probably taste great as is and I’ve noticed what tastes like malolactic results (unconfirmed of course) when I’ve left it long enough. Just don’t add a bunch of simple sugars except for carbonation and it should stay at terminal without noticeable variance. I’m getting a little tired of it too, but I still like earlier versions of them, which I tried to do with this. A more reserved mineral profile (like 100 ppm chloride and 60ppm sulfate) and dry hop smaller than a lot of what I see people doing out there. Probably won’t even be all that hazy but I like some flaked adjunct in there. Mostly I needed to use up some of these hops and they played a lot more into that style than anything. Setting up the new kegerator I picked up now and will be kegging this batch tomorrow. Feels good to get back into this. Planning my next batch for my time off during the holidays. I also realized I live like 8 minutes from Midwest Supplies so that’s nice.
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Dec 14, 2020 02:43
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Going to be brewing up a Schwarzbier this weekend. This will be my first try at the style so if anyone has any input on the recipe I've drafted up, I'm all ears. I'm also going to throw some oak in the keg for a bit while it's lagering. I had an oak aged dark lager from a local brewery recently that really impressed me recently which spurred my idea for this beer. 6 Gallons 6lbs Pilsner Malt 4lbs Light Munich 8oz Carafa III Special 8oz Caramunich I 1.5oz Hallertauer at 60 min .5oz Hallertauer at 15 min Imperial Global Yeast Also got a Tilt hydrometer for Christmas. I'm excited to give that a try on this one.
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Jan 8, 2021 19:15
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thotsky posted:That is an excellent malt bill for a dark lager, it's pretty much identical to my czech dark lager recipe, although I use Carafa II special and Caramunich III. Yeah, I'm sort of playing a middle ground to a Czech dark lager and a Schwarzbier on the malt bill. I found a lot of varying recipes for Schwarzbiers out there some were even more munich, some were very little, some had darker more roasted malts in there, some just de-bittered ones. Almost all of them had some form of crystal in there. I kept that at just a half pound and also balanced that with a crispier, drier lager yeast. I'm going to pick up a sack of Mecca Grade's pilsner malt and use their munich for this as well. I've heard glowing things about their malts and the price on them isn't that wild through Midwest Supplies who are less than 10 minutes from my house. Spendy for a base malt, but close to the price of normal malts per pound if I'm buying a full 50lb bag. Scarf posted:I really dig mine, make sure you go through the calibration process. Accuracy concerns aside, it serves as a great monitor and indicator for fermentation completion. I feel like I don't have to pull as many samples for testing; once the Tilt levels out for a few days, I'll pull samples for the hydrometer. Mine consistently reports a +0.002 reading on my hydrometer. Good to know about the calibration, I haven't done that yet. Also, I have basically the exact same fermentation setup and I did wonder how well it would transmit through stainless AND a freezer. It's not a huge concern if I have to open the freezer for me. Eventually I'll probably build one of those raspberry pi transmitters, but that would just be for fun really.
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Jan 9, 2021 22:59
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Kraftwerk posted:I see a lot of videos of people soaking everything in a plastic tub with like 2-3 gallons of water and the appropriate starsan dose. Is there any difference? I fill my fermenter with sanitizer and soak things inside that, then drain the fermenter right before I fill it. Not that much really needs to get sanitized for a normal batch really, just anything that touches your beer after it's cooled. Anything that touches it before or during the boil doesn't need to be sanitized. Even your hydrometer and flask for it don't really need to be sanitized as long as you don't pour the sample into the fermenter. I basically only sanitize my fermenter, airlock and the scissors I use to open the yeast pouch now. When I was using a traditional carboy I had a funnel and strainer that I sanitized too, but I use a stainless fermenter now and don't need a funnel. Where you'll end up doing way more sanitizing is bottling. For that I'd get a 5 gallon buck and soak your (well cleaned) bottles in there. I soak them for a few minutes, dump the sanitizer from the bottles back in the bucket then place them back in their box and cover the tops in a sheet of saran wrap. Bottle caps I soak in a pint glass of the sanitizer from the bucket. A spray bottle is super handy though and if you used distilled or RO water to make the sanitizer it keeps for months and you can keep using it. I keep it handy for anything that contacts the beer during or after fermentation.
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Jan 10, 2021 01:04
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Yeah, city water is fine for sanitizer, it’s just supposed to keep longer in a spray bottle if you use distilled. Related to city water though, you probably want to buy some campden tablets. They will help remove chlorine and chloramine from your water which can cause some off flavors in your beer. Stirring also helps boil over as does adding your first hop addition the second the boil starts.
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Jan 10, 2021 02:28
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Yeah, seconding that it will foam up when agitated, don’t worry about getting the foam off of things. It won’t leave enough actual starsan in the beer for you to ever taste it.
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Jan 10, 2021 05:34
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You can definitely dose bottles with your priming sugar/solution individually, but most people put it into the bottling bucket. If you do use a bottling bucket, add the priming sugar solution to it first and rack into the solution. I'd also sanitize a spoon and very gently stir a couple times as it's filling to ensure the sugar is evenly mixed.El Pollo Blanco posted:I bottle from the fermenter and don't notice much difference between bottles. I normally mark the bottles I use when I get really close to the trub, so I know the ones that might be a bit funky. Where are you located that CO2 tanks are that much? I think a new 5lb tank was $60 when I bought a spare one a couple years back.
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Jan 11, 2021 20:41
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tater_salad posted:i was thinking about brewing this weekend again then I Realized I don't really have a second seed mat for heating, although my current yeast is 55-75°f capable so currently monitoring the temps of my fermenter to see if I can ferment 2 at the same time. Assuming your current beer will be a week in at that point, it will be largely done fermenting and the temp should be a lot less important.
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Jan 12, 2021 18:43
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Jhet posted:Regular 20# (15? W/e they are) propane tank you’d get for a gas grill is all you need for a handful of batches. I was told when I first learned to brew that you should use spring water, but after listening to explanations of how extract is made, a lot of those companies say to use distilled because they already build in a mineral profile to their water when they make it. Of course, if you use distilled, you’re stuck with whatever mineral profile they used but you’ll end up with something perfectly drinkable and it should have enough minerals for the yeast.
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Jan 17, 2021 18:27
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Echoing the keep it in the bucket suggestion. There isn’t a ton of need to rack to a secondary for most styles, and hoppy styles, as noted above, are prone to oxidization so transferring is just an added risk to introduce oxygen.
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Jan 22, 2021 01:57
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tater_salad posted:just chiming in to say I'm super excited for my next planned beer, I'm able to use malt that's grown and malted locally. They also have hops but generally only sell to breweries, have a friend who pretty much knows everyone in my area, including a few of the breweries that use their hops, hoping they pull through for a 100% locally sourced organic farm to table beer. Oh god I feel dirty saying those words together. Sometimes you can email the hop farm and they’ll sell smaller bags directly in person. I did that with Crosby Hop Farms in Oregon. They don’t advertise it on their website but I figured asking couldn’t hurt. The guy even gave me a tour of the whole facility.
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Jan 26, 2021 18:55
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Kraftwerk posted:Has anyone bothered with the grainfather or one of those other all in one brewing systems for all grain brewing? I have one. The complaint about boil time holds true. I bought a hot rod heat stick as a supplement heater for it because I can barely get to a boil on the built in heater alone. With that in there though, it heats up rocket fast. If I were to make a suggestion, get the 220V if you have a 220V outlet available. The rest of the system works great. Super simple to use and pretty compact.
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Feb 14, 2021 04:24
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calandryll posted:I use the brew bucket exclusively. I have two but haven't been brewing enough lately to put the second one into "production". But they are extremely easy to clean and I like them because of that. I have the brewmaster editions so I can stick a probe in there from my inkbird to control the fermentation chamber. I've been thinking about doing glycol in the future once I finish my brewery build. Seconding everything here. I got a very early SS Brew Bucket and have been using it for years. Dead simple to clean. I use mine in a chest freezer and lifting it out doesn’t disturb the yeast much at all. It’s well compacted by the time the beer is done. If I ever upgrade, it would be to a Spike Flex+, mostly for some of the added benefits like being pressure capable and bigger valves. I’m not 100% sure it would fit in my freezer, but the dimensions seem like they might. It would definitely be heavier, but I can pump wort into it when it’s in the freezer already from my Grainfather and pressure transfer out when done.
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Feb 27, 2021 04:59
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Paul MaudDib posted:What do people think about the Brewzilla style systems (or other similar units)? Tight temperature control seems desirable and while they're not inexpensive, they're not that expensive compared to a higher end kettle, insulated mash tun, burner, etc. It’s a 9.25 gallon capacity, not a 9.25 gallon batch. It’s intended for 5-6 gallon batches. I have a 110V Grainfather. It will boil, but takes a long time. I supplement with a Hot Rod Heat Stick and it heats and boils much faster.
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Mar 6, 2021 04:14
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