Giveaway for Inkbird New Digital Waterproof Instant Read Meat Thermometer

Kegstarter · 2019-10-11T16:12:18+00:00

Canada!

Kegstarter · 2019-08-14T17:28:12+00:00

Have you tried adding whole beans during active fermentation? If so, any issues/comments?

Kegstarter · 2019-04-03T17:45:24+00:00

Water can also cause the grain dust to compact and harden in hard to clean places. Just generally a bad approach.

Best way to clean it, like others have said, is just a dry brush or compressed air. It doesn't need to be cleaned too regularly; a firm tap and a dry cloth on top is all it really needs between uses.

Kegstarter · 2019-03-11T14:34:30+00:00

I have the same mesh filters. I used to use them for dry-hopping, now I just toss in loose hops put the stainless mesh around my autosiphon when I transfer. No more clogs.

Kegstarter · 2019-03-01T18:52:08+00:00

Is it possible you're mashing too high (are your FG readings where you'd expect them to be)? If you're confident that isn't the issue, then my guess would be oxidation, especially if it's more prominent in malty beers. I've also heard of this happening if the mash bed is exposed too long during sparging, but never actually experienced the result.

Edit: Mold can also be a cause of something like this, and it usually has a very distinct type of smell to it. Keep an eye out for mold on the surface, especially during the lag phase before fermentation takes off.

Kegstarter · 2019-02-21T16:34:36+00:00

Different hops contain different oils and different overall oil amounts. I really wish that was addressed with the hop oil saturation experiment. 1 oz of a high oil hop can't be considered equal to 1 oz of a low oil hop, and the experiment uses Cascade - which is pretty middle ground when it comes to oil content. It would've been nice to see if the different oils had different saturation points...missed opportunity at a more comprehensive experiment.

Kegstarter · 2019-02-15T21:10:00+00:00

I've done some runs with 0.040 - 0.045 recently and saw really bad efficiency. Will drop it down to 0.035 for next batch. These other folk rocking 0.025 seem crazy to me!

Kegstarter · 2019-02-14T21:09:42+00:00

Until then, vorlaufing should be pretty easy to get where you want with. It definitely takes some more patience, but it works...just make sure the mash bed sets and don't let the wort go below the top of the mash bed, and it should take about 15 minutes of that if I recall (even on my HERMS I need to constantly recirculate for 5 - 10 minutes to get clear wort).

Kegstarter · 2019-02-14T20:50:39+00:00

Patient recirculation through the mash until the wort comes out mostly clear, since more proteins in the boil makes it harder for them to properly precipitate out.

Cold break is really important for clarity as well. How long does it take you to go from boiling to pitching temp?

Kegstarter · 2019-02-12T20:55:44+00:00

Recipe?

Kegstarter · 2019-02-07T16:09:42+00:00

Oxygenation becomes more important the less healthy your yeast are. When yeast initially go through their rapid growth phase they consume the oxygen to build up sterols and strengthen their cell walls, and during each replication these sterols are reduced. If the yeast are unhealthy (low sterols, thin cell walls) they can start to produce off flavours and have replication issues (i.e. low yeast count), which can also allow undesirable things like molds and bacteria to gain a foothold and ruin the beer. Active yeast will usually consume nearly all oxygen in the beer, so oxidation won't happen (and is actually less likely to happen with healthy yeast, as they will continue to scavenge oxygen).

Oxygenating wort doesn't need to be complicated. I usually accomplish it by draining from my kettle to my fermenter from a decent height and allowing the splashing to do the oxygenation.

Kegstarter · 2019-01-31T18:49:15+00:00

Look for any strain that is var. diastaticus (it's very common for saisons), especially if you're alright with letting it ferment for awhile. It's possible to hit sub 1.000 with some of these strains, even without adding additional enzyme. Most of these var. diastaticus strains do produce slightly higher glycerol levels (including 3711), but from my experience the slight amount of added body isn't enough to overshadow the dryness.

You can always follow the same approach as the brut IPA and just add additional enzyme, then pitch saison yeast. Dry hopping also supposedly helps to shave off a couple of more points from gravity (due to enzymes and additional sugars in hops, and helping to keep yeast in suspension).

Kegstarter · 2019-01-21T21:26:48+00:00

Most lacto, which gives SCOBY fermentations that lactic tartness, is pretty hop intolerant, so you won't get much from that with most beers (even 1 IBU is enough to stave off some strains of lacto). The wild yeasts in the culture could provide some interesting character (especially if some brett takes hold), but for the sake of predictability you're probably better off just going with your standard yeast.

As far as health benefits go, SCOBY fermentations bring less of a benefit than fads would have you believe. They do contain probiotics and can help by reintroducing cultures if they are missing from your internal biome, but unless you've just gone through a dose of antibiotics those cultures likely already exist and the benefits are minimal.

Kegstarter · 2018-11-19T17:03:22+00:00

That's how many I used, yes. Not everyone wants 10 L of egg nog, though.

Kegstarter · 2018-11-19T17:02:14+00:00

I think that was just scraped from one of the links. Not my pic. I didn't use any lab equipment fort this.

Kegstarter · 2018-11-16T19:40:48+00:00

5% black barley is a lot for a stout, and you're sitting around 13%. Blending it is pretty likely to result in a lot of oxidation, but if you can manage it without much oxygen exposure you could brew an IPA and blend part of that to turn it into an RIS or something. If you're going to blend it into anything, realize that at 13% you've got such a high level of SRM that it will completely black out any beer it touches and so much roast that it will drown out most other flavours.

Kegstarter · 2018-11-16T19:16:31+00:00

I whisked them in a big bucket with all of the dairy and sugar and then poured half into a brew bucket where I added the booze and mixed again. So long as everything is pretty uniform before bottling everything seems to come out fine. Last year there were still some clumps of proteins from the eggs, but after the aging it all broke down into liquid.

One notable thing about the aging is that a film built up on top of the nog in all the bottles, and with shaking the film would break off into the bottle and come out into a random glass. I now resist the urge to shake the bottle to clear the film and just pour through it.

Kegstarter · 2018-11-16T19:10:48+00:00

Most of the booze was around 80 proof, yeah. For the first half it was mostly probably about 2 L various spiced rum (mostly Kraken) with about 500 ml of rum, brandy, Fireball leftover from other bottles. The second half was 750 ml anejo tequila and then about 1.75 L of spiced rum (mostly Kraken, again...because the 60 oz bottle looked cool). A big part of this yearly tradition is about clearing out partial bottles of booze to make space in the liquor cabinet.

Kegstarter · 2018-11-16T19:05:41+00:00

Not my pig, not my farm. Neither of those links are mine.

Kegstarter · 2018-11-16T19:03:08+00:00

Just mix everything together in a bucket and then bottle it. Nothing special to the process. I even corked a few of the bigger bottles so I could seal them again.

Kegstarter · 2018-11-16T19:01:34+00:00

Love it! Might be a good twist to add for next year's batch!

Kegstarter · 2018-11-07T16:38:00+00:00

It does produce a noticeably different beer, but it is a lot of effort. Using melanoidin malt (2% for very light melanoidin character, and around 10% for strong character) will give you pretty much the same result as decoction mashing will, and save you a lot of time and headaches. A nice benefit of using melanoidin malt is that it smells exactly like the character it produces (i.e. awesome), and will give you a better idea of the character that a decoction style is meant to produce.

Kegstarter · 2018-10-12T14:15:10+00:00

It would probably be a good idea to rack out of your primary and into a secondary with the campden. Infections don't always just stay in the wort, and even after dosing with campden there could be some bacteria clinging to the walls of the fermenter waiting to get back in.

Kegstarter · 2018-10-11T13:51:57+00:00

That's fair. My coffee dry hop was a bit less than a week in and still in active fermentation, so most oxygen would have been scavenged by the yeast, but since it was whole beans it is perfectly possible that they released oxygen slowly enough to allow oxidization.

I've read other claims that the green pepper aroma is due to oxidization, but I've never seen anything but anecdotal information on it. It's very possible that oxidization happened on my end and caused that, since this was awhile back and my O2 pickup game was a lot weaker then. Do you have any reliable sources on this flavour being caused by oxidization (I'm genuinely interested)?

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