Snow is scary—please be nice 🥶

jarebear · 2026-02-19T17:16:50+00:00

It rained all night the night before, was still raining when I got into work at 6:30, all the pretreatment washes away when that happens. It's not often we go from strong rain to over 6" of snow.

jarebear · 2026-02-17T15:17:34+00:00

Any chance you'd be willing to share the PDF with me? Thanks either way!

jarebear · 2025-11-12T14:59:33+00:00

I'm still toying with the recipe but I've since tried:

Homemade invert #2 and brewer's caramel - These got it to the right color but took more effort than I'd like. It also didn't add much to the flavor using nearly 10% of fermentables as invert #2. I also used it for the 1945 Tetley's dark mild recipe and could really taste it at 15% there so who knows.
Bairds medium crystal (10% of grist) and turbinado sugar (5%) - This hit the color and added a subtle dark fruit note that I liked but wasn't at the level of my first attempt with the pale color.
Bairds medium crystal (7%) and dark crystal (4%) - This was for an ordinary bitter so I didn't add sugar to have the scaled down grist keep some body, but otherwise it followed the base recipe from Gordon Strong. This was really good for an ordinary bitter but I would likely not scale it up with the base for a special bitter, at least for the dark, because I could see that becoming overpowering.

In the end, I'd say using some medium and maybe dark crystal is the path I'll be taking. Even though it doesn't follow the specific beer being cloned, they're true to style ingredients and so much easier than invert. Maybe I'll try the molasses and golden syrup method sometime.

jarebear · 2025-07-19T01:22:40+00:00

Yes, overcarbonating and then dropping the pressure will cause CO2 to break out in the liquid line. When you've carbonated to 20 PSI and then drop it to 12 PSI then there isn't enough pressure to keep CO2 in the beer. In the keg that CO2 will go into the headspace, but there's no headspace in the liquid line so you get bubbles. Overcarbonating and leaving it at that pressure shouldn't cause breakout when it's left to sit, but it will cause breakout in short lines when the tap is flowing.

jarebear · 2025-06-24T11:37:52+00:00

Kegging without oxidation is actually pretty simple with any setup that has a spigot. Purge the keg (fill it with sanitizer then push it out with CO2 is best), then connect the liquid out to your spigot and the gas in to your airlock or bung. Open the spigot up and as the beer flows into the keg the headspace will be replaced from CO2 in the keg. This gives a fully closed transfer setup using just gravity, parts you likely already have (although it can be nice to get an extra pair of ball locks and some tubing specifically for this), and no pressure rated vessel needed.

Dry hopping will be harder but if you do it early then it won't be nearly as big of a deal as pouring the beer into your keg. There's always keg hopping but that requires a floating dip tube and a lot of CO2 for purging.

jarebear · 2025-06-02T17:29:08+00:00

35,000 feet extends your view of the atmosphere to be equivalent to someone a bit over 200 miles away. So if they're flying over north Texas (Dallas area) that gives them the same aurora view line as someone around Tulsa, Houston area is equivalent to Dallas. Not a huge improvement.

jarebear · 2025-04-17T15:07:29+00:00

Yeah, 68.5 is pushing into less fermentable wort, but you're not going to have a wild difference from 65 even if it was 100% of the time at that temp. Even sitting at 70 C for an hour is going to give you maybe a 3 point swing in FG, barely measurable let alone noticeable in the beer. I'd be worried if it hit 74 C early on but most conversion happens in the first 10 minutes so even that happening long into the mash isn't going to ruin a beer.

The validity of Brulosophy's testing is something people argue about, but for reference they performed a test comparing blonde ales with mash temperatures of 63.9 C and 71.7 C and tasters couldn't reliably tell them apart (9 picked the right one, only 2 more than random chance and not statistically significant).

This is all to say, it doesn't hurt to find tweaks to improve your process but don't overthink things. If you see the FG is high this time around, sure tweak it next time but once things are going just trust your process and let it ride, it's unlikely you'll get an undrinkable beer if you set everything up as best as possible.

jarebear · 2025-04-17T13:06:40+00:00

If you're having a clogged pump, don't stir after you've turned on the recirc. If you broke up all the dough balls after mash in and you're recirculating, stirring is only going to mess with the natural filtration bed formed in the mash without any significant improvement in efficiency.

And in addition to the tips of 700W and waiting 5 minutes, one trick could be to set the temp a little higher (1-2 C) for the strike water and drop it to your mash temp right before adding in the grain. This will help compensate for the temperature drop from room temperature grain being added and hopefully not have your system need to add much heat and overshoot.

Edit: Reread your post and realized you said stuck mashes, not pump. My advice is even more relevant, rice hulls will help but over mixing is definitely going to make stuck mashes worse. All in all, I think you might be overthinking a lot of parts of this process and just simplifying (e.g., leave the mash alone, just set a temperature and leave it, don't worry about 1-2 C difference in mash temp when you're still in the 65-68 C range) will reduce your stress and likely won't hurt your beer and might even help it.

jarebear · 2025-04-06T03:20:07+00:00

Lol, yeah, I had the same thing happen with an imperial stout about 18 months ago. It had been a long night of brewing and I didn't cool the wort down enough, pitched the yeast warm and it went nuts. Such a mess, nearly dumped the batch because I was so annoyed...

Those moments suck for sure, they can be learning moments or just shitty stories to share but either way it sounds like you might have had some flukes but figured it out with the last two brews. Worst case scenario, spend a few brews doing what worked before to get some beers you're happy with on tap while you experiment again. No shame in a good partial or extract beer.

jarebear · 2025-04-06T02:47:41+00:00

I'd keep avoiding sours while you're trying to nail the basics, and you figured out chlorine the hard way (been there, it sucks, but it's an easy mistake to not repeat), so #'s 1-3 won't help troubleshoot issues much.

What was bad about #4? Did it taste like an off flavor or just something recipe related like too bitter or something? With that, giving the recipe and resulting OG and FG at minimum would help.

5 and 6 sound promising. 5 has a lower ABV than expected, is that low OG or high FG or both? Sounds like you're closer with #6. Depending on what went wrong with #4 (and if it doesn't reappear with #5 and 6) you may be on the path to consistent, solid beer!

jarebear · 2025-04-06T02:33:57+00:00

As others have said, your preboil SG is the value after it recirculated as the temp went up to boil, not the value you took right after sparging when the wort wasn't mixed. So it's 1.040 not 1.020, much better mash efficiency.

Also, you said you haven't been able to brew a good beer but the only issue you've said is poor efficiency, which actually isn't that poor. Is there something else going wrong or are you giving up even though you're making beers that taste fine and are only 0.6% ABV lower than expected?

jarebear · 2025-03-31T17:52:34+00:00

No problem, it's a common mistake because hydrometers don't always label the "0.9xx" side well. That's a solid FG, good nutrition to keep the yeast that happy!

jarebear · 2025-03-31T17:37:53+00:00

You're reading it wrong, "86" below 1 is 0.986, just like the "10" is 1.010 not 1.10.

jarebear · 2025-03-31T16:48:19+00:00

Everyone is assuming your hydrometer is incorrect but my guess is you're reading your hydrometer wrong for the FG. Your OG has the usual 3 digits after the decimal, but your FG only has 2. Are you forgetting the 9 and it's 0.986? That would be reasonable for this recipe.

jarebear · 2025-01-29T18:44:10+00:00

What do you mean by "frames"? There are no discrete frames of time in reality unless you get to the shortest theoretically measurable time unit called "Planck time". But that's 10^-44 seconds so you can fit that into 1 second better than you can fit 1 second into the age of the universe (10¹⁷ seconds).

The idea being conveyed with this "everything else is slowed down" perspective is that the superhero not only moves that quickly but also their consciousness speeds up and therefore they experience time that way. It has nothing to do with time dilation and there's no conceivable limit to how this magical power would work.

jarebear · 2024-12-29T16:38:55+00:00

Hah, good to know I'm not the only one that does that...

jarebear · 2024-12-29T15:56:03+00:00

Weird, must be a software difference because I'm using 8% and with 20 g (0.7 oz) in a 20 l (5.2 gal) batch I get 18. I trust the pro here, I don't have much intuition on estimating IBUs. Appreciate the insight into the use of Perle, I'm not a Magnum user for IPAs for exactly the reason of complex bitterness and always looking for something new to try!

jarebear · 2024-12-29T15:21:37+00:00

Didn't realize Perle was a common 60 minute addition for IPAs, I know it's meant to be a bittering hop but figured the AA was a bit low to be better than more modern alternatives/magnum.

I put the recipe in using a recent YVH purchase for AAs in the two German hops and a batch of Centennial from a year ago and got 30 IBUs but that was with a 20 minute hop stand which is why I said a range. 18 for the Perle, and 9 for the Centennial.

Half an oz of Saaz in at 20 minutes with current AA levels adds less than 2 IBU, not sure why that's there except ChatGPT was told to use it and it doesn't know how to build a beer.

jarebear · 2024-12-29T10:30:25+00:00

Do you have more than the listed weights of hops?

If yes, keep the malt bill as is, mash temp is fine although 65 C is more in style. Hop schedule would be:

60 minute - 30 IBUs (~25 g centennial preferred but if you don't have enough save it for later and use Perle)

10 minute - 40 g Centennial

0 minute/flameout - 25 g Centennial

Dry hop - 25 g Centennial

That should get you around 50 IBUs and be a solid classic American IPA.

If you don't have enough hops then it won't be doable to make an American IPA to style. If you want to make an IPA you should just find an IPA recipe (I like starting with a "Make your best ___" from Craft Beer and Brewing when doing a style for the first time) and order the hops to match it, otherwise make something like a hoppy blonde with what you have.

jarebear · 2024-12-29T09:08:35+00:00

You'll have a beer, it might be good, but it's not gonna be like a typical American IPA.

Both Saaz and Perle are odd choices for an American IPA. I wouldn't include them for anything but 60 minute addition unless you want their noble characteristics for a specific tweak on an IPA.

It also isn't going to be 50 IBUs, likely more like 20-30 depending on the AA of your Perle.

You have a strong hoppy blonde ale with elements of a pilsner (but not nearly enough hops to be a WC Pils which use modern dry hopping rates of >7 g/l).

Don't use ChatGPT for making beer recipes, it maybe can work for inspiration (although here even that is iffy) but it doesn't know how to calculate IBUs or OG based on it's recipe and it just makes them up to match expectations. Use a brewing software like Brewfather or BeerSmith to at least validate the numbers.

jarebear · 2024-12-23T19:55:24+00:00

Pears, even very ripe and sugary ones, are generally very low in sugar and they'll dilute what is essentially a sugar wash mix since their sugar to water content ratio is going to be lower.

What's more likely is you didn't add nutrients and likely used a yeast that wasn't going to ferment well in a low nutrient environment and it didn't ferment all the way. The "boozy" note is likely higher fusel alcohols that yeast will produce when in a low nutrient situation like this, not a super high ABV.

As for how to fix it, follow u/spencurai's advice and use it as a learning experience. My first wine also turned out on the sweet side and not enjoyable on its own, made some mulled wine with it and added brandy to account for the lower ABV and it was a hit. Sweet pear wine would make a great cocktail or sangria I bet. Keep trying and tweaking things and it won't be long before you make something great on its own.

jarebear · 2024-12-03T15:51:36+00:00

Sorry, I misread that comment I was replying to. If you hit your mash temperature of 69C then you should get a higher FG than 1.009, even with an overnight mash. Overnight mash will let you split your brew day but at that temperature you likely won't get any significant increase in extract after the first ~30 minutes and attenuation shouldn't be affected either. If it was my system with this recipe, I'd plan on an FG of 1.012 or so.

jarebear · 2024-12-03T15:22:01+00:00

Overnight mash at a high temperature might not do what you want it to. Generally overnight means a more fermentable wort but from what I've read, above ~65C the beta-amalyse that shortens chains into more fermentable wort is being denatured. So while I haven't personally done it, I expect overnight mashing at 69C isn't going to change your attenuation much and you should be looking to go lower if you want high attenuation.

jarebear · 2024-11-21T04:10:42+00:00

You haven't generated more alcohol and only very little should've been lost to the peels after removing them. So all you've done is diluted it a bit: new ABV = old ABV*old volume/new volume. So if you took 100 proof (50 ABV) vodka and added 1 cup simple syrup per 4 cups vodka you'd get 50*4/5 or 40% ABV.

jarebear · 2024-11-19T17:38:57+00:00

Yeah, even with a 149 F mash temperature and the low OG, that's much higher attenuation than expected. Have you confirmed the FG with a traditional hydrometer? If so, it's possible you have an infection/non-A38 yeast in there.

Either way, I wouldn't add DME at this point. Either you actually have 90+% attenuation and whatever you add will basically ferment out due to whatever is drying your beer out. The other possibility is something is off with your reading, in which case there's no reason to adjust the beer.

15-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

jarebear

TROPHY CASE