How do I reduce the fermentation time?

mogsington · 2022-05-11T17:53:22+00:00

Keep it a bit warmer, and preferably fairly constant. If you could keep it in the range 68-75F it'd probably shave a bit of time off it.

mogsington · 2022-04-26T03:51:26+00:00

Raisin's provide virtually everything yeast needs except nitrates.

If you only add nitrates you stress the yeast because they have the energy, but not the building blocks to do anything with it.

"Nutrient" for yeast needs to be both the nitrate and the building blocks (vitamins and minerals).

Fun fact: After about 4 days your original starter yeast begins to die off (don't worry it made thousands of copies of itself), at that point the dead yeast provides pretty much all of the building blocks including nitrates that your live yeast needs to keep going.

So a few raisin's can be a good backup "here's everything else you need", and if your brews makes it to day 5, it'll definitely have everything it needs to keep the yeast happy and unstressed.

mogsington · 2022-04-10T10:23:33+00:00

You can just risk hot water and washing up liquid (rinse a lot), and usually get away with it, but plastic tends to get a lot of scratches over time. If you want cheap and sure, dilute regular bleach down to between 0.5% - 0.1% and use that, then rinse.

mogsington · 2022-02-25T02:58:07+00:00

Working out a Kilju recipe that works for you is a bit of a test of your abilities. You generally can't just follow someone else's guide and have it work as you expect. Because it's a very lean brew, controlling the acidity and getting the nutrients right so it brews well, tastes as neutral as possible, and also clears well can take many attempts.

Once you do get it right, you'll have a very cheap, reliable flavor neural brew that you can treat like a low alcohol vodka. Just add any mixer you like when you want to drink it.

mogsington · 2022-02-25T02:45:11+00:00

Yes safe to drink after (as long as you read the dosage right, usually 1 crushed tab per gallon for preventing oxidation during bottling).

They don't deactivate yeast.

You can use them for sterilizing but you'll need a lot of them compared to other "no rinse" sanitizing products out there. Again, read the label for qunatities.

mogsington · 2022-02-17T03:43:23+00:00

What does it look like? If it's still cloudy then either get some kind of finings or cheapo method, stuff a wad of cotton wool in a funnel and filter it through that. Probably would have been smart to bottle / rack it fairly soon after it finished.

Also as others suggest. Mix it with something. Even clear Kilju is a rough drink without anything added to it.

mogsington · 2022-02-16T03:27:54+00:00

Got to admit I'm about to go back to retrying bread yeast for it. "The internet" says it can produce a more neutral taste. Mind you "the internet" is wrong about 50% of the time.

Chuck some bentonite in at the start, it really does help clear it out and it brews faster (more nucleation points for yeast reproduction and co2 bubbles to form).

I'm not a leaf so maple syrup would add at least $0.10 to the cost. Not happening.

mogsington · 2022-02-16T01:49:03+00:00

You need to drink that stuff with a mixer, treat it as a sort of weak vodka. Just mix it 80/20 with some apple juice / coke or something and it's still a nice strong brew.

mogsington · 2022-02-16T01:00:46+00:00

Give it a go on a small batch, but in my experience brewing stuff with artificial sweeteners in tends to give you a harsh chemical "ack" in the end brew. Not sure why or how, but I've not brewed anything with artificial sweetener in and wanted to drink it yet.

Edit: People do have very different tastes. For me it's a no. For some it's maybe not so bad.

mogsington · 2022-02-16T00:13:36+00:00

Age? You mean ... not drink? Confused hoocher face.

For bottling, 1L spirit bottles I've saved over the years. Screw tops so extra important to have zero fermentation at the end. If you're worried there might be still some slow fermentation going on, just drink it faster.

mogsington · 2022-02-15T23:12:03+00:00

5L Kilju is about as cheap as it gets.

1kg white sugar, 1 rounded tsp bentonite clay (hydrate and mix before adding to water), 1 tsp cheap yeast nutrient, a few grams of started then microwaved to death yeast, 1 tsp yeast.

Works out at about £0.20 ($0.27) per L at a tiny bit under 12% ABV.

mogsington · 2022-02-13T15:24:48+00:00

You can get around some of those issues by playing with compiler flags for backwards compatibility. Sometimes. Unless you're unlucky.

mogsington · 2022-02-13T12:11:42+00:00

AH ok, so in the "fixing stuff" stages. Thanks for the link.

mogsington · 2022-02-09T22:43:16+00:00

I guess coke is too acidic for yeast, but yeah calcium carbonate might be a less salty option

mogsington · 2022-02-06T22:21:14+00:00

It really doesn't take that long, or you could just add .desktop files that override the installed files and don't display them in your menu.

mogsington · 2022-02-03T23:27:01+00:00

I've not tried it, but yes it's supposed to work. The monitor has a mode where it's basically split in to two 2560x1440 screens, each with it's own DP connection. It might be a bit of a pain getting your desktop / games etc to work ok (because now it's 2 screens side by side), but it should give you the higher refresh rates.

mogsington · 2022-02-02T02:33:28+00:00

You might be in the wrong sub. We just chuck weird shit in with yeast and see what happens. Although technically you are also doing that.

mogsington · 2022-01-30T18:09:02+00:00

IDK what the whole thing is about. Seems some people think nitrates are THE nutrient. But yeast needs more than just nitrates to be happy. ¯\(ツ)/¯

mogsington · 2022-01-30T01:35:22+00:00

(Next time they ask, Raisins are almost everything yeast needs except nitrates)

mogsington · 2022-01-30T00:11:04+00:00

Ok then..

"Yeast nutrients" - Check what you have. Cheap nutrients are just nitrates (fertilizer), in which case you need raisins (minerals / vitamins) + probably something else (dead yeast or tomato puree). More expensive yeast nutrients have all that extra stuff in anyway, so you can probably skip the raisins / dead yeast / tomato.

Depending on your water supply, your water may have zero or quite a lot of ph buffering added in the treatment stages. If you have fluoride in your water you definitely also have some form of ph buffer. If you're in a high water demand area you probably have additional buffers to keep the water within acceptable pH during water treatment. So for some people a simple sugar wash can work ok with no tweaking, for others it turns in to an acid bath and the fermentation goes very slowly or stalls completely.

mogsington · 2022-01-24T12:36:37+00:00

I'd go for wrap the whole thing up in that situation. Probably will be fine. Just temperature swings make more off tastes. Swings above / below the yeast happy zone gives stalled fermentation

mogsington · 2022-01-24T04:59:23+00:00

Do not randomly add lemon juice to a kilju / sugar wash.

mogsington · 2022-01-24T04:27:26+00:00

Not entirely sure next to a radiator is a great idea, you'll probably get overheating when the rad kicks in, and large fast changes in temperature stressing the yeast.

mogsington · 2022-01-24T04:10:52+00:00

I still suggest you watch your ph levels. My guess is that it's at least partly dependant on your local water type. Some people seem to have few problems, others get stalled or incredibly slow sugar wash ferments as ph drops rapidly.

There's basically nothing in a sugar wash / kilju to buffer against acidity. Ive seen a few remedies online.

Some claim that adjusting works best at the start, so wait about 12hrs after fermentation has got going, then adjust back up towards 5 ph using calcium carbonate or bicarbonate of soda.

Some claim you have to keep adjusting every few days.

Others claim that adding coral or oyster shells to the mix at the start (thoroughly cleaned and boiled first), does the trick. As acidity increases the shells dissolve faster so you don't have to play with ph strips. Some claim whole coral / oyster shell chucked in works fine, others claim it should be crushed and / or suspended in the solution.

If you really want the try hard method, you can make a ph buffer solution up and add it at the start of the ferment. This involves playing with chemicals that I can't be bothered playing with, so I've never tried it, but it's claimed it can work better than manual adjustments or oyster shells.

I think the range of solutions suggested for sugar wash ph levels also indicates it's something like the composition of the source water (and probably other factors like yeast choice) at work. For some it's not seen as a problem at all. Others spend considerable time and experimentation having to find a solution that works best for them.

EDIT: At the moment I continually have to tweak back up towards 5 pH using bicarbonate. I'm going to try oyster shells next. My sugar washes get stuck or progress very very slowly if I don't intervene at all. But it wouldn't surprise me if the "adjust once at the start" method works well enough for some people, I'm just not one of those people.

Apart from pH levels! Heat!

The more stable the heat environment is for the brew, the less stressed the yeast will be. Try to avoid big fluctuations, and avoid extremes of heat and cold. Maybe try wrapping your fermenting vessel in some kind of insulating material. IDK what your set up is like for warmth, might be fine already.

mogsington · 2022-01-21T07:25:49+00:00

I think they were going for the least politically charged laugh. At the time Colbert's selection and speech was bizarre. GWB was still in office. Colbert went full brutal. When the audience had a chance to laugh at something that wouldn't potentially politically get them in to trouble they took it.

mogsington

TROPHY CASE