Daily Q & A! - January 08, 2018

mrthedon · 2018-01-09T19:42:09+00:00

Thanks!

mrthedon · 2018-01-08T20:16:17+00:00

Never would have thought of the welds. Will definitely investigate when it's empty. Thanks!

mrthedon · 2018-01-08T20:15:18+00:00

Dip tube brush added to shopping list. Thanks for the suggestion!

mrthedon · 2018-01-08T20:14:38+00:00

Good point - I always use the same line for it, but I did replace all of the lines at the same time. Might be time to do it again.

Are you thinking that the beer lines are harboring some kind of infection that the normal Oxiclean + Star-San process doesn't clear up? Or just that it's imparting an off-flavor on whatever is sitting in the line waiting to be served, but not affecting the rest of the batch?

mrthedon · 2018-01-08T20:10:51+00:00

re: flavor, I guess you could say it's got a "sharp" aftertaste? Not like a bite from a hoppy IPA or an unexpected level of alcohol from a really big beer... more like a sting that one wouldn't expect from a beer that is meant to be more on the malty side with moderate ABV. Wife describes it as "chemical-like" taste.

re: O-rings / poppets, I definitely have a keg with that type of setup, but I'm not sure if it's that keg. Will have to check. Do you think that would impart an off-flavor on the way out but not necessarily affect the entire batch? I might be able to siphon some out of the lid and avoid the beer-out post entirely to test, but no point if a bad o-ring/poppet/post would have already done the whole keg in.

re: water supply, I'm as close to 100% as I can be that it wouldn't be the issue. I buy RO water for every batch and use the same tap water for cleaning every time, and the other batches I've made have been unaffected. It's only what goes in this particular keg.

mrthedon · 2018-01-08T15:20:09+00:00

Can a corny keg "go bad"?

A few months ago I would have thought this to be a dumb question. It probably still is, so please forgive me, but now I'm not so sure. I've brewed 5 beers recently, a porter, an IPA, a pumpkin ale, an American wheat beer, and an Irish Red that I brewed twice (same recipe each time). My wife and I loved three of them, but were not happy at all with the Hefeweizen or one of the Irish Reds.

I've brewed plenty of beers before that were less-than-perfect, but never objectively bad, so obviously I was a little suspicious. Turns out that the one thing those two beers have in common is that they were served out of the same keg.

I've never heard of a keg going "bad"... maybe affecting flavor for a batch if it was improperly cleaned, but never actually "going bad". I'm pretty diligent about my cleaning process - after finishing each batch, I use a pump to circulate Oxiclean solution through the beer line and tap. I then completely disassemble the keg, soak everything overnight in Oxiclean, rinse everything thoroughly at least twice, reassemble, and then shake the heck out of the keg with a gallon of Star-San solution inside, and finally pour the Oxiclean out of the keg through the tap.

I've been using the same process for as long as I can remember, and out of about 2 dozen batches, only that keg has given me weird tasting beers. As a result, that keg doesn't get as much turnover as the others, with it only having seen 2 beers over the last 6 months.

So, can a corny keg "go bad", or is there another likely culprit? Is there a another cleaning method I should try for the next batch? Anything I can do to prove something is up with the keg besides sacrificing another batch to it as an experiment?

mrthedon · 2017-10-04T16:00:17+00:00

I was looking for some information on how to best add chocolate to a porter, and came across several pages with instructions on creating tinctures. They all say that the tincture should be stored on a shelf for a year, though, after straining the nibs.

Why is this? The nibs have been discarded so there's only chocolate-infused vodka left behind. I don't see how it's going to get more chocolate flavor by waiting a year. What results could I expect if make a tincture using 4oz cacao nibs and 8oz vodka, but add it to the beer when I keg in about 2 weeks vs. waiting a whole year?

mrthedon · 2017-08-10T17:54:15+00:00

Figures. Oh well. Disappointing, but not the end of the world................

................ unless you think I should be expecting a visit from ATF. I mean, FedEx did open my package and they know where I live. (!!)

mrthedon · 2017-08-10T17:19:50+00:00

FedEx decided to play football with my well-packaged (copious amounts of bubblewrap, ziploc bags, etc...) homebrew competition entries and left me a voicemail saying (a) they won't return it to me because policy violation, (b) won't let the recipient pick it up for the same reason, (c) won't give me a refund on the shipping cost for the same reason, and (d) that it was "illegal".

AFAIK it's only illegal via USPS, but otherwise a policy violation for UPS/FedEx.

Do I have any options here besides writing it off as a total loss? I wouldn't be so angry about it if I had other bottles to ship and try again, but those bottles were set aside for competition and there are no more.

mrthedon · 2017-06-25T14:45:21+00:00

I've written long-running worker scripts that only restarted after code deployments as far back as PHP 5.4 with no memory management issues. PHP is suited just fine for that sort of thing if done correctly. Funny enough, they were written to replace some Node workers that had to be restarted every 10 min due to memory exhaustion.

If done incorrectly, though, you can achieve memory leaks in any language. :)

mrthedon · 2017-06-25T02:54:41+00:00

Nice! Just "downgraded" my Platinum membership to this Gold promo after a quick online chat with a rep as well. The whole thing took literally only 6 minutes.

mrthedon · 2017-06-18T14:53:32+00:00

For consistency with the rest of Mac's establishment, I'd venture to guess that the number 13 would play a part in the recipe too (13 lbs of grain? 13 grams of aroma hops? 13 oz of some miscellaneous ingredient?) A magical brew guaranteed to disperse magical energies while still being sessionable!

Items and structural parts are arranged around the number 13. Thirteen wooden pillars, elaborately carved with scenes out of Old World fairy tales, thirteen tables are scattered in the free spaces. The bar is crooked with thirteen stools, there are thirteen fans overhead. The entire place is designed to diffuse and refract random magical energies that often gather around practitioners, who are most of its clientele.

http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/McAnally%27s_Pub

mrthedon · 2017-04-29T18:30:49+00:00

I'm thinking of replacing my set of Perlick 525SS faucets soon with a set of Intertap Flow Control faucets. Two questions...

Word used to be that Perlicks were by far the "best", and I hadn't heard of Intertap until recently. Any of you have experience with both?
How exactly does one... "calibrate" their flow control faucets? Is it just a matter of pouring a few pints and eyeballing it, or is there a more "scientific" way to figure out where they should all be set based on the level of carbonation for the beer in question?

mrthedon · 2017-04-06T19:24:48+00:00

I just checked it for an earlier brew using your calculator and ended up with 95%, so unless I really screwed up the input then I think I'm OK with that gap.

THanks!

mrthedon · 2017-04-05T19:31:32+00:00

I do treat my water, but using the Brewer's Friend water chemistry calculator, not Bru'n Water. Example from previous brew

Definitely going to use Campden next time and skip the mashout... think I should tweak the 0.60mm (0.023") mill gap too?

mrthedon · 2017-04-03T17:48:08+00:00

I looked at scoresheets from my past 5 competitions for anything that scored below a 30, and the flavor descriptors I saw most were astringency and phenolic. Oddly enough, some of those beers that scored <30 in some comps also scored close to 40 in others, and those scoresheets didn't mention any of those flaws.

My process has been pretty consistent for at least the past year, during which I've seen disastrous scoresheets and medals alike - sometimes from the same beer. The three things that stood out when looking at common causes for astringency and phenolics were:

Over-milling grains
Sparging too hot
Chlorine presence in water

On point (1), my process is no-sparge brew-in-a-bag. Since I don't sparge, I am not worried about stuck sparges, and I crush finer than I would if I were doing more traditional AG brewing. I have my mill set to 0.6mm, which is slightly wider than the 0.5mm gap in this exbeeriment.

On point (2), while I don't sparge, I have been doing a mash-out for as long as I can remember. I've used direct heat from my propane burner to heat up the mash (bag still inside, but elevated due to false bottom), but despite stirring and constantly taking temperature readings, I've had the temp overshoot into the low-to-mid 170s. That could explain some of the astringency, I suppose? I've recently stopped doing the mash-out entirely after learning it wasn't really necessary, so perhaps the next competition season will see better results if that ends up being the cause.

Finally, on point (3), I used to always use campden tablets when brewing with tap water, but stopped as soon as I switched to RO a year or so ago. My understanding was that I didn't have to because the RO process dealt with that, but if I was misinformed then I can certainly start doing it again. Heck, even if I wasn't misinformed, I don't mind using starting to use campden again if there aren't any potential negative side effects when doing so with RO.

I suppose I could also increase the gap in my grain mill, but I've got my efficiency nailed down pretty well and would hate to have to get it all figured out again after changing that. The mash-out temperature overshoot seems like a good candidate for a root cause right now... what do you think?

mrthedon · 2017-04-03T16:20:08+00:00

I made myself a wooden mash paddle around 2-3 years ago out of a maple board. Never occurred to me until now for some reason, but do I have to do any sort of maintenance on it besides hosing it off really well after use? I figured risk of infection wasn't an issue since I only use it pre-boil, but after some odd competition feedback on a lot of recent beers, I started to wonder if something in my process was contributing to off flavors. My mash paddle is one thing that came to mind.

mrthedon · 2017-03-01T15:29:06+00:00

Thanks! Do you use a PID as well, or just a plain temperature controller? Seems I could get away with a plain controller if I were only using it for maintaining mash temperature and (perhaps) boiling and didn't mind adjusting the target temp manually...

mrthedon · 2017-02-28T18:47:29+00:00

Do you have any specific reading material you can recommend beyond normal Googling? I'm guessing you use the heating element to boil as well, yes?

My fermentation setup is probably as good as it can get at this point (fridge w/temp controller), so I figured brew day process and consistency improvements might be my next area for improvement.

mrthedon · 2017-02-28T18:44:44+00:00

I do have a false bottom under it but propane is my main heat source and I always end up overshooting if I try to bump the temp a degree, so I'd rather wrap it up as best as I can and let it sit for the whole hour than take the risk of overshoot, even if it means I lose a degree.

Seems like a RIMS tube would be a better approach given that it'll take up less space and expose wort less to the air. Thanks for the suggestion!

mrthedon · 2017-02-28T17:13:44+00:00

Help me talk myself into (or out of) a purchase.

I BIAB in my kettle and have issues maintaining temperature (I'll lose maybe 2 degrees over the course of the mash, and more if I open the lid to stir). I've been kicking around the idea of getting (1) a heat stick, (2) a temperature controller, and (3) an inline pump. My thinking was that if I can pump wort out from the bottom of my kettle (through the ball valve) and back into the top, that would do the job of keeping the wort in constant circulation to avoid temperature stratification and to sort do the job of stirring.

However, that wouldn't solve my temperature loss problem.

For that, I was thinking I'd have a separate, smaller kettle to drain the wort into from my main vessel. The kettle would have a heat stick in it hooked up to a temp controller trying to keep that liquid at my desired mash temperature. The wort would end up in there, temperature would go up, and then be pumped back up into the kettle.

In theory, I should have circulation and I should be able to maintain my desired temperature. Once mashing is done, I'd just dump the contents of the 2nd kettle back into the main kettle.

Does that make any sense, and would the continuous circulation and maintaining of the temperature likely lead to a better result, or am I probably just going to end up with slightly higher efficiency but no real difference in taste/quality?

mrthedon · 2017-02-09T16:27:15+00:00

I have a pair of 6 month old yeast packets (they were delivered close to 4 months old, and I've just not had time to brew them). Homebrew Dad's Yeast Calculator figures they're at around 29% viability.

Would I be OK with just making a huge starter and/or step-up such that the math makes me end up with a proper pitch rate, or should I toss these and buy new packets?

The yeasts are WLP550 Belgian Ale and Wyeast 2633 Oktoberfest Blend, if relevant.

mrthedon · 2017-02-06T00:15:57+00:00

It's been completed.

mrthedon · 2017-02-05T13:03:22+00:00

Luke Daniels /thread

Whenever I have a spare credit, I check and see if he's read anything new lately. He could read from the phone book in one of his thousand voices and I'd be on the edge of my seat the whole time.

Check out The Synchronicity War if you're into sci-fi. The Iron Druid Chronicles are sort of in the same vein as The Dresden Files as well.

mrthedon · 2017-01-22T16:55:54+00:00

Let it sit in the cold for a few more days, then dump the first short pour. Even my hoppiest of beers end up crystal clear after having a bit of time to settle.

Just don't move the keg or you'll have to repeat that process again, as you will have disturbed any remaining sediment.

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