Hot answers tagged beer
6
It's mostly to achieve a crystal clear presentation, and also because the average consumer expects no sediment in a can or bottle of beer. Also, filtering out the suspended solids improves the flavor of the beer, especially noticeable in light colored beers.
Craft brewers that don't filter the beer leave the yeast in suspension so the beer can condition or ...
5
Do you really mean just a tee? I guess not, since there's not much benefit, and you'll just get lots of spilled wort!
I'm guessing you mean a tee, plus an attached valve - affectionately known as a "burper valve", which can help rid trapped air from the pump. When the liquid first flows through the pump, it displaces the air, which can become trapped in ...
5
To quote from http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_oxygenation.cfm:
It was concluded that pumping compressed air through a stone is not an efficient way to provide adequate levels of DO. Traditional splashing and shaking, although laborious, is fairly efficient at dissolving up to 8 ppm oxygen. To increase levels of oxygen, the carboy headspace can be purged with ...
5
Pitching yeast directly into wort is not a good idea - it reduces the viability by at least half for normal strength wort, and presumably even more for higher gravity or higher alcohol worts.
You have a lot of yeast in this brew, presumably dead or dying, so I would consider racking soon to avoid picking up a yeast bite in the beer. A schedule like this ...
5
I sometimes will see a very slight shimmer of oil on the surface of a beer, kinda just like a little rainbow effect when looking down from above. If your "oil film on top" sounds like that, then you are fine.
Regarding the color, the beer went from gold to brown because the yeast are dropping out. You'd think a beer with a lot of yeast in suspension would ...
4
Upvote on the question, and someone will undoubtedly come by with a better answer, but here goes off the top of my head:
Acetaldehyde (a-cee-tal-de-hide....nobody says it right!) is a precursor to alcohol. It is an intermediate compound that is formed prior to the formation of EtOH/ethanol during fermentation.
So the weird thing is that acetaldehyde is ...
4
As long as you aren't using air purged cask type "kegs" you'll be fine.
Disconnecting a keg from the hook up seals the keg from the outside air, and contains the pressure already applied.
Assuming you're using the proper pressure to dispense, the beer's carbonation level will remain the same.
If the beer is unfiltered, or has been naturally carbonated, ...
4
Maybe.
Depends on what bugs were in the water and whether they can reproduce fast enough to flavour the beer before your drink it.
My advice is to keep the beer as cold as you can to limit microbe growth, and drink it quickly. The beer stored at 16 C is much more at risk because the elevated temperature will accelerate microbe growth. If you can keep ...
4
Racking to secondary and letting it sit for a few more days or a week can improve clarity slightly but is by no means necessary. It will however make things easier to bottle without stirring up sediment in the process. If you're careful you can bottle straight from primary with about the same results.
I'm guessing since this is your first brew that you will ...
4
There are a variety of techniques to clarify beer. Filtering is the quickest method but will strip out the yeast you need for natural carbonation, and potentially also some flavor compounds. Finings (gelatin, isinglass, others) will help large particles drop out; I'd recommend reading posts here about finings and/or talking to your LHBS about techniques with ...
4
It's to do with hormones, and not specifically beer but the fact that it's high in carbohydrates. As the blood sugar increases, the body produces more insulin to push the blood sugar into the cells and thus decrease the overall blood sugar level. But elevated insulin levels in men cases testosterone to be converted into estrogens, which is the cause of the ...
4
Fruit is not the best color agent here - the flavor will be out of character in an Irish Red.
You get the red color from a little roast barley. Take a handful of lightly crushed roasted barley (or two handfulls of whole) and let them stand in half a pint of cold water for half an hour to an hour. Strain the water, which will now be black, boil, then add it ...
3
I have been doing a lot of hop chemistry research and if you want a more then basic comparison check this site out
http://beerlegends.com/hops-varieties Click on a hop variety you are interested in and there will be a chart for every characteristic of a hop you could ever want to know.
Get to know your hop oil fractions (or compositions)(Myrcene Humulene ...
3
I think Tallie has it right. It's likely a trade-off between stressing the yeast with CO2 and having oxidized beer. I would add that degassing or adding O2 after fermentation has started also introduces a mostly unnecessary step, creating more work for the brewer and increasing the risk of contamination.
Depending on how early in fermentation we're ...
3
In a recent BeerSmith podcast Michael Fairbrother from Moonlight Meadery talks about degassing mead during fermentation (at about 17:45 in the YouTube video), and alludes that unlike beer, mead and wine can handle additional oxygen after fermentation begins.
As we know, depending on the stage of fermentation, oxygen in beer can be detrimental. So I guess ...
3
Designing Great Beers has a table listing fermentability of a few brands of extract on p 15. I don't think it's permitted to reproduce it here, but if you search the book content in Amazon, search for "Malt extract test worts" - you'll get a link to table 3.1 which will take you right there. The range is from 45% to 65%.
I've not seen any tools that ...
3
For spruce flavored beers you don't use the wood. You use the fresh lighter green tips that come out in springtime. Its the new growth that is more aromatic and doesn't contain as much of the resins as the woody parts.
As far as using your spruce christmas tree, I think you are out of luck.
3
The ideal keg size for a 23l batch is 23l or as close as you can get above that.
You can use a larger capacity keg with no problems, but you will end up using more CO2, since you have to pressurize a larger volume.
Using smaller kegs is also possible, but a bit of a pain since you have twice the work to do cleaning, sanitizing and filling, and again, the ...
3
Not much to add to mdma's very nice answer. The first time you get cavitation in your pump and lose prime, you will most definitely appreciate having the 'burper' valve to re-prime. Just open it up, let some liquid flow, then continue pumping away.
I thought I'd add a few pictures of my own tees for reference.
I used an acetal plastic gate valve on this ...
3
As was stated previously, yeast don't kill bacteria directly. They make the environment unfavorable for bacterial growth, primarily by acidifying the wort, removing oxygen and increasing the alcohol content.
Once ferementation is over, the yeast have done all they can to thwart bacterial growth. In fact, as fermentation comes to an end, the pH will rise, ...
3
In my experience, the biggest cause of non-clear beer in your glass is chill haze. You can rush from fermentation being complete to bottling, without any significant "conditioning" time, and the beer in the bottles will become crystal clear quite soon. But put those bottles in the fridge and you'll have chill haze by the time the beer is at drinking ...
3
Avoiding sediment floating around in the glass is often a function of carefully pouring from the bottle. If bottled beer is allowed to sit and condition properly, given time the yeast and other solids in suspension will settle to the bottom and create a fairly tight sediment in the base of the bottle. Upon opening a careful pour should leave much of it ...
3
I would go with some Sinamar. Its a product from Weyermann made entirely of Black Malt and will add color to the beer without any additional flavor.
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/4-OZ-SINAMAR-NATURAL-BEER-COLORING-P2651.aspx
Sinamar® natural beer coloring was patented by the Weyermann Company
in Germany in 1902, and is a gluten free natural mashed ...
2
In the 80s UK, Boots, the chemists, who already sold home brew kits, developed a yeast that settled at the bottom of bottles as a gel. Unlike the sediment you're used to, that is disturbed when you tip the bottle, this just sat there. Friends, who used to avoid my home brew, said things like, Wow this tastes like real beer. it was clear and sparkling. For ...
2
FWIW, I don't use a T on the outlet side to prime.
My system isn't hard plumbed where I need it. The outlet hose I have on the pump serves as the air escape. The reason to use a venting T is when the outlet end of from the pump is connected to plumbing (or hoses) that goes into fluid. The fluid tends to create just enough back pressure that the pump ...
2
At -10°C I think you will need some sort of heating element. If you don't have electricity, you could try doing it swamp cooler style.
Put the bottles in an insulated container - an old refrigerator unplugged,
a plastic cooler, or a DIY insulated box would all work (like a fermentation chamber). Put a thermometer in there to check on the temps.
Put a heat ...
2
My concern with using green wood from a fir tree would be the high amount of sap. Also not sure about this but as far as flavor I think that you would get a better hint of what your looking for by using the needles themselves. I know of a few microbrewers who have made things like spruce beers by adding the needles in, just a thought.
2
On the few occasions I have had beer freezer it led to a permanent haze forming in the beers. Otherwise the beer was fine.
Without a power source even a well wrapped/insulated container of beer will lose its temp and get to the ambient -20 you describe.
You only option is to find a place inside or get power out there to the beer.
2
Aside from the bevy of recipe databases out there:
hopville
beertools
brewersfriend
tastybrew
BrewToad
HBT
Most online homebrew supply shops offer pdf downloads of their recipes. Really like NB's Irish Red? Grab the recipe, and give it a try.
Honestly, there are so many recipes out there I find it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak. ...
2
4oz in 5 gallons for a what I imagine to be a fairly bland fruit extract doesn't sound like any problem. I've not tasted watermelon extract, but I do eat watermelon, and easily 4oz per serving. Watermelon has a subtle flavour.
With a wheat beer, the character is dominated by the esters produced by the yeast. Even though this is a competition with wort plus ...
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