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Aug
6
comment Got first 2 kegs and need advice
Good point about filling and cleaning.
Aug
6
answered Got first 2 kegs and need advice
Aug
6
comment Got first 2 kegs and need advice
Btw - good score! They're worth more than that just as scrap.
Aug
6
comment Got first 2 kegs and need advice
Do you have a fridge that can hold a keg that size?
Aug
3
awarded  Yearling
Aug
1
comment Saison stuck at 1.030
My Saison (also using W3724) took a full month at 88 F to finish. It started at 1.054 and ended at 1.005, which sounds low but the grain bill included 10% sugar. Time, patience and heat is all you need. I used a brew-belt to add heat, and wrapped the carboy in a wool blanket for insulation.
Jul
31
comment Carbonated in carboy from primary fermentation?
That's still a really low FG. Can you post the recipe, or at least the ferenetables (malts and sugars)? Could be that you introduced some bacteria that's been chewing away on the sugars that brewers yeast won't ferment.
Jul
30
comment Degassing wine - how to proceed
Don't think you'd ever get exploding bottles or ballistic corks from residual, dissolved CO2. That sort of thing would require active fermentation in the bottle. Slightly fizzy wine is the worst possible outcome.
Jul
23
comment Does wort gravity affect hop utilization?
Does the quantity of solids increase with gravity only for all-grain worts? If so, then the answer to the original question must be that wort gravity does not affect hop utilizarion for extract beers.
Jul
7
comment Cherry vishnick
@Wulfart: 2 cups of cherries and 1 cop of sugar is going to be pretty near 40% sugar by weight. There ain't nothing on God's green earth going to ferment that. That's jam levels of sugar. There's a reason they're called preserves. High levels of sugar impede bacterial and fungal activity.
Jul
4
comment Cherry vishnick
There's no fermentation going on in that recipe, despite what the author claims. Fermentation requires yeast or bacteria. This recipe is just cherries macerated in vodka and sugar -- an infusion. From what I can tell, this is the traditional way to make it.
Jun
27
answered Airlock required for lagering or conditioning?
Jun
18
comment All my all-grain batches produce a bitter/astringent, dark, almost burnt off flavor that ruins every batch, from light pilsner to dark belgians
If the beer tastes good when you're bottling, and then tastes bad after a week or two in bottles, there must be something going on in the bottles. How are you priming the bottles? If you're not doing anything outrageous with respect to priming sugars, etc., then I would probably conclude that some micro-organism, is affecting the flavour of the beer post bottling. That being said, I can't think of any infectious agent that produces "burnt" or "dark" flavours.
May
31
comment Extract vs Mash
+1 because mashing is fun.
May
30
comment Extract vs Mash
I don't think commercial breweries use extract; the cost would be prohibitive. You sure those weren't bags of malted barley?
May
29
answered Are saisons a high or a low alcohol beer?
May
25
comment What is the purpose in adding unmalted wheat to a beer?
It's still important to heat the wheat to geletinization temps, or the starch won't be available for conversion.
May
22
comment Mash Efficiency vs Brewhouse Efficiency
I think you need better software :) I use Beersmith and it has fine grained controls over train absorption, mash dead space, kettle dead space, etc. It takes a while to get the right numbers dialed in, but then determining water volumes and grain weights is a breeze. Other popular programs are Beer Tools and Pro Mash. I expect they have similar controls.
May
20
revised What is causing a bad flavor after cold conditioning?
added 1 characters in body
May
15
comment Why is my starting gravity low?
I've never let the sparge water sit on the grains before draining. A good stir is needed to distribute the sugars, and a vorlauf is good to clarify the wort, but waiting accomplishes nothing. I get close to 80% brewhouse efficiency on normal strength beers with this technique.