7
Yes you can. In fact I did it a few times myself, blending too dark beers for my taste with some lighter beers to create the perfect depth.
But, if the mixed beers use different yeast strains, it is possible they both have different attenuation levels. The yeast from one beer can continue to ferment the sugars of the other beer. Fermentation starts again ...
5
This looks like Pediococcus contamination: see here Is this lactobacillus?
More information about spoilage here: https://www.craftbrewingbusiness.com/news/four-bacteria-that-will-ruin-your-beer/
Lack of sanitation might have cause this.
5
Honey is almost 100% fermentable, so if added at bottling, it can increase carbonation and potentially result in gushing overcarbonated bottles or even explosions. You can however use it to prime the bottles instead of sugar. In proper amounts you will get normal carbonation. I have used honey one time as priming sugar and it worked well, however I forget ...
4
As Robert mentionned, it is still sugar even after 5 years! I usually disolve it in boiling water to kill any bacteria, before adding to a wort (after cooling a bit).
Almost no chances of spoiling the brew when added this way.
4
You could end up with bottle bombs, and even if you are lucky, when opening bottle with much more pressure, you risk gushing.
I would empty all bottles in a fermenter, leave it to ferment dry and bottle again with the right quantity of priming sugar. I prefer to prime the whole batch in a bottling bucket, then mix it well. When you prime the whole batch, ...
4
It is really hard to make a poisonous brew with regular, plant based ingredients. Fruit, sugar and some yeast is all you really need. The easiest is apple/grape juice, sugar and some bakers yeast. If you want to make real beer, that will involved either malt syrup, hops, water and yeast. But, unless you have homebrew shops everywhere like we do here in the ...
4
The process of making beer is safe if you are careful with sanitation. Most bacteria contamination will be visible or smellable.
However, poisoning can occur when adding ingredients or using cleaning agents that are not safe, and might not be detectable.
Never heard of beer poisoning recently, but I know of a commercial brewery that closed in Canada ...
4
I would set the fermenter into a tub with 2 inches water in the bottom, and drape a wet t-shirt over the fermenter. This will cool it off just by about 5 degrees F, which might keep it under 70 F. To avoid potential fusel alcohols and unusual esters and phenols, you don't want it to get much hotter, so this method is ideal.
4
I'm not sure what exactly attracts slugs to beer. I would try to find out what specifically that is and replicate that as it might be cheaper.
However, in general it would be quite hard for you to brew beer cheaper than than the cheapest beer you can buy. Rather, doing so would probably require you to have some equipment, buying which would negate any cost ...
3
It is very fast, probably due to the high temperature (the higher the faster it will ferment), the insulation jacket would keep it warmer. The type of yeast used cans also cause this, some yeast are more vigorous than others, but in the end, the main reason is the temperature.
Depending on your room temperature, you might not need an insulation jacket (I ...
3
At the high end (81F) plus an additional couple of degrees generated by the yeast there isn't much except Kveik that would make decent beer.
At the lower end, there are some Ale-strains that would produce okay beer, I suspect that you will have better results by finding a cooler room - or try to investigate some cooling hacks (wet wrapping + fan, or ...
3
The 17 days of fermentation is more than enough to finish fermentation, your 1.015 is a good FG. After fermentation (about 7 days more or less), the yeast will flocculate to the bottom.
You already know the answer to your question "What to expect?", it is way too strong of a beer, perhaps 8.5% to 9% of alcohol, instead of 5%.
As suggested by dmtaylor, if ...
2
Gambrinus Honey Malt, maybe about 5-10% of the total grist, plus 50% wheat (either malt or not, or both), should get you really close, based on experience.
No more loquaciousness required. Cheers.
2
Disclaimer: I have never eaten a graham cracker.
Based on this recipe for Graham Crackers, a "graham cracker taste" would essentially be a wholemeal biscuit/cookie flavour, with a brown-sugar accent.
To get the toasty/bready flavours, I would use a base of 5% biscuit malt and 5% crystal to compliment a good base-malt like Maris Otter - known for having a "...
2
What makes you think you've got contamination? A slight skin over part of the surface isn't necessarily an uncommon thing. I guess it depends how it looked. You wouldn't happen to have any photographs?
Anyway it sounds like you pitched enough healthy yeast and it took off pretty quickly, so it is difficult to know for sure, IF you've got any ...
2
Too many variables to predict the rate. That's why you can't find a chart.
Temperature, ABV of beer, yeast cell count per bottle, yeast viability, residual extract in beer (related to FG), dissolved O2: All these things contribute to your specific question about rate. It is not going to be universal.
You need to sacrifice a few bottles along the way and ...
2
You can adjust the sweetness in two other ways not already mentioned.
Through adjusting the mash temperature and time. This will affect how much the natural starches are broken down. Generally mashing at a higher temperature will yield a less fermentable wort and could lead to a "sweeter" tasting beer. This sweetness would be a malty sweetness.
Using a high ...
2
It should be fine, I would think, since it's the yeast that does the carbing in bottle conditioning. Yeast is stored in the fridge routinely before it's woken up, I just wouldn't want to give it any sudden temp changes. Might take a little longer to get it where you want it.
I routinely experience continued fermentation in beers that I keg & put in the ...
2
Answer on your first question: young fermented beer is always cloudy, it will only clear in the bottle. The cloudiness in this stage is caused by the yeast, and that takes some time to drop out.
And, it is connected to your second question. By keeping it warm, your beer will ferment out fine, but it will stay cloudy longer, because the yeast stays active.
...
2
I'm reasonably certain its beer ;) Even a pale ale looks dark in a carboy when it clears.
Your yeast is settling to the bottom and in that process the beer at the top is clearing. But this beer is having trouble clearing. That looks like a lot of sediment for a secondary on a pale ale, to me.
My recommendation would be to crash cool it. That will help ...
2
Posting an update here for folks who may visit this page in future, and to answer some of the queries I posted.
My final product
It tastes like a very very dry white wine.
No pineapple taste
No naartjie taste
No sugar taste
All converted to alcohol.
It's a tad tarty astringent, but by no means worse on the palate than a medium low price Chardonnay.
I ...
2
Do not close the lid of your fermenter. The first 3 to 4 days is when the most yeast action happens and a lot of gas is let out. So keep the lid slightly loose, it will be fine. What I do is close it tight and then give it a slight turn loose.
Just leave it in the fermenter for the 7 days before you bottle it. Make sure everything is super sterile. I'm ...
2
It's actually going to be pretty difficult to cause excess oxidation if you aren't doing it intentionally or performing extra transfers. If you've had uneven priming then you are going to need to up your mixing game. Jeff's method is going to be foolproof for all methods that aren't just adding syrup to your mix.
Maybe some context will help ease your mind/...
1
Obligatory Disclaimer
I'm not at all experienced with brewing ... but I have some pretty good experience with spawning and cultivating mushrooms.
That sure looks like a fungal growth to me. Classic mycelium threads, building into a network.
Some Google Images for you that look pretty similar.
Google Images : mycelium fungus
As with all unknown fungi/...
1
You said you boiled and cooled it to distill it. Unless you are leaving out a lot of steps, you didn't distill your drink, you just boiled it. Boiling a drink like this will reduce the alcohol content and change the flavour, as well as producing more alcohol fumes, which may be why it smells stronger now. It shouldn't be any less safe to drink than it was ...
1
First of all, welcome to HB SE. Questions about distillation are usually not anwsered here, since it is not legal in many countries.
I would say that if you do not have the right equipment or knowledge, it can be very dangerous, do not take any chances. Brewing beer is relatively safe, distillation not so much.
1
If beer is "perfectly carbonated beer", then transferring it isn't a problem. What happen with "warm" beer is that it doesn't retain/absorb gas as a cold liquid. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law
Putting a keg at room temperature and purge it few time will lower the CO2 volume in liquid. Using it cold with pressure will add CO2 volume.
If ...
1
Most likely it will turn out just fine, but you did add risk of infection keeping the lid off for a while. In future you should keep the lid on it, just to keep any wild organisms from flying into the beer and causing infection. I myself will often brew in the evening then let the beer cool overnight, with the LID ON, then pitch the yeast the next morning, ...
1
I've used brewing sugar that was ten years old. Hard as a brick (due to being packaged in plastic that was sufficiently permeable to water vapour) but in the fermenter it dissolved quickly and the yeast climbed into it without any problem. So go for it!
1
Floor Malted Bohemian Pils malt from Weyermann has a huge graham cracker thing going for it when used in a straight Pilsner.
https://bsgcraftbrewing.com/wey-fm-bohemian-pilsner-25kg
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