I just saw an add for Sanke kegs for 75$. Is this a good deal, or could they be had cheaper.
Forum: Equipment | Author: bruguru
Posted: February 10, 2009, 9:36 pm
Learning How to Make Beer From a Book is Crazy!
I've read every book on home brewing I could find and while some are better than others, none of them taught me as much as I learned in one day of WATCHING A BREWMASTER AT WORK.
I made my Chocolate Oatmeal Stout yesterday, and today all seems to be going really well, the yeast starter did it's trick and its REALLY fermenting and bubbling away.
Where I have my fermentor placed its 64ish F right now and varies to 73ish, I had the bucket wrapped in towels and a heating pad underneath. The bucket is pretty warm at the moment, much warmer then the surrounding air temp, I would guess around 75-80 possibly. Is having the bucket wrapped and using a heating pad overkill, and could the high temp mess up the fermentation?
Thanks
guy
Forum: Homebrewing | Author: GuyNMT
Posted: December 27, 2008, 1:31 pm
Hey everyone, some-time lurker, first time poster. Like many delurkers, I finally registered because I need some advice... and everyone here is so smart! So without further ado:
I brewed a monster of a trippel earlier this month - it was largely based upon the "Tripel Around The World" recipe in Sam Calagione's "Extreme Brewing." I made it a little bigger, though: the OG after the boil was 1.108. Fermentation was blow-off-tube-vigorous, thanks to the massive starter of Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity) I made.
The recipe calls for the addition of 1 lb. of brown sugar two days into the fermentation, which I followed. There's no way to be absolutely sure what this did to the overall gravity of the beer, but to the best of my calculations, it added approx .009. Fermentation continued, and I left it alone for some time. After a little over a week, it looked as if things had settled down, so I checked the gravity: 1.037. Not bad from such a high start, but still "too high" to be palatable. And there it stopped.
I read Wyeast's website about 3787, which indicated that this strain likes to continue to be fed sugar additions. So I added yet another pound of brown sugar (again, by my estimates, adding .009 to the gravity), and out of prudence, pitched an additional smackpack of 3787 I had lying around. Things got going again (though not as much as before), and I managed to get the beer down to 1.030. There it stayed.
If I'm right that the brown sugar additions added approx. .009 to the gravity of the beer, then the alcohol level is getting up there: 1.108 + .009 + .009 = 1.126. (1.126-1.030)*131 = 12.6% ABV.
I've sampled the beer: it smells and tastes like a tripel; in fact, it tastes quite like New Belgium's Trippel... aside from the fact that it is WAY too sweet. Cloyingly so - it has a wonderful exotic complexity, but definitely too sweet for more than a sip or two. Unfortunately, being brewed as a tripel, the hop bittering presence is relatively low, so the beer is unbalanced.
(as a side note, I should say the wort made was highly fermentable, so much of the residual sugars ought to be able to be fermented... by a yeast with a high enough alcohol tolerance).
So I thought I would add some champagne yeast to try and bring things down a bit more and dry it out a little; beer yeast would probably just pass out in this high alcohol environment. So I pitched a packet of rehydrated Lalvin-1118 in 24 hours ago...
... and nothing. 24 hours later, there has been no appreciable sign of fermentation and the gravity is unchanged.
So. Decision time! I see a few options, but only a couple I'd really want to try:
(1) condition and bottle it where it is. Ugh, I don't think so. I'd never drink it... too sweet by far.
(2) boil some hops in a small amount of water (or weak extract wort) for an hour and blend it with the trippel to try and up the bitterness to balance the beer out. This seems like the best option, BUT I'm afraid I'd take the beer too far in another direction -- I don't want some kind of american barleywine thing; I'd like to keep it reminiscent of a tripel if possible (fruity and floral).
(3) Try champagne yeast again, but pitch substantially more, on the theory that the yeast in one packet simply rehydrated was overwhelmed/shocked by the environment in the beer. Use multiple packets, and/or make a starter of champagne yeast. I know conventional wisdom is that one shouldn't make starters for dry yeast, but since the starter would be pitched into such a high alcohol environment (currently at least 10.2%, perhaps as high as 12.7%), I'd think any bacteria/wild yeasts in the packet would have a hard time taking over.
So FINALLY... I turn to you guys: would you choose one of the above options, and if so, which (and how would you go about it)? Is there another avenue to consider to help reduce the sweetness?
Cheers, and thanks in advance!
- EJ
(I'm choosing to not even THINK about carbonation at this point... this beer may be the one that tips the scales toward kegging for me, but I'll worry about that later...)
Forum: Homebrewing | Author: Engine Joe
Posted: December 27, 2008, 6:24 pm
dropped my 10 gallon batch using nothing but my new plate chiller and gravity. The plate chiller brought my batch from boiling to 57.8 degrees F in 18 minutes. Dropped into two 7 gallon fermenters as it was chilling. FREAKING AWSOME. I can't say enough about this way to chill I mean, it is really the way to go.
Forum: Equipment | Author: bruguru
Posted: December 28, 2008, 7:00 pm
I'm trying to keep better track of numbers now as I try to get into designing my own recipies and become a better brewer as a whole. I plan to use Promash to help me do this. One bit of information that it wants for the "water needed" calculator is the evaporation rate (of the boil) in % per hour.
Saturday I brewed a porter, and collected 7.5 gal of wort pre-boil from both runnings(batch sparge) and ended up with 6 gal left after the 60 min. boil. I'm guessing that this is a 20% loss. Is that correct? I haven't really haven't had work with percentages in awhile, but I figured that 6/7.5=0.8. Which means that 6 gallons is 80% of 7.5 gallons, or a 20% loss from the original volume. Is that right?
Forum: Homebrewing | Author: Mortician607
Posted: December 29, 2008, 10:38 am
This is the current recipe, I did just get some new hops from freshops, so my next batch of this is going to have a totally different hop schedule, I'll put that variation at the end.
13 gallon batch
15 gallon boil
90 minute boil
88% brewhouse efficiency
OG- 1.085
FG- 1.015
SRM- 7
IBU- 133
25# 2 row pale
3# light munich (6L)
1# torrified wheat
1# special roast
1# melanoiden
4# corn sugar (10 minutes to flameout)
All pellet
3 oz columbus (60)
4oz simcoe (60)
1oz simcoe (20)
1oz amarillo (20)
1oz simcoe (10)
1oz amarillo (10)
1oz amarillo (0)
1oz centennial (0)
4oz centennial (dry 2 weeks)
75 minute mash @ 150
US-05 / WY1056 / WLP001 @ 64 deg ambient
Modified hop schedule, will be brewing 1/9/09
3oz Zeuss (leaf) 60
2oz Zeuss (leaf) 30
1oz Warrior (pellet) 30
2oz Cascade (leaf) 20
1oz Centennial (leaf) 10
1oz amarillo (leaf) 10
1oz Centennial (leaf) 0
1oz Amarillo (leaf) 0
1oz Summit (pellet) 0
2oz warrior (pellet) dry
2oz Summit (pellet) dry
This will back it down to 110 IBU.
When I saw summit was available I had to jump on it, love the grapefruit/pineapple it gives. There is a micro on one of the islands (I think martha's vineyard) that does an all summit IPA, when I had that I definitely wanted to do one, but am ltd to only 3oz per order. At 18% AAU, a little can go a long way, but I chose to get the aroma out for this batch.
Forum: Homebrew Recipes | Author: thirsty
Posted: December 29, 2008, 11:21 am
Says cannot connect to database. I am a computer moron, so maybe its me, but tried all afternoon, no worky.
Forum: Homebrewing | Author: thirsty
Posted: December 29, 2008, 7:17 pm
we are just brewing our first batch with a Coopers kit. we are thinking of ordering more packages, and wonder about ordering more bottles. i have noticed that plastic bottles seem to be very unpopular and now am unsure what to do. any advice would be greatly appreciated. we're not sure how far we will take this, but we do like good micro beers, and hope this will be a successful hobby.
Forum: Bottling | Author: Nick&Lori
Posted: December 30, 2008, 2:05 pm
[b][color=red]Meadllennium [/color][/b]will be held on 24 January 2009, in Central Florida. All are welcome, so please plan to come out and help us judge & steward this event. There is no better way to sample some exceptional meads. [i]Nice weather and good mead ? what a great combination![/i]
This is a MEAD-ONLY competition, registered with the AHA/BJCP, and will be run, once again, by Ron Bach, a triple Grand Master judge with the BJCP. Entries should be categorized using the 2008 AHA/BJCP style guidelines for categories 24, 25 and 26.
Awards, made especially for Meadllennium, will be awarded to First, Second and Third place winners. The Best Of Show winner will also have a special award.
There is no limit to the number of entries each meadmaker may send, and there is no limit to how many meads each meadmaker may enter in each sub-category.
This year, only online electronic entries will be accepted. This speeds up the registration process, and causes fewer errors while recording your entry information.
Cost is still $6.00 per entry. Form of payment is check, money order or PayPal.
Entries should arrive after 1 January 2009 and before 19 January 2009. For shipping address and drop-off locations, as well as all the information, go to: www.CFHB.org.
Forum: Mead | Author: OCurrans
Posted: January 1, 2009, 8:53 am
