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So I really want to brew a saison this afternoon but I dont have my yeast starter started. Can I just Pitch it right into the fermentor? I always make a starter so thats why i’m asking. Are their any tricks I can do to help them out in this short amount of time?
Cheers
I’m getting ready to buy some stainless tubing for a rotating racking arm for my Keg fermenter. The price of the welded tubing from McMaster isn’t that bad, but I’m worried about the weld bead on the ID. How significant is it? Should I spend the extra money (and it’s significantly higher) on the welded and drawn tubing?
I’m looking toward you metal-working guys for guidance!
Thanks
Mike
Hi all. I brewed a JPA 9 days ago. Used Wyeast 1968 with a 1 liter starter.
After 9 days this is what the yeast looks like. Does this look normal? I just racked to secondary and it smells and tastes great. But weird looking. No activity for about 3 days now. OG was 1.061 and FG is 1.019 which is slightly higher than I expected.
Any thoughts? The yeast cake is normally nice and creamy, where this is more chunky. First time it looked like this in the 12 batches I have made so far.
Pilsner Urquell. I picked it out and continued drinking it anyway. Too good a beer to pour out for that.
Posted: by kajerm (13 hours ago)
Craft beer industry swells; Colo. brewers rank second
The Denver Business Journal - August 24, 2007
by Noelle Leavitt, Denver Business Journal
Colorado’s craft beer business is growing and with 90 breweries, the state is the second-largest producer of craft beer nationwide.
Statistics show continued popularity of craft among consumers.
In 2006, Colorado craft brewers sold $471 million worth of […]
It is straught out of the kettle in the picture, so it is still full of a little cold break.
Quick question. I’m looking to do full boil with at least a 7.5G (but more likely 10G) brew pot. Will a normal kitchen stove top be sufficient to handle this task or must an independent outdoor burner be used. Any help or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
brewed the Flat Ass Tired (Fat Tire Clone) from this board, this weekend. 2nd attempt at all grain. For some reason I CANNOT get this efficiency shiznit worked out. Last time I was short of what I got into the fermenter, due to not accounting for grains absorbtion, boil off and hops.
This time, I made sure to sparge with at least 1.25 gallons more water. This time I was closer to the volume I wanted in the end, but my OG was WAY low.. 1.035.. Expected 1.056. What the hell can I be doing wrong?
If it makes any difference, Im using a 48qt cooler, with Denny’s SS braid as a false bottom. Only one braid. Would making a “T” and adding another SS braid help?
Subject says it all… is there any interest in doing a 100% brett beer as a possible group brew/mini-group brew? An initial thought (if there is interest) is that we could use a similar grist/hop bill and have different groups ferment with differnt Brett strains (i.e. Brettanomyces bruxellensis, Brettanomyces claussenii, and Brettanomyces lambicus) and do a swap and tasting at the end to compare and contrast the different strains. From my understanding the whole project should take about 8wks in a carboy and another 3-4 months or so in a bottle before an all brett beer begins to reach it’s prime.
OldSock has similar experiments on this blog if you want to take a look and see what you may be in for http://madfermentationist.blogspot.com/search/label/Brett
other resources that I can think off off hand are:
“Brewing Sour Beers at Home Using Traditional & Alternative Methods” a powerpoint from Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo talk at NHC is available at http://www.babblebelt.com/newboard/forum.h…752780&pg=1
Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition by Jeff Sparrow
Anybody in?
I think I might have just screwed up my brewing schedule. I brewed last night and after making some adjustments to try and improve my effeciency, I overshot the hell out of my original gravity. I was shooting for 1.055, and got around 1.070. Fortunately, I had a huge starter to pitch, but I was hoping to brew again this weekend. Problem is, I only have one primary fermenter and I have doubts that this beer will be done by Saturday or Sunday. So, question is, can I move a beer to secondary before it’s done fermenting without screwing it up? (White Labs Irish Ale yeast in case your wondering, pitched a good quart of it.)
I didnt want to hijack the best chiller thread but ive been thinking (yes i can think every now and again).
Yesterday I brewed with Stangbat. He uses the whirlpool/IM/Pump cooling option. He used tap water thru the IC and got below 140* in a few minutes. Then he hooked up his ice bath return and finished the job. Obviously, he was out of the DMS zone quickly. Total chill time using this setup on a 10.5g batch or so was around 33-35 min. Not bad IMO!….
Now my setup is different. I pump thru a CFC using ground water then pump into a second copper coil that I call a Post Wort Chiller (PWC) thats in an ice bath then straight into the fermenter. Its all setup inline. I can get a 15g batch in the fermentor at 65* from flame out in 18-20min. Lagers I add more ice and get close to the same times. I leave the lid off my kettle during the chill as its still producing steam and this prevents DMS cursors returning back into the wort. In cooler weather i ditch the PWC and just use the CFC and get the same times.
Now heres the question for lots of comments. My method doesnt get the wort in the kettle down below 140* (DMS) in 3-6 minutes like Stangbats method. But my method gets the entire volume in the fermenter quicker. So, how long after flameout will DMS cursors start to rear their ugly face? I have never tasted or been judged DMS in my beers and neither has Stangbat……
Id even entertain some thoughts from the No Chill guys (OMG, I cant believe I said that 
)….
So, what gives?
I just built my system, converted a small chest freezer, brewed two beers a strawberry babe and a yeungling style……I forced carbed the strawberry at 20 lbs for 4 days….at first all I was getting was foam and now I get a little foam but the beer just tastes flat……have I screwed something up?
HELP……before I start on the yeungling.
Posted: by PhiloPsych (8 hours ago)
We launched BeerDinners.com a couple weeks back, and so far, we’re getting some good feedback.
Appellation Beer made a great point - Shouldn’t every dinner be a “Beer Dinner”?
There’s been quite a bit of BeerDinner.com chatter on BeerAdvocate.com.
And A-Cold-Beer.com seems to like the Grilled Sausage, Jicama; Apple Slaw and Scottish Porter Apricot Mustard. Chris tried […]
After trying a couple barleywines with some Scotch characteristics (subtle in DFH Immort Ale, not as subtle as JW Lee’s Harvest aged in Lagavulin barrels) I think I would like to make my first English Barleywine, and give it a little scotch character. I’m thinking a gravity around 1.100 with IBU’s at maybe ~50 (All EKG). Almost all Maris Otter with a small percentage in peat smoked and regular smoked malt (maybe 2-1 smoked:peat), a 2-3 hour boil to give it color and some English yeast. This will be a 5G batch. Any suggestions for % of smoked/peat malts? I want it subtle, but there. How about the yeast, I don’t brew much English stuff so I don’t have any favorites.
Fellow brewers,
the September 2007 Beer Pass drawing (deadline to enter) will be held this Friday, August 31. The deadline to ship beers will be two weeks later, Friday, September 14. Normally I try to post this earlier to get more people to sign up, so if there is great hue and cry we can extend the sign up period for another week. In fact, I will be out of town the whole memorial weekend, so i will actually run the pass monday night unless there is strong sentiment to wait longer.
Since I took over the pass there have been only a very few losers who failed to send beer. However, it has happened, including to me, and it is not a pleasant experience. In order to avoid misunderstandings, I suggest you send your recipient a tracking number once the beer is shipped.
Thanks as always for participating in the beer pass!
The rules for the Pass:
1. Preferably send Homebrew, but if your stocks are low you can send a favorite microbrew. If you are sending a commercial style, check in with the person you are sending it to just to make sure they don’t already have a bunch of that in the fridge already.
2. Drawings will be held on the last Friday of the Month and the deadline to Ship your beers is 2 weeks after the drawing. That allows some people who get paid every other week to wait for the following paycheck if it falls on an odd week for them.
3.Every Month is different. Just sign up during the month you want to participate.
4. You are responsible for PMing the person you are paired up with for the month.
5. Minimum of 2 bottles to be sent, can be 2 of the same, or a mix and match. Feel free to send more if you wish.
6. If you don’t receive someone beer from them, within 2 weeks of the deadline, post it and they are out of the name exchange for good, unless everyone who is participating votes to give them another chance, or a penalty is paid to the person who did not receive beer.
7. You must me 21 to participate.
I’ll be in London on Busines from 9.9 to 9.28. Please, any suggestions of pubs/breweries to visit or worse yet, NOT visit.
thx,
They’ve been running this promo for years, and it’s always been a success. A great and affordable way to get into some microbrews and a good time to top it off.
School’s back in session so their won’t be a shortage of people to meet and hang out with. If you’re in the neighborhood on […]
Every now and then my SWMBO request a certain beer that on the tip of her tongue. She tosses out flavors, bitterness, and body feel and I like to try my hand at a recipe.
This time she requested something of low bitterness, chocolatey, toasty, toffee, but not roasty. Dark, but not black, with nice full bodied mouthfeel.
I gather she wants a full bodied English Brown ale, just short of a roasty porter.
So with that said, how does this look:
8 lb English Pale
1 lb Victory
.5 lb Chocolate
.5 lb Crystal 120L
Mashed at 154oF
1 oz Fuggles at 60min
1oz Fuggles at 2min
Come to around 1.054 and 23 SRM
With English or British yeast, Or even American??
I think I’m finally going to bite the bullet and buy a whole 500g brick of S-189, but I can’t find anybody that sells it. Anybody know of a source?
I made a yeast starter 1 week ago. It’s a full liter and has made a great start however I’m afraid I left it sitting too long. If it has ceased all activity and is dormant will it restart when its pitched or should I add more wort too it and find out first?
Posted: by juzy (23 hours ago)
Since I didn’t brew this past weekend, I decided to try my hand at building a stir plate. I took the fan out of an old computer I’ve had stashed away in my closet. From that same computer I also took a round magnet about the size of a quarter (came from a speaker in the computer). I used an old router power supply for the power…connected it to the fan. Then I screwed the fan to a 2″ thick piece of wood. Next, I super glued a canning lid to the top of the fan. Off to the side of that canning lid I glued the magnet. I put a tupperware bowl over the whole thing to act as the cover. (I’m thinking of getting some plexi-glass and making a permanent cover soon) Since I don’t have a stir bar (yet) I used a thin nail which I cut down to be about 1/4″ long. I also don’t have an erlenmeyer flask yet, so for practice I just used a pint glass.
I was able to get the nail to spin, and the water did start to rotate…but I never got a funnel. I am going to buy a real stir bar and an erlenmeyer flask. Will those two things make this stir plate work like I need it to, or should I change anything with my setup? Also, what kind/size/shape of stir bar does everyone recommend?
I goofed and ended up with a low temperature mash, ( 140F ). I heated the mash water to 150F ( before I added the grains )instead of 162F. I never realized the goof until it was in the fermenter. How will this beer turn out? I didn’t check for conversion with Iodine, but I’m going to for now on. I didn’t do a temp check because I have been using the same old procedures for a long time. I had better pay more attention to what I am doing for now on.
Cameron
Greetings all,
I had emailed a brewery that I toured a month ago asking for a clone recipe for one of their beers that I liked. Their head brewer was most gracious enough to reply to me with the recipe to include grain and hops but he couldn’t tell me which yeast to use. This is a cut and paste from the email….
So I was wondering if anyone had recommendations on a yeast based of this description. I was thinking of perhaps WLP500, but I’m not sure…. 
Cheers,
Impalla
Hi guys,
I’m wondering if you or anyone you know, has ever drilled into keg lid
and added in a keg post ?
I was on MoreBeer’s website last night, and saw this one :
http://morebeer.com/view_product/18212/
However they have not been available since last May. This is basically I am interested in,
minus the carbonator tube and carbonation stone.
I did a search for this, and couldn’t pick up anything, so thought I would ask this morning.
thanks guys !
Posted: by number1bum (3 hours ago)
The smack pack that I ordered arrived warm. I did a yeast starter and never got them to work so I ran to my lhbs and bought an equivalent strain of dry yeast. Never used dry yeast before. I rehydrate with 1 cup of water that I had brought to a boil and cool down to around 85 - 90 dF. I left it to rehydrate for almost an hour while the wort was chilling. This time around, I did a real good job aerating the wort. I pitched the yeast at 1:15AM, wort temp was 78dF. 4 hrs later, wort was down to 74dF (and dropping) and the yeast were happily working, I already had activity!!! Way freaking cool! Maybe it was the aeration, maybe it was all the other variables (this was my best brew session so far) but I never had yeast take off so quickly.
I am doing a winter spiced ale. OG was 1.063 (adjusted). Initial sample tasted delicious. I can’t wait to drink this in 3-4 months!!
Hope everyone else had a happy brewing weekend!
