Beer Feeds

Posted: by cdkrenz (23 hours ago)

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Discuss.

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Hello, I have a strange request. I really enjoy drinking Samuel Adams Boston Lager and would like to make it at home.

The problems are, I don’t have a place to make a lager, and I’m not really set up for all grain. So, is there a clone close-enough for a Samuel Adams Boston Lager (Ale), (extract or part-mash) clone?

I know this sounds weird, but if any of you can help, that would be GREAT !!!!

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I am brewing tomorrow my toasted coconut brown porter (look in receipe section) but cannot find brown malt anyplace. Is their a sub for this?

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Hi. I have a question about how long its okay for beer to stay in the primary before bottling. I have a batch that has been in the primary, undisturbed, for about 2.5 months. I just wasn’t able to bottle it quickly and now want to know if it should still be okay to bottle or should I dump it. Thanks.

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Has ayone done inline aeration with an aquarium pump? I have all the parts but just not the O2 reg or tank so I figured i would set up for the aquarium pump for now and when I get O2 I can just swapo them out?

DOes anyone see and issues with the aquarium pump inline?

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So I’m attempting to hit 1.076 today for my IPA. I wasn’t a big fan of high gravity beers, but I’m finding myself leaning more towards them. I’m going to be racking on the yeast cake from last weekend, so I should be set for the yeast. Anyone else brewing anything interesting?

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I have a small collection of corn sugar packets from B3 kits. Since I don’t bottle they don’t get used for their intended use. What can I do with them? What happens if I toss one these into the boil? I guess a slightly drier beer?

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I haven’t brewed in about a year. The last time I brewed I used LME for the yeast starter but can’t remember for the life of me what the extract to water ratio was. Now, all I see is examples of people using DME for the yeast starter. Is using LME frowned upon now?

Also, are “rice syrup solids” considered DME? I’ll just use that if this is the case.

I’d appreciate any info.

Thanks!

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Posted: by SusurusIgnoramus (21 hours ago)

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I’m getting a jump on the weekend for once.

Perfect cool, cloudy, drizzly day for brewing. I’m doing another IPA… go figure. This one’s called Heavy C’s IPA. It’s bittered with Zeus 2008 (Columbus), and Zues/ Centennial 2008 combo at 30-20-and 1 min.

13 lbs. 2 row, 2 lbs. Carravienne 20, and .50 lbs. wheat. Throwing it on top of a London Ale yeast slurry from the last beer.

mmmmmmmm, I love IPA.

Brew on, neighbors!!

I may even get a chance to do my seasonal stout this weekend!

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Link
Not the greatest article, but something to read if youre bored at work.

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Now for the fun part of this show. We sat down with Jon Lang of Barley Island and Dave Colt of The Ram (Indianapolis) who between them, won every medal at the GABF in the No.16 Wood- and Barrel-Aged Beer category. We sampled Beastie Barrel Stout (bronze), Buffalo Bock (silver) and Old Jack (gold). We also tried a Pro-Am beer called “Single White Friar” which Jon Lang and Mark Schiess created.

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I purchased a used chest freezer that is in excellent condition. My idea is to convert it to a kegerator, however, I am trying to decide how to set it up. I know I want to put a collar in between the door and the body of the freezer. What I’m trying to decide on is whether to glue down plywood to the top and then tile it, and if so, what size tiles OR glue a slab of kitchen countertop (the pressed wood type) on top.

What have you guys done? Any tips?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Darin

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Hello brewboarders,

I was having a discussion with one of the professors here at school about brewing and the conversation ended with him suggesting I look into all grain brewing in my apartment. I thought this was strange because I was under the impression that you needed additional equipment and therefore space to rise to this challenge. He claimed to have had a friend that did all grain in his college apartment (5 gallon batches too) and said he just used the equipment that I have and the beer turned out great. He did not know how it was done exactly as he did not brew, but he says it can be done at a 5 gallon scale on a stove top. So here I am. I want to get into the all-grain brewing but have not been able to find a good resource on this topic (stove top).

Potentially Useful Equipment:
8 gallon SS stockpot
3 gallon SS pot (used for my partial mashing)
2 Large nylon grain bags
6.5 gallon fermenting bucket (w/spigot)
6.5 gallon priming bucket (w/spigot)
1 stove
1 oven

So, is this feasible given what I have (of course I am willing to make small investments to get me up and all-graining). If so, what do I need and how would I do this with what I have? Thanks, yet again, for all of your help.

Brian

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Looking to brew CJ’s JPA and I cannot find any caravienne, anyone know a acceptable substitute for it?

Thank you

Mike

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My old method went like this:

boil 3 gals for 15 mins, cool down some, put in fermenter
boil 3 more gals with extract, hops, etc. for 60 mins, then cool, then mix in with pre-boiled water in fermenter

This was pretty much spot on for giving me 5 gallons.

Now I’m moving to a bigger kettle (old one was 12″ diameter, new one is 16″ diameter).

Should I start with 6 gals like before or will I see more boil-off?

On the one hand the total boil time is less b/c I’m getting all my boiling done in one shot. On the other hand the surface area on the top of the pot is greater.

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I really just wanted everyone to know that I just got a butt-load of fresh hops from a guy in Wriglyville. Boo-yah! Really don’t have much of a question, but I remember a tread started about how to test for the AA. I think there was no real way to do it except by making a hop tea and tasting the bitterness. If anyone remembers how do do this I would appreciate it.
Thanks,
Jay

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I have an amber ale spiced with guidance from a recipe for pumpkin pie that I really enjoy. No clue how the beer will turn out (seemingly good) but I don’t want to invite my friends over to try it and tell them its my pumpkin-pie-recipe-based-first-brew-in-my-new-state. Thats lame. Any suggestions for a name would be nice.

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So me and my buddy are planning on doing 2 consecutive 5 gal batches this Saturday. One is intended to be a Tripel the other a Belgian Golden Strong. We wanted to do a partial mash with each batch. The limiting factor is that I bought 18 lbs of Muntons Dry Extra Light Extract on a whim, so that is what I’m going to use, probably about 9lbs/batch. The basic recipes:

Tripel:

9 lbs Muntons Dry Extra Light Extract
2.5 lbs. Vienna malt
3.0 lbs. clear candi sugar
Insert hops (Tettnang for 60 min?, Saaz at intervals?, Hallertau?)
some yeast nutrients for 15 mins, and a little Irish Moss
I think I’ll as Cloves too, and maybe orange peel
Wyeast 3787

Belgian Golden Strong:

9 lbs. Muntons Dry Extra Light
1 lbs Crystal 20L
1 lbs Munich
Probably Cascade Hops for 10, 20, and 60 min
some yeast nutrients for 15 mins, and a little Irish Moss
Wyeast 3787

Both have OG of around 1.080-1.085, and I’m gonna be doing a full boil to get all my hop utilization. I’ll be adding the extract incrementally and the sugars for 5 min.

Does anyone have any suggestions? What kind of hopping should I use for the Tripel? Should I have a target IBUs to avoid sweet jet fuel effect? What should I be concerned about?

Do I need to start my yeast a couple day ahead of time? Do I need an exceptionally high yeast count?

Thanks

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I had a keg of Golden Ale that just blew. I also have the same exact brew in sec. right now.

What I want to know is can I just release the CO2 from the keg and transfer the beer right into the keg without cleaning or anything?

It should work, right?

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My buddy and I are in the process of brewing our first batch (a hybrid English/American IPA) and we came up a little short on our recipe volume. After a 90 min boil, a couple hydrometer tests, and erring on the side of caution when leaving sediment behind during racking, we wound up with ~4 gallons instead of 5 on bottling day. To complicate things, when we made our priming solution for the bottling bucket we accidentally measured the sugar (we used cane sugar) by volume instead of weight. So here’s my problem:

1. We were shooting for ~2.5 volumes of CO2, which would have required ~3.5 oz by weight of cane sugar for a 5 gallon batch (temp is ~63 deg. F). Due to our weight vs. volume mistake, we ended up with 2.33 oz by weight of sugar.

2. After realizing our mistake, I did a ratio calculation and determined that to get the 2.5 CO2 volumes we wanted, we should have added 2.8 oz by weight of the cane sugar.

I think we’re relatively okay because we were shooting for the high end of the spectrum for carbonation, but we would really like to get an exact reading of the volumes of CO2 for record-keeping purposes. First, because the uncarbonated beer sample from our final hydrometer test tasted pretty good, so we want to keep the recipe for further adjustments. Second, because we don’t want to screw up again.

All the nomographs out there seem to be for 5-gallon batches. Is there any way for me to determine my volumes of CO2 given our small recipe volume?

Thanks for the help

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The big night is less that two weeks away: Election Night.  Maybe it’s because we work in the beer business, but it seems like the three debates were great nights to sit back, pontificate on who made a better showing and drink a good beer.  Election Night ‘08 should be no different.
Here are some ideas […]

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I have my regulator set so that I’ll eventually reach about 3.2 volumes (21PSI @ 40-41 degF) of CO2. What do you guys normally shoot for?

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I just got some kegs and I am really eager to keg some beer. But my batches that are ready for packaging require that I package a case of each in bottles. I know that I could keg the whole batch and use a beer gun or similar gadget to bottle a case of bottles, but I’d rather bottle half the batch and keg half the batch in one packaging event.

I expected I might be able to do this by priming as normal, bottling a case, then putting whatever’s leftover in a keg.

I now understand that I would generally use roughly half the priming sugar for “keg conditioning” as I would for bottle conditioning. I am also not really clear on what the effect of the huge headspace of a half-full corny keg would be…

Can I prime my batch with a normal amount of sugar, and then keg half of it? Would I be able to control the carbonation just using the regulator on my CO2 tank? Or would I need to let it carbonate naturally in the keg, then release all the CO2, and then pressurize it from the tank?? Or should I just buy the beer gun and do it that way??

Thanks!

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Is there really only two choices for a stainless conical for a 10 gallon batch. The only ones I’ve ever seen are the ferminator and the one morebeer offers.

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Posted: by tigerpaws (21 hours ago)

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I have grain (I dunno what kind) Wy Yeast and I believe hops…everything has been refridgerated except for a few short (like an hour tops) power outages, everything is in the fridge or freezer. I think the only thing in the fridge is the yeast. Do I need to get new or fresh anything?

I’m doing this alone, and the last time everyone walked me through it. But Jason no longer works at Alt Bev and I don’t know anyone over there now.

Thanks for any help.

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Has Anyone brewed with this? What are your thoughts?

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So I have been getting a rash of under-attenuating batches. Previous threads have told me to double check my thermometers for mash temp accuracy. My HLT thermo (blichman) boils at 212, so I know that is right on. I had thought that I lose 12 deg transferring to the mash tun, so heating to 178, gave me a reading on my MT thermo (blichman) of 166, after striking grains I would achieve a 150 mash. Thought everything was cool and the gang- not quite so turns out (I think?)

It all looked right. So I took the thermo out of the MT to test it in boiling water and it showed boil at 206, only problem is it also showed room temp which was supposed to be 64, but read 68- higher than reality not lower.

So I recalibrated up 6 degrees on it to make my boil temp a true reading 212, but that now makes my 64 deg room temp read 74.

Now to make sure of accuracy I know the answer will be to compare it to another known calibrated thermo, but my glass stick thermo is broke, my other blichmans are all attached by weld-b-gones (so I can’t just yank those out), and my wireless BBQ thermo is reading haywire all of a sudden (gonna try replacing the batteries tonight after work).

So the big question is if my recalibration worked, and 212 really is 212 now, is a 10 degree swing at room temp acceptable and normal? And how accurate will this be in the median at 150 deg? Anyone else encounter similar issues?

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