Messages

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General Homebrew Discussion / Re: My homebrew smells like vomit

« on: May 02, 2012, 04:28:14 pm »

Chad Yakobson was just on the Brewing Network. He claimed to have a brew full of Butyric Acid and Brett ate it up and produced pleasant flavors. I think he said it took 6 months.

Interview starts sometime after the 50 minute mark - http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/866

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General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Really bad O.G. from specialty grains - any chance of a redo?

« on: March 19, 2012, 04:59:57 pm »

Now that I've calculated it through Hopville I dont' think I was that off. The beer is milky white and I'm thinking it's better off as a starter. I'll try again this weekend and recycle the yeast. The hop additions were so low that I only need more grains and I'll mini mash that as you suggested.

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General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Really bad O.G. from specialty grains - any chance of a redo?

« on: March 19, 2012, 11:32:56 am »

I hope you're right about the ice.  Although it's been maybe 10 years, the last study I read cast serious doubt on the food safety of commercial ice.

Small apartment brewing. Over the years I'm convinced I want an easy and fun brew day over 'keep up with the pack' brewing. I have an AG setup and a wort chiller. But I save hours of time by not lugging them out of storage, cleaning, then re-cleaning, and lugging back to storage.

Before I made the 'downgrade' to ice I talked to several people who have been doing it for years. They confirmed no infections and no one has detected infections in my last 7 ice brews. If I get one infection at this point then it's still worth the hours of time it's saved me.

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General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Really bad O.G. from specialty grains - any chance of a redo?

« on: March 19, 2012, 09:20:52 am »

I created a Hopville recipe with it, http://hopville.com/recipe/1239051/witbier-recipes/zymurgys-blunder, turns out 1.035 is what I should have expected with that grain bill. So .005 would be explained by poor steeping practice. My oats clumped together and I didn't do enough to break it up. After reading up on Carapils I don't expect it to convert any of the starches anyways.

As far as my readings, I confirmed the accuracy of my hydrometer before I started brewing.

Given all of the starch in the beer I'll probably to dump it. Perhaps I can cold crash and collect the yeast. Then I just need to re-buy the grains and I can do a round two.

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Zymurgy / Problem with White Lightning Recipe, Vol 35, No 2 (current), pg 20

« on: March 18, 2012, 09:19:00 pm »

Just finished brew day on this recipe and had some problems with my OG. I did the extract option, steeping .5# of flaked oats and Carapils. My OG came out low. Looking into it I find that Carapils has no diastic power but flaked oats needs to be mashed.

Is this recipe correct or is this a mistake? I may end up throwing out this batch and keeping my Muscat concentrate for a future one.

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General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Really bad O.G. from specialty grains - any chance of a redo?

« on: March 18, 2012, 09:02:23 pm »

This is the white lighting recipe from this months issue of Zymurgy. @dmtaylor - really disappointed if I needed to mash flaked oats when Zymurgy told me that wasn't necessary. 

2#LME Pilsner
2#LME Wheat
8 oz Carapils
0.5 # Flaked oats

Seep Carapils and Flaked Oats for 30 minutes at 154F. Strain add extracts top off with water and proceed with boil. 

I did the above, keeping 3# of the extract for 0 minutes.  I was down to 2.5 gallons at the end of the boil and dumped in 1.5 bags of ice to bring it down to 68F. Added water to 4.5 gallons and took my gravity reading.

Kept it below 5 gallons because I'm adding 4# of Muscat Grape Juice during primary fermentation.

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General Homebrew Discussion / Really bad O.G. from specialty grains - any chance of a redo?

« on: March 18, 2012, 08:09:42 pm »

Using a recipe that's 4 # of LME, .5 # of flaked oats and .5 # of carapils. Expected O.G. was 1.045 and I had 1.030. I plugged it into hopville and confirmed 1.045 was correct.

Since these are specialty grains with no fermentation, could I potentially re-steep and boil these in a 1 gallon batch and pitch to secondary? Or if I can get it in soon enough, primary. Right now it's only 4 gallons so I have room for that.

I think my oats clumped together and I hadn't noticed until I threw them in the trash.

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General Homebrew Discussion / Brewing with Muscat Grape Concentrate

« on: March 11, 2012, 05:27:52 pm »

This week I'm brewing the White Lightning Recipe in Zymurgy pg 20 and had a few questions.

For all grail it's 5# of grain, and then Muscat Grape Juice (4#) added after primary fermentation.
For extract, it's 1# of grain and 3.2# of DME. Muscat Grape Juice is added to secondary.

I will be doing the extract version with wyeast witbier.

First, why the difference in the grape juice addition? You have less trub with extract and it seems like it could be added to primary as well.

Second, it seems odd to add 4# of fermentable sugar after primary. Won't this force the active yeast to go through another fermentation? With less vitamins and oxygen they'll be stressed and produce off flavors. It seems better to add the juice 2-3 days into fermentation when most of my yeasts are still active.