Messages

196

All Things Food / Re: Bread Pre-ferments

« on: November 20, 2010, 11:10:33 PM »

Flour is technically a sugar per se.  Yeast can consume a carbohydrate chain of four sugars or less.  You're not trying to ferment the entire loaf, but there's enough residual sugars in the flour for the yeast to feed on.

197

Equipment and Software / Re: Good thermometers?

« on: November 20, 2010, 06:55:24 PM »

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009WE45/ref=ox_ya_os_product

$13.  Buy as many as you need.

The guy I brew with is a chef in NYC and these are the thermometers they use in the kitchen.

198

Equipment and Software / Re: Stainless Steel Immersion Chiller

« on: November 19, 2010, 09:12:23 AM »

I would agree that it wouldn't be as efficient at transferring heat as copper, and that would be the biggest concern.  You want to chill wort as rapidly as possible to your pitching temperature.  Copper is the best metal to do this with.

199

The Pub / Re: My apartment smells funny

« on: November 18, 2010, 07:23:05 PM »

I take out the trash.

I wash the dishes.

You know, where rotting food would be.

My oven isn't filled with splattered casserole.

There isn't food littered all over the f**king place.

Why does my apartment smell like food?  Why does the smell persist?  What am I missing here, people?

My roach-control methodology is to not leave any food for the roaches.  Or the mice.  This should suffice to prevent infestation by strange smells too.  What the hell?

Did you try bathing yourself?  Change of underwear?

Did you have a pet one day and then not the next?

200

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: filtered water and R/O stuff

« on: November 18, 2010, 04:39:02 PM »

You might want to have your water tested. That would give you a good starting point. Many universities will do the testing for very little. If you do not know what your water baseline is, you will just be guessing by adding anything. Hope this helps...

Gary

Or you can get it tested at www.wardlab.com.  Test W-6 for $16.50 will give you all the info you need.

+1

I just did this.  I sent them a water sample in a Poland Spring bottle (16 oz.) on a Thursday from here in NJ.  I got the test results emailed to me on Tuesday.  I then spent the next 24 hours reading everything I could about water chemistry, playing with Palmer's Excel spreadsheet, and messing around with BeerSmith's water chemistry calculations.  It really explained a lot about why my beers taste the way they do.  Total eye-opener and well worth the $16.50 I spent for the test.

201

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: The final word on a secondary fermentation

« on: November 18, 2010, 08:57:33 AM »

I have 12 carboys I use for secondary fermentation and 6 for primary fermentation.  Why?  Because I make so much friggin' homebrew that I have to store the backlog somewhere.  I can only get 5 kegs in the fridge at a time, so the other batches are usually queued in secondary carboys for however long.  Oh, and I split 10-gallon batches with another brewer.

202

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Lagering temps.....

« on: November 18, 2010, 07:19:45 AM »

Lager means to age.

When you lager a batch you usually are doing it a lower temperatures.  This affects the length of time required to get a full fermentation and it also affects what the yeast contributes to the beer.  Lagering usually prevents the yeast from producing esters, and fermenting at warmer temperatures runs the risk of having the yeast contribute esters to the flavor of the beer.

I've started outside the fridge, and I've chilled the wort down to 58°F after the boil and pitched a 42°F starter into it with the same results from each.  I usually keep the yeast within the temperature range posted on the package, that's the best rule of thumb.  After primary fermentation is done, you can drop the temperature down to the mid-30s (°F) and lager it there for a few weeks.

This is a very important part of Palmer's site to read:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter10-4.html

It talks about a diacetyl rest.  You probably don't need to worry about this when you're making your first batch or two, but if you taste diacetyl, this is where is may be coming from and how to prevent it.

203

Equipment and Software / Re: Refractometers

« on: November 18, 2010, 07:07:35 AM »

I just stick my brewing spoon into the boiling wort and let it drip onto the refractometer.  Why buy more stuff?

Isn't the point of this hobby to buy as much stuff as possible and come up with reason to brew with it? 

204

Yeast and Fermentation / Re: Oxygenating Wort

« on: November 15, 2010, 08:45:38 AM »

We use an O2 tank and stone.  It makes a considerable difference in the quality of your beer.

We also started using a stir plate.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/default/northern-brewer-stir-plate.html
http://www.northernbrewer.com/default/2000-ml-yeast-starter-kit.html

With a properly made starter we can get a krausen on the wort in about 6 hours.  The cost of the stir plate and the starter kit was about $100.  However, in the past we would make 2 gallons of starter for high gravity beers using 2# of DME.  Now we make 1.5L of starter with 1.5 cups of DME for the same high gravity batches.  It saves us approximately $20 per batch, so in the long run it's a really good thing.

205

Other Fermentables / Re: Fixing a bland Cyser

« on: November 14, 2010, 05:43:16 PM »

What's the current flavor profile and how does it differ with what you were shooting for?  Bland is a broad description.

206

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Out of Starsan sanitizer is chlorine bleach okay?

« on: November 13, 2010, 09:30:53 PM »

My bleach story is a sad one.

We used to sanitize our glass with bleach.  Made a Belgian Dubbel one day and fermented in a bleached carboy.  When we tasted the beer it was my first introduction to chlorophenol--the wet Band-Aid flavor.  Killed an entire 10-gallon batch of what would have been awesome beer.  After that day we banished bleach from the brewery forever.  It's either Iodophor or PBW for everything.  I strongly recommend deep cleaning with PBW, especially stainless kegs.  Leave it overnight or for a couple of days.  Sparkling clean on the inside.

207

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: What's the most you've ever done in a weekend?

« on: November 13, 2010, 08:23:54 AM »

Brewed three 10-gallon all grain batches back-to-back and kegged two 10-gallon batches.  It was a 15-hour day.  Good times, good times.

208

Yeast and Fermentation / Re: Spilled Yeast while making Starter

« on: November 12, 2010, 09:38:11 AM »

You're making a starter.  Don't sweat it.  You should have enough yeast cells in the starter to kick off a decent brew.

209

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Burners for 10 gal batches

« on: November 10, 2010, 07:03:00 PM »

You should be fine with 55K.  We have two 55K burners (http://www.northernbrewer.com/default/cast-burner-55000-btu.html) and we boil water just fine.  Actually, we usually turn down the boil burner once we have a rolling boil.  Pushing out more BTUs is just a waste of gas.  We're boiling 13-14 gallons.

210

All Things Food / Beer Bread

« on: November 09, 2010, 01:29:44 PM »

I had a friend who had some beer bread mix given to them and they used our Bohemian Pilsner to make some.  It tasted freakin' awesome!  It was definitely bread but with a subtle and balanced pilsner flavor to it.

So I scoured the Internet for a decent beer bread recipe.  It seems like all of them settle on something like this:

3 cups self-rising flour
3 tablespoons white sugar
12oz of beer

I've been baking for several years and want to start integrating more homebrew into the recipes.  Today I'm going to make a loaf of IPA bread and American Black Ale (my own style for a beer I've made that isn't a Black IPA or a Brown or a Stout, but sort of steals from all of them) bread.

Has anyone else made homebrew bread and do you have advice / recipes to share?

Thanks!