Messages

1

Beer Recipes / Re: Lavender in a Dubbel?

« on: May 20, 2013, 06:53:24 AM »

Sounds good, thanks for the advice. I have just one more completely noob question, in the name of science. I've been very curious about the variety of effects achieved by adding Brett to a batch. If I'm going to be packaging and cellaring this not so fruitful experiment for quite a while, would it be worth adding some Brett to see if that might clean up the lavender or perhaps mask it with typical acidic flavors that it produces? Or Lacto or Pedio?

Totally a shot in the dark, but any advice is much appreciated!

2

Beer Recipes / Lavender in a Dubbel?

« on: May 19, 2013, 06:16:45 PM »

A week ago I brewed a extract Belgian Dubbel and tried my hand at adding herbs. A friend recommended to try .5 oz. each of coriander, rose hips, and lavender. I weighed them out and added them to the last 5 minutes of the boil. Lo and behold a week later now, I took a gravity reading and tasted the "beer".

I have enjoyed licking bars of soap more than I did drinking this stuff. Way overwhelming with the lavender. My question is, is it worth aging the beer at this point to see if the lavender mellows out significantly or should I just jump ship and dump it?

Also, just as an aside, it took nearly 50 minutes to chill this batch in an ice bath (my wort chiller broke). Would the extended contact time make the herbs that much more potent? Thanks for any advice!

3

Equipment and Software / Rolling boil gathers no moss...?

« on: December 16, 2012, 12:15:25 AM »

Hello All,
I recently moved apartments and my gas stove in my new apartment is strangely weaker than the electric burner I was using in my old apartment. I am an extract brewer and have been fairly pleased with my results, I try as much as possible to do full volume (6 gallons starting for a 5 gallon recipe) boils. While my new stove is quite weak it does eventually get the wort to 100 C. However there is not that much motion on the surface and I definitely would not say the boil is "rolling." Is this a problem? Is there a benefit to having a vigorous boil or is the fact that the wort is 100 degrees sufficient? Also if it helps, I am getting a decent hot break.
Thanks!

4

Yeast and Fermentation / Re: Two Different Krausens / peaks of activity?

« on: October 29, 2012, 07:48:11 PM »

Hey, you guys were totally right. I just got back from a business trip, "2nd Krausen" was still as it had been but the air lock had almost stopped bubbling. I took a gravity reading of 1.015, transfered it to secondary, thiefed a little bit and it tastes pretty great for this point in the process.

Just for my future knowlege:
a. Is it a problem if the CO2 falls out of suspension (such as mine did)?

b. I'm not sure I trust my stick-on liquid crystal thermometer to accurately tell me what's happening Inside the carboy. Is there a better temperature monitor that I could use inside the frige I converted for brewing and am using a digital thermostate to control?

Thanks for all the help and sorry for the "newbie" questions, your advice has been super helpful!

5

Yeast and Fermentation / Two Different Krausens / peaks of activity?

« on: October 29, 2012, 02:30:22 PM »

The temperature has been between 65 and 67 F the entire time. Would the primary phase of fermentation be done that quickly? The second krausen didn't actually have the airlock bubbling too much...

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Yeast and Fermentation / Two Different Krausens / peaks of activity?

« on: October 29, 2012, 05:26:03 AM »

Of course, I hadn't thought of that! This also happened to be the first beer I have ever done with a late addition of corn sugar to bump up the gravity. That would make a lot of sense that they would burn through the simple sugars first. Thanks for your help!

7

Yeast and Fermentation / Two Different Krausens / peaks of activity?

« on: October 28, 2012, 08:17:59 AM »

Hello All,
This was my first extract batch where I used a yeast starter, making a Black IPA. I did the calculations to create as appropriate a starter as I could for this 1.075 beer, used a stir plate for 20 hours, put it in the fridge for a day, made the wort exactly as I had my previous beer which have been turning out quite well, decanted the starter, and poured it in. If anything the OG was a bit under the target, more like 1.071.

I saw a very healthy krausen kick up within about 8 hours of the fermentation, it was bubbling away furiously and then about 2 days later started to fall back down. I was a little disappointed that the fermentation was done so quick, thought that was a bad sign. Then about 12 hours later a "cleaner looking" krausen started to rise. I'm almost 4 days into the fermentation now and this newer Krausen is even taller than the first one I saw. I am pretty meticulous about sanitization and cleaning, and cant think of anything that I did differently in this batch aside from the yeast starter that would have infected it. Any ideas on what might be going on?