Messages

76

Yeast and Fermentation / Re: WTF?

« on: December 05, 2012, 03:25:15 PM »

Maybe the starter settled a bit before you split it and the bucket got more initial yeast (037 is a high flocculator)?  Bigger headspace in the bucket led to better oxygenation at the start?  Maybe the wort into the bucket had a lower OG than the bottle due to kettle stratification?

I'm just taking wild guesses here.

77

Ingredients / Re: Tart cherry juice concentrate

« on: December 04, 2012, 03:34:30 PM »

Instead of measuring the gravity, just look at the nutrition label which will tell you grams of sugar per serving. 28.35 grams = 1 oz. Divide priming sugar needed by sugar per serving to get the number of servings to add for priming.

Well, sure ... if you want to do it the easy way...

78

Questions about the forum? / Re: AHA Site Not Letting Me Log In

« on: December 04, 2012, 12:50:57 PM »

I am unable to log in either.  I tried resetting my password, but the link that gets emailed doesn't work either.  Any suggestions?

Last week I had this same issue when I tried to log in to pre-order the hops book.  I tried logging in using my password, but it wouldn't work, even after being very careful to type it correctly (can my AHA account password be different than my forum password?  I thought they were linked).  I gave up and tried to reset the password, but clicking on the URL I was emailed didn't resolve to anything.  Finally I called the AHA and I was told that my account had been locked out from too many incorrect password attempts, which was also the reason the password reset link didn't work.  My account was unlocked over the phone and I was able to reset my password using the link mailed to me.

I am suspicious as to why this happened in the first place, and I get a little paranoid when I find out that others had the same issue.  If there is a suggestions box for future software versions, it would have been handy for me if the password reset link sent me to a page letting me know that the account was locked out, or at least informing me that it couldn't complete the task instead of not doing anything.

79

Ingredients / Re: Tart cherry juice concentrate

« on: December 04, 2012, 07:47:45 AM »

I've used cherry juice for bottle priming with good results.  I tried it out on a gallon of American Wheat.  I calculated the amount of juice I'd need my measuring the specific gravity of the juice and assumed that anything over 1.000 was fermentable sugar, then figured out how much I'd need to add to get what would be the equivalent amount of sugar I'd normally use for bottling.  It ended up adding a very nice color and a subtle cherry note in the aftertaste. 

I also had two of those bottles break on me, but I don't know if that was due to them being bottle bombs or whether they broke when moving the box around that I use to sequester bottles while being conditioned.  To be safe, I assumed they were grenades and I put the rest of the cherry-primed bottles in a cold fridge.

80

All Grain Brewing / Re: composting spent grain

« on: December 04, 2012, 07:33:00 AM »

I also like to use spent grains to make dog biscuits as well as throwing them into a loaf of bread.  The first time I used them to make bread I went with way too much spent grain.  The bread came out very dense, which was OK, but there were way too many grain husks which made the bread very coarse and scratched your throat on the way down.  Now I run the grains through the meat grinder attachment on my stand mixer before using them, even for dog biscuits.  For bread, I swap out the spent grain 1-for-1 with flour, then adjust with water or flour after kneading for a while to get to the proper dough consistency.

As for taste, I find the base grains add little to no flavor.  I keep meaning to save extra wort to use instead of water in the bread, but I either never end up with much extra wort, or I just forget.

81

Yeast and Fermentation / Re: yeast for Shock Top Wheat clone

« on: November 26, 2012, 03:17:19 PM »

"Dry looping" with Froot Loops?? I think the red ones are for your flavor additions and the orange ones are for aroma. 

Somehow this brings to mind that Mountain Dew beer recipe I saw several years ago.

82

Kegging and Bottling / Re: Extra yeast at bottling

« on: November 26, 2012, 10:40:57 AM »

If you go with EC-1118 or some other sparkling wine yeast for beer bottle conditioning, do those yeast strains work on the same sugars as the lager/ale yeasts?  In other words, do you need to worry about getting more carbonation out than you were expecting for the same amount of priming sugar?

83

Questions about the forum? / Re: Icon reference page?

« on: November 23, 2012, 03:13:46 PM »

Not for the one I'm seeing.  When I hover over the new posts icon, the one that has two speech balloons, the hover-over says "New Posts."  It says the same thing when I hover over the icon I'm talking about. 

FWIW, the icon I see looks like you take the "New Posts" icon, replace the right speech ballon with a pencil, and make the whole icon greyscale.  I really only ever see it on the "Kegging and Bottling" category.

I did find on the Simple Machines Forum online manual that you can get to such an icon summary page, but only as an admin:  http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Smileys_and_Message_Icons

I"m not at all worried about any of this; it has just piqued my interest.  I assume the pencil signifies something about authorship or editing, and since I've only ever seen it on that one category, perhaps I started a topic but never posted it or something and the forum thinks it is still hanging out there.

84

Questions about the forum? / Icon reference page?

« on: November 23, 2012, 08:12:59 AM »

Is there a central place that tells you what the various icons that are used here are?  For instance, when I'm on the main page I see all the icons that tell me which topics do and don't have new posts, and in case I didn't know what those icons were there is a place near the bottom of the page with a key.  However, I also see an icon that isn't in the key.  It has a speech balloon with a pencil next to it.  I've been poking around the Admin boards and FAQs, but I can't find a description of this icon.  Is there a symbol key somewhere around so that I don't need to bother everyone with a posts like these?

85

All Grain Brewing / Re: Toastin Oats

« on: November 09, 2012, 05:15:05 PM »

Oil evaporates at room temperature?

86

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: My first dumped batch

« on: November 09, 2012, 01:40:21 PM »

Did you try it before you dumped it?  Maybe you could have been on to something ......   

87

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: These guys need to clean up their act

« on: November 09, 2012, 01:38:45 PM »

Sad that they didn't think to try handling it in a more grown-up manner, first.

They of all people should have known to RDWHAHB.

88

Equipment and Software / Re: Cleanup...

« on: November 09, 2012, 07:42:00 AM »

How long do you guys let PBW go?  When I'm done with bottles, whether they're my homebrew or commercial, I give them a quick rinse and set aside.  When enough have accumulated, I will fill one of those home center 5 gallon buckets with PBW solution and I will submerge as many bottles in there that I can (usually about a dozen).  The next day I'll pull them out, drain them back into the bucket, then do a few twists with a bottle brush, rinse them with a bottle jet, then put another batch of bottles in the bucket.  If the bottles were commercial, then the labels come off real easy this way.  Is there a feel for how long PBW is good?  There doesn't seem to be a quick test to tell, like the pH test for StarSan.  After a while, especially if there were a lot of commercial bottles with all the dissolved glue from the labels, the water gets pretty murky, but I'll gladly keep using it as long as I am confident that it is doing its job.  Right now I'm verifying its efficacy by visual inspection of the cleanliness of the bottle.

Another interesting thing I've noticed is that if I have a bottle that is only partially submerged, then right at the water line something starts to accumulate, like a mineral scale, and it does not want to wash off.  Thinking it might be some kind of caustic scale, I've soaked the bottles in a StarSan solution hoping it would dissolve, but it doesn't.  I have to use some kind of abrasive scrubber and really work to get it off; if it ends up around the bottle lip, then I usually just recycle the bottle instead of spending the effort needed to get it off.  Any ideas what that deposit is and how to easily remove it?  Is it PBW coming back out of solution?

89

Kegging and Bottling / Re: Naturally carbing, adjust sugar amount for style?

« on: November 08, 2012, 03:59:31 PM »

I usually shoot for only 1.5 volumes or less when I do British beers, so I end up adding a lot less.  I keep a printout of John Palmer's carbonation nomograph (http://www.howtobrew.com/images/f65.gif)taped to the inside cover of my brewing log.  For me, that means I would end up adding only about 2 oz sugar. 

The other thing to keep in mind is make sure you have a good idea to what volume of beer you are adding your sugar because, to first order (at least for bottle conditioning, I still don't understand the "use less sugar for keg conditioning" issue -- is it a headspace thing?), the carbonation level scales with beer volume.  If only 4 gallons make it into your bottling bucket, you'll have 25-percent more carbonation than you were expecting.  You, of course, have to scale the nomograph number you get since it is based on a 5-gallon batch.

90

Other Fermentables / Re: Cranberry cider help

« on: November 08, 2012, 03:29:29 PM »

If you have access to the big warehouse food outlets (BJ's, Costco, etc.), this is the time of year they sell the whole fresh berries in the big bags pretty cheap (4 or 5 lbs, maybe, it has been while since I bought the big bag).  If you buy them out of the freezer section, I believe those have been flash-frozen which means that the cell walls don't get broken up very much and you don't derive as much benefit than if you froze them yourself.  If you thaw a bag of frozen fruit and you end up with a sloppy mess, then either it wasn't flash-frozen, or it had thawed somewhere between the factory and the freezer.