BeerTools Discussion Forum

Let the beer carbonate at room temperature (75-78F)

HairNutz,
Assuming you're using just a can of hopped malt extract from Munton and sugar and you didn't have a recipe, if you don't add more sugar, you will simply have a low alcohol beer.

The fermentation temp for WLP550 should be 68-78 degrees. So long as you stay at or under 78 degrees, you should be OK. However, with the WL500 batch, you should be at or below 70 degrees. You very well may get off flavors with that yeast at so high a ferment temperature.

Those starter kits you were looking at in the other post -- they all pretty much come with one-step oxygen sanitizer, which is very good. You don't need to also purchase iodophor. Just use the stuff that comes with the starter kit.

You don't need to worry about drying things, as they are just going to get "wet" again anyway. Don't put plastic wrap or anything else that isn't sanitary on your equipment. Simply sterilize -- with iodophor or single-step oxygen cleaner -- immediately before using. Ice bath is fine for ch...

$98 is a bit pricey for a starter kit that doesn't include bottles. You should be able to get a kit that includes most of that stuff (perhaps a bottling bucket instead of a carboy) except for the $30 ingredient kit for about $50. Start with that and some bottles left over from your favorite commerci...

Sounds like your mead is just fine. It would be better to age it in the bottles than in a fermenter, but if it tastes good, it probably is good. Of course, although many meads get better with age, there is a limit after which they will turn without preservatives. As for mead headaches, many people r...

Just curious why you would add them to the brew pot, but I would just scoop the fruit out and put it in the primary first and then syphon the wort on top of it.

Anne is going to law school in the fall (August actually), and we won't be able to keep operating Brady's Homebrew, so we are putting our business up for sale. This is an Internet business only, no inventory to speak of (except for some Mr. Beer products, eBooks and brewing calculators) and no brick...

Sanitation is your friend and oxidation is your enemy right now. Really the only way to do this is to gently syphon the beer from the bottles back into a bottling bucket, gently add and stir in a regular-size portion of yeast (yes, from a starter) and then rebottle and allow the bottles to sit at ro...

Keep in mind that there is a difference between extract-with-specialty-grain recipes, which typically use the "tea bag" method of steeping you outlined at the end, and mini-mash recipes, which call for holding the grains at a particular temperature (mashing) and then sparging, as you outli...

Your beer may be contaminated or it may be OK. If it is infected, there really isn't anything you can do about it now. Before you bottle it, taste it; you may save yourself some bottle caps and some bottling time if it is infected. In the future, you may want to consider an S-shaped double bubbler a...

Sounds like you're going to have some super-healthy yeast there. Any drawbacks? Well, I guess you probably "wasted" a wee bit of money, but that's about it.

You're probably going to be totally fine. What is your yeast doing?

We have a refrigerator full of glass jars with different yeast strains.