BeerTools Discussion Forum

I really enjoy Altbairisch Dunkel by Brauerei Aying in Germany. I have tried unsuccessfully to clone this beer, or even make an accurate version of a Munich dunkel. Do any of you have a proven recipe for brewing a clone, or even a good representation of this style. I am an all-grain brewer, but if s...

A long time ago in a galaxy far away I used to bottle. Be aware of two things 1) If you have beer in a secondary for over a month it is a good idea to add yeast at bottling time, especially for high flocculatiing yeast- I believe whitelabs and wyeast publish their flocculation "rates." 2) ...

I was coming back from my brother's house. My wife was driving I had a Corny keg between my legs. We came upon one of those DUI checkpoints. The cop asked us if we had been drinking, I held up the keg and said, "Just this one." He got a kick out of it, he was a homebrewer and waved us thro...

There are many different kinds of vessels, conveyances, glasses, coolers, schooners, mugs, and cups to drink beer from. Are the differences cosmetic or is there some higher purpose? I just drank a beer in a belgian goblet and it tasted more malty than when I tried it in a pilsner glass yesterday. Wh...

What kind of yeast are you using? Please indicate strain and manufacturer. Last month I brewed a molasses beer. Using the WLP001 I got an attenuation of 65%, White Labs advertises the attenuation of that strain as 73-80%. I am drinking it now and it tastes fine. Keep in mind, molasses may not be res...

The dry yeast may be the culprit. Dry yeast is generally of lesser quality than liquid. Dry yeast packets may or may not have dead yeast cells, wild yeast, or bacteria in them. When compared to liqiud the proportion of viable yeast cells is less. There is however more cells in the dry packet than th...

I'm no chemistry guru, but in about a year I will have a piece of paper that I will need to justify the admission price of... Why not get started now... maybe I missed something, but if the solution is 10% H3PO4 and you have a gallon of it then wouldn't you have .1 gallons of H3PO4??

I bring some home in my Pinkley Taurus

I know of two ways to clean a carboy, assuming you still want it intact. The first is with a carboy brush. This is like a long bottle brush with an L- shaped bristle head. You cram that sucker through the mouth and go to town. The other way is with a nozzle that fits on the faucet of your sink. I ha...

I have brewed many high gravity stouts, one had an O.G. of 1.131! I think that yeast is very important. Perhaps oddly I would recommend a high attenuating yeast. This may seem on, but sometimes in big batches the sweetness can become rather unpleasent i.e. cloying. I have experinced this even at the...

Wyeast advertises the 1214 yeast to have an apparent attenuation of 72-76%. Assuming your readings were taken at or corrected to 60 degrees F, your apparent attenuation was 71%. I would attest that your beer did attenuate well, given the yeast style. If you want more of the sugar fermented try: Usin...

This is something I have pondered recently myself. Water freezes at 32 degrees F. Which means that unless it has a significant amount of impurities, it won't get any colder than 32 degrees F, nor would you be using it to brew if it were. Bottled water in your fridge for a couple of days will have th...

Lathe, if memory serves me right you were trolling for ideas for brew software awhile back. Someone may have mentioned this, but how about having a feature that when someone comments on your recipe you are notified by email? This would be similar to the forum response notification you already have. ...

The convention is 3lbs grain to 2 lbs DME, but I have a thought. How about trying a little test. Take one pound of the DME you've been using for the recipe. Add one gallon of water and boil it for an hour- basically make a small batch. That should give you the gravity per pound DME per gallon of wat...

Invest in a hydrometer and learn to use it. Over time this will allow you to establish a baseline as to when repeated recipes are "done." In the meantime, when you use old yeast ake a starter. Use yeast nutirent in the starter and in the "big" wort. Take a hydrometer reading. Aer...