BeerTools Discussion Forum

You can pre-prep wort for the next days brew, but it must be fully lautered when you do to avoid lactic and acidic bacterial infection. There are two ways this can be accomplished: 1) Preparation with anti-microbial agents prior to refrigerating such as sodium metabisulfite or potassium sorbate or 2...

The strain you have used is not particularly alcohol tolerant and may have led to a reduced viabilty or count when used as a conditioning yeast in these higher gravity brews. They beer may either take longer to carbonate, may only carbonate so far, or not carbonate at all. My suggestions in order of...

Sorry to hear you had this problem. Let me know: 1)Am I correct in interpreting your post that you have a total of 3 kegs of the same beer... 2 good & 1 bad ? 2) The "poor boil" you refer to... was it not rolling and too short ? 3) What method and how long did it take you to chill the ...

You should not be concerned about brass valves when used in mash tuns. The temperature is not hot enough to promote much leaching and the contact time and surface is too small to produce a noticable effect. Actually, stripping the oxidized surface of brass would be worse than leaving it alone. This ...

I assume the 5, 3 & 2.5 gallon "kegs" you are referring to are Cornelius (TM) cylinders. Depending on the country you live in, there are sanke and other comercially fitted kegs in those increments. Assuming these cylinders are what you have, the net capacity is that embossed on the cyl...

"...materials to use for the new valve tap. Brass fittings ... but I've heard that these can contribute bad flavors" A: Most of the causes for off flavors via brass are caused by cleaning them with abrasives and not letting the fittings re-oxidize (passivate) before use. But really... the ...

OK, since it's only occuring in your stouts, it's obviously something with the flaked barley. Do you use the FB in other beers ? It is commonly used in English Pale Ales, particularly in Ordinary & Special Bitters. If you don't, you might try to see if the problem occurs in another beer. One tec...

If you have natural gas available at your house, it is best to use it due to it's significantly lower cost over LPG, higher BTU content, higher pressure and cleaner burning results in less fowling of kettle bottoms. FINALLY, natural gas burner rings are available for home brew useage. They are made ...

Heading always benefits from a protein rest and via step mashing as well, but should not be required with fully modified malts combined with the fact you are using flakd barley. I'm going to take this in another direction that has caused this problem with others. What are you cleaning your bottles a...

Apply 6 PSI to the BEVERAGE tube to allow the carbon dioxide to bubble through the COLD (>45 deg. F.) beer. Attach a hose and fitting to the gas side of the canister and pich it off so that is SLOWLY releases the gas. This proceedure takes about 60 minutes. Check to see if the appropriate level is r...

I would not advise attempting to mash raw cerial grains such as rice, corn, rye and oats in mashes. The reason is that they must be pre-geletanized PRIOR to being incorporated into a mash. I can post the procedures for cereal mashing, but I don't recommmend doing it because it is messy and time cons...

A round cooler is best used with 5 gallon yields. The reason is that you can eliminate sparging since you can usually fit 7 or so gallons of water in the container. This technique has a number of advantages with the biggest being the reduction of tannin leaching that can result from high sparge temp...