BeerTools Discussion Forum

I found this article so far, I am still looking for you though. First, Zima has a very low amount of actual malt, and is not completly a naturally brewed product. To remove any trace of color any fermented portion of the beverage is force filtered through a very fine micron filter. This filter is ca...

I throw 3/4 pound of flaked wheat into EVERY batch I make. I get raves on the head retention, but I don't know about flaked barley. The wheat tends to never overpower the style I brewed, everything from a Coors clone, to Imperial Cream Stout, the flaked wheat has never failed to give me about 1' hea...

Did pitching a new yeat packet work ok for you?

I made a Porter that was very close to Tommyknockers Black Powder. This was my second homebrew; after a 4 year break, and it is an all extract. I've moved on to 1/2 mashes, but do not have the equipment or space for a full mash. Mashing rules 'cause you can control every aspect of the beer, it's the...

Try making a basic beer, one you do not need to secondary. Do not use the plastic bucket, use the glass, bottle and see if it's infected. Your beer should taste like it does from the store, infected beer tastes like 'homebrew'. If it's aok that way, your bucket has bacteria living in some scratches ...

What you've got is an infected beer. To lick my problem I got a second glass carboy to use as a secondary. I use glass for primary, then rack into a sanitized glass secondary, and keg directly out of the secondary. I took out the step of putting the beer into the plastic bottling bucket. If you use ...

Just throw it in, you'll run a serious risk of infection if you leave the airlock off very long. It'll look like clumps at first, but it'll fix it's self.

Yes, normally those packets are OEM and they sit on a hot shelf until sold. The brew guy at the store should have warned you. I use Coopers, or Safeale. I found the liquid yeasts are expensive, and do no better than a .75 package of fresh Coopers.

The activity could be stumped due to a dead yeast packet. Did you use the included yeast? If so pitch some fresh stuff. If not you might have a slow starter. Do you recall the temp? 80 degrees will kill half a packet of cells. Try going to the brew store and getting some yeast food. Keep the carboy ...

It'll come out about like Killians Red, do NOT boil the grain, just let it soak in a grain bag and remove before boil. Boiling grains produces bitter off flavors. Also ease back on the hops abit, you might get it more bitter than you'd like.
Hope this helps,
Malt Vault

Hops are categorized by % Alpha, the higher the more bitter. The highest I've seen was an 11%. Champagne yeast has the highest tolerance for alcohol, since alcohol kills yeast, and more malt extract equals higher alcohol. Yeast eats sugars, uses oxygen to digest the sugar, it then exhales carbon dio...

I normally use party pigs, but now have a beer that needs atleast another month to mellow. I also bottle directly from the secondary, so I throw the cornsugar in the pigs and go. Due to past infections I have cut out about three transfer steps. Anyhow, how much cornsugar per 16 oz. bottle should I u...