BeerTools Discussion Forum

(If you grew up watching H.R. Puff N'Stuff, you'll recognize that subject line...) Spice Guru Randy Mosher, by way of Jeff Sparrow's Zymergy article a couple months back, noted that Curacao oranges are actually an unripe strain of Caribbean orangs - the seville. He cautioned to steer clear of dried ...

I'm intrigued and certainly will try this. Thanks, Eric! As far as the broader topic of mash hopping (a completely new concept to me), what types of beers would you use it for? I assume only the flavor and aroma components are liberated without a boil, but not bittering properties, correct? While yo...

I'm in! Here's my battle plan of the moment: Batch Size: 6.5 gallons Boil Volume: 8 gallons Ingredients: 5 pounds German 2-row Pils 5 pounds Wheat (hard red) Flaked 0.5 pounds Acidulated Malt 0.5 pounds Oats Flaked 1 ounces Saaz boiled 60 min 0.5 ounces Saaz boiled 15 min "handful" of whea...

I use Wyeast and like the Thames Valley strain if I want more esters in the flavor profile. 1028 (London) also gives some fruity notes and accents malt nicely. For whatever reason, I have not been as pleased with the way 1098 (British) has turned out, and I haven't tried British II yet. As far as di...

A beer engine is the English hand-pump dispense system for cask-conditioned Real Ale. I keep looking at them on eBay and trying to figure out how to convince Mrs. Gravity we need one

I do almost exclusively ales that are conducive to single temperature mashes. I have done a Vienna lager that needed a protein rest, but the batch sparge works fine here too. My mash tun is an insulated, converted keg that I cannot directly heat, so for a step mash I start with the low-end grain:wat...

Jayhawk, Welcome to the land of the hardcore all-grain brewers! Batch sparging is really simple, and I wish someone had turned me on to it when I first started all-grain. First, credit to Ken Schwartz, who has a lot of great online info and raelly spelled out the concept of batch sparging nicely (I ...

I agree that the iodine test is most often a waste of time, and rarely do one any more. Better to spend the time on a pH test. If your pH and temperature are within bounds, you'll get conversion. if you severely overshot mash-in temp and are worried you have killed your enzyme activity, an iodine te...

No feathers have been rustled... but if anyone can appreciate a peeing contest, it's homebrew mass-consumers Maybe an exhibition sport in the next Olympics?

Cheers,
Jim

The two concerns I would have are: 1) much of the yeast from the high gravity beer may have succumbed to the resulting high alcohol and been killed or fallen dormant. 2) The yeast has started down the artificial selection path toward specialization for high grav fermentation. Since this is only the ...

I know this thread is going on a couple of weeks old, but I just saw it in the archive and thought I'd chime in on the no-sparge mash. (I just started posting here a few days ago, btw, but have been using the site for a year or so. There's a good group of enthusiastic brewers here and I think it's a...

Az is right - you have a bit too much water in the mash tun. But, if you're shooting for a 1.33 quart/lb ratio instead of 1 qt/lb (both will work fine), you are only high by about a half-gallon. The enzyme kinetics is uphill with too much water, but I wouldn't think it would be so bad that conversio...

Conversion shouldn't take that long. My first suspicion is your mash pH is too high, which will have your enzymes working out of optimal range. If you have a lot of dark malt in your grain bill, this is probably not the case, but if your grist is exclusively light grains check pH and add gypsum or p...

My brew day is about 8 hours, no matter what I try to do to shave some time. The wife would rather I spent the day with her and the kids (though she never complains when the beer is ready!), so I do a lot of graveyard shift brew sessions and finish up in the early morning. This weekend I cheated and...

First a warning: going all grain will TRIPLE the length of your brew day, so you really have to like brewing. But, the satisfaction of basically making something great from nothing but raw ingredients is huge, so go for it. Take baby steps. Do a couple of stovetop all grain batches before you build ...