Recent content by cwhouston

Thanks for the kind words, it suddenly occurred to me that after five years meddling with English yeasts that perhaps my opinion may be considered informed, if no expert! Good luck with the stout really hope it comes out great I edited the post above to give the link to one of the best blogs...

Hi, I wasted several batches of ESB which tasted great post primary only to take on this metallic tasting gusher thing, as described by others. So I quit beating my head on 1968 and spent some time trialling other strains. I maintain a yeast library, so being a yeast nerd is kind of like a sub...

Going to pick 2, wyeast 1275 if you want drier finish or 1318 for something more malty. If pushed, i would pick 1318. I find 1469 too dry and fruity, in a bad way, S04 whitbread leaves a very worty aftertaste, nottingham is too clean and 002 unstable if bottling (likely because of under...

Nice work - I'm doing mine tomorrow night.

If it were me, I'd reduce the 15 and 10 minute additions to 10g instead of 15g (sorry can't do imperial), or remove one or other addition - NS can be super fruity as flavour addition. I'd also increase the aroma addition / dry hop up to 1 oz each. I'd never thought of using NS in a tripel, now...

I brew English styles all the time. I reckon your logic is pretty sound. Good luck with the brew.

I used 1214 on a dubbel too, about a year ago. Fermented on the low side, about 18 C. It came out really well attenuated and tasted just like Chimay Red but without all the nasty crap i think that beer has because it's fermented warm. If you like the Chimay taste then it will be right up your...

Welcome to all grain - you won't look back. I use English amber and find simply toasting maris otter or other base ale malt for 20 to 25 minutes at 150 C produces a better result. Rumour has it that it needs to be left for a week in a bag after toasting to allow grainy flavours to dissipate...

You appear to be confusing yeast 'acclimatisation' with cell count. Expert advice is to pitch the correct amount of healthy cells, i.e. not underpitch. Healthy cells are obtained from a sufficient volume of starter culture with OG around 1.040. Yeast do not learn to cope with high gravities...

What makes you think there are bacteria in there in the first place? Acid wash will not purify a contaminated culture. The way to do that is streaking out onto agar.

I like the sound of a brown with 1187. If you can't taste butter in the sample, you could scratch thr D-rest.

I'd keep a close eye on those bottles. Everytime I have tried to bottle with the Fullers strain it has restarted fermenting and produced gushers with a very bad taste. Ordinarily you'd think that was infection but it's an issue others find repeatedly with this yeast. I keg now and have had no...

Any chance you could post the recipe? I have 5kg of vienna to use and SWIMBO wants a dubble :mug:

just started using koppafloc powder, and the amount of the gunkballs (above) does appear to be proportional to the amount of Koppa powder I've used, now that I think about it - for this beer I tipped in too much. I never saw this using Irish moss.

Ha! Many thanks guys - I was going to turf the barrel too. I've been brewing a while now and have never noticed these until the last few batches. I've just started using koppafloc - reckon that would be the cause for it occurring?