Recent content by Duane

For what it's worth, chemically halting fermentation using the above methods is a technique the mad fermentationist recommends in his book on American Sours.

Oops. Where I wrote sulfites I meant sorbate. Does sorbate need to dissipate into the air (like campden tabs) or can I seal the keg immediately after adding it?

This is actually for a 100% Brett beer, the final stages of fermentation of which I want to halt. Will my campden tablets and sulfites both dissolve readily if I just crush them and dump them into my chilled keg of beer, or do I need to boil them in water first to get them to dissolve? I ask...

Finally was able to further disassemble my manifold. Looks like the gas leak has to be due to old o-rings not creating a seal. You can see on the pic that there are two black rings for each valve. Do you think a lube job with keg lube would do the trick, or should I go for new o-rings? If the...

I don't know much about the structure of a gas manifold, but I've found mine has a slow leak at two of the three shut-off valves. Specifically, the leak is coming from the nut that attaches the lever to the valve. It lets out a quick burst of air every time I move the lever (on or off), and...

Well I cold crashed this before getting the most recent posts here. The krausen dropped and the beer is looking quite clear except for a few white spots here and there floating on top. Gravity is reading 1.017 (at just above freezing) and it is tasting fantastic. Nice, mild funkiness...

That said, I don't suppose there'd be any problem with cold crashing, just to see how/if it clears up, to take a gravity reading with ease, and to taste a sample. I can always let it warm back up to room temp. Perhaps that's what I'll do.

Thanks for the input so far! More info: I pitched Brett (an unknown combination of strains) on January 1st. By the 2nd we had steady airlock activity. We had vigorous fermentation for a couple days after that, followed by a slow down, then complete halt in fermentation - little different...

My first 100% brett beer just finished primary after about a week. Now it's doing its job SLOWLY chewing through the sugar of the pound of crystal 120 I had in the grain bill. Thing is, I'd prefer not to wait for it to finish because 1. I'm impatient, and 2. I'd like to keep some residual...

I'd think this would be an easy question to answer, but 30 minutes of google and forum searches have given me nothing. Obviously Melanoidin gives you extreme malty flavors, it's like munich on steroids, it's used sparingly, etc., etc. This information is plastered all over the place. But...

How do I set my differential? I thought if I wanted to maintain 50 degrees with a differential of 4 degrees, the temp of my keezer would fluctuate between 48 and 52, keeping my fermenter at the desired 50 deg. BUT, that's not what my controller SEEMS to be doing. It seems to be cutting on at...

Fair enough. Actually, I'm not sure if I can improve them. It's not that I've noticed anything wrong, per se. But I'm wondering if tinkering with water will give me something I don't know I'm missing (better efficiency?). That being said, I have made stouts in the past that were a bit...

I'm brand new with tinkering in water chemistry in brewing, and for now would like to stay that way. I have No interest yet in plugging in numbers in water calculators, buying test strips, or studying water analyses. Really. Honestly. That being said, is there a safe addition I should try...

Anyone see any problems with splitting up a brew day over two days IN THE WINTER? My biggest brewing obstacle is finding a full 5 hours free in a single day to do a batch. How about splitting that down the middle and taking an overnight break AFTER sparging? Anyone see any trouble with...

So if I understand you correctly the amount of water really doesn't affect final cell count - just potentially the yeast health. I thought during the reproduction phase, prior to fermentation, the yeast cells multiplied to fill the volume of sugar solution, however much that might be - not to...