Recent content by Schmutzli

I made the previous post because I hadn't heard of this idea, and wanted to see if the ratios being thrown about had any validity based on what was known about yeast metabolism. For my job, I've done some engineering of fatty acid production in microorganisms (to make biofuels) so I had a...

You can think of it this way. Imagine the olive oil is corn starch and the wort is hot soup. Maybe you've encountered this during cooking: if you plop a tablespoon of corn starch in the soup, you are going to get a ball of cornstarch floating in soup. If you break it up it will still be dry in...

A 30cm thermometer like you described could easily have upwards of 3 grams of mercury - maybe even double that. Had you spilled it into 800 gallons of beer, it would still be above the legal limit for mercury in drinking water, at least in the USA (didnt check Europe). Depending on where you...

what do you clean your equipment with? insufficient rinsing of bleach and other chemicals can make flavors like you describe- acrid, hot, caustic.

The grape leaves and oak leaves supply tannin (same tannin as in red wine) which inhibit the enzymes which break down the cucumbers' structure. I'm curious whether a pinch of purified tannin from the homebrew store would do the same... I think I will try it soon. I just need to find a good...

That reminds me of a question I saw on the internet the other day... "is TSP (trisodium phosphate) vegan?"

I was forced to no-chill on my last batch due to inopportune plumbing issues. I drained onto a gallon of water (I thankfully had set aside) to accelerate the cooling and then wrapped the fermenter in a wet towel swamp cooler style. Even with that, it was >90F 8 hours later (5.5gals). Figure...

Well, I haven't brewed since the summer since it's been too hot in my apartment. So lately I've been staring down these two mediocre batches I made earlier in spring-- a witbier I racked on top of Gala apples and an experimental amber flavored with blackstrap molasses. The molasses one was too...

I saw you use starsan, do you use any cleaners like bbrite or onesstep? Or anything else to clean/sterilize? Do you sterilize bottles in the dishwasher? Residuals from these have caused flavors like you describe in my beers and brew pals'.

I know this post is a few months old but I wanted to chime in and say I do this all the time. Also, I never clean my bottles, I just rinse and sanitize. Never had a gusher or a spoiled bottle. Also, I never aerate before pitch, nor do I worry about splashing when bottling. I figure let the...

I ordered this yeast on a whim and gave it a test with an extract batch I was trying. The recipe is a very pale ale, lots of easy fermantables like rice syrup solids. I pitched a whole packet into 3.5 gal. Took off like crazy in 2.5 hours (~74F). Next day it was done, visually at least. I...

think of the timescales: a couple hours is what fraction of a month or more in sunlight after bottling?

I had a similar taste when I would clean my bottles and fermentor. Now I just rinse and Starsan, skipping the cleaners. Never had contamination and the taste went away. I would try leaving out the B-brite just to see what happens. Since you rinse/dry right after use you should be fine with just...

One addition I would have is that if your apple cider is >1.046 Beersmith will not tolerate the value, and reduces it to 1.046. I do it the same as you, only I set the fermentability as 106% to make up for limitation and give accurate lb=gal for my local cider. Do not know why Beersmith...

when you have a permanent saltwater cooling bath in your freezer