Recent content by BLL

I brewed professionally for years and never heard of anyone doing that.

So far as I know the bacteria would be out-competed by a pitched culture meaning if you didn't allow time between pressing and pitching for MLF then the bacteria won't contribute much, if at all. I have limited experience with cider and I'm interested to know as well.

Preboil gravity could've been off due to stratification, postboil could've been off due to temperature. If there's no question in your mind your gravity readings were correct then you're just going to have to chalk it up to a miscalculation in beersmith. That could be because you've input some...

It's not uncommon for preboil gravity measurements to be misleading, especially in bigger batches since you've got a runoff outlet feeding wort that is of a substantially lower gravity and temperature into a large volume of higher gravity, higher temperature wort. All of this contributes to a...

I forget about the lack of PRVs, but if you got a smokin' deal then snag a couple corny lids with PRVs on them or build a spunding valve and the savings will have paid for it. That's what I did.

On the downside they were all still full of soda that had to be disposed of and cleaned out, but it was still well worth it.

I live in AZ too. It's dry enough in the entire state that opening a few windows ought to help wisk the moisture away, but I don't brew in my house. I also live in NAZ and if you're in the Valley I can understand not wanting to open a window, especially with summer around the corner.

I use pin lock because I had a buddy with a trailer full of them years ago and I bought 20 of them for 100 bucks. Other than individual cases of availability/cost I personally don't see much difference and I'd be a ball lock man if that's what the trailer had been full of.

Your efficiency is almost always going to drop with an increase in grain mass. If you're averaging 80% with worts in the 1.050 to 1.070 range then I'd anticipate around 75% for a wort that is approaching 1.100, maybe even less.

You can top up post boil if it means hitting your target volume, but it's ideal to accurately predict you're boil off rate and top up to a preboil volume that will yield both the target post boil volume and target OG. The only real advantage of a preboil top up vs post boil is that you don't...

The Nutty Professor followed by, The Klumps

They're not all that similar. I think you're better off just figuring out a storage solution. How much could possibly be leftover? 1 oz of Centennial and 1.5 oz of Chinook? That fits in the palm of your hand.

Grease

Ingredients are proportioned to target a certain color, gravity, IBUs, etc. at a target final volume. If you're volume is short of that target then each of those will be concentrated. Topping off with water to the target volume will dilute to achieve your other targets as well. This is common...

I'm looking for some feedback from brewers who have primed bottles using speise and their results by comparison to typical priming sugars. I'm not looking for a lesson on using speise. Just experience and opinions please.