Recent content by CallyBrewster

Why not buy another packet of yeast just before your go get your orchard juice? You can try making a starter with the old packet, if it proofs, then you're set. If it won't go, then bust out the fresh pack with no lag time and you're ready to go regardless of whether the old pack works.

I wanna hear about the liquid smoke! Sour cherry is always my favorite addition, black sour cherries like morellos if I can get them. Red Montmorency if I can't. I steeped 4# of dried montmorency in some cider I made for a wedding. Was one of the best batches I ever made.

Hola, bienvenidos. Mucha suerte con tú receta. People here are very nice about answering questions.

The real question is whether any sodium hypochlorite residue remains. It's unlikely. You may have initially created some chlorine gas, but that is volatile and evaporates quickly. Then you rinsed. Then you added some acidic beer. What you may have is a few minuscule amounts of extra salt in your...

Yeah, the problem is you can bottle still, sweet stuff, or you can bottle dry fizzy stuff, but sweet, fizzy is problematic. Sadly, the original Skeeter Pee recipe only shows how to sweeten. The cider makers in this forum who are bottle carbing sweet cider that is meant to be fizzy do it by 1)...

Notty used to be my go-to yeast. I got some SUPER SNOTTY pushback from one of my LHBS who won't even carry it because, reasons. But it's generally good, I like it at around 57–58°F, and would use it again, especially for cider I intend to ignore for some number of months. Problems I had with...

I just checked my Cranberry-lime as well. Finally down to 1.002, just a few more points to go. Mine tasted better at .002 than it did at .016, so hopefully yours will start appealing to you as the last little sugar ferments away. I'm kind of agog at the amount of backsweetening sugar in the...

Since you already tried a PBW soak, you can go one level up. Be super careful. Mix 1 Tbsp of TSP (tri sodium phosphate) powder with 4 cups of water + 1/4 cup of chlorine bleach and use this to clean the mold/mildew that grew in your fermenter. Maybe wrap a microfiber cleaning cloth around a...

Both, actually. While I'm not a newbie brewer in the technical sense, I don't brew beer. A glossary would be such a handy thing for beginners, or folks trying out something that's different from what they already know. Looks like the short answer is "no." S'ok. Just was wondering.

You know, an alphabetical list of terms, abbreviations and localized shorthand?

I have a batch of "Cleaning out the pantry" Pee running as an experiment. Theoretically it'll be cranberry lime, I used a super old bottle of cranberry cocktail + a bottle of Kirkland (Costco) Margarita Mix + what was left in the bottle of the Knudsen Cranberry juice concentrate. I pitched some...

I had that problem with the lid. Star San leaked into my brewing box, dissolved all the ink off anything that had a printed label and gunked up a spare 0-ring for a keg lid. I re-assigned an empty plastic water bottle to Star San duty. Labeled it. Drew a Mr. Yuk on it, and then washed all the...

I'd put the spices in some kind of spice ball or spice bag that you can pull out. Some spices, looking at you cloves & nutmeg, can get insanely bitter after steeping in alcohol for a long time. I made Cherry Rumtopf (Cherries soaked in booze for at least 6 months) last year and the spices I...

It's not that I don't like beer, but like Ranzor, I'm allergic to hops. In fact, I really miss my IPAs. *sniffle* But ... I do make kickass cider as a result, and like someone else said, it's super popular at parties. My keg floats first.

Hi Mike! I'm in San Hoser, too! Cheers!