Recent content by d_striker

Once you pitch your grain or culture, make sure you lay down a hefty layer of CO2 on top of the wort. Then seal your kettle if possible.

4.6 generally isn't very sour. Most all ale and lager yeasts will lower your pH around or below that level within 48 hours of fermentation. If you plan on doing more sours or want to get serious about it, bite the bullet and get a good pH meter. I like the ones where the bulb and...

As far as how to gauge sourness, the best way is titration. A pH of 3.5 with one water profile may have a completely different concentration of lactic acid as a pH of 3.5 with more alkaline water. The easiest way is to check pH and taste the level of acidity. Then calibrate your own...

The difference is how you're able to process the wort prior to lacto inoculation. In a kettle sour, you can boil the wort for 5-10 mins to kill off any undesireable microbes. Boiling also helps deaerate the wort. Scrubbing with CO2 through a stone helps even more. Then, you can proceed...

Are you doing a sour mash or kettle sour? They are two different processes. I like to keep kettle soured wort no higher than 115f and no lower than 100f. As someone else mentioned, grain has quite a few different microbes. However, the bacteria responsible for butyric and ISO-valeric...

Personally, I don't think sour and bitter go well together. We do quite a few kettle soured beers at our brewery. I typically do about 10 IBU's from a single addition. Pick up a few more from dry hopping one of our sours. Any more than that and its off putting to my palate.

Agreed. There's a lot of confusion in the beer community about Brett beers vs sour beers because of the ambiguity. I come across a lot of people that think all Brett beers are sour which is not necessarily true. Also, I don't really consider a lacto soured beer such as Berliner Weise to be a...

Brett takes TG down so low, I wonder if it is able to consume melibiose as well. My point of this thread is that the statement that all beers are lagers or ales is incorrect.

Agreed...

1. Get a bigger system than you think you need. 2. Spend the money on having your floors sloped toward your drains...In both your brewery and cold room. 3. Have a safety plan/protocol in place. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong at some point.

Not sure I'm following. Saccharomyces is the genus. Species is cerevisiae or pastorianus. Brettanomyces is the genus. Lambicus, bruxellis, etc. is the species. Brett and saccharomyces are of the same kingdom, phylum, subphylum, class, and order, but it ends there.

Lagers are generally bottom fermenting and ales are generally top fermenting. Lager yeast is Saccharomyces pastorianus and ales are Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

We've all been in this game long enough to have heard over and over that all beers are either ales or lagers. Saccharomyces cerevisiae or Saccharomyces pastorianus (or uvarum depending who you talk to.) More and more beers are being fermented with 100% Brettanomyces. These beers aren't...

Any homebrewers in Manitou have a water report for the local TAP WATER. I'm looking for a report on tap water, not the mineral water.

NHC entry rules are being changed up. Anyone that wants to enter has to be an AHA member. I've been a BA member for a few years now. As the AHA is a division of the BA, do I have to buy a separate AHA membership to register for NHC?