Recent content by geneticbiscuit

Count me in!

Banana wine has been made by lots of people so you should be all set there, and I think I've read that for peanut butter it is best to use it in the powdered form (PB2 is the only brand I've had - actually half-decent product)...search the forums for that, I'm sure you'll find more than enough info.

This. You have a volume problem, not an efficiency problem. Not that it will help you now, but at least for future batches you can adjust your sparge or boil accordingly. If you're really worried you could always boil up some DME to add 10 points to your 6 gallons...although I'd probably just...

I definitely wouldn't add water until it is done fermenting and you have a chance to taste it...given that you're admittedly flying by the seat of your pants and don't have a hydrometer, there's a decent chance that you undershot your OG so diluting could very well put you (retroactively) below...

I'd have to go with 4) Depends. Depends on what the SG of the extra was, depends on how much extra your fermenter can hold, depends on if you have extra hops laying around. If the SG was low (<1.015, or even 1.02), I'd probably toss it, if the SG was decent and I had capacity and hops, I'd...

Given that we don't have all the details of your process, it would help to know how the final beer tastes. Is it overly sweet? If so there is an under-attenuation issue which could be due to a high percentage of unfermentables (mashing too high), poor yeast performance (under-oxygenating/not...

If the clamps don't work out, a short length of copper wire will do the trick (at least it has for me).

One problem - simply racking off the yeast cake and adding sugar will only result in more fermentation, not a sweet final product...

Yes, even at pH 3 it shouldn't make much difference with the acids that would be present. Also remember that to determine alcohol you need to know both the OG and FG. Any acid that is in solution to start isn't going anywhere during fermentation so the gravity contribution can be ignored (it...

In theory, yes - the acid (and anything else dissolved for that matter) will affect the reading. In practice, the amount of acid is so low relative to water/sugar/alcohol that your hydrometer isn't calibrated to detect the subtle differences.

You won't be able to get your hands on any in St. Louis, but check out the notes on Viva Habanera from Night Shift. Great guys, they'd probably give you some direction if you contact them.

I mash in a spare bottling bucket with a jury rigged false bottom (vegetable steamer wrapped in a large mesh bag) wrapped in an old sleeping bag. Way cheaper than messing with your boil kettle, and you could probably rig the bazooka screen to the bucket too.

Definitely looking to see how this turns out. You did have me confused there for a minute - Levitra is an erectile dysfunction drug...I think the Merck drug you're looking for is Mevacor (lovastatin), although it would be hilarious if this stuff turned out to be erection enhancing.

Has anyone tried dry hopping some bland beer (see https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/dry-hop-testing-bud-light-399495/) and then doing some blending trials to nail down the late/dry hop additions? I imagine you could get pretty close this way in a week or so then make minor adjustments from there...

It would make the most sense to blend batches from different generations of the yeast equally spaced over the lifetime of it (i.e. 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th if the yeast is good for 8 generations) to maintain consistency from canning run to canning run. If this is the case, then you should be...