Recent content by stz

Ok! This got a little off topic. Some of it is just uh ... like your opinion dude. When I started home brewing (and I started off home brewing, not commercial brewing) I followed the instructions that came with kits. My beer tasted like kit beer and it wasn't what I wanted. Everybody around me...

Never sanitise nibs? I do roughly mill and bake (toast) them though. 120C for 15-20m until colour and aroma greatly improves. They are pretty rubbish without this step.

As an update ... Final gravity was 1.029. 6 points of this was lactose. 67% attenuation. There was additional sugars from the cocoa nibs, cherries and priming sugar so it managed further fermentation. I'm very happy with it, most prominent note is coffee, like good coffee, rich coffee flavours...

While I'm not dissuaded trying to culture old/random things sometimes it isn't worth the effort and what comes back isn't always what you expected. How much are you spending on hops for this NEIPA? When I've had doubts like clearly this is a big jar of dead yeast and trub I've done your first...

Wow dude I had to go back and read through all that. What an awesome story. I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere in a steady and pretty well paid office job which was rapidly driving me insane. I managed to get a minimum wage job as a brewery assistant in a local brewery based on talking about...

Well that is cool. I always suspected that generalised home brew wisdom is often a case of ... well generalised wisdom. If you pitch what might be a technical under pitch, have patchy temperature control and aren't quite sure if it is done yet before bottling it is probably safest to tell people...

I've been trying to recreate the tart saison of my dreams and getting nowhere fast so far. Two batches got fed stupid things in the hope of making them interesting see how they end up with some time and brett. I've ordered yeast bay saison blend, amalgamation and TYB184. See how I go. The...

Hello HBT. I am a commercial brewer and as such apply a similar approach to my home brewing. In the professional world I meet people who range from like myself to letting things take their time. I love the language of things like - the yeast will tell you when it is done - or - patience is a...

I try and rinse the keg as soon as possible after it is finished, certainly the same week. I remove the lid, upend it and put my garden spray hose in there for a minute or so. I inspect it to ensure it looks clean, chuck in a litre of PAA, seal it up, shake it a couple of times and store it...

I brew 50 or 60L batches so two days before I brew I usually take a few litres of hopped wort, add my vial, let it get busy for a day or two, might feed it a second time depending on the OG of what I'm brewing. I chill it the night before brew day, decant the majority of the liquid into a fresh...

Hello HBT. Does anybody have any links or book recommendations for improving basic knowledge of yeast and bacteria identification, microscope work and techniques for storage, handling, culturing and so on? I've got the yeast book by white and zainasheff already. Ideally something helping me to...

I've had quite a few when in europe and honestly, the majority of them just taste like a pale ale with fusel alcohols. Hot, sometimes a little burnt rubber. The 'fancy' ones are a confusing bunch, not really meeting my expectation of the style. As a result I suppose I have to admit I just...

Maths it out. What is that a 45L mash tun? So realistically you'll get a maximum of 18kg of grain in there. If your efficiency is 80% you'll recover about 4,320 points from a grist with an average of 300LoD. You said you want 10 gallon batches (in FV?) and you've room to concentrate the wort...

Hello HBT. I want to home brew my first 'proper' lager. But it won't be a 'proper' lager, actually, maybe it will be a proper lager because it'll involve amylo glucosidase, pilsner, rice, though deviating into 15-22IBU's of whirlpool citra and about 4g/L of dry hop. SG 32, proposed FG 0 or...

That sucks. Try some different fruit products. Aseptic puree, concentrate, freeze dried powder and so on.