Recent content by Mirkin

yeast character often has nothing to do with attenuation or flocculation! Temperature is the real key for most strains if you want character or not. At low temperatures 17-18 deg C : WLP001, WY1056, US-05 or BRY-97 are all very clean and neutral. Keeping the temp low and controlled for the...

That yeast should drop hard when it's done and chilled, I've heard reports and can understand the arguments as to why fining agents can strip hop aroma, also lots saying its fine. No practical experience of my own to add to that tho. Personally, if its just for the private bar don't worry so...

What yeast did you use? What temperature is it sitting at? Is fermentation actually finished? Once you're sure it's finished crash chill it. That should do the trick as posted above. If you've used US-05 or Wyeast 1056 I know from personal both of these strains are very poor at flocculating...

Yep Geoff is spot on the biabrewer.info forums have the BIABacus spreadsheet on there. The forums are a wealth of specifically BIAB info and discussions. Great resource and community.

Checkout biabrewer.info forums the guys there have created an amazing brew calculator called BIABacus it's brilliant.

Long time since my last update, all 5 gallon batches 2 porters 3 IPA 2 Apa 1 RIS 1 ordinary bitter 1 Scottish 60/- 1 wee heavy Gosh that's more than I thought I'd done!! 55 gal + 26893 = 26948

First I'd try rousing your current yeast cake and raising the ferment temp by a couple of degrees. If your goal is a higher abv add some more sugar as others suggest. If your goal is to dry out what you have, consider champagne yeast. It's a neutral yeast functional at high abv's. BW being...

For flexibility I'd go full fridge, you would be able to store other things as well like bottles of washed yeast, various sizes of bottles etc. also most wine coolers are designed for horizontal bottle storage, where as beer, especially bottle conditioned, is best vertically stored.

Safale S-04 is my favorite for It's clean, fast, high attenuation, flocculates like rocks. Us-05 is ok just it doesn't Flocc out as well as 04. For a 20L (5 Gal) batch I will hydrate about 1/4 - 1/3 pack and dump in bottling bucket with priming sugar solution. Away u go! Edit: another option is...

It's all sounding good to me, just got me thinking of doing a kiwi fruit kolsh or Saison for next summer! Just one note for kolsh - in my experience the yeast tastes horrible! So filtering or really long cold conditioning to drop it all out. I think I somewhere to use s-04 or us05, something...

Hey mate, really simple solution :-) This is a good listing of hops stats http://www.usahops.org/graphics/File/HGA%20BCI%20Reports/Variety%20Manual%207-24-12.pdf. And here's a quick video tutorial to help add it to your beersmith. http://beersmith.com/adding-ingredients-in-beersmith-2/...

When batches are going to be that small just pop the lid on it and place it in a water bath, then when the temp gets down around 40•C start using ice to push down further. My personal experience is that chilling like this is only worthwhile doing for 10L or less, 15L is starting to get...

As the other guys have said its best to do biggest boil volume possible. Hop utilization is a big factor with volume of wort and also the concentration (specific gravity) starts to be an issue for your amounts of hops too. The greater your volume boiling the smaller the amount of boil-off you...

Yeah that's true, but if you whirlpool and use a pickup tube angled towards the wall more you don't get much trub. Alternatively a false bottom or hop blocker. Siphoning adds more risks to the system, infection, or if you use a countrtflow or plate chiller siphoning hot liquid can be hazardous.

I have 3 standard brews, an Ordinary Bitter 3.3% abv session beer, Robust Porter 5.2% and my 'signature' Red IPA at 7%. I have them almost dialed in to my satisfaction. I experiment with APA's playing with different hops etc, and make one completely absurd IIPA year as well as a Russian...