Recent content by RIT_Warrior

So there a fruit fly has landed in my cider. I have named him Geoff. I have retrieved Geoff from my carboy, but I'm worried about Geoff's aceto friends. Anyone know what to do in this situation? Is it possible to kill everything with campden once I hit FG? The cider is 5 gallons of...

So I'm making a fruit wine for the first time, and I made a bit of a splashy mess getting the strawberries out. Then, when transferring from the bucket to a 5 gallon carboy my autosiphon glugged half wine half air for 30 seconds or so. Most of the recipes for fruit wine that I see recommend...

I have a minor toothache in one of my incisors that hurts when I drink hot liquids. Because of this, I drink coffee through a straw. This bypasses the tooth and thus it won't hurt. Perhaps this young lady has a similar problem, except she is sensitive to cold.

A dubbel I made recently was recently (FG: 1.008) called "sweet" and "heavy" by someone at my office. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt as I think he was thinking that the esters produced by the 1214 were "sweet" and interpreted that as "heavy". I did raise my eyebrows a bit when he...

Sugar does not give cider aromas or flavors...that is an old chestnut that refuses to die, much like "use a secondary to get your beer off the yeast" and "squeezing your grain bag releases tannins". Running your numbers, it looks like your sugar was around 15% of fermentables, which is right...

A few tips I've learned: 1. The absorption is horrendous. But I compensate by doing a "sparge". I rest a colander over my pot and pour hot water through the grains. I make a "hole" in the middle of the grains and aim for that while I pour, I find that seems to help the water distribute in a...

Looks like it depends on your efficiency. Comparing Austin Homebrew's cheapest bulk 2-row vs bulk extra light DME, you can buy 2.9lbs of 2-row per pound of DME. 1lb of DME in a 5 gallon batch will yield an OG of 1.009. Assuming a brewhouse efficiency of 45%, you will get 1.009 out of 2.9lbs...

Or...you could spend 2 bucks on some US-05 and have some yeast that attenuates, flocculates, and doesn't make beer that tastes like bread? In another thread I used bread yeast coupled with carb tabs to test the efficacy of plastic champagne corks when paired with belgian-style bottles. The...

If you are making a Belgian-style beer I think the lower FG would be a positive, as low FG is a desirable characteristic to the Belgians. Personally, if I was shooting for a sweeter taste and higher FG in a Belgian I'd get that through caramel malts like Aromatic or Special B than through...

Gosh boss I just can't make it into work today...yeah, terrible sore throat and a cough and...yeah sore throat and a cough. Yeah, totally. I'll be out all week I think.

Wyeast 1968?

I'd really like to see a double blind triangle test between a regular beer and a gustunlingunlinglingtunlingified beer to see if anyone can taste the difference. And also to see if it makes the beer better.

I pitched a 2 liter starter into a Tripel that I had forgotten to add 3 pounds of sugar into. I knew I forgot to pitch the sugar but it was too late. When I woke up in the morning about 8 hours after I had pitched I saw the most violent fermentation I've ever seen, IRL or online. My "orange...

I'm always a bit leery of "store-aged" beers as those beers have been sitting under fluorescent lights for god knows how long. Maybe it won't matter for your average darker Imperial Stout or Barleywine, but I think I'll pass on the 2007 vintage Chimay White.

Might want to start there...how did you "proof" the yeast? In general this isn't something you do with brewing yeast.