Recent content by Sandow

Taste them both in lemonade. I did a broad swath of sweeteners with friends and we all pretty much had the same conclusions. everyone hated the stevia after a few sips. It starts way too sweet and then ends up less sweet and kind of bitter as your taste buds saturate. Most people could taste...

Boiling absolves all sanitation sins. Aside from prions... -Sandow

from wyeast: Pitch rates, in addition to strain, temperature, and gravity, make a dramatic difference in the final flavor and aroma profile of any beer. The pitch rate will have a direct effect on the amount of cell growth during a fermentation. Cell growth decreases as pitch rates increase...

My concern was more methanol than the larger alcohols. I ended up mulling the applejack for 20 minutes at 150F and sweetening with a touch of maple syrup. Came out dangerously drinkable and strong enough that it stays liquid in the freezer. I got sloshed on it while tasting small batches and...

If you are using unpasturized juice, you need to handle it appropriately. Adding campden and what not unless you want to spin the wheel on wild yeasts and bacteria. As far as the yeast recommendations, there are plenty if you look around a bit. targeting 9% is going to take a decent amount...

I've been using the red star champagne yeast too. It tastes decent once sweetened but it is yeastier that I'd like. Even a few weeks aging helped quite a bit with that though. Did one normal batch and one high gravity that I made into applejack. Was nice and fast to play with but I'm moving...

I just finished jacking some that started at 1.150 using only apple juice concentrate and finished out at 1.03 using red star champagne yeast. My goal was high final ABV though. It was ok straight, a little dryer than I expected it to taste at that FG but it was always going to be made into...

Got a small batch of high test running right now that tastes great so far. I started with apple juice concentrate diluted only 50% and nutrients. Estimated etoh was 16% but the red star champagne yeast I used caps out at 13-15%. Been racking for about two weeks and tastes great. Nice strong...

So I'm pretty happy with the way my cider tastes and how the applejack I've made from it came out but I must confess a tendency toward a bit of a headache after a decent dose of either. Given the lower boiling point of methanol at least, is there any reason you can't just boil it off before...

The temp never dropped after bottling. They have been at room temp the entire time. It is possible that the temp dropped down to the mid 50s while it was racking but I wouldn't have thought it would matter. This yeast has a very high EtOH tolerance so I have a hard time believing that it has...

No preservatives. Same brand of juice I used for the initial fermentation (Seneca) with about 168g of carbs. Using one of the calculators, that works out in the ballpark of 3 to 3.5 volumes of CO2 unless I'm blowing the math.

I'm sure this is a noob question that has been answered a dozen times but I couldn't find an explicit answer when I searched. How long should it take to get the carbonation up after bottling? I used frozen apple juice diluted out to 1.5x of the instructed concentration. Added 2 pounds of...

Soy sauce notes may indicate an infection with Aspergillus Niger. It is usually a harmless mold used in the fermentation of soy sauce and other asian sauces and foods. It can also be a lethal pathogen depending on the state of your immune system and how it is taken in. If you don't have the...