Recent content by Shade

After successful yeast starters, I decided to make a DIPA again. I’d tried in the past but didn’t understand yeast as much in those days so the beer ended up underattenuated but newly armed with yeast starter technology, I had another crack recently. I made a 2L starter with Omega DIPA yeast...

Well .. starting with water, more chloride than sulfate will make for a malty beer, which is good, but that balance is quite high in the chloride side. It's worth learning the power of one of the water adjustment tools like Bru'n water, that suggests 39ppm sulfate, 28ppm chloride for a balanced...

Well, lots of fancy talk. I can relay one don't from my experience - don't toss your hops in loose then crash cool it without gelatine, then try to syphon it into your keg. My syphon got blocked several times, required disassembling to clear, only to block again, and in the end I crashed it...

NEIPAs are typically pretty hoppy and not that malty - that recipe you've linked will be pretty pale (until it's hazy due to the hops). No boil is an odd limitation also - that will change the outcome a lot if you start with a boiled recipe and will be noticeably different. If you can boil...

Gnomebrewer’s advice is good - check the gravity of your first runnings and preboil as well, there are calculators around for what these should be. Then you can tell if it’s the mash or lauter stage, or both.

Thanks fellas. The yeast lifecycle stuff I am ok on but appreciate the background info. The refractometer correction stuff I didn’t realise. My polish isn’t so great so I used the first calculator which suggests I’m at the target FG now, which is encouraging. I’ll check it again this morning...

I'm brewing a small batch of a German wheat beer. I went no sparge since I could mash the full volume and didn't consider the efficiency drop so ended up with an OG around 1040, compared to the 1048 I was aiming for, doh. Other than that, getting the wort into the fermenter went fine (although...

It's a matter of taste I guess. I couldn't get something with the hop profile of a commercial hop bomb (which I what I want, why brew and still buy ..) without ramping it up big time. So, if the OP isn't content with what he/she has going on now, go big! At least for one batch. Sure, the...

You are thinking the right way re the g/L ratio being material at flameout and dry hop. I remember reading a post sometime saying if you want a hoppy beer, between 7-15g/L in whirlpool and 7-20g/L at dry hop. Once I figured out what that converted to for a 21L batch I thought it was madness...

+ 5 gal Pliny clone, + 5 gal tropical hop bomb, +2 from the guy above = 1717.5

So - in an effort to make the tropical hop bomb my wife and I enjoy drinking the most, I went fairly all out in terms of the volume of hops added for the most expensive batch I've ever made. 550g/19oz in total of Mosaic, Equinox and Amarillo -> 60g in the boil, 200g in the whirlpool, 250g in...

Anyway .. a post-party update. So, the set and forget beer had the best carbonation easily. The other two were overcarbed but we made do. Frequently they poured half-foam, even with no gas attached, and the best pours were when we left the gas off for a while. But overall was a grand success...

I made this for the first time recently for my birthday party - had a few beer drinkers coming so made 3 kegs, Centennial Blonde, a 6.8% hop bomb and a 7.1% IIPA. I tagged them as 80s/90s wrestlers, CB was Mr Perfect and he was very much in demand. Unsurprisingly that keg was tapped first...

Party day! The keg I had put on for 5 days at room temp and 23 psi I tried last night. It had visible bubbles but enough quite enough so I've cranked that up a bit. The first keg was pouring 2/3 foam so I degassed it a couple of times and last night it poured better but I think undercarbed so...

I'm finding this easier said than done in my lack of experience. Possibly it's being drowned out by my fridge when I open the door (but I can turn that off I guess) but if it's happening, it's pretty quiet and/or quick. In my mind I'd think if the beer isn't carbed, the pressure in the...