Search results

I brew several very long boil beers and there are distinct and drastic changes that occur in a long boil. 2 hours is not a long boil though, so blast away. If you are curious here are the changes I notice in the 8-12 hour boil range: 1. Substantially darker color. A light wort turns a unique...

Considering that you're crafting a brown porter recipie based on pale malt I don't think that brown malt is going to be as critical. You're color will end up brown and should have some nice flavor that is all appropriate to style. If you were doing a traditional style brown porter made of all or...

It was a solid american barley wine (still have a few bottles left), but didn't match troegs exactly. It wasn't as dark the genuine article and missing out on some of the dark crystal type flavors and not as estery. If I do it again I'd dial back the munich and increase the crystal, and maybe...

How old was your kit? I ran into this problem when I first started doing extract brews. The yeast was old and had been sitting on some shelf. It barely fermented the beer, then after secondary it had settled out and was no longer viable enough to carb the beer. On beers I secondary for 6 months...

I am relying on the default beersmith numbers. I wouldn't expect the potential discrepancy to account for the >10% difference though. I suppose its possible if 2-row was a few points less than reported and all the pilsners are a few points higher. I always just assumed the US 2-row would...

No they are they same, and both 2-row barley. I don't have an adjustable mill but I always inspect the crush and it is perfectly suited for these grains. If I didn't have my bins labeled it would be easy to completely lose track of which grain is which.

I didn't average them actually. Literally every pils-based beer was between 88% and 92% efficiency and every US 2-row was between 70 and 76. Within those bands it correlates directly to the gravity of the beer. Making a 1.045 beer with 2-row was still less efficient than making a 1.090 beer...

I've been troubleshooting wildly inconsistent efficiencies in my brews over the last couple of years. I've been brewing exclusively belgian and french beers this year and as a result have been using nothing but pilsner malt of various varieties as my base. I've also been very happy to have...

how are you getting medical oxygen without a prescription?

I posted a thread on this a while ago, but didn't get any good advice here. People do use this trick though as I see it thrown into recipes periodically. I was reading in Papazian's Homebrewer's Companion and ran across an interesting tip. He states the following. He then expands on the...

I'm looking into brewing up a Biere De Garde and I'm curious about trying out the technique of extended boil times to achieve the kettle caramelization for color and flavor. The book (farmhouse ales) says some breweries boil hard for 3 hours or more (one example cited 12 hours). It does not give...

Thanks everybody! Yeah I've since found what appears to be the main distiller's forums and its a pretty good wealth of knowledge. Perhaps they are almost as opinionated as us over here at HBT! haha. I think I'm going to try the freeze distillation method with the batch I've currently got aging...

There is any number of things that could be the problem but for me it was dough-in. I experienced very inconsistent and somewhat crappy efficiency when I first switched to AG. After a while I realized I really wasn't stirring effectively enough at dough-in to break up grain balls. So if...

Don't let your stove bring you down. I brew in a small NYC apartment and I do full AG batches. I use two bucket heaters to aid the stove in delivering heat. I think the bucket heaters alone would actually be able to boil it but you want a really good vigorous boil if you have the means...

i'm currently fermenting a few batches of the fabled apfelwein and I'd like to distill one into a brandy. Will the brandy batch also benefit from the 6 month+ aging period or will the distillation erase the subtle improvements of the aging process? I'm fairly new to distilling but aging prior to...

I just made my first experimental batch with Golden Naked Oats and it didn't go quite as expected. Its hard to find many recipes out there using this ingredient but I did quite a bit of digging and it seems everybody just throws it right in there with their other grains to grind. I inspected the...

Its my first attempt at apple wine. I made two 5gal batches with one using the montrachet wine yeast as per EdWort's instructions and the second using a vile of While Labs champaign yeast (no starter). The one with the champaing yeast is going crazy and is foaming up into the airlock while the...

I typically dump trub after about 2 weeks. I'll check gravity to make sure I hit my target and again a few days in a row to make sure there isn't any significant movement. From there it sits at least two more weeks, but usually a month or two, in secondary waiting on one of my kegs to free up...

I was reading in Papazian's Homebrewer's Companion and ran across an interesting tip. He states the following. He then expands on the point with a little narrative. Has anyone tried this? I wish it provided a few more specifics. Precisely what is meant by "at the end of the mash" and how...

I just felt like posting as a sort of public service announcement, decoction mashes can be turbo efficient so plan accordingly. I normally do regular infusion mashes and the occasional step infusion but I recently got a chest freezer so I figured I'd try a decoction mash with my first real...