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[wetwired]

Any of you guys in Australia and use the soda stream bottles for carbonation?

They've recently changed the bottles to a large version with a slightly deeper thread which doesn't seal properly, causing gas to leak. I've lost a whole 60L bottle of gas when the regulator was turned off due to this. It seemed like it was sealed and I heard no noise but obviously of the week I had it sitting there it'd slowly drained.

 

[fenners]

Spent tonight at a friend's house, drinking a bunch of rare sour beers he'd won at a local brewpub, with another of his friend's that's a homebrewer. Was totally out of my depth in conversations about sour bacteria (they're big sour fans), water profiles, obscure tastes in the beers we were drinking, etc etc...

Man, I make beer, my friends and my wife's friends drink it & seem to like it by how much they drink of it... Totally out of my depth with this other crowd

 

[Yaboosh]

Spent tonight at a friend's house, drinking a bunch of rare sour beers he'd won at a local brewpub, with another of his friend's that's a homebrewer. Was totally out of my depth in conversations about sour bacteria (they're big sour fans), water profiles, obscure tastes in the beers we were drinking, etc etc...

Man, I make beer, my friends and my wife's friends drink it & seem to like it by how much they drink of it... Totally out of my depth with this other crowd

Don't worry, they were probably full of shit.

 

[fenners]

Don't worry, they were probably full of shit.

I drank some of his homebrew, absolutely awesome imperial stout aged in a whisky barrel. I've got a bomber of it sitting there to drink in a couple of weeks. He may be the classic OCD software engineer type obsessing about a hobby, but he could walk the talk

Just a different level of obsession/quality desire to where I am as a brewer.

 

[op_ivy]

its homebrew day!

got a moose drool/R&R inspired coconut brown ale going today! while i'm mashing, i'l be bottling a pliny clone.

i'm enjoying the last days of summer.

just bottled and tasted. this came out utterly awesome. tastes like a nuttier version of moose drool. i used about 45 drops of coconut extract when transferring to the bottling bucket, but should have used a fair bit more as even looking for it i barely detect it (and even then, i think its contributing more to the nuttiness). still, it turned out amazing.

 

[ShinAmano]

I have a belgian trippel in secondary fermentation currently and plan on kicking off a chocolate porter this weekend.

 

[ShinAmano]

Edit dp...stupid phone.

 

[codswallop]

Got my delivery of supplies to make an APA today, got my new cooler mash tun all setup, going to try using that tomorrow hopefully!

Edit: Oh dear. Had massive problems with a stuck sparge with my cooler mash tun. What a letdown after all that excitement building up. I think I've wrecked the steel braided supply hose, so unless I come up with a better solution (costing more money, dammit) I'll use the same cooler but put my BIAB bag in the cooler as the method of filtration next time I brew.

 

[andylsun]

Brewing an APA today - recipe from Brewing Classic Styles (wonderful book). Going to switch from my usual thick mash of 1.25qt/lb to 1.75qt/lb. I've got a 10gal mash tun, and hopefully this will keep the mash at a more constant temperature over the mash time. Will see what it does efficiency wise. I've not yet bought a crusher, so relying on homebrew store crush again. It's next on my list after a new burner.

 

[Stet]

There's nothing worse than a sulphurous start to a ferment.

 

[andylsun]

There's nothing worse than a sulphurous start to a ferment.

But it can lead to amazing beer.

 

[thcsquad]

I'll be interested to see how it turns out, especially with the nutmeg and cinnamon, but then I've been surprised in the past (by things like thyme, rhubarb, etc, got a truffle beer in the cupboard right now)!

A bit late, but this turned out great. The spices really did come to the forefront, especially the peppery flavor from...the grains of paradise?

 

[MacGurcules]

So I'd heard of people fermenting Mountain Dew into beer so I decided I had to try it. I whipped up a little recipe for it and brewed a few weeks ago. Been waiting for it to drop clear. Checked the gravity today and it landed where the math says it should. It turned out...interesting.

There's a bit of residual sweetness and the Citra comes through strong. It's like drinking mango juice. I've got a little Columbus in the freezer and I kind of wish I'd used some of that to get a bit more bitterness. But once I get it on gas and put a little carbonation bite in there, I think it'll work out decently.

Here's the recipe if anyone cares to try:

For a two-gallon batch:
6L Mountain Dew
3 oz Crystal 40L (steeped 20 mins @ ~155F)
1 lb Light DME
0.25 oz Citra 45 min
0.25 oz Citra 0 min

Top up the fermenter with water to 2 gallons.
Pitch Safale US-05.

 

[Yaboosh]

There is a board game being Kickstarted right now that is brewing themed and I thought some here might be interested.

It is a worker placement game (ala Agricola) called Brew Crafters.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dicehateme/brew-crafters-a-board-game-about-making-beer

Sounds interesting. I am not one to kickstart things, I will just wait for a retail release, but as someone who brews for a living, I have no choice but to pick this up.

 

[pxleyes]

First brew has been fermenting since Sunday. Woke up to insane action Monday, but a blow off and swamp cooler helped settle things down. I hope the 12ish hours above optimal temp doesn't affect much. Already have a list of improvements for the next batch.

Few Qs
-2-2.5 gallon batches just as easy as 5 gallons? Want to experiment more than make quantity
-Do bombers work well for bottling along side my normal browns? Same for stumpies?
-Are there recommended recipe sites? I have some specific styles I want to shoot for.
-Is there much difference in brewing in concentrate and thinning before you pitch or just brewing at full volume?

 

[Yaboosh]

First brew has been fermenting since Sunday. Woke up to insane action Monday, but a blow off and swamp cooler helped settle things down. I hope the 12ish hours above optimal temp doesn't affect much. Already have a list of improvements for the next batch.

Few Qs
-2-2.5 gallon batches just as easy as 5 gallons? Want to experiment more than make quantity
-Do bombers work well for bottling along side my normal browns? Same for stumpies?
-Are there recommended recipe sites? I have some specific styles I want to shoot for.
-Is there much difference in brewing in concentrate and thinning before you pitch or just brewing at full volume?

2-2.5 gal batches are far easier to make on a stove top and full boils are one of the best things you can do for the quality of your beer.

Bombers are effectively identical to 12oz bottles. Stumpies are fine assuming they are normal crown necks.

The standard of recipe recommendations is the book Brewing Classic Styles.

Yes, huge difference. Try to boil the full volume if at all possible.

 

[KingGondo]

First brew has been fermenting since Sunday. Woke up to insane action Monday, but a blow off and swamp cooler helped settle things down. I hope the 12ish hours above optimal temp doesn't affect much. Already have a list of improvements for the next batch.

Few Qs
-2-2.5 gallon batches just as easy as 5 gallons? Want to experiment more than make quantity
-Do bombers work well for bottling along side my normal browns? Same for stumpies?
-Are there recommended recipe sites? I have some specific styles I want to shoot for.
-Is there much difference in brewing in concentrate and thinning before you pitch or just brewing at full volume?

I'm pretty new to brewing myself, but I can answer a couple questions.

As far as I know, as long as you don't leave too much room in the bottles, the size of the bottles shouldn't matter. Fill to the top with the bottling wand in the bottle and remove it, which hold leave just a bit of room before capping. It should carbonate at the same pace regardless of the bottle size.

Also, I've brewed from concentrate several times and the beer has turned out fantastic. Don't think brewing at full volume would improve things much.

As for recipes, I've been using Extreme Brewing by Sam Calagione. I've made the Allagash Belgian Wit recipe, Indian Brown Ale, and I'm making Raison d'Etre at the moment. Good book with a wide variety of styles.

Welcome to home brewing! It's a damn fun hobby.

 

[pxleyes]

Thanks guys! On my phone but I'll keep this thread subscribed.

Got to say asking questions here is far less intimidating than the sites dedicated to the craft. A lot of their stuff goes over my head at this point. It's great to have a group of brewers on GAF.

 

[fenners]

2-2.5 gal batches are far easier to make on a stove top and full boils are one of the best things you can do for the quality of your beer.

Bombers are effectively identical to 12oz bottles. Stumpies are fine assuming they are normal crown necks.

The standard of recipe recommendations is the book Brewing Classic Styles.

Yes, huge difference. Try to boil the full volume if at all possible.

Listen to this man.

I like bombers just because there's less of them to bottle a batch with.

 

[MacGurcules]

First brew has been fermenting since Sunday. Woke up to insane action Monday, but a blow off and swamp cooler helped settle things down. I hope the 12ish hours above optimal temp doesn't affect much. Already have a list of improvements for the next batch.

Few Qs
-2-2.5 gallon batches just as easy as 5 gallons? Want to experiment more than make quantity
-Do bombers work well for bottling along side my normal browns? Same for stumpies?
-Are there recommended recipe sites? I have some specific styles I want to shoot for.
-Is there much difference in brewing in concentrate and thinning before you pitch or just
brewing at full volume?

• Personally, I find that five-gallon batches aren't a lot more work than two-gallons. You need to clean all the same equipment and do basically all the same work. I generally just do short batches for experiments or testing recipes, stuff where I don't want to waste materials on something that might not turn out. The biggest advantage of smaller batches for a starting brewer is as Yaboosh said. It lets you do full-volume boils on smaller-scale equipment.
  
• Bombers are great because it means you're cleaning and sanitizing like half as many bottles. Use them just like you would regular 12oz. For bottles in general, basically, if your capper can close it, you should be fine to use it. I will warn that I've had some issues with crushing New Belgium bottles while capping in the past and I try not to use them.
  
• Northern Brewer publishes the recipes and instructions for all of their kits on their website and many of their recipes have plenty of reviews. You can do worse than pick through there for something you like. Hell, you can do worse than just ordering their recipe kits until you're comfortable building your own.
  
• There are a fair number of advantages to doing a full boil rather than half boils. If you're boiling only half the volume, you're essentially making beer at double the strength. As you can imagine, that's going to make a lot of things different. That said, most of the advantages of full-volume boils come when mashing from whole grain. If you're brewing primarily from malt extract right now, you can make plenty good beers on half-boils and you can mitigate some of the disadvantages of a partial boil by doing late extract additions. Yeah, full boils will make better, more predictable beer. But don't feel pressured into it. If you're making beer you like from partial boil recipes, go ahead and keep doing it until you're comfortable before expanding too quickly.

 

[fenners]

I just won the Halloween homebrew competition here at work 7 entries including mine, judging was two senior managers & a brewer from Circle Brewing here in Austin. I brewed up a Cascadian IPA that I've brewed before - it was the hoppiest beer there by far, though I wouldn't say it was over-hopped. Second place was a great Saison.

The pro-brewer said my brew was perfect to style with a /great/ hop smell & flavour... Woot

 

[Yaboosh]

I just won the Halloween homebrew competition here at work 7 entries including mine, judging was two senior managers & a brewer from Circle Brewing here in Austin. I brewed up a Cascadian IPA that I've brewed before - it was the hoppiest beer there by far, though I wouldn't say it was over-hopped. Second place was a great Saison.

The pro-brewer said my brew was perfect to style with a /great/ hop smell & flavour... Woot

Judging homebrew comps, you wouldn't believe the amount of hoppy styles that are entered that aren't nearly hoppy enough.

 

[MacGurcules]

Just racked my milk stout onto cocoa bits.

Smells amazing. I'm looking forward to this one.

 

[pxleyes]

So that first batch? It is in bottles and just chilling for the next month. Didn't break a single bottle and got 562oz out of the batch. Lost about .6 gallons out of a 5 gallon batch. I call that a win for my first time.

A few photos

Had to make a blowoff for the first couple of days. Was wayyyyyy too warm, and I eventually made a little swamp cooler.

Bombers are my new favorite.

 

[pxleyes]

Just racked my milk stout onto cocoa bits.



Smells amazing. I'm looking forward to this one.

Recipe?! I have been debating between a milk stout or a porter with coffee.

 

[Stet]

I racked 26 L of freshly pressed apple cider about three weeks ago. It's in an opaque bucket so I'm anxious to pop it open and see if it's cleared yet!

 

[MacGurcules]

Recipe?! I have been debating between a milk stout or a porter with coffee.

Pretty basic extract stout:

• Three quarters pound of chocolate malt
• Like a quarter of 80L Crystal
• Six pounds dark LME
• Ounce and a half Goldings for 60
• Pound of lactose at five
• Safale S-04

After primary, rack onto a quarter pound of crushed cocoa bits. I understand you could use powdered instead, if need be.

 

[codswallop]

Recipe?! I have been debating between a milk stout or a porter with coffee.

I did a choc milk stout earlier this year.

65% pale malt, 9% chocolate malt, 4% flaked oats, 4% 50L crystal malt, 3% roasted barley, 9% lactose sugar (15 mins). I also mashed in a further 6% with cocoa nibs (yes I mashed, not added them during the boil, the sparge wasn't stuck). Fuggle at 60 and 45 mins aiming for about 25IBU. Mashed high, about 68-69c, used Safale S-04 yeast.

Has a strong dark chocolate flavour, perhaps I might ease up a tad on the IBU (maybe 20) and the roasted barley next time, but I'm pretty happy with it. I think I'll add some powdered cocoa at about 5-10 mins to round out the flavour too. As it's aged those two concerns have disappeared entirely, but after 3 months is was still a bit bitter.

Makes a great beer float, too!

 

[pxleyes]

Check your home depot for copper tubing being on clearance. Just picked up 50' of 1/2" tubing for 20 bucks!

 

[Velinos]

Brewed my lemon-lime wheat beer again last night.

2.5 Gallon batch
3lb 2oz 2-Row
2lb White Wheat
8oz Vienna

Single Infusion Mash 152F 45min

.125oz Motueka 60min
.125oz Motueka 20min
.125oz Sorachi Ace 20min
.125oz Sorachi Ace 7min
.25oz lime zest 5min
1L Lime-ade after 2 days in primary
WY3068 Weihenstephan

 

[codswallop]

Brewed a saison IPA yesterday (strongish and about 65IBU IPA with 3711 yeast). The calculations in BeerSmith told me to use 5L too much sparge water, so I ended up with that much extra liquid, obviously at a lower gravity. Oops!

Put it in multiple pots and boiled off as much as I could over a few hours until it was back at the right volume, and only then did I start my hour-long boil (which was about 3.5 hours in the end, but the hops were only in for an hour so no big deal).

Ended up hitting roughly my expected target but the volume somehow ended up less than expected. I've realised the volumes were way off because I didn't tick the "drain mash tun before batch sparge" or whatever option. I didn't notice because BeerSmith told me to drain the mash tun first anyway!

Fingers crossed next time things will go smoothly. I moved to separate mashing/boiling vessels using batch sparge from BIAB and this was the second brew with the different setup, so plenty of time for improvement. I'll be doing another in two or three weeks because of an order delay (ordered supplies Monday, they hadn't arrived by Friday so I devised the recipe quickly and ordered from a more expensive local HBS as I really wanted to brew this weekend).

 

[fenners]

Was /supposed/ to be brewing right now but today's "fun" with my kids wiped out my energy. Tomorrow morning instead.

It's a "robust porter" (to put it mildly) taken from the actual recipe for Jester King's Weasel Rodeo but scaled down to measurements that suit buying actual grain (i.e. 6oz instead of 6.75oz etc). Having to substitute some LME for the Maris Otter as there's just too much for my BIAB setup

Should be quite a brew day for sure. After primary, I'm thinking of splitting up the batch to put one on cherries & the other either on coffee or oaked whiskey... Decisions decisions.

Estimated OG: 1.085 SG
Estimated Color: 58.5 SRM
Estimated IBU: 60.8 IBUs
Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
8 lbs                 Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)         Grain         1        48.9 %        
1 lbs 12.0 oz         Caramel/Crystal Malt -150L (150.0 SRM)   Grain         2        10.7 %        
1 lbs 12.0 oz         Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM)                   Grain         3        10.7 %        
1 lbs                 Brown Malt (65.0 SRM)                    Grain         4        6.1 %         
1 lbs                 Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM)               Grain         5        6.1 %         
1 lbs                 Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)               Grain         6        6.1 %         
8.0 oz                Smoked Malt (9.0 SRM)                    Grain         7        3.1 %         
6.0 oz                Pale Chocolate Malt (200.0 SRM)          Grain         8        2.3 %         
1.25 oz               Millenium [14.25 %] - Boil 60.0 min      Hop           9        54.7 IBUs     
1.00 oz               Saaz [4.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min            Hop           10       6.1 IBUs      
1.50 oz               Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min          Hop           11       0.0 IBUs      
1.00 oz               Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 0.0 Hop           12       0.0 IBUs      
1.0 pkg               Edinburgh Ale (White Labs #WLP028) [35.4 Yeast         13       -             
1 lbs                 Brown Sugar, Dark (50.0 SRM)             Sugar         14       6.1 %

 

[fenners]

Fingers crossed next time things will go smoothly. I moved to separate mashing/boiling vessels using batch sparge from BIAB and this was the second brew with the different setup, so plenty of time for improvement.

I'm curious why you moved away from BIAB to the standard setup?

 

[sharkmuncher]

Brewed a saison IPA yesterday (strongish and about 65IBU IPA with 3711 yeast). The calculations in BeerSmith told me to use 5L too much sparge water, so I ended up with that much extra liquid, obviously at a lower gravity. Oops!

Put it in multiple pots and boiled off as much as I could over a few hours until it was back at the right volume, and only then did I start my hour-long boil (which was about 3.5 hours in the end, but the hops were only in for an hour so no big deal).

Ended up hitting roughly my expected target but the volume somehow ended up less than expected. I've realised the volumes were way off because I didn't tick the "drain mash tun before batch sparge" or whatever option. I didn't notice because BeerSmith told me to drain the mash tun first anyway!

Fingers crossed next time things will go smoothly. I moved to separate mashing/boiling vessels using batch sparge from BIAB and this was the second brew with the different setup, so plenty of time for improvement. I'll be doing another in two or three weeks because of an order delay (ordered supplies Monday, they hadn't arrived by Friday so I devised the recipe quickly and ordered from a more expensive local HBS as I really wanted to brew this weekend).

Trick you can use when batch sparging is to drain your mash tun completely and measure how much liquid you have in your kettle. You can just add as much water as you need to hit pre-boil volume and use that volume to sparge. After the mash, the grain won't hold any more water so anything you add in the sparge will make it to the kettle.

 

[codswallop]

I'm curious why you moved away from BIAB to the standard setup?

I'm currently doing about 10-12L (into the fermenter) batches, but want to make slightly larger batches (about 19-23L batches). That's too big for stove top, and I didn't want to have to lift the bag of grain that size out of the pot. I also feel it's not as efficient.

The big problem though is that the crappy pot I'm using is terrible, thermally. I'd lose up to 8c during a mash, so moved to a converted cooler with a large capacity (still haven't upgraded the pot!). I actually use the BIAB bag still though as the filter, because I haven't gotten around to making a manifold and the steel mesh filter didn't work very well for me.

Trick you can use when batch sparging is to drain your mash tun completely and measure how much liquid you have in your kettle.

Yeah, the main problem was that I didn't really pay enough attention to what BeerSmith was telling me (and didn't realise even though it told me to drain the mash tun, that I hadn't ticked the box saying that's what I was going to do). I think I should be right next time, but I'll keep that in mind instead of blindly doing what it tells me to!

 

[fenners]

Was /supposed/ to be brewing right now but today's "fun" with my kids wiped out my energy. Tomorrow morning instead.

It's a "robust porter" (to put it mildly) taken from the actual recipe for Jester King's Weasel Rodeo but scaled down to measurements that suit buying actual grain (i.e. 6oz instead of 6.75oz etc). Having to substitute some LME for the Maris Otter as there's just too much for my BIAB setup

Should be quite a brew day for sure. After primary, I'm thinking of splitting up the batch to put one on cherries & the other either on coffee or oaked whiskey... Decisions decisions.

Ended up brew evening because of kiddoes lol. Still, my 5 year old patiently helped me by pouring jugs of water & keeping count of how many gallons, which rocked. Undershot my OG - ended up at ~1.070, giving me about 70% efficiency, which is a little low for me, but I'm not going to worry - it should still turn out awesome

Now to wait & figure out if I'm going to go cherries, coffee, whiskey soaked oak or something mixture. Ideas?

 

[fenners]

I'm currently doing about 10-12L (into the fermenter) batches, but want to make slightly larger batches (about 19-23L batches). That's too big for stove top, and I didn't want to have to lift the bag of grain that size out of the pot. I also feel it's not as efficient.

The big problem though is that the crappy pot I'm using is terrible, thermally. I'd lose up to 8c during a mash, so moved to a converted cooler with a large capacity (still haven't upgraded the pot!). I actually use the BIAB bag still though as the filter, because I haven't gotten around to making a manifold and the steel mesh filter didn't work very well for me.

I think that still counts at BIAB You're just using a cooler to keep the heat in during the mash - I've thought of doing that myself & I know others do it that way on HBT.

For the size of pot/batches I do, I don't find moving the grain that much of a hassle - I don't do /huge/ beers, usually 1.07/1.08 at most though. When it's time to pull out the grain, I untie the voile from the rim of the pot, gather it up & tie a knot, then pull it up & slide a BBQ grill underneath to hold it right above the top of the pot. That way it drains into the pot, I can press on it to squeeze out as much liquor as I can etc.

 

[Angry Grimace]

My attempts to make an Exponential Hoppiness/Pliny the Younger type recipe have still been unsuccessful. I haven't been able to get any kind of attenuation below 1.020. I think I need to try one more time with an absurdly low mash temp (147 or so) and a 90-120 minute rest time. I'm a little inspired after talking about beer for a couple minutes with a Ninkasi award winner/BJCP Master earlier today.

 

[fenners]

My attempts to make an Exponential Hoppiness/Pliny the Younger type recipe have still been unsuccessful. I haven't been able to get any kind of attenuation below 1.020. I think I need to try one more time with an absurdly low mash temp (147 or so) and a 90-120 minute rest time. I'm a little inspired after talking about beer for a couple minutes with a Ninkasi award winner/BJCP Master earlier today.

Well, what's the target starting OG vs FG? The "hoppiness" of Pliny etc have no bearing on gravity, just IBUs & flavour. If you're having a tough time getting below 1.020 (a classic homebrewer problem), it's not your hops.

What's your fermentation temperature control? Are you oxygenating/aerating your wort enough? Yeast starter?

 

[codswallop]

I think that still counts at BIAB

Not really, since it's not single vessel brewing and I don't lift the bag and all the grains out of the brew kettle. The mesh is just for filtration in this instance. Does make cleanup a bit easier, though. Wondering if I should even bother with a manifold. I only went with the bag for filtration because my steel water supply hose did a terrible job and I accidentally poked some holes in it trying to make it work.

When it's time to pull out the grain, I untie the voile from the rim of the pot, gather it up & tie a knot, then pull it up & slide a BBQ grill underneath to hold it right above the top of the pot. That way it drains into the pot, I can press on it to squeeze out as much liquor as I can etc.

I'm brewing inside and stove top at the moment, and likely still will even if I move up batch sizes (on the stove top, but probably with a heat stick), but a bigger bag of grain would likely be difficult to manage with my space hence trying the separate mash tun. It gives me more options too, like doing decoction mashes if I want and I presume being able to vorlauf probably ends up with slightly better beer, but I don't know how I'd confirm that. Using a cooler though means I have to hit the temperature and stay there, whereas with BIAB (or a stainless steel mashing vessel) you can slowly increase the heat if you want to dough in low and rise slowly.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with BIAB, I've done brews up to 10% alcohol with it (but, as with you, starting gravity of about 1.080 max, and honestly that and less is where 90%+ of my batches fall anyway). I think ultimately I want to end up with a three vessel (stainless steel) setup with pumps and the works, but we're looking at different housing options at the moment so I need something a bit more portable depending on how that works out.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Well, what's the target starting OG vs FG? The "hoppiness" of Pliny etc have no bearing on gravity, just IBUs & flavour. If you're having a tough time getting below 1.020 (a classic homebrewer problem), it's not your hops.

What's your fermentation temperature control? Are you oxygenating/aerating your wort enough? Yeast starter?

Uh....what? I didn't say anything about hops.

I couldn't get it past 1.020 because the starting gravity was 1.101. The only trick I didn't do was mashing in the mid 140s - for whatever reason I mashed an intended 11% IPA at 151, which is probably way too high.

 

[codswallop]

You could try rousing the yeast (shaking the fermenter) or adding more yeast if you think it's really done? US-05 is pretty clean so shouldn't affect whatever flavours you have in there much.

 

[codswallop]

I'm just going to go right ahead and double post, since it's been a couple of days.

When I had way too much wort on Saturday with my latest batch (saison IPA fermenting away nicely!), I decided to take some and try the spontaneous fermentation experiment I've been wanting to do for more than a year.

While the worth was boiling, but before I added any hops, I took a litre of wort and put it into another pot, and added a few grams of hallertau mittelfruh I'd set aside in the freezer a year ago for the experiment. I didn't bother to thaw them, just chucked the straight in. Boiled for a few minutes and chilled in a sink full of cold water in an erlenmeyer flask (I looked away for a moment and the flask fell over, filling with the water from the sink, oops! I almost abandoned the experiment then and there, but figured I may as well press on now).

I left the flask outside near a lemon tree in our back yard, overnight (from around 5pm to 10am the following morning, actually), and covered the top with a hop bag to stop bugs getting in:

The next day, covered loosely with sanitised foil and tied with some string to keep it from falling off easily, then put into a cupboard to forget about for the next six months:

Yesterday I pulled something out of the cupboard and glanced at the flask... it looks like krausen had formed already!

Very exciting.

 

[andylsun]

Made a Wyeast 1968 starter on Sunday (1 litre) that I'm going to use in a mirror pond clone. It's now Tuesday and the starter is done! I'd heard comments that the yeast drops like a rock when done and they weren't kidding - when I turned the stir plate off there was a thick carpet of yeast within 30 seconds. Turn the plate back on and huge sheets of yeast came up from the bottom.

Amazing stuff!

 

[wetwired]

I put on a brew for xmas last night, Belgian dubbel (Wort Kit) gonna top it up with some syrup in about a week to finish it off and raise the percentage. After that I've got a shitty canned tin kit my dad gave me for my birthday. I'm gonna use 1Kg of Honey instead of sugar and dry hop some galaxy hops so I have something lighter for xmas (it's summer here in Australia)

 

[Angry Grimace]

Made a Wyeast 1968 starter on Sunday (1 litre) that I'm going to use in a mirror pond clone. It's now Tuesday and the starter is done! I'd heard comments that the yeast drops like a rock when done and they weren't kidding - when I turned the stir plate off there was a thick carpet of yeast within 30 seconds. Turn the plate back on and huge sheets of yeast came up from the bottom.

Amazing stuff!

WLP002/WY1968 (which are the same yeast, taken from Fuller's ESB) have a tendency to clump into this really wild looking flat clumpy sheet when either done or chilled down. It's very popular for cask ales because the beer will run bright very quickly.

I've heard good things about WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale as well. Going to give it a try, but I still have almost 4 gallons of Best Bitter on tap, so that will be a while. Then again, 4.9% beer goes away pretty quickly.

 

[fenners]

My last batch is frustrating me. Robust porter, mashed ~156F, original gravity 1.070. It's thoroughly stuck at 1.040 for close to a week now. I've pitched more yeast & given it a rock. I've wrapped it in a blanket - temp is 68.5F. But it isn't dropping.

Had high hopes for this batch too.

Only things out of the ordinary was a new brand of yeast (Mangrove Jack) & a cold snap, but the cold snap /should/ have been long after primary fermentation. Either way, it's thoroughly stuck.

 

[codswallop]

My last batch is frustrating me. Robust porter, mashed ~156F, original gravity 1.070. It's thoroughly stuck at 1.040 for close to a week now.

What yeast did you use? Dry, liquid? Starter? Maybe you could make a third starter separately, make 100% sure it's working and then pitch it?

I pitched my wild yeast into a witbier I made on the weekend, along with Wyeast 3463. It's gone totally bonkers, can't wait to see what it's actually like.

 

[fenners]

What yeast did you use? Dry, liquid? Starter? Maybe you could make a third starter separately, make 100% sure it's working and then pitch it?

I pitched my wild yeast into a witbier I made on the weekend, along with Wyeast 3463. It's gone totally bonkers, can't wait to see what it's actually like.

Both dry yeast - the first was a new to me brand as a test, Mangrove Jack. Rehydrated as normal. Second was a good old stand by Safale S05, just sprinkled on top - I have little doubt both yeast were "fine", especially the second as it's a S05, a reliable back up.

After doing some reading/posting on HBT, I've spent today rocking the carboy & put a brewbelt to heat it up a little - something I didn't expect to need to ever do here in Texas I'll take a sample & test gravity again tomorrow evening, see if it's moved any.

 

[Bigfoot]

I forgot about this thread. I hadn't made anything for sometime, but got back in to it a few weeks back and made a simple extract Hefe. Just kegged it tonight and the ABV sample tasted great so I can't wait to try it for real in a week.

I will probably do a kit beer or two that I need to use up in the new year and then I'm looking forward to taking on my my first IPA in the spring.