That's gotta be a good feeling.

Yeah. Congrats dude! I'm sure it was delish.

Wish I had the time to join a club. I barely have the time to brew these days.

You may wind up where I have - "work from home" days are the only viable way. Brew new batch before lunch, bottle last batch after. About every 3 weeks, do it again.

Unfortunately, working from home usually means I actually work from home. I would really be bad at brewing with that distraction.
I try to handle brewing activities in early morning hours instead of night time like I used to.

Regarding the difference in mash water volume you mentioned a little while back. If doing the cooler set up, I go with about 1.25 quarts per lb of grain and more water with the sparge. With the BIAB technique it's closer to a no-sparge so I do 2 quarts per lb of grain. Then I do a super hot rinse which is sort of a sparge but its really to build my volume, if I had a larger kettle that water would have been in there the whole time. My cooler approach is about the same as yours, I just haven't done it that way in a while.

So I just tasted my "pilsner" that was brewed on 2/16/13. Holy shit it's good but it could never really be a pilsner because on a whim I threw in 1lb Weyermann Caramunich II... so I don't know how to find the category it will fall into. It was made with bohemian lager yeast...tastes and has the right IBUS for a really delicious pilsner. Too much IBUs for any lager category. Doesn't really matter because it's so tasty, but if it fight a category I might try to enter this one in some contests. Could fit style and color of an American Pale Ale, but it doesn't taste the way I think of those tasting.

Good info. Thank you.

I've now got a pale about ready to be bottled, and have the DIPA to compare it with. The pale is all Maris as a base, and 2 kinds of crystal. The Double is 2-row and a bit of honey malt, so very very different malt profiles, and what I'm discovering (or what's finally settling in) is how much personality maris has. To the point that I think I may not WANT that much personality in the malt in a pale ale. Somehow the DIPA tastes so much cleaner and lighter, even though it is 7.1% compared to high 5's on the pale. I think I might make the base malt on the next pale version 50/50 with maris / 2 row, just to get some of that bready englishness, but not have it like eating an actual sandwich. Maybe when it's bottled and cold I will feel differently, but quick sips now out of the secondary make me think it's too sandwichy.

Also I wish a lot of you lived closer, because this DIPA is finally something that's actually WORTH sharing. Very, very close to having a closet full of Pliny.

I think I'm gonna try that DIPA tonight.

Cool. I have zero idea anymore what other people would like, regarding stuff I brewed. My radar may be way off.

Just bottled Black Hole Brew that I made with Jerkass.

I can tell it will be an enjoyable drink, I don't know if it will be any better than my last black ale. I hope I don't overcarbonate this-the first one I made is now best after it's been out and open for an hour ...then I can begin to drink it.
The bubbles have gotten out of control. I'm going to drink up my last six real quick because I'm concerned for my basement. (Possibly a result of the shady squirt of honey yeast starter making the yeast too stupid to finish this batch)

Also,
I've always bought into the common practice of putting the bottling sugar at the bottom of the bucket and trust that the slow swirling of beer will distribute it all evenly. After sampling some of this towards the top of the bucket and then closer to the bottom, there is no way that this is true.

However, I've always used just organic table sugar, never "bottling sugar"...
Question, could a person use a small batch of fresh wort to carb in the bottle? Wouldn't that be the better approach?

catz - i've unceremoniously returned to MPLS after a stint away. would like to take the pepsi challenge w/ your suds ... and i need tix to royals-twins affairs at target field. do you take homecoming coupons?

where did you go?

i take the (wink) kind of (wink) coupons you'd give a (wink) guy like me (COUGH)
PM game you want to see and stuff.

Don't understand... the yeast didn't finish the batch well enough, and yet it's over-carbed? Does not compute.



I use bottling sugar (corn sugar, fine white powder), and I use the bottling wand to swirl it around pretty well in the bucket before filling. It's denser so it WANTS to drift to the bottom, and if I don't I get very uneven carbing. I swirl slowly, too, to avoid oxygenating the beer too much. -shrug-

Table sugar (sucrose) is poorly soluble in ethyl alcohol which is why the corn syrup / powdered sugar Cap'n uses works better. It's the same principle for simple syrup in a bar -- the sugar is already in solution so it dissolves more readily when added to an alcoholic drink. Try making a mixed drink by simply mixing table sugar in. It don't work.

Here me out and know that I'm comfortable with being totally wrong.

I've read that a common problem in using a simple sugar like honey to excite yeast is that they prefer that and won't have the energy or desire to finish the more complicated wort sugars. They'll do some of the work but not enough. The yeast are still there they're just not into finishing the work that's in front of them. Then I reintroduced the table sugar during bottling they got fired up again. Taking the sugar and some of the leftover wort sugars.

It's either that or I have an infection that's not really giving any off flavors?

Honey is composed primarily of glucose and fructose, table sugar (sucrose) is composed of glucose and fructose. Yeast don't like sucrose (table sugar) for metabolism. They prefer glucose/dextrose or maltose (the wort sugars). Yeast CAN metabolize fructose but they much prefer glucose and maltose. Honey is OK but there's likely a lot of unmetabolized sucrose in your batches if you're adding table sugar. It's like feeding corn on the cob to a guy wit no teef.

The sugar isn't added to the batch until the wort has been turned into beer. It's a very small amount, brought to a boil in some water and then added just so that the yeast have something to eat to carbonate the bottle.

In this case. I got the yeast going with honey and agave...just for a few hours. Then it was added it to the wort. After a few weeks the gravity stopped dropping and was stuck 1.020... typically finish between ~1.012 or 1.010. Then the half cup of sugar was brought to a boil and added to the batch.

Here's the quote that spawned this thought in my head from mr. malty

Could it be explained by the strain/attenuation of the yeast? If there's maltose there, the yeast should be metabolizing it until they reach complete attenuation.

Also, you're pitching a tiny packet of cells. Sure, you may have started them on some honey or table sugar and "made them lazy" (I love the personification of yeast that happens), but when they get pitched, they multiply. So then there are millions of cells replicating over and over in a malt environment... how is it that all these new cells which are doing a lot of the work "remember" that Grampa and Gramma got fed honey? I've never understood that part of the rationale of "no sugar starters."

Meanwhile in actual practice I've just been rehydrating in warm water and have had no appreciable difference in startup times, so I haven't been risking it.

My theory was fat parents have fat kids.

Well emerging genomic research backs you up... You pass on the copy of the genetic code you HAVE, not the one you started with. Hence 50-yr-old mommies and higher incidence of down's. The telephone game.

If I take a final reading of a carbonated beer and it is now below 1.020 would that back me up?

I've never read a carb'd beer.

Bottling a pale and a gluten free belgian now, btw.

I'm thinking of ditching my glass carboys and getting plastic buckets. Sounds ridic but I could clean up at least 20 minutes faster. After reading all the pros and cons I shouldn't be too affected by the cons.

I can clean my plastic carboys (not buckets) inlike 2 minutes. Have zero issues.

Even the big DIPA, which was FULL of hops, came pretty clean pretty easy. I just don't let them sit long once I bottle.

What's the hangup?