re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

Btw what brewing software are y'all using? I've played around a little with Brewers friend and it is a little janky so investing in software seems worth it.

Im using Beersmith 3. I like it since they finally got the water profile computation working. it is a little different that what the spread sheets i have give me but im not a chemist so idk the difference.

I do wonder why Beersmith doesnt do sparge water acidification though. It has a spot to add acid to the sparge but it is always greyed out for me.

I use Brewersfriend for IBUs, have my own excel spreadsheet for gravity calcs, then I use Bru'n Water for water adjustments.

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I used to use brewersfriend for water salts/acid adjustments. But with beersmith 3, i no longer need to do that.

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did you understand the issue i have with BS3 and sparge acidification? do you have that issue? am i missing something?

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did you understand the issue i have with BS3 and sparge acidification? do you have that issue? am i missing something?

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I don't acidify my sparge water, so i can't tell you if i've ever had that issue before.

Email the beersmith guy, Brad Smith. He's pretty good at returning emails.

i bought Beersmith 2 outright because that was the only option. For BS3 i did the subscription. it will keep your software more up to date. it cost about 2.33 years worth of buying it outright without updates. and you get a lot more space for cloud recipes as i use my phone or a tablet on brew day verses my computer to design recipes.

one thing i do love about the infusion mash tun is that it pulls the running off the bottom rather than needing a dip tub to get all the way there.

damnit.... i just cant justify the 500 bucks for it.

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do you feel like today's commercial starter packs of modern strains are sufficient for fermenting worts of OGs of 1.060?

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My personal opinion, is to always use a yeast starter. White Labs and Wyeast cell count are around 100 billion. For a healthy full fermentation, it is suggested around 320 billion is needed, which is easily achievable with a yeast starter (prefereably with a stir plate). I get some yeast that claim 200 billion cells, but i make yeast starters for every single batch, outside of some sour beers, but that's if i'm looking for a particular character or something.

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I've also seen those commercial starters that come in a 16 oz can. Basically at what point do you start to worry about pitching extra yeast?

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I don't. If i'm at 500 billion cells, maybe i'd be worried, but that is never the case.

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I know the bulk of fermentation will be done in the first week and that secondary fermentation has fallen out of favor for the most part.

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Primary and secondary is really referencing moving the wort off of the old yeast and cleaning up the beer. It's a bit of an antiquated idea nowadays, as information has shown that yeast autolysis is not much of a factor unless you have a clean beer sitting for months at a time.

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How do you know when your beer has conditioned properly?

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Whenever it gets to the desired FG, is when i decide to cold crash and keg. But if i'm on day 12 or so, and i still see signs of active fermentation, i'll let it ride for a few more days until i cease seeing activity.

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Just take samples every week out of the primary fermenter?

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That is an option. Or, if it's been fermenting for about 10-12 days, take samples every 2 or 3 days after.

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At what point do you let bottle conditioning do the rest of the work?

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Well, i keg my clean beers, but i do bottle my sours. I think the key for bottling, is wait until end of fermenation. If you are happy with your FG and ferm is not quite done, then cold crash your beer for a couple days. Then add your priming sugar per the calculator and according to your FG and temperature. Higher FG, less priming sugar is typically needed because you still have residual sugars (assuming the sugars are viable for sach. yeast).

In short, wait until ferm ends, add priming sugar, bottle. I used to wait 2 weeks until i cracked the first beer. But usually, the beer didn't start hitting it's stride until week 4 in the bottle.

To summarize all of this, start kegging.

So my brew partner tells me that airlock had almost no activity when he looked at on Thursday. we took a sample and measurement of the stout today which is one week from brewing. Krausen is gone, no nasties floating on the surface, no off odors or flavors. Og was 1.06 but is now at 1.034. Per the recipe it should finish at 1.014. replaced the lid and the airlock bubbled 4 times a minute after resting in place for ten minutes or so. We have moved it to another room that runs around 70 because the temp strip was reading 68. I think I'm going to leave it alone for a few more days and if it doesn't attenuate any more pitch another pack of yeast. Thoughts?

This will be day seven. My concern is that palmer says the vast majority of attenuation is done in 6 days. I'm only about halfway where I need to be.