re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

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Man, beer smith is opening up a whole new world for me. There's so much to look at that I am getting bogged down in the details.

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Just take it a little at a time. Focus on your recipe formulation, your OG/FG, and your Mash efficiency at first. The rest will come as you use it more.

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Is your recipe for a 5 gallon batch?

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Yes

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Going back to your recipe, can I ask you why you used acid malt? to lower your mash ph?

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Yes, to lower mash ph. This was before i started using lactic acid.

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Which mash method do you use? single infusion medium body?

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Single infusion, light body, 150 degrees. However, i had horrible efficiency and it was likely due to making mash temp adjustments by adding hot/cold water (again, this was 4 years ago so i don't remember all the details). I recorded my FG at 1.020, but if i was mashing at 150, it should have finished around 1.012. That being the case, if you want to recreate as close as possible, i'd shoot for 152-154 mash temp range.

Speaking of blowoff, did you use one for the hefe? I hear the wlp300 can be pretty vigorous.

My beers were a hit at our party last weekend. Finished the entire keg of Mexican Lager, save for maybe 1 or 2 pours still left in there. Killed maybe 2/3rds of the Blonde Ale.

I'm now onto planning my next few brews. I went to go by ingredients from LA Homebrew the other day, and they are completely out of 2-Row. They need to get it together. They were out of 2-Row when I bought ingredients for my Blonde Ale too, so I had to sub Pale Ale malt. Naturally the Blonde came out darker/maltier than I wanted when I created the recipe.

My water quality report doesn't list magnesium on their primary or secondary analyses. Is there a way to calculate it's concentration? I used an online calculator where I put in hardness (80) and calcium (32) but the value it gave me for magnesium concentration was less than 1mg/L. Does that seem reasonable?

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Did you try to add any to your cart online? I get limited to 1 pound, it says any more than that is out of stock

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Ah, no i didn't. I just clicked on the grain and it said "in stock".

ETA: Call them up or message them. More than likely, a shipment will be coming in this week.

Hope everyone out there is faring well. I'm getting ready to brew Bug's hefe with some blood orange and I wanted to review a couple things that I decided based on information from beersmith. Please give me some feedback.

I ended up going the acid malt route rather than try to add acid for simplicity sake, but reduced the acid malt to 6oz. Beer smith says the adjusted mash pH will be 5.56 and while it would be nice to have it lower, adding more acid malt would've increased the OG even higher that the 1.052 that Bug's recipe called for. I know acid malt can be somewhat variable in how much lactic acid it lends to the mash, but I am trying to simplify my brew day that will be complicated by my standards.

Speaking of water I am going to use my local water and add CaCl and Epsom per beer smith recommendations. Using distilled would've forced me to do a lot more additions. I called LHBS and asked what most people around here were doing for water chemistry. He said 95% of people aren't fooling with chemistry at all, but if you want the best outcomes you should try to adjust chemistry.

I subbed liberty 4% for hallertau because it was a noble hop substitute that my LHBS had on hand.

To this point I've made my the first stage of my starter. My yeast (wlp300) was manufactured in February, and beersmith is calling for 245B cells. I dont have a huge starter vessel, so I followed beer smith recommendation for a two stage 1.4 and 1.6L starter. The first starter went for 20 hours or so and slowed down, so I am currently crashing it in the fridge before doing the second starter in the AM. I understand that hefe yeasts are less floculent by design so I wanted to give it 10 or so hours to crash, rather than decanting off good yeast. Planning on letting the second stage go for a full 24 hours. Planning to brew on tuesday so I will pitch the full second starter then.

I zested, peeled and separated 4lbs of blood oranges before freezing the zest and flesh separately. Planning to add the zest to the boil with 10 minutes left and using the flesh for secondary ferm. I kinda mashed up the flesh a bit before freezing so the liquid could get out of the skin but tried to leave most of the skin intact so that I wouldn't have as many issues with skins blocking up the siphon. Will probably try to fit the segments in a mesh bag inside the secondary fermenter.

Haven't decided if I want to throw in an oz or two of sabro at biotrans. This is already a non traditional hefe with the addition of the fruit.

Beer smith is calling for a mash temp of 148. Is that what you'd recommend Bug?

Nice! Looks like you are making progress. I've made I think 15 beers now, and I've learned something new just about every time... I was hesitant to start with water chemistry at first, but it really is super easy and makes your beers much better. I only have Calcium Chloride, Gypsum, and Lactic Acid that I add... I would probably save the Sabro hops, you will already be getting a good blood orange flavor. But, it's your beer, I'm sure it will be good either way.


I brewed my Single-Hop APA today with Sabro hops. Wasn't a super strong scent compared to some of the other hops I've used, but I loved the coconut/pineapple it gave off. Interested to see how this one turns out. I'll be dry-hopping in a week and kegging the week after.

Pitched my second starter this am and wife texts saying it's spewing all over the counter. Guess I've got some healthy yeast lol

do yall boil the starter liquid in those demijohns? I have a large flask i use but it is kind of a pain to store so om looking for other options.

i didnt think so. the flasks i have are rated for that, they are just so big. maybe i can just get a larger beaker.....hmmmm..