re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

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Wow, I REALLY want a beer gun.

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For bottling uncarbonated beer, it's great. For bottling carbonated beer, it's a pain in the arse. Way too much foam gets pushed through the lines into the bottle.

the best way to bottle while carbonated is a counter pressure gun. But it is a pain. what i do when i bottle is take a picnic tap, and the bottle filler tube with the valve at the end, it fits right into the picnic tap. but before that i got a bung with a hole and put it on the tube.

then put it on the bottle and as you fill up it creates the counter pressure, keeps the foam down and when the pour slows down, you used your thumb to bleed out some pressure until it fills up.

here is a pic but with a plain tube.

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I add the sugar and conditioning yeast to the keg when i close transfer to the keg.

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dude WTF how long do your kegs take to carb? I force carb and doing it the proper way takes 3-5 days. The quick way 30 mins to 1 day. And I still itch because i want to drink it fast.

Brewed the cascade pale ale on Friday night with a buddy of mine while he brewed a brown ale. For the second brew in a row my mash efficiency percentage was in the mid forties despite paying close attention to my volumes and adding acid to correct my residual alkalinity issue in my tap water.

This was my third all grain batch from adventures in homebrewing. The first was a shandy kit that I had to boil for 10 extra minutes to hit correct OG. The second was the octoberfast which I had to boil for 20 additional minutes. This also required an additional 20 minutes to get close to the expected OG.

I've been trying to pay a lot of attention to my process to make sure I am not creating the issue, and at this point I have settled on improperly milled grains as the only good explanation for a 30 plus percent drop in my mash efficiency. My friend and I ordered together so I could see if his efficiency sucked as well, but unfortunately he forgot to check his OG (damn you 11 percent imperial stouts). Is there anything else I could be missing to explain this wide of an efficiency discrepancy?

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What is your water to grain ratio of your mash?

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In my last two batches 1.36qt/lb and 1.48.

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Are you sparging after mashing?

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Three step batch sparging at 168 per Beersmith recommendations. Ensuring even distribution of sparge water each time. Stirring vigorously after mashing in to avoid doughballs, especially on this last batch.

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Can't remember are you doing BIAB?

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Doing standard 60 minute mashes with 10g picnic cooler MLT and hitting my temps on the nose the last three batches. The batch before these most recent three I had 78% mash efficiency using what I felt was much poorer technique. poor stirring, estimating sparge volumes, not hitting temps perfectly. I also used to use acid malt for ph correction which I understood to be much less accurate than fine control with lactic or phosphoric acid.

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What temp did you mash at?

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Most recent batch (pale ale) 151. Oktoberfast at 158. Shandy at 149. No real issues hitting temps as I am preheating mash tun before adding grain.

Everything looks fine to me.

1 thing you could try is mash until your mash gravity is where you expect instead of a timed mash.

I'd measure pre-sparge and post sparge as well.

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By any chance did you take your specific gravity while your wort was hot?

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Exactly what I was going to say. It's gonna be off unless it's pretty close to room temp.

Duuuude, I need to try one of your sours someday. Will trade GeauxPack Brewing Co beers.

I've been out of brewing action for about of month, been traveling for work and weddings. The beauty of homebrewing though is that I put 2 beers in the fermentation chamber 3 and 4 weeks ago and now they are ready to transfer to the kegs. I killed my gose last night to make room for these bad boys. Got a Galaxy IPA and an Oktoberfest. Fined both with gelatin last night (first time doing that) and cold crashed. Should be drinking both this weekend. Will post pics of the finished products... We need more pics of finished products in this thread.

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In my last two batches 1.36qt/lb and 1.48.

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I believe mine is set at 1.25 qt/lb, if that helps. Could you post your recipe and brew steps when you get some time?

Oohh yea I misread.