re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

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I believe the culprit, was that i did not rinse teh bottles well enough after their starsan soak. Caused the beers to be dark purplish color, and it appeared to negatively affect the carbonation as well. The 2 bottles that were not affected came out great, the rest were pretty bad. Unfortunately i also submitted this to a homebrew competition as well.

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Isn't one of the major benefits of starsan over other sanitizers that it's "no rise"?

Could it have been reside from whatever you cleaned the bottles with?

I haven't bottled in years, but I'm planning on bottling some of these brett beers. I'll have to look into this some more.

this seems like a good time to add frick bottling

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. My long aged sour will need to be bottled completely, however, and i plan to do the same process as before, but make sure to rinse the hell out of each bottle.

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You could argue as Michael Tonsmeire does that there is no real reason to sanitize multi-bacteria soured beer bottles. The environment isn't terribly conducive to more bacteria growth, and frankly you probably have everything that would have been in the bottle already in the beer.

So I've been using the Jamil style whirlpool with a bent copper pipe return inside of the immersion chiller for quite a few years with great chilling results, but as my hop loads increased the whirlpool didn't work very well and more trub/hop hop material was making it into fermenter than I wanted.

This whirlpool method also meant I had to use and immersion chiller and as I'm trying to transition things to things that can be replicated on a larger system I want to convert to a plate chiller.

Anyway I purchased the whirlpool port from ss brewtech a couple weeks back, installed it on the kettle, and today is my first brew using it.

This is the the whirlpool pre-built. Pushing about 8.75 gallons with an upgraded 809 March pump. Not bad...

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What should I brew? Give me one of your favorite recipes.

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How about a Saison with Brett? If you don't want to deal with the brett, then omit from the recipe. THis is one of my best recipes (so far, i have a brett pale ale currently fermenting that i think may surpass this one). I call it French Benefits.

If you do want the brett, pitch it after primary ferm. I wish i would have left it in the fermenter a little longer before kegging. I kegged it about 2 weeks after adding the brett. It took another 2 weeks in the keg to start imparting some brett flavors. Every week after that i'd get some slightly more funky flavors. Unfortunately, i finished off the keg before the brett fully developed.

5 lbs 8.0 oz Pilsen (Franco-Belges) (1.8 SRM) Grain 9 51.2 %
3 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Ale (Franco-Belges) (2.7 SRM) Grain 10 34.9 %
1 lbs Wheat (BestMälz) (2.0 SRM) Grain 11 9.3 %
8.0 oz Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 12 4.7 %
0.40 oz Magnum [12.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 13 17.3 IBUs
0.50 oz Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 14 7.1 IBUs
1.40 oz Blood Orange Peel (Boil 5.0 mins) Herb 15 -
1.25 oz Nelson Sauvin [0.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool Hop 16 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg Brux Blend (Gigayeast #GB156) Yeast 17 -
1.0 pkg French Saison (Wyeast Labs #3711) [50.28 Yeast 18 -
2.25 oz Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Da Hop 19 0.0 IBUs

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The only two styles that I don't want to brew right now are porter and IPA

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Then I'm no help.

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How about a Saison with Brett

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+1

I like having an easy drinker available for the masses during the holidays. In the past I've brewed something like Kolsch, American Wheat, or Berliner Weisse.

This year I brewed a Saison added some lacto along with the yeast, I may or may not add brett later in the process or to some specific bottles.

LBHS was out of 3711, so I passed on the saison. Ended up brewing a smoked brown ale. Brew day went pretty well considering that I was watching the game while brewing.

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How vanilla-y is your porter?

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Enough to really make it seem creamy, if that makes sense. It makes it such that there's no coffee bitterness apparent at all. I usually go with 2oz of the vanilla puree. You could obviously start with less than that and go from there.

My pumpkin coffee vanilla porter keg kicked yesterday as I was bottling some. Guess I'm brewing something this week. I think it's time for my pecan strong ale to make a return in time for Christmas.

My saison hit the 3724 stall over the holiday. I bumped the temp from 84 to 90 and it seems to be cranking along pretty well.

Other than this strain is a total pain in the arse, the samples taste great. All the dupont characteristics with a subtle lactic tartness.

Hopefully the yeast keeps rocking along and can dry this out over the next week or so.

Anyone else brewing?