Homebrewers - Whats Fermenting?

[lucky1]

Bottled up my Kotbüsser last night. It finished at 1.022 nice golden color. I will check a bottle in three weeks to see how it turned out. It sat cold conditioning in my garage for about three weeks before bottling. It should be NICE and clear in a glass.

I also moved my tripel from my keg into a 6gal better bottle it has a great flavor. That beer is almost done fermenting it was still slowly going when I transferred. Should finish around 10%.

The stout I did with odds and ends grains I had has fermented a little lower than I wanted. I will have to doctor it up at bottling with some malto dextrin and lactose sugar. The low finishing gravity could be due to the 24oz of grade B maple syrup. I might add some homemade bacon vodka to the beer also at bottling.

Smokinghole,

That sounds awesome. Are you kegging any of your beers? If yes, are you carbonating them with a tank or priming sugar? The reason I ask is that a firend can get me a few of those 5 gallon kegs (the kind with the lid in the middle that opens for cleaning). I'm thinking I can fit two of them in my kegerator and use a dual tower. I was wondering if they sell inexpensive equipment to quickly force in CO2 or if I'm better off connecting it to my normal regulator and carbonating it slowly.

Thanks,

 

[lucky1]

Nothing like that. Most that I got when I first started drinking lots of bottle conditioned homebrews was really frequent and smelly farts. Now I'm normal which by my wife's definition is still frequent and really smelly. However now compared to when I first made homebrews is drastically different.

My mother actually has an allergy to yeast. A sip of my beer gives her enough yeast to have major digestive repercussions.

If you find out it's a yeast allergy you can try a filtering setup to see if it helps. There are only a few nationally distributed breweries that bottle condition beer. I think Sierra Nevada, and Bells are the two biggest I know of. There are many others and MANY belgians do as well.

An other option could be dishwasher pasteurizing for you. Maybe it's a sensitivity to live yeast but if you killed all the little buggers you'd be okay?

If it's not the yeast it could be something in extract if you're not doing grain brewing.

Thank you. I actually made the other post right before seeing your response. The reason I was asking about kegging is that if I do have that allergy, maybe I can boil the finished product just enough to kill the yeast, keg it and artificially carbonate it. I'm sure that destroys the flavor though!

 

[lucky1]

Smokinghole,

Dishwasher pasteurizing sounds like a great idea. I never thought about that. My dishwasher has that high heat setting. If the bottles dont burst in there, yeast is killed and problem is solved. If they do burst, at least they're in the diswasher!

Thanks for that tip!

If it turns out my problem is not a yeast allergy, I will review the ingrediants of all the extracts that I have used.

 

[smokinghole]

Smokinghole,

That sounds awesome. Are you kegging any of your beers? If yes, are you carbonating them with a tank or priming sugar? The reason I ask is that a firend can get me a few of those 5 gallon kegs (the kind with the lid in the middle that opens for cleaning). I'm thinking I can fit two of them in my kegerator and use a dual tower. I was wondering if they sell inexpensive equipment to quickly force in CO2 or if I'm better off connecting it to my normal regulator and carbonating it slowly.

Thanks,

I don't keg at the moment and don't see it happening in the near future. Wife refuses to let me get a kegerator. If you can swing having a kegerator I'd grab at least 4-5 kegs. That way you can have two on tap at any given time and one carbonating. If you have a kegerator designed for 1/2 barrel sanke kegs you can fit 3-4 in the fridge. If I had a keg setup I'd just be using CO2 slowly. There are tables available for the amount of CO2 able to dissolve at a certain temp dependent on PSI. Your other option is also of course priming sugar but I hear you need approx 25% less sugar when doing 5 gal at a time instead of in bottles. It's probably a head space thing.

 

[smokinghole]

Brewing up my double IPA with loads and loads of Citra hops. Heating strike water right now. I'm still undecided on the yeast either US05 dry yeast or WLP023. I think because the temp of the ferment might get over 68 I will go with US05 because that can go a little warmer with out off flavors. I need to build my ferm chamber like quick.

 

[mthhurley]

Me and a few of the guys brewed up a Gumball Heas clone last Thurs. Herf and brew. . Bubbling away in primary now.

 

[JRL]

I bottled up my IPA last weekend, now to wait. Should be able to bottle the raspberry wheat next weekend.
Brewing an Irish Stout kit today, going to add blueberry extract to half at bottling. Next in line is a hefe and then a Irish Red.

Love this hobby.

 

[smokinghole]

I have a stout and a tripel that need bottling. I am having curious issues with the stout though because I added maple syrup. It seems like it's still fermenting but the gravity isn't changing. I will stick a SS rod and stir around on the bottom to see if I can mix any left over maple syrup around. The tripel is about ready though for bottles though.

Here's almost 10oz of Citra (the whole hops), with 3oz Warrior and 2.5oz Simcoe. There's another 3oz not pictured of citra for dry hopping.

 

[SergeantStogie]

Just pulled the trigger on a new all-grain system. Set up to brew 5 gallon batched but I upgraded the mashtun to a 10 gallon version so I can brew bigger beers. Will still do 5 gallon batches but the 5 gallon tun tops out at like 14 lbs of grain. I need more! Next when I get home is to find some good glass carboys in Germany since shipping them to Germany is basically out of the question.

 

[JRL]

Bottle the raspberry wheat today, will probably be good but more for my wife. 48 22oz should keep her busy for a while.

I am in the process of making my mash tun right now. Went with a 10 gallon round cooler and making a copper manifold for the bottom. All Grain here I come.

 

[Admstf]

My brother and I were talked into making mine 8 months ago.... We started down the path of don't worry it will be easy.... My hat goes off to all you other brewers. The wine is finally finished and well worth it but if we knew how much work and money it was going to take up front we would not have started. Our first batch was a Chilean Merlot and Cabernet. Both of our wines came out to our liking. The gentlemen that mentored us was even jealous of our Merlot. Now if I could only find a way to sneak away from the house a little more to drink a bit and smoke it would be perfect.

 

[JRL]

The wife and I were talking about doing some wine for Christmas gifts this year. I probably have almost all the materials to do this, however I don't want my fermentors stained or any of my other equipment.

 

[matty07]

mmmmmmm beeeeeerrrrrrrrrr all sounds tasty

 

[smokinghole]

The wife and I were talking about doing some wine for Christmas gifts this year. I probably have almost all the materials to do this, however I don't want my fermentors stained or any of my other equipment.

I just did wine. It was a white to drink over the summer but my fermentors didn't absorb any wine smells. If you're using white buckets to ferment in a red might stain it but a good better bottle fermentor should not stain. Do up a batch of wine. I'm trying to pick out my next kit.

 

[smokinghole]

Well I have a development. I noticed that after moving my Tripel into the garage for a period at lagering temps before bottling it still had some fermenting going on. As some of you know I'm interning at a brewery. Part of my internship revolves around testing yeast health and checking for wild yeast contamination of their brewing yeasts. Well all the tests I've done for them have come up negative and we know positive controls are just as important as negative. So I took some plates home and tested my beer that certainly had contamination, and one that I suspected to have contamination. Long story short I have a 10% tripel with what I suspect to be Brettanomyces bruxellensis slowly going in there still.

 

[corvid]

Still could be good. Just brewed a Extra Strong Bitter. Have my 90 min IPA currently to drink and will be bottling a KBS clone here in about 3 weeks.

 

[JRL]

Brewed an Hefe on Saturday, used a liquid yeast this time. She is a bubbling away. Put it into a glass carboy this time so I could watch it. Lol o the joys. Should be bottling up the stout and blueberry stout this weekend. We brewed in the garage over the weekend so I got to smoke while I brewed, that was sweet.

 

[smokinghole]

Brewing up a saison that I threw together with the grains I had left. It has vienna, pils, pale malt, wheat malt and rye malt. It's a hodgepodge of grains that should all work well together as they are all a base grain of some type then there will be 1lb of jaggery and 8oz of local honey. Hops are a hodgepodge of left over stuff as well. Tettanang, stryan goldings, fuggles and citra as flavor hops. The yeast is wyeast 3711. I was debating on throwing a jar of lambic sediment in the fermentor but opted against that since I want this in a bottle sooner rather than later.

 

[smokinghole]

Nothing like brewing in the rain. My wife is a one person brewday wrecking crew. I learned to keep free days a secret because she miraculously finds things for me to do. Today it was sit around while the furniture and carpets got oxycleaned. So there I was in COLD, DARK, and raining brewing my beer. Grrrrrrrrr

 

[smokinghole]

Brewing up my peat smoked barleywine again. Changed a couple things up that I believe will improve the recipe. First I doubled the peat since I liked it but wanted more flavor. Second I doubled the bitterness as I felt it was a tad sweet. Third I added some brown malt for a little bit of a light roasty toasty character. Forth I switched from a cheapo Briess american 2row malt to an English Maris Otter. I am adding 1oz more of oak, for a total of 2.5oz, that has been soaking in Laphroaig Quarter Cask. The beer will age in secondary for 4-6 months and then will land in bottles. Finally, due to the tweaks and additional grain this has the potential to end up over 10% which I am hoping. This is an almost 21lb grain bill figured for a 5.5gal batch. Hops are Nugget for bittering and East Kent Golding for flavor/aroma.

I can't wait again for this one to be ready. I think depending on how it comes out I might have to make this a biannual brew for my smoking pleasure.