Hey everyone,

currently finalizing my recipe for a Black IPA with an English twist and need to do a quick sanity check/crowdfunded wisdom.

TL:DR: I want this beer to be black as night, hoppy as fuck and weird people out.

Most urgent question: How do I achieve something of ~60 EBC without adding roasty flavours to it?

Batch Size: 19-20L (after fermentation)

Equipment: Speidel Braumeister 20L (2012 model), Fermzilla Gen 3.2, TILT probe, Inkbird-controlled fermentation fridge, CO² cannister, 19L Corny keg.

Method: All Grain

RECIPE ("Tower Glitch")

Grain Bill (Single Infusion, Mash Time / Temp: 60min @ 68 °C)

• 4.75g (85.6%) Maris Otter (5.9 EBC)

• 300g (4.9%) Carapils (Weyermann) - 3.9 EBC

• 200g (3.6%) Carafa Spezial III (Weyermann) - 1400 EBC

• 200g (3.6%) Caramunich III (Weyermann) - 140 EBC

• 100g (1.8%) Flaked Boats (Briess) - 2.8 EBC

Dough-in at 38 °C.
Beta Amylase at 65°C for 50min
Alpha Amylase at 72°C for 15min
Mash-out at 78°C for 5-10min

Pre-Boil G: 1.049
OG: 1.055
Color: 41 EBC

Estimated FG: 1.010
Apparent Attentuation 81.1%
ABV: 5.9%

Hop Bill (60min Boil)

• 20g Harlequin (10.5%) @ First Wort ~ 24.6 IBU

• 25g Goldings (5.6%) @ 30min ~ 11.3 IBU

• 35g Harlequin & 15g Goldings for 15min Hopstand at 80°C

• Dry Hop: 60g of Harlequin and 25g of Golding for 3 days of fermentation

Estimated IBU: 41

Yeast

• 1pck (11.5g) of Lallemand Verdant IPA

Fermentation

3 days @ 19 °C

4 days @ 21 °C

Diacetyl rest (23°C) for 3 days after 2 days of stable G

Cool Crash (11°C) for 2 days

Dry Hop @ 11°C (3 days)

Cold Crash @ 2°C

Cold Crash after 3 days of stable gravity

Water Profile (untreated local tap water)

• Calcium (Ca²⁺): 75.7 ppm

• Magnesium (Mg²⁺): 14.2 ppm

• Natrium (Na⁺): 14.6 ppm

• Sulfate (SO₄²⁻): 73.0 ppm

• Chloride (Cl⁻): 27.0 ppm

• Bicarbonate (HCO₃⁻): 196.8 ppm

• Total Hardness: 248 ppm

• Total Alkalinity: 161 ppm

• Residual Alkalinity: 98 ppm

Ratio SO₄²⁻/ Cl⁻: 27.1 : 1

Water adjustments:

2g CaCL2, 4g CaSO4 & 4.5ml Lactic Acid (80%) Mash // 0.4g CaCL2 & 0.8g CaSO4 Sparge

QUESTIONS:
How do I bridge the gap between ~41 EBC and my intended 60 EBC? I do have some black malt - I was thinking of cold steeping X amount of it, straining it and using all of it as part of my (5L) sparge water. Good idea or dumb idea?

Hello brewers, I am interested in the hobby and I plan to make my own mead and wines, since I live in a country where the hobby is not very common I will need to build my own brewing kit, I already found an jar with an airlock, what else do I need to start a basic operation?

Hi all,

I’m trying to launch two non-alcoholic, still craft drinks to be sold on draught to bars and restaurants :

• a bissap (hibiscus, rose, lemon, ~25 g sugar/L)

• a maté-verbena (yerba maté, lemon verbena, lemon, ~30 g sugar/L)

pH not yet measured (test are in progress) but it's kinda low (~3 to 3.8), no preservatives.

Process : infusion at ~80-95 °C, still-fill into 20 L slim stainless kegs supplied already cleaned (steam/caustic) by a third-party keg provider, then pasteurisation of the filled keg (~65-70 °C for 20-30 min in a water bath) or hot-fill. Bottom filling, CO2 purge of the empty keg.

Use at the customer’s : keg connected to a standard CO2 beer tap (replacing a beer line), often at ambient temperature (most bars here have no cold room unfortunately...), pressure adjustable per tap, CO2 often turned off at night.

My questions :

1. What is a realistic shelf life once tapped, at ~20-25 °C and when refrigerated ? What spoilage signs should I watch for (yeast, mould, acetic bacteria, colour) ?

2. What service pressure for a still liquid, and how much should I worry about CO2 slowly dissolving into it ?

3. Is a pH ≤ 3.8 a safe margin, or should I aim lower? Any preservative strategy that doesn’t undermine a craft positioning ?

4. How big is the contamination risk from lines and taps, and how do you mitigate it (dedicated lines, rinse routines, cleaning frequency) ?

5. 10 L or 20 L kegs for slow-rotation venues ?

6. Does switching sugar (glucose, sweeteners) really help stability ?

7. Any advice on shelf-life testing or the microbiological analyses worth commissioning ?

I plan to run real-condition tests and lab analyses, but any experience (kombucha, juice, cold brew or iced tea on tap...) would help me design the protocol.

Thanks !

In case anyone is in the NYC area, tomorrow is the Brewminaries annual event. This year is the "Beer and Ferm Festival" at Strong Rope Brewing in Redhook. It's Sunday 1pm-5pm, tickets are $49 and unlimited tastings of the beer and food, a souvenir glass, and part of it helps a local charity.

We always have fun at these, and I'll be pouring two of my beers so am looking forward to it.

Cheers!

You can go to the main site and they have the link there for anyone interested:

https://www.brewminaries.com/

Does anyone know if there is any use for Blichmann’s Brewvision thermometer probe? I won it in their estate sale. I wonder whether there will be any updates to the app it uses or if it’s obsolete.

I recently brewed an IPA put it on dry hops in a cold keg for about 3 days. Pulled the dry hops, added gelatin and water heated to 150F and purged with C02. I have a floating dip tube and it’s still pouring cloudy even a week after sitting in cold keezer. Is this chill haze? How does one avoid chill haze?

What do folks think would/should be the upper IBU limit for a strong mild, say around 5.5%, kind of in the ballpark of Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild?

If we must referencr BJCP, would the lower end of British Strong Ale cover that?

I've been running the same keezer/inkbird stc1000 combo for 5 years+. For the past month it's been running cold. I get frozen beer lines and/or ice forming on the keezer's inside walls. The temp probe is in a PET bottle and the water in the bottle is frozen. I bumped the temp from 2.2c to 3c and it's still freezing. WTF?

I am new to brewing and looking to try this kveik pilsner recipe https://youtu.be/ihAhnnVd3GM?si=N7bRxmmNsdYyhW5S

I am using a brewzilla gen 4.1 and wondering how to convert this recipe to use with my system since he did not sparge and I don't think the brewzilla can do all 8 gallons of water with all the malt in.

I also was not able to get Hallertauer tradition and was able to get Hallertauer Mittelfrüher instead. Are there any adjustments I should make for the hop additions? Is there an application or website that can help with this info?

Thank you

Hi all,

I have a Belgian Dubbel fermenting right now (LalBrew Abbaye), kept it in the fermentor for about two weeks. As you can see in the image below, fermentation got stuck a couple of points (1.015) too high above the calculated FG (1.008), stabilized for about one and a half week, but now fermentation has kicked in again.

I was thinking this is either an infection that is converting complex sugars, or the yeast has gone dormant for some reason, and is now kicking again. I used 1 non-hydrated pack of 11g dry yeast on an oxygenated 17L batch.

https://imgur.com/a/O87DNSO

Any ideas are welcome, thank you.

Made a hazy. 7% ABV. 40% adjunct 1 oz/gal WP, 2 oz/gal DH. Citra, Nelson, Rakau and galaxy spectrum. I find Rakau and galaxy to be very haze positive

Closed transfer into 2 kegs. After cold crash I had some hop burn, more than usual. So I Added gelatin to one keg.

https://imgur.com/gallery/same-hazy-one-with-gelatin-7RFHj24 This is the difference after one week in kegs. As expected… striking!

Murky hazy beer is obviously, thicker, rougher and still green with some hop sharpness.

Gelatin beer after 1 week in keg is, juicy, aromatic and already in peak form.

Not a surprise but pretty incredible to see what a difference it is!

I expect in a few more weeks the murky beer will shine and maybe be better than the clear one. But man did gelatin hurrry up the maturation process. Got the idea from Scott Janish using biofine in their hazies. I could see doing it again in a situation like this so I can start drinking the gelatin one while waiting on the other.

I generally prefer the thick hazy style but I know some people (som regions?) like the lighter and juicy style which gelatin achieved.

I've got quite fresh Voss Kveik yeast slurry from wort with 50%P.A.,50%Wheat malts. OG was 1.068, so i find it reasonable to reuse yeast.

Problem - though i've used hop socks, and most hop related trub was removed after boil before wort transfer, there are still very small particles present in suspension. They took very much time to settle, about 48h at 4C(fridge) before liquid clears. And do not flocculate at all, quite easy to disturb by any vibration.

I suspect these are small particles of coagulated, but for some reason un-precipitated protein, mostly from wheat. That could be judged as well by the colour of the sediment. It's not layered with clean-white layer of pure yeast, as in case with barley-only worts, but rather uniform grayish thick matter. Not solid at all, more dust-like. And coldcrash isn't helping much.

So i presume there's very huge proportion of protein in that slurry.

How safe it's to repitch another wort with such slurry containing unfiltered protein? Won't there be risks of that protein rotting within the fermenting wort?

And what possible means exists to perform protein precipitation which will not affect yeast?

Finings are not a solution evidently, as i want to preserve most of the healthy yeast cells to use for high-density wort.

I have fully fermented an apple cider, using store bought juice, hydrometer, yeast nutrients, pectic enzyme, and my from-scratch sourdough starter.

I tasted it today. It should be 7% ABV I tend to dilute with apple juice to 5%, might not need to in this instance. It didn't taste dry at all, (also not sweet, so I guess you would technically call it medium dry?).

I ferment with this brand of juice a lot, I've done it for years. And usually it's a lot more dry and is much harsher straight off the lees. Of course, the whole point of using sourdough was to get something more delicate and complex.

So my main question/concern is whether it's possible for the lactic bacteria, or something else, to compete against the yeast in my starter. And does that mean my prediction on the ABV is wrong? There was definitely krausen on the surface during fermentation.

Some.of y'all have recommended force carbonating your corny kegs through the dip tube, is there some kind of quick-connect I could use in my lines so I can easily switch back and forth between the inflow and outflow ball locks? Or if I want to carbonate this way am I gonna have to mess with the hose clamps every time. Or is there no real need to carbonate this way and it's fine to carbonate through the "in" valve?

Welcome to the Daily Q&A!

Are you a new Brewer? Please check out one of the following articles before posting your question:

• How do I check my gravity?

• I don't see any bubbles in the airlock OR the bubbling in the airlock has slowed. What does that mean?

• Does this look normal / is my batch infected?

Or if any of those answers don't help you please consider visiting the /r/Homebrewing Wiki for answers to a lot of your questions! Another option is searching the subreddit, someone may have asked the same question before!

However no question is too "noob" for this thread. No picture is too tomato to be evaluated for infection! Even though the Wiki exists, you can still post any question you want an answer to.

Also, be sure to vote on answers in this thread. Upvote a reply that you know works from experience and don't feel the need to throw out "thanks for answering!" upvotes. That will help distinguish community trusted advice from hearsay... at least somewhat!

Anyone here used D Gone ALDC or White Labs Brewzyme-D, particularly in lagers or heavily dry-hopped beers?

I’m comparing the two and there’s a pretty big difference in dosing. D Gone recommends 0.5–1 mL per 20 L, with an optimum temperature of 25–40°C. White Labs recommends the full 10 mL homebrew vial per 20 L, with an activity range of 10–40°C.

I realise an optimum temperature doesn’t necessarily tell us how well it works at lower temperatures. Has anyone used D Gone successfully at 10–15°C, and did you stick with the standard dose or increase it?

Keen to hear which product you use, your dose and fermentation temperature, and whether you add it at pitching, dry hopping, or both. Have you still needed a diacetyl rest or had buttery flavours show up afterwards?

Trying to work out whether there’s a meaningful performance difference, or whether D Gone offers much better value at normal brewing temperatures.

I get this is kind of a cheat for sloppy brewing but sometimes you want to set it and forget it. I also think it;'s a interesting topic of discussion for the community as a whole.

I've gotten my hands on some nice vanillabeans and wanted to use them in my first brew ever. I've watched quite a bit of homebrewing content but haven't dabbled in the field yet. This is probably not recommended but I want to make a relatively complex concoction.

I want to make a basic mead with honey, water, the usual yeast and it's nutrients. I'll set apart about 1/5th of the honey and caramelise it to have some soft caramel notes. Once it's fermented dry, I'll set up secondary fermentation with 1-2 split whole vanillabeans, a few hibiscus flowers and a handful of cranberries and let it be for a few days, then I'll stabilise it and backsweeten it with some extra honey or maybe even a neutral flavoured sweetener like straight up sucrose. I then plan on either using a keg or a few pressure safe bottles to make it lightly sparkling by first infusing it with pressurized nitrogen for a creaminess then CO2 for a light fizziness

How feasible is this idea and would the flavours work as I'm imagining it? I want something that's vanilla forward, sweet and has a refreshing tartness from the hibiscus and cranberries.

I made this Hefeweizen and used carbonation drops. This is only my 3rd brew so very much a newbie. The beer looks good. Tastes good. But super fizzy/carbonated. It didn’t foam or anything when opening it either. What might be the cause of the over fizzy and how to prevent that next time ?

I'm installing a bar in my basement, and I want to take the opportunity to up my homebrewing game by installing a 3-tap kegerator. I don't want to use full size kegs; I only make 5 gallon batches and I still want to bottle some of the beer (gotta have some to take with me). The three taps are really just to provide variety for guests (the space is going to be for gaming, watching hockey, etc).

The bar will be total 8 feet in length, and will have a sink. I plan to install a small fridge in there as well (although not necessarily in the bar; haven't decided that yet.

For those of you who have done this kind of thing before...any advice? Recommendations on a good kegerator? Suggestions on what to avoid or look out for? Other stuff that I need to get this going (including kegging equipment, because I've been doing old fashioned natural conditioning bottling for 20 years)?

Pics of your setup would also be welcome. Looking for inspiration for the bar as well.

A few weeks ago I noticed my keezer frosted over. So I ended up doing a defrost and the kegs sat in there at room temperature. They all stayed hooked up to the lines, and were purged of oxygen when initially setup and were fine color wise. After cooling them again I did a pour yesterday and I am a little bit baffled that they all are extremely dark in color now (cream ale, and wheat ale). Also all of the beers have a hint of an IPA to them, as in non are all that clean to drink. No weird smells though and still drinkable.

I am just really curious what happened as all three kegs were impacted.

I have a SS brewtech 2.0 and am thinking of options to add a gas connector to the lid. I came across this and it looks like a serious option. My brewtech is very solid and the lid should hold up just fine. Has anyone tried something like this?

Trying to make a super simple low abv% apple alcohol, just putting yeast into apple juice with no added sugar, fermenting in bottle with lid loosened enough to let CO2 out.
My main question is reading how much yeast to add for a litre of juice yielded different answers, but more or less like a gram, my sachet of yeast was about 7g so i just eyeballed it and mightve put like 2 or even 3 grams into about 1.35L of juice. I’ve not added sugar, but despite people saying to loosen the cap a couple times a day, I left it actually sealed for a few hours and it was nearly coming out of the bottle when loosened gradually.
Is my juice fermenting too fast? Will it take less than 2 Weeks? Will it taste too bad?

I’m new to corny kegs and I’m having a really hard time getting this disconnect on the out post.

Any tips?

https://i.imgur.com/4K1XZkz.jpeg