Last year I have made walnuts liqueur, or nocino in Italian. From the single batch I have obtained 2 liters of liqueur, which I have bottled in dark beer bottles and left to age in the same, dark room. Now I have noticed that while the liquor in one bottle has achieved the dark brown color typical of the liqueur, in another bottle the liquor is greenish and opaque. What can have happened?
I'm making a wine with some pretty green tasting sangiovese grapes. I did a MLF to help soften the taste but it's still pretty sharp to my palette. How will that sharpness change as the wine ages? Will it get more intense or less? Or will it stay exactly the same? I'm trying to decide if I need some acidity intervention at this point or of I should just see how it's going to turn out. This is only my …
Etosha is a hardwood from Namibia, it is an invader species there and is hence used widely as barbeque charcoal throughout Southern Africa. Its smoke has an amazing scent and aroma to it. I saw this recipe video for Whiskey and was wondering if you could substitute the oak with another charcoal that is fit for cooking food. I don't know if there is something that may make a charcoal fit for cooking food, but unfit to mellow whiskey with. …
When I make my wines at home, I usually make it in roughly 13 gallon batches. However, after racking I usually lose about half a gallon to a gallon, so I have a fair amount of headspace in my container when it is time to age and clarify. So far the longest I have bulk aged my wine was up to a year with no real issues. However I was recently given a much larger food safe plastic container to …
My impression is that ales are typically best drunk within a couple weeks of brew day. It's my experience that letting them age in the bottles for 2-3 months yields the best beer, both improving body, head, and desirable flavours, and reducing estery flavours. Could there be something I'm doing wrong to make the beer mature too slowly?
I started a batch of wine at the end of the summer, and I happen to have a bad habit of not following through on projects. Basically, I fermented it, moved it to the secondary after about a week, then reracked about a month afterwards. Since then, it's been sitting in my basement (cool and dark) aging in the carboys. This has probably been there 5 months (wow). I guess at this point my question is: Do you think there's …
I made an American Brown ale that turned out very dark brown. I opened the last couple of bottles a month or so apart after most of the batch. The color seems to have faded to a significantly lighter shade of brown, still in the brown ale normal range but different enough from the fresh beer to confuse me. What can possibly cause this phenomenon? RECIPE: Based on: https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/784491/brown-ale-chance-dodds Title: Brown Ale Brew Method: BIAB Style Name: American Brown Ale …
There is a history of people using oak barrels to age and mature beer. These days people often use bourbon soaked oak chips to flavour beer in the secondary. Also, I have seen people asking about using maple, spruce and pine on the site? Regarding, spruce/pine they have been looking for a pine/spruce flavour that you would get from the needles. What experience have people had using these and are there any woods you should avoid due to health/food safety …
I'm brewing an imperial stout. It will have 10-12% ABV in the end (hopefully). I never used wood chips before, but want to add it to this beer. I read through guides but I read everything from just 24 hours to 2 months. I have about 12 liters of the stout and want to add the chips next week after primary fermentation is done. How much do I add and how long? I would prefer to do it for 2 …
I seem to be noticing that the beers I drink early on from my kegs taste less bitter than the last few beers. My kegs do not move for 1 to 2 months while they are being emptied. Is it possible that the hop oils are separating to the top during this time causing the last few beers to be more bitter?
I just brewed a trappist style ale and I am ready to bottle it. I am a meticulous sanitizer. Just a question though. I have always filled my buckets/carboys with 5 gallons of star sans solution to sanitize it, and since I don't have the space I would dump the solution afterwards. This is wasteful and costly, so due to a response from another question I posted here, I was planning of mixing 1 gallon of solution and thoroughly shaking …
I have found that Mangrove Jack's Cider kits are quick for a summer drink and satisfies the family and friends with gluten issues. I just fermented another batch and don't have a keg available right now (yes, I know buy another) So, I racked it into a 6 gallon carboy, which got me wondering will aging it a bit will do anything beneficial as far a taste and quality? If so, how long?
What is the best grade of plastic for brewing and storing alcohol (up to about 15%)? Basically as the title suggests, I’m in a rural part of Tanzania with no access to glass but I do have access to some food grade plastics.
I am planning on tasting my cider in the fall (6 months from pitching yeast) and seeing how the flavor is then. How much would the flavors improve aging for a year? 2 year? 5? 10? At what point would I see diminishing returns? Context My second (ever) batch of cider is currently entering secondary fermentation, and has left me wondering how long I should age my Cider. The first batch of cider I made was done "hastily" and I …
I am about to brew my first test batch of a Flanders Red/Brown. I am thinking Rodenbach, but with local ingredients. So, for me Maris replaces lager malt, Admiral and Progress replace nobel hops. Basically harking back to Porters of London from the late C18, early C19. Malt 8 Kg Maris Otter 1.5 Kg flaked corn 0.2 Crystal 150L 0.2 Chocolate Malt Hops Admiral 20g @ 60 min Progress 30g @ 60 min Yeast/Bacteria Wyeast - Roeselare Ale Blend I …
First time brewer. I have my beer in the bottle (for about 8 days now). Things are good -- yeast is precipitating out. The instructions that came with the kit suggested to put 1 bottle's worth of beer in a PET plastic bottle instead of glass -- and when the PET bottle is firm to the touch (i.e. you can't really squeeze it anymore), the beer is carbonated. The plastic bottle has gotten to this point, but the kit said …
I just got this cheap wood barrel that was suppose to be for aging whiskey. I want to age my mead in the wood mini barrel. What is the best practice for doing so considering the mini barrel shown above? I have read that I should fill it, then check on it many times to refill it from some mead getting absorbed by the wood. Is there a high risk of infection? My mead just for documentation:
I know of two classic beers that should be consumed young and taste awful when aged - Belgian Wit and German Hefeweizen. What they obviously have in common is that both are wheat beers. Does that mean that wheat decreases shelf life and tastes better on young beers?
I have recently made an extract amber ale from a recipe kit, after primary fermentation was done I bottled my beer for priming, the beer had a strong sour smell than but after searching online I assumed it's because the beer is still young. After another 2 weeks of priming I opened a bottle and it smelled sour, bet less so from bottling day, the beer tastes sour/tart. To my understanding this can either be from a wild yeast infection, …