I like experimenting with different liquids aside from ginger tea and was wondering if cold brew coffee would be viable for a fermentation. I was not sure if the acidity of the instant coffee would prevent the ginger bug from feeding off the sugar, or if some other reaction would make it unpalatable or unsafe. Thank you :)
I've been a wine maker and grower for 10+ years and now diving into home beer making which is a lot of fun and gives MUCH faster returns on enjoyment. I have seen where some folks recommend filling the head space in the conditioning carboy (secondary) with CO2. In wine making argon is preferred (and I have it). Any comments about using this to spurge air out of the secondary? Also, I have a wine lab/cellar that I keep around …
I have very nearly mastered the clarification process but still wish to control the timing of flocculation more consistently. At what point/stage is cold crashing most efficient?
According to "How to Brew" by John Palmer (4th ed.), cold conditioning (a.k.a. lagering) is the act of cooling beer after fermentation has completed (including maturation) in order to clarify the beer. So far so good. The book also suggests to slowly decrease the temperature (down to 1 °C/day!) to avoid thermal shock on the yeast: The point of slow cooling is to prevent thermal shock of the yeast and subsequent excretion of fatty acids and other lipids. These lipids …
I'm trying to understand the mechanism behind cold crashing. When cold crashing, you cool the fermented brew, yeast and suspended solids settle. With my first cider, a very turbid bottle visible cleared in a day or two. Why do solids settle whan cooling? Generally, sedimentation happens continously and is faster at low viscosities of the suspending liquid. Cooler water is actually more viscous so you'd expect slower sedimentation. Another purely physical explanation would be that with colder temeperatures there's less …
I have brewed a Brewferm Christmas beer. I have been brewing on and off for 20+ years but I don't try complicated things. My first mistake was not reading that this particular beer requires no extra sugar to ferment. Si after I added the extra sugar, I also added extra water to match. I hoped that I would be simply stretching the flavour out over more beer but that everything else would be ok. I bottled the beer once fermentation …
I've just made my first lager, it is currently lagering at 1 C. What is happening to my beer at this temperature? Is the yeast still active? And most importantly: What is happening at this temperature that would not at higher temperatures?
I have just put on my first all grain homebrew (a porter) here in Melbourne, Australia. After a day or so it was bubbling away quite nicely. A couple of days ago the weather decided to change dramatically and the temperature has dropped from around 18-20 ºC to around 14 ºC. The yeast in use is an ale yeast (Wyeast 1338 - European Ale if I remember rightly). When I got home from work yesterday the fermenter was no longer …
I have a wheat and a golden ale, both in 5 gal carboys, that have been in secondary fermentation for 2 weeks. I was planning on letting them settle for another week and then transferring them to kegs for 2 weeks of cold conditioning before carbonating. Should I cold condition them in the carboy or would it be better to cold condition in the keg? If I cold condition in the keg will it hurt to also carbonate at the …
I'm double dry hopping my Rye India Pale Ale, doing half with simply double the dry hops, and half one addition, remove, adding the other half to see if anyone within drinking distance can distinguish the difference. Once this beer is bottled and carbonated, I'll be attempting to drink it more quickly than my less hoppy creations to be certain, but if getting a third refrigerator for beer storage would help preserve hop aroma, then I need one. I'm really …
I brewed a high gravity (1080) saison and am planning on cold conditioning it in secondary at 32 degrees x 2 weeks, then bottle conditioning it. I am wonder will the cold conditioning make all my yeast die? Will I need to add more yeast when I bottle? If so, how much?