When I was about to leave this morning, I noticed that one of my carboys has this white mold growing on the surface. In 8 years of homebrewing, this is the first time it happens. This is a braggot I've been aging for 6 months and I had recently racked it off to remove some sediment. I guess something got inside during that process. I was thinking of racking it tonight and discard the head and hopefully, that could help …
I am making my fist batch of Honey Mead. I had followed the "fast mead making" recipe on " Stormthecastle", added the orange and the raisons, the balloon with pinhole first inflated and has now been deflated 2 days. The honey has disappeared and sediment is on the bottom. Total time elapsed has been approximately 6 weeks. ( I made the rookie error of not marking the start date but I know the approximate weekend) I am now lost! I …
I recently pressed a some garden apples into two buckets of cider. The first bucket has been air sealed in a fermentation bucket with an airlock for 2 weeks. As explained in another thread I have about 8 litres in a 15 litre bucket so there is quite a bit of headspace in there. With this batch I added some wine yeast after a week. The second bucket has been sealed for around a week and has around the same …
I am making mead for the first time using honey from my hives. It has been going for 3-4 weeks and I'm not sure if it's time to rack it. The fermenting has been slow, which I think might be due to the coldish (60 degree) temperature in my house. I didn't heat the honey and it settled to the bottom of the carboy almost immediately. There is some bubbling doing on, a gurgle about every 10-20 seconds, but it …
I am wondering if it is possible to barrel ferment white grapes/wine. I can only find information on the web about red wines. In regards to this process I have some questions and assumptions; I hope someone here can help me with this. Am I correct to assume that barrel fermenting also adds color to the end product? Do people here know of commercial wines that do this? And if it is possible, what are the steps to go from …
The primary fermentation for cider is going for 9 days and SG wend down from 1.052 to 1.005. Is it normal to have such a low value before first racking? Should I add sugar to rise SG to 1.015 and rack it? Thanks.
I have a gallon of very sweet kiwi wine. I've racked it twice already but after couple months in at it's current stage it still hasn't cleared. I want to let it sit in the carboy until it does clear but at the same time I don't want it to continue getting stronger (the wine is very sweet so there is plenty of sugar still to be eaten and for some reason the yeast seems to be pushing well beyond …
I`m brewing a pilsner at slightly higher temperature levels and has been two and a half weeks. Can I rack and then bottle if my hydrometer reading are stable? Or should I rack and then store in fridge for extended period before bottling?
Newbie here. First post, only my 2nd batch of home brew and my first partial grain brew. I did a pale ale "Northern Light" from BestCase.ca. So my problem... the instructions had a big bold statement "DO NOT LEAVE IN PRIMARY FERMENTER FOR MORE THAN 5 DAYS". So, being paranoid, I racked on the 4th day. The SG went from 1.048 to 1.020. I thought I was good (now I know I should have looked for consistent readings for a …
Making some kiwi wine (exciting!). When transferring from primary to secondary getting the fruit pulp was a bit of a mess and I inevitably stirred all the lees into the wine. Now, after only 1 day in the secondary there is lots of sediment in the carboy (more than 1cm). Should I worry about it at all? Rack it again of the gunk?
New to home brewing, and have started out with some cider. I've started out with just store bought apple juice, 4l of which is now fermenting in a demijohn. Is secondary racking required for this? My understanding is that secondary racking is to remove lees, but as I'm using store bought juice from a carton (no additives), shouldn't I be able to skip secondary racking? Or is there something I'm missing? Thanks in advance!
Let's assume I've read all I can about the pros and cons of racking my beer from primary to secondary and I've decided that I want my lager clear and I'm going to rack away. I've brewed a dozen batches and have learned how to keep things sanitized, how to carefully use my auto-siphon, how to properly transfer to my bottling bucket, etc. I'm careful and deliberate. I'm doing my best to keep the beer from splashing and bubbling as …
I think I oxidized my whole keg. I was attempting a closed transfer but the beer stopped going into the keg so I decided to change the tube but totally forgot about the air in the tube. So when I started to transfer again, bubbles went through the keg. I bled the keg many times right away but I'm not sure how much it helped. Did you ever have such an experience? How did it turn out?
I want to create a fruit saison, I used some interesting hops (centenial and citra) and intend to rack to secondary ontop of the fruit puree (I will also dry hop with citra). The question I now have is when do I need to rack to secondary? The questions here Fruit Beer: When to rack to secondary? states 2-3 weeks, but does not really say what I'm looking for to see (e.g. a certain gravity). Saison is notoriously slow for …
In my short career in the home brew world I've always transferred the beer from the primary to bottle without a siphon (directly from the spigot). I've started to see that this made my beer darker and with unwanted components(oxidation). So I'm deciding now between an auto siphon or a CO2 cylinder and etc for a closed system. In that sense how the two compare to each other in terms of oxidation prevention? If possible a comparison in terms of …
Digression from What's the point of secondary fermentation? What are the good rules of thumb for determining a. whether to use secondary fermentation at all and b. when to move from primary to secondary. Preferably any rule of thumb should have both chemical and anecdotal rationale supporting it.
tomorrow I'll brew an English style IPA with extract. I want to dry-hop in the conditioning phase, so, considering I'm using S04 on a small batch, I'll probably add the hops on Wednesday. It should be more than finished by then according to my experience. Two questions: do you think it's ok if I dry-hop in the primary? how long should I dry hop for? Batch size is 10 liters and I was thinking of dry-hopping 15 grams of EKG.
I brewed my very first batch of extract (Brewer's Best Amber Ale) yesterday morning, and I'm still not seeing any bubbling in the airlock. I'm running through a list of things that could I could have done wrong, and one of them might have been from when I racked the wort from the (cooled) brewpot into the plastic "Ale Pale" fermenter. Yes, I confirmed the wort was chilled down to 110°F before I racked. And yes, I racked using a …
I'm reusing my yeast for a while, and my procedure now is to have a wort ready when I want to bottle or keg a previous batch. So I drain the finished beer out of fermentor, and then collect some yeast slurry to a vessel, wash and sanitize the fermentor, put the yeast in it again, and pour the new wort onto it. Since I'm reading about it, I know that is possible to rack directly onto the previous yeast …