Search results

I have 2 FVs one lid with an airlock hole the other without, and swap the lid on the one fermenting with a solid one at the end of fermentation: when it stops bulging it tells me that fermentation is over and I can move it somewhere cool for 24-48hrs.

That's why I do it, yeasts that used to take 24hrs to get going now get the airlock bubbling within 6 hours after re-hydration.

Try them both in water to check calibration: reading should be 1.000. I've never had a beer go anywhere near that low in over 200 brews, if someone hadn't posted above then I'd have said it's impossible.

I normally put mine in the coolest room in the house in winter, with the radiator turned off: can get down to 12-13C in there. The yeast can tolerate a wide temp range, it's better to keep it at a constant temp though.

I've got one of the 10L Dark Farm kegs, typically use 1.5 bulbs of CO2 per brew so not bad at all. I really like them and am thinking of getting another.

I rarely dry hop these days, I can't taste the difference between that and a 30min hop steep after flameout, plus there was some discussion a while ago on whether bottle bombs were more likely to occur with a dry hop.

There's various recipes doing the rounds, some use a bit of Cascade and some don't. Although I was surprised to see Cascade in some of the recipes, I made it and it does seem to work.

Nice long thread on hop growing here, which a few of us contributed photos to last summer Hop plants/rhizomes - growing report

Late to this thread - why is it a crazy idea, tons of commercial hops are grown in the UK and they even grow wild, quite a lot around here down by the riverbank. I've been growing them for about 5 years, really easy, and they get better and better each year as they get more roots down. I grow...

I always use half a teaspoon per bottle (500ml). This works for me and results in lightly-carbonated beer: I'm never very scientific with priming as I find some yeasts carry on fermenting a bit in the bottle, producing gushers or even bottle bomsbs, so I always err on the safe side.

Same here, but that's with much lower OG brews 1045-1050 or so. As the OP has a much higher OG of 1064, the FG is likely to be higher. Plugging the figures, 1064-1016 is 75% yeast attenuation which is pretty respectable, I usually get a little more with US05 but wouldn't expect the FG to drop...

This is the thread you need Have a go at simple AG You don't have to brew 23L, many of us brew different volumes depending on our kit. I use a 15L pot as above BIAB, adding 1kg DME to the AG brew so I can top it up in the FV to 18-20L.

Thanks guys - I agree too. I've had this for 2 years in 3 different plastic barrels, no matter what I throw at it I can't seem to get rid of it. I started with stainless-steel kegs just before Xmas and the beer in there is fine, you have confirmed the way forward.

Mid-Feb update: after leaving the pressurised keg with a small amount of beer in it for the last 6 weeks I finally opened it today, hoping to see some sort of mega-infection. A bit underwhelmed to be honest, looks like a few spores on top but not really sure, what do you think? Massive...

Yeah, never chuck a beer until you actually taste it. My last Porter went wrong and got stuck at 1025 after 20 days fermenting, I nervously bottled it and it turned out great, just weak 3.4%.

Will do, but it's been stored out there for over 10 years and we've had colder than this. It was minus double figures on my morning commute one year.

Me too. I keep a max/min thermometer on top of my bottle stash in the garage, got down to -6c last night near Malvern. What temp does beer freeze at?

My observation that it doesn't do so well in dark beers comes from many years of using S04 in a variety of dark and light beers using the same brewing method, so a fairly non-scientific observation. But as you point out, it generally results in the attenuation range listed on the packet, just at...

I did this yesterday, it was a bit more stressful than my usual brewday due to needing to get the boil up to temp before my first Teams meeting, but it worked out OK. You can usually fit things round an AG brewing session, you just need to be "there" rather than say in the garden or popping out.

Good point, it's not a bad yeast, just a bit underwhelming at times. The last time I posted about S04 I was having a bit of a downer on it, but then made a BC Porter with MJ Empire Ale yeast that only produced 54% attenuation and an FG of 1025, now that's a poor yeast (well it was for me, used...