Funny, isn’t it? I actually have recipes come to me in my sleep. If I have a brewday coming up or there have been a bunch of brewing projects going on (bottling, kegging, transferring, dry hopping, ordering equipment or ingredients, etc), I dream about all of it. Freaky, freaky stuff.[/quote]
sometimes I have dreams where I brew, then when I wake up I run down stairs like a kid at Christmas.
I would strongly recommend AGAINST using your mash paddle to oxygenate your wort, unless you’re going for a sour beer. Malt is loaded with lactobacillus and will quickly sour your batch. I guess you could buy a dedicated plastic mash paddle just for aerating, but I think there are better ways. No offense to Pietro.
[quote=“El Capitan”][quote=“Pietro”]
Oxygenating - very very important, but unless you are making HUGE alcohol beers, using your store bought mash paddle and splashing the thing around in the for 2-3 minutes is sufficient…IF you are pitching enough yeast (not just a smack pack/vial)
[/quote]
I would strongly recommend AGAINST using your mash paddle to oxygenate your wort, unless you’re going for a sour beer. Malt is loaded with lactobacillus and will quickly sour your batch. I guess you could buy a dedicated plastic mash paddle just for aerating, but I think there are better ways. No offense to Pietro.[/quote]
I have heard of people picking up a dedicated drill attachment (like a stirrer/propeller type of thing) for this. They say you have to do this for quite some time to get oxygen into the wort and that the chance of infection is higher than pure O2.
One of my big things was using BMC as a baseline, when ever I get a couple of batches that haven’t been what I thought they should be I will crack open a Coors light or what ever and realize that my stuff that isent all that good is still 10X better then what I once thought was good beer. Your brewing better but your taste buds now have a higher standard.
Perfect, fellas. This is what I’m looking for. I’m an extract brewer; here’s my general procedure:
Heat DI or RO water
Boil specialty grains for ~30 min @ 170F
Add hops at set times
Fill sink with ice, water, cool with lid off (Around 13-20 mins)
Pour into bucket of some cool water, top off to 5 gal
Pitch dry yeast (S-05 so far)
Leave in closet (temps ~74+)
Bottle around 3-5 weeks
I think my temperatures are probably the most probable culprit after the suggestions. Is using distilled water, RO, etc. ok? I know water mineral concentrations are very important for AG but I figured that was a bigger issue as starch extraction isn’t occurring in extract.
[quote=“mhollerb”]Perfect, fellas. This is what I’m looking for. I’m an extract brewer; here’s my general procedure:
Heat DI or RO water
Boil specialty grains for ~30 min @ 170F
Add hops at set times
Fill sink with ice, water, cool with lid off (Around 13-20 mins)
Pour into bucket of some cool water, top off to 5 gal
Pitch dry yeast (S-05 so far)
Leave in closet (temps ~74+)
Bottle around 3-5 weeks
I think my temperatures are probably the most probable culprit after the suggestions. Is using distilled water, RO, etc. ok? I know water mineral concentrations are very important for AG but I figured that was a bigger issue as starch extraction isn’t occurring in extract.[/quote]start steeping your grains at a lower temp & see if that has an effect for a few batches. some say you’ll leach harsh tannins from your specialty grains at higher temps. RO & distilled are just right for extracts. the extracts already have the mineral content from when they were made.
In your process I am not seeing you add the extract. LME or DME?
Try to ferment cooler. 74 is too warm and during actual fermentation, temps go 3-5 degrees higher.
Make sure the beer is finished and cleaned up before bottling rather than a generic 3-5 weeks
+1 on the steeping grains temp. Even though you’re not technically doing a mash, if I’m doing an extract batch I like to keep steeping grains in mash-temp range. I usually kill the heat at 160, add the grains, then cover the pot and leave it on the burner. Residual heat in the kettle/burner will let the temp coast up a couple of degrees before it starts falling. At the end of the steep I’m generally still at about 150 or so. This is also helpful when you’re steeping something like Munich or Victory, that really should be mashed but you can get away with steeping for flavor purposes.
For hoppy extract beers, I would still add extra gypsum. In this case it is solely for flavor purposes and not really a water adjustment for the mash. 3-5 grams in a 5-gallon batch is the range I usually shoot for.
But the big thing is fermentation temp. If you’re fermenting in a 74F closet, the beer is going to be well over 80 at peak of fermentation. Even if you can only get down to 66-68 or so, you will see a HUGE improvement in the final product.
[quote=“El Capitan”][quote=“Pietro”]
Oxygenating - very very important, but unless you are making HUGE alcohol beers, using your store bought mash paddle and splashing the thing around in the for 2-3 minutes is sufficient…IF you are pitching enough yeast (not just a smack pack/vial)
[/quote]
I would strongly recommend AGAINST using your mash paddle to oxygenate your wort, unless you’re going for a sour beer. Malt is loaded with lactobacillus and will quickly sour your batch. I guess you could buy a dedicated plastic mash paddle just for aerating, but I think there are better ways. No offense to Pietro.[/quote]
Not to highjack the thread, but after I use my mash paddle (HDPE) in the mash, I wash it, then have it sit in my sanitizer and/or the boil as I’m conducting the boil. I know lacto/pedio are sneaky little bugs and can get into minute scratches or crevices imperceivable to the human eye, but wouldn’t a 212 degree environment or bath in diluted phosphoric acid kill even the ones that are hiding?
This is why these boards are great for ‘experienced’ brewers and noobs. It is $5 for another mash paddle (and I have some cool wooden ones that just need some modification), and I should probably just fish around for change in my couch and buy a dedicated paddle. Brewing is about minimizing what you don’t want.
That being said, in about 40-50 batches, I have only had one infection perceivable to me or my fellow beer nerds, and that was on a borrowed/transported wort batch that I was futzing with twice a day during fermentation (likely the cause).
No offense taken, and thanks for the feedback! Its a small cost that will remove any doubt.
[quote=“560sdl”]In your process I am not seeing you add the extract. LME or DME?
Try to ferment cooler. 74 is too warm and during actual fermentation, temps go 3-5 degrees higher.
Make sure the beer is finished and cleaned up before bottling rather than a generic 3-5 weeks[/quote]
Haha; yes, I add LME. What are you thoughts on late boil LME additions? Like half and half?
[quote=“mhollerb”][quote=“560sdl”]In your process I am not seeing you add the extract. LME or DME?
Try to ferment cooler. 74 is too warm and during actual fermentation, temps go 3-5 degrees higher.
Make sure the beer is finished and cleaned up before bottling rather than a generic 3-5 weeks[/quote]
Haha; yes, I add LME. What are you thoughts on late boil LME additions? Like half and half?[/quote]
This will help in making the beer lighter color and a bit more (imperceptible?) bitterness from your hops.
Second to temperature, make sure your pitching rates are up to snuff. If you’re using dry, you don’t have to worry (with ales) up to 1.090OG.
Third, try full boils if your pot and stovetop/burner can handle it.
Fourth, patience. Some of those off flavors are a result of green, new beer. Wait a couple of weeks before testing again and see if those flavors haven’t dissipated or even disappeared.
My first 10 batches all used dry. So much easier to not have to worry about pitching rates. Around then I started harvesting so needed to learn the “starter” process. Since then, I get and save as much liquid yeast as I can. I still make about half my batches with dry or at least harvested dry yeast.
Here’s something else: When brewers are newbies, they hear a mantra over & over again… Making beer is easy! And it can be. But making consistently stellar beer is harder than that. I think of it as a scale from 1 to 100. 1 is undrinkable and 100 is stellar. When you first make beer, maybe you make one that rates a 70 or 75. As you pick up tips, the beer improves by small amounts. 78, 80, 82, etc. Eventually it gets tougher to raise the score higher and higher without getting your hands dirty with things like water profiles, salt adjustments, mashing techniques and about 100 other things. I have made over 500 batches of beer in 13 years and without going to a Siebel class or some other brewing school, I will always consider myself a student because every single day there is something else I’m learning. Every batch I make has some new trick or technique. Brew, adjust, make notes, talk to other brewers, get feedback, have a brewing nightmare, break a carboy, brew again and again. There’s a tip for you… brew often. It teaches patience. Cheers & good luck.
that helped me out a lot my first few years. it’s also easier to let some off flavors age out while you’re getting better. i guess tasting age progressions really helped me out with my styles as well.
@ Pietro - I was envisioning a wooden mash paddle or even a plastic one sitting around for an hour with residual mash on it before going into the cool wort - a virtual sure bet for infection.
It sounds to me like what you’re doing has been working for you, so there’s your answer. If you start getting infected batches, you might re-examine that procedure. :cheers:
How often do you guys utilize gypsum in the boil for extract brews? I use DI/RO water.
I never added it when I did extract brews
I never added it when I did extract brews[/quote]
560, how was your hop profile/did you perceive it? I know extracts have the mineral appropriate contained within them, but I’ve heard from several experienced brewers that it aids the isomerization of hops.
I always add gypsum to my hoppy extract beers. Gypsum gives a bit more bite to the hops bitterness. Even though you don’t need gypsum as a water adjustment for your mash, extra gypsum is useful for flavor purposes for things like APA’s and IPA’s.
I never added it when I did extract brews[/quote]
560, how was your hop profile/did you perceive it? I know extracts have the mineral appropriate contained within them, but I’ve heard from several experienced brewers that it aids the isomerization of hops.[/quote]
I brewed plenty of hoppy extract beers but I guess I am just learning that it improves hop profile.
