Adventures in cleaning and sanitizing
The second beer of mine to get the hop stand treatment is drinkable, that means it's time to see how the hop stand technique worked for this beer. As with the first experiment, I was cautious in the amount of …
April 15, 2012 | Posted in Assorted Beer Geekery, Techniques
Earlier this year I heard about a technique that could supplement -- or possibly replace -- dry hopping as the best way for adding hop aroma to a beer. The technique is the hop stand, and I heard about it …
March 28, 2012 | Posted in Techniques
After yesterday's overly trub-laden brew I spent some time thinking about possible causes. Initially I blamed the fine grind of the grist, but that explanation never seemed quite right. I wondered if perhaps Whirlfloc was the culprit. And, indeed, that may be it. …
March 25, 2012 | Posted in Assorted Beer Geekery, Techniques
When I started playing with water chemistry I bought myself a scale with 0.1 gram precision. It's perfect for measuring any small addition, such as potassium metabisulfite, yeast nutrient and hops. With hops I've found that the weight on the …
March 2, 2012 | Posted in Assorted Beer Geekery, Techniques
I've noticed over the past few batches that when I compare a brix* reading from my refractometer and a SG reading from the hydrometer that the two are not agreeing. The conversion between brix and SG is pretty straight forward, …
October 30, 2011 | Posted in Assorted Beer Geekery, Techniques
Measuring the volume of my wort and beer is a problem that I've tried to solve a number of ways. First I made measuring sticks, pieces of wood marked in half-gallon increments that I could set next to a container. …
October 16, 2011 | Posted in Techniques
The two most common defects in home brewed beer are probably oxidation and bad fermentation (incomplete attenuation, too warm, etc.) Most home brewers don't have the temperature controlled fermenters and closed transfer systems that professional breweries have, so it can …
October 2, 2011 | Posted in Techniques
Fancy golf clubs won't fix a terrible swing and imported olive oil won't improve your cooking if you don't know how to chop an onion. If you want to make better beer, you could spend money on fancier equipment, or …
September 20, 2011 | Posted in Techniques