i am just judging it on the fact I have no gas coming through the bubble trap. I have a froth. I carefully double checked and there is a carbon dioxide smell. It doesn’t have the malty beery smell that I get with pale ales though, it is more earthy (I have chucked batches for having that smell)...

Just an update on what has happened. I did a yeast starter of Wyeast 1056 for two pale ale batches. They were set on 25th Nov and are nearly done, I’m at about 6 on the Brix scale at the mo so another 0.5 and we would be nearly done. I did a lager yeast (2208) yeast starter in 3.5litres that I...

I can’t see me being able to brew a lager with this starter tomorrow (it is lunchtime Friday right now). I think it will be Sunday at least. Does that figure? I want to do a 25 litre batch. On the plus side, I pitched some of yesterday’s starter of Wyeast 1056 into 500ml of media and it looks...

thank you for the link, it is great. I’ve done most of this but I did use DME and diluted it as suggested by the BF calculator. I did a 500ml starter from a Smack pack yesterday of Budvar 2000. No stir plate so I just agitated it every time I thought about it. It looked good this morning...

It also gets me thinking about my next batch where I want to make a Bock lager. I have an American lager yeast smack pack containing 100Bil cells. I will be making about 25litres so the BF calculator suggests I need 294Bil cells. That means I need 3.4 litres of culture medium to grow that many...

The other thing on the BF yeast starter calculator is that it doesn’t say how long it takes. I was assuming 24 hours (ish). on that basis though, I am going to struggle to do 2 batches this evening arent I? The calculator suggests I will have about 240Bil cells which is just over what I need...

thanks for this. I used that calculator actually. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t done something stupid. I ferment the beer in fermenting buckets with a spigot tap. I generally clean them out with hot water and soap, then rinse well and then sterilise. I take the spigot out and wash it a...

Hi All, I have a stupid question. I’ve been merrily brewing 25-27litre batches with mixed success. I’ve chucked a few batches I suspect down to infections getting in. I think the reason for these infections are either cleanliness of the spigot (I’m now much better) or pH (I now buffer with...

Thank you all, it is reassuring. I have been just adding hop pellets when the recipe suggests. I avoid the trub when I come to bottling by siphoning the liquid out of the fermenter into a clean bucket containing the measured amount of corn sugar dissolved in boiling water and leaving and...

We seem to get loads of hop sediment when we brew. We use bazooka filters but there is always lots of mush in the fermenter before we prime and bottle. Even then, we get sediment after bottle fermenting. we are toying with using hop bags to minimise sediment. Do you simply add the hops to the...

thanks for this. I can do that. I have some metal shelving in my garage and I could put those bottles in a big box. So if when you go to bottle it (or transfer to a priming container) it smells really bad, can it still be saved after ageing in bottles for 6 weeks? When I did the first batch...

Thank you all, this is great feedback. I have bottled batch 3. The dregs left over (didn’t complete the final bottle) I just tasted and spat out and it tasted great. I have shelved them in the garage and plan to leave them there for 6 weeks before chilling and drinking. I think batch 4 has...

lovely thank you. How long would you expect to leave a beer in the fermenter?. I was led to believe that it would normally take 7-10 days before priming and then bottling. Measure the SG at 2 day intervals and if they are the same, go ahead and bottle. I have primed batch 3 by transferring it...

thank you so much. This is great. I’m in the log phase of learning at the moment so yes totally agree, I will nail down the process and terminology and soon we will have consistent brews. I can’t tell you how great it feels to create something!

I am so pleased to read this. Thank you. We are brewing a Spring Beer - it is a pale ale but should end up around the 5% mark. I guess I need to get some sort of Brix conversion device. Or perhaps just bear in mind that after fermenting, the Brix device will read a touch high. In future I will...