I think it does have a place in home brewing. Targeting enzymes with temperature and pH are relative to the quality of beer despite the size of the brewery. Blindly step mashing is a waste of time, but for doing for specific reasons can have a positive effect on the outcome; mainly high quality...

I have made a spruce tip beer in the past, but I used very young Colorado Spruce tips. It turned out fine, but had very little pine and mostly strawberry flavor/aroma. How old do the tips need to be to pick up more pine rather than strawberry? I have heard of people adding the tips to salads...

I step mash every beer (Hochkurz) because it's easy for me on my system. It improves overall efficiency and it creates beer with a full body, malty and yet still a dry finish (at least I think the beer is better). The efficiency side of it is real for sure. I never do a protein rest because...

Lager yeast do not produce much of a krausen as most ale yeasts. Lager yeast flocculate down, where as some ale yeast first flocculate up (there's a joke in there) before finally dropping out, the yeast that come to the top create a massive krausen. Since lager yeast just drop out, the krausen...

Does anyone spund? A lager can be at terminal gravity and fully carb'd in 10-14 days, ales even faster. It faster than burst carbonation.

Pre boil gravity is nice, I adjust the boil to hit the desired gravity. I don't like missing numbers, so I try to hit within 1.001-1.002 or less of the intended gravity. So I never worry about volume, only gravity. I often will miss my expected preboil volume and gravity slightly, so I either...

If your pH is truly rising, it could be a sign of yeast autolysis. But I doubt that’s the case. That pH is really nice after dry hopping. It’s not uncommon for dry hopping to raise pH by .2-.3 pH. 4.4 or lower is really good finish for a dry hopped IPA.

The pitch pH certainly doesn’t hurt your attenuation and may even have helped, but attenuation is a really a complicated subject and one detail helps but may not be the sole reason. I’m glad the beer turned out so well!

With that much oats and wheat it could be just beta-glucan, but usually it doesn't separate like that from the beer except in the mash during a vorlauf (it sets on top of the grain bed). Kind of weird for sure.

I have been adjust boil/pitch/knockout pH for years since I saw an interview with John Kimmich (The Alchemist) who mentioned he would never pitch yeast in wort above 5.2 pH and that he was okay with pitching at 5.1 pH, but for their beers he preferred 5.2. I started doing it right away and it...

This is good advice. Water can be as complicated or as simple as you want. My opinion is that the water is often over complicated by some brewers. Keep it simple, add a little water salts to RO for some calcium, that goes along way in improving beers.

Two things can cause this. First yeast is very bitter and tart, yeast suspended in beer is not my favorite. Second, if it's not a typo, +6 pH is not good at all. Tannins get leached out of the grain in the mash and they are very bitter and harsh. This high pH in the mash effects finish pH, which...

Yes and no. The pitch pH (AKA knock out) is a little high at 5.3, but despite that the yeast hit 4.3 on the finish. This is strain dependent, so if a Kolsch yeast were used, this finish pH would be too high. But for a lager yeast. it's in the ball park. The other note is that mash pH almost...

I notice your lager s are landing @ 4.3, but the hazy landed about 4.1 or so. What yeast was that? It must be an English variety. Thanks for posting your results, always interesting! At least to me.

I'm assuming the pound of specialty malt is honey malt, which has a DP of 50. You could mash it on the stove top by itself or with a bit of 2 row. You could just follow the instructions which I'm assuming is calling for steeping the grains. I would mash the honey malt on the stove top to get as...