Mr. Wizard
Wild Yeast Pitch Rates
MEMBERS ONLYPitching rates for wild yeast and bacteria are really all over the place. Brettanomyces species can be used in place of Saccharomyces species for the primary fermentation of wort into beer. Brettanomyces has become a very popular “wild” yeast in certain brewing circles and imparts an interesting aroma and flavor to a wide range of
Double filtering homebrew
MEMBERS ONLYThe first question that really should be answered is why do brewers filter beer? Some brewers filter beer to make it clear and pretty, some filter beer so that they don’t have to wait weeks for yeast to settle out and want the yeast out for flavor reasons, others use sterile filtration to guard against beer
What style should I barrel-age?
MEMBERS ONLYOne of the most common beer types to age in bourbon barrels is strong stout. The rich, roasted flavors from the stout marry well with oak, vanilla, coconut, and Bourbon notes from the barrel. Additional layers of complexity can be gained by blending fruit-aged stouts to the mix. Other strong beers with a sturdy malt
Why do some grains need to be malted?
MEMBERS ONLYGrains are malted so that starch contained in the grain endosperm can be released into solution during mashing. The changes that happen during malting are collectively termed modification. And the thing that unites all of these changes is enzymatic production and enzymatic activity. At the end of the malting process, malted grains contain a wide
Starches in the Mash
FREEThis is really a great question and one that brewers started contemplating shortly after RIMS (recirculating infusion mashing systems) brewing became popular. The two main goals of malt milling are particle size
Making Kettle Sours
MEMBERS ONLYIt took a while for brewers outside of the small sour brewing centers of Belgium and Germany to produce excellent sours because so much of the science and practice of sour beer brewing was closely guarded ~30 years ago when brewers from other parts of the brewing world began dabbling with sour beer. Jean-Xavier Guinard’s
Tracking Sugar Content of a Cider
MEMBERS ONLYMost homemade ciders, unless specially handled, ferment out completely and contain very little residual sugars. This is because apple juice mainly contains fermentable sugars (fructose, sucrose, and glucose), and smaller amounts of non-digestible carbohydrate (e.g., pectin), organic acids, especially malic acid, amino acids, and minerals. This is very different from wort that contains a significant
The Low Down on Water Softeners for Brewing
FREEI want to recap a few things before suggesting a solution to your water woes. Before your move, you had soft water that worked well for brewing. Now you have water from
The Importance of Brewing Ingredients
FREEIn full disclosure, I work for BSG, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rahr Malting Company in Shakopee, Minnesota, and do bring some bias with the answer that follows. BSG sells malt, hops,
Hydrometer Isn’t Reading Correctly
MEMBERS ONLYThe short answer to your question is that this offset is linear, and you can simply subtract 0.004 from the measured density at 60 ˚F (16 °C) to correct for the error with your hydrometer. You can also correct for deviation from the calibration temperature by referring to a correction table, or using a hydrometer
Setting the Record Straight on Mash pH
FREEThere are some answers that I write where I know that I am stepping into a gray area, and my very brief sidebar about pH jumped square in the middle of the
How do hops affect the final gravity of a beer?
MEMBERS ONLYHops do not have a significant impact on wort or beer density because the concentration of hop soluble compounds is simply too low to make much of an impact on density. In order to increase the density of 1 liter of wort by 1 ˚Plato, 0.01 kg or 10,000 mg of soluble solids must be