I'm going to go veg out on the couch now, but hopefully this will all be worth it in about a month. I'll definitely keep you posted.
I'm going to go veg out on the couch now, but hopefully this will all be worth it in about a month. I'll definitely keep you posted.
3 comments:
I've been following and enjoying your blog for a while now. Happy to see you're getting into brewing. I've been doing it for a while now so if you have any questions, let me know and I'll do my best to help out. Enjoy!
Thanks! I brewed a few batches in Los Angeles. One batch was fantastic. Then a heat wave hit and...ew. You can imagine. Now that it's cold in SF we're hoping for great results!
One question I've had for a long time: when I start boiling the wort, the instructions say to boil until the foam disappears. It never really disappears. It subsides but there are still small bubbles on the surface. At what point do I stop and continue?
Good question, I used to get a lot of foam during the boil and would skim it off periodically. It's really just made of insoluble parts of the malt. I find that the amount of foam is affected by 2 factors; the amount of dry malt extract (dme) and the volume of the boil. From your image, it looks like you have about a 3 lb bag of dme. I try to limit my dme to 1 lb. I found that using too much dme led to some cidery off flavors in the finished beer. Of course there are some people out there who only use dme and get fine results but I'm not one of them. Also, a few years ago I bought a 6 gallon turkey fryer which came with a propane burner. I can now comfortably boil 4 gallons outside. When I brewed inside, I could only boil 2.5 and had to watch it very carefully. The larger boil volume makes everything dissolve easier and I rarely get any foam after the initial boil break. Also, a larger boil volume utilizes your hops better which comes in handy with the hop shortage situation.
Looks like you're making a pretty big beer there, what style is it? IPA?
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