Recent content by chthon

Well, many commercial swing tops are glued or melted together with the sealing rings, so the complete cork mechanism must be replaced.

I use mostly swing tops and dextrose too, but I always bulk prime. However, if you have your process for measuring your dextrose and putting into your bottles in your fingers, doesn't seem that anything can go wrong. W.r.t. swing top bottles, however, I noticed a difference in the force needed...

How do you prime your beer before bottling?

More like Affligem Blond, Grimbergen Blond or Leffe Blond. But then you best limit your ABV to something between 6% and 6,5%. I actually did this at the beginning of the year with MJ M20 yeast, then lager a couple of weeks after fermentation (I can do that in my garage in the winter) so that...

Yes, but in these cases I have good results (and the UK member had good results with his Duvel yeast). They attenuate well They give nice flavours and smells It is not possible to build a perfect clone unless you really spend much time improving and honing the recipe, but they all succeeded as...

The biggest problem in propagating yeast from the real thing is probably the availability and freshness at your side. I have propagated yeast from Westmalle, St.-Bernardus and Rochefort from the bottle. But then I live almost at the source. If you are interested in Duvel, on the UK forum someone...

A style note on saisons (and bière de garde, which served the same purpose), they were brewed in winter and kept until harvest. For that, much hops were used, but not all bittering hops: flavor and taste hops, because it used to be a light beer to quench thirst. The beer in itself also probably...

I cover my open fermentation vessel (actually my boil kettle, with trub and all :-)) with a sterile cheese cloth. I must say that all my brews with open fermentation (started in July) have been a success. I brewed a WV12/St.-Bernardus Abt clone, a weizenbock, and now a Kasteel Donker. For what...

Well, what about this one then?

Why dry hop Why dry hop (part two) Why dry hop (part three) Apparently, dry hopping can (will?) re-introduce diastatic enzymes into your beer. That is the real reason that fermentation can start again after dry hopping. It also probably depends on the hop species.

I found this because I was looking for wheat starch too, but not from reading BLAM. My source is the book from Jef van den Steen about the trappist beers (he has already rewritten and/or added several times to it, but I think it has only been translated to English once). And there it says very...

This looks perfect. Good luck with it.

There are no drawbacks using candi sugar. The reason to use it is because of the coloring properties, the sugar and other things in the sugar that give it taste, and which are not fermented or used by the yeast. But the problem might be the source of the candi sugar. If it would contain too...

I made wine from my own grapes. I had a pretty good result in the first year. In the second year it was good, but not as good as the first year, because in the first year I could blend three types of grapes, while in the second year I could only use one type.

I have used for weizen, for a raspberry weizen and for a Leffe clone (Leffe seems to be a Kristalweizen). It is a tasty yeast, however, i don't really like the banana, so I overpitched and tried to keep the fermentation temperature at around 20°C for the Leffe clone, it has a nice clove taste...