Recent content by peterhop

Kombucha is a stable group of organisms that will sour a sweet liquid. It is like a thick jelly several milimeters thick. The one that grew in my wort was thin and had holes in it. Other examples of similar things are 'ginger beer plant' and kefir grains.

My last ferment seemed to go normally, except that when I came to bottle I found a kombucha had grown in it, giving it an off smell and taste. I make kombucha tea and beer in the same kitchen, but they don't share fluids or equipment. For beer I clean with PBW, sanitise with starsan and...

The traditional process for making ginger beer is: 1 Maintain a ginger beer starter 2 Steep ginger and citrus zest in warm water 3 Open ferment the zesty water, citrus juice, sugar, ginger and some of the starter 4 Bottle and store in frig when carbed up I found I could not make too much at a...

If you can not detect odour now it seems unlikely you will detect anything in the final beer. Incidentally, my LHBS carries a scented cleaner. Never figured out why.

I thought my 5-weeks-in-primary beer had a more interesting taste than shorter ones.

There is an idea on the internet, attributed to the late George Fix, that one could test for the effects of wort oxidation by brewing two identical batches and trying to oxidise one by splashing & stirring at the wrong time. Has anyone tried this ? Doing this might also promote a mild infection...

Splashing hot wort will absorb some air into the wort, which is said to oxidise the wort (process called hot side aeration or HSA for short) and cause cardboard flavours. John Palmer's online book has a section on this. I don't think splashing a few cups of wort will do much harm, but avoid it...

This might not be good - if the wort that comes out has an SG of less than 1.010 then this can extract tannins (bitterness) from the grain. Though I'm not sure in the case of cold water. Rinsing like this is called sparging, and usually the water is at around 65 degrees; sparging is what BIAB...

I taste it out of curiosity and in case an infection develops. It did once. It is interesting to taste a beer every week or so after bottling to know how the flavours change and develop. You will find out soon if your beer is OK or not. John Palmer's online book has a chapter called Is my beer...

I was wrong. My reply to your post was a bit of a muddied lake - I think we think the same. Thanks for the reference to babblebelt - I had not heard of that. I make sour breads. Here too, as you say, people have developed a huge diversity of styles from simple basic ingredients plus wild or...

This is topical for me because I just bottled by siphon for the first time today. Just a piece of tube - held one end in the beer with a bulldog clip handle and controlled the flow by bending the tube in one hand. Sucked tube to start (sigh). OK for one person, but it is hard to take a break to...

That might be so, but it does not mean the old taste was better - beer made without hops anyone ? 9,000 years ago, and until fairly recently, there was no trade in beer, so there was not much choice in flavour. And there are only some parts of the world where you can (could?) leave wort...

You loose water many ways: soaks into the grain, as water (liquid) in the bag when you take it out, evaporates when you boil, left in the kettle with the hot break when you remove the wort to the fermenter. More is left with the yeast in the bottom of the fermenter. I'd say a 9 L pot was too...

How thick were the icebergs ? In my first few AGs I noticed a thin white film on the wort at the add-yeast stage. It would bunch up when I moved the surface of the wort. I put it down to my primitive sparging methods. It didn't affect the taste. Does your beer taste normal ?

Thanks for your informative and fast answers - while my bottles were standing soaking on the sink. I'll add a bit of vinegar to the first rinse.