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The problem is that that's not really hydration. The live yeast will sense that it is in a highly concentrated nutrient environment, and that could confuse it regarding the various substances that it needs to start manufacturing.

My suspicion is actually that none/few of the manufacturers are late hopping for reasons of cost. If they were and the lid went on straight away, which it presumably should for reasons of sterility, then I would have thought the aroma has nowhere to go and remains locked in. (Could be displaying...

According to Dave Miller, many home brews are so badly oxidised that polyclar will lighten the colour substantially. He's mainly referring to hot side aeration (controvery alert!), but there's an interesting question of whether polyclar would correct the effect of cheapo, oxidised liquid...

The majority of unsheathed elements on the market (both kettle and hot water service) are nickel plated copper. The plating is corroded by either alkaline or acidic conditions, and heat speeds up the process. So most brew elements will eventually look red rather than silver. Some distillers...

Seeing this thread seems to have revived itself, here's an update from my end. After caramelising the entire first high-gravity runnings a while back, I managed to wind up with a terminal gravity of 30. Some dry beer enzyme subsequently reduced that gravity down to near 0 over a period of a...

Ian, nice work, and a couple of questions on your calcs if you're still listening. As you indicated, you're taking the quoted Coopers IBU spec and adjusting by 1.25/23 (that is, for a 23L brew). But when it comes to colour, you're using 5/80. For Black Rock, on the other hand, it's 5/80 for...

1. How do they compute colour? 2. Do they heed the solubilities of poorly soluble salts when attempting to replicate regional water supplies?

So how about colour calculations? I don't know whether it's just that I have just been looking in the wrong places, but none of the common brew books contain an algorithm. This is of more than cosmetic interest, as Palmer for example bases his specialty malt acid buffering technique upon colour...

I have found that fermenting hot break (and, worse, fermenting on the grain) results in more sulphides being produced. Whether that scrubs out or not is a technique issue.

I haven't deliberately mashed cool but probably should whenever I'm caramelising 40% of the extract or thereabouts. However, distributing the product over several (3-5?) batches would probably alleviate that need. Yeah, and the nice part is that if the caramel is dehydrated enough then it will...

Re pre and post boil volumes, I would typically obtain about 5L of SG 100 first runnings from a standard batch. An implication there is that I am either getting a high mashing efficiency or I am mashing stiff, correct in both cases. Those runnings represent about 40% of the total extract from...

Got myself down there last night for the first time. A few interesting draught brews that don't appear in bottle, and seeing as there doesn't seem to have been much previous chat, here goes: 1. Highwayman's Red. Unusual because it is chockas with hop aroma. Goldings I think, although food had...

I oversimplified it all by neglecting to mention Maillard reactions! I'm wondering whether simple sugars might combine better with amino acids (also pure speculation BTW). :icon_cheers:

Fix claims that all-malt worts contain about 10% glucose. That is most likely due to thermal hydrolysis of maltose, so it obviously only occurs partially. Adding some acid would most likely accelerate the process. Note that the acid is a catalyst, ie, it isn't consumed in the reaction, just...

Edit: I incorrectly assumed the adapter contains a one-way valve. It doesn't, so either the adapter needs to be adapted to the existing valve in the cap (more thread incompatability hassles), or some sort of gas tap needs to be added in-line as well. Starts to get messy and expensive.

Yeah, that's an aspect that doesn't receive a lot of attention. It suggests that either pyrolysed maltose isn't so fermentable for some reason, or that a dehydration reaction is occurring and is forming larger polymers out of the maltose. Either way, it conflicts somewhat with the notion of...

You're not limited to sparklet-type cylinders. I used to use a 350-ish g Hambleton Bard cylinder, about the same size as a Sodastream. The simplest way to go is to get an adapter that connects a Sodastream bottle to a gas regulator. Some of the sponsors here will do you one for $39 plus...

Incorrect. Incorrect. I also have a King Keg with a top mounted tap, and the CO2 (either natural or bottled) is perfectly capable of pushing the beer uphill. It takes a surprisingly low amount of pressure BTW.

I have one of these, albeit with separate gas intake and pressure relief valves. Your problem is more than just corroded metal - there doesn't appear to be any pressure relief band around the stem above the cap. I'm a bit of a kegging noob, but AFAIAA the Sodastream bottles have a male thread...

As long as the boil contains enough water to generate steam, the temperature won't rise much above 100C except for some of these odd browning reactions that occur at the interface of the wort and the kettle. Once most of the water is gone, the temperature rises sharply and pyrolysis starts to...