Westy 12 any thoughts.

[chookherder]

I brewed this about a year ago. A few notes from mine:

• I used 3787 for the yeast.
• even with ~40% of the fermenter being headspace, I got a blocked airlock (first one ever) and I had to delicately remove it and cover the volcano with a bowl. Got some minor spray onto the ceiling, but not as bad as it could have been. Definitely use a big blow off tube.
• I did a 50/50 pilsner and DME as my BIAB set up wasn't going to fit it.
• FG ended up way too high (can't remember exact number off my head). Not sure if due to using DME.
• Final beer tasted too sweet. A year on it is good, but not great.

I'll be brewing it again learning from my many mistakes haha. I recently bought a Guten 70L and a big part of that was being able to brew bigger beers like this.

Hi Rodney,

I have lots of headspace on this 1/2BBL fermenter and the long blowoff tube too, so I hope it doesn’t block. Currently it’s just blurrpping very slow and steady, maybe there’s a storm coming but at the moment I’d say it’s about the same volume of gas coming out as the Westy6 did. Which it did for 7 days constantly to my surprise, but SG appears to be going where it was designed too.

I haven’t added the Dark Candi syrup yet, so the yeast have to do the complex sugars first. I will slowly add these over the next few days to keep the yeast interested and not lazy, Mark suggested this is better practice to ensure they finish the job.
I’ll update when they finish, or if they paint my ceiling!

Ben

 

[mynameisrodney]

Yeah I hadn't seen that advice on adding the syrup to the fermenter when I did mine last, but will do next time.