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By bostonbrewer on Feb 18th 2006, 6:21 am
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Eric, if you can twist the caps they are likely not sealed tight enough. What kind of bottles are you using? Are they domestic like sam adams or are they imported like amstel light or bass? The imports will not seal easily using a double lever capper. Also, you are using bar bottles (non-twist off) right? It doesn't seem likely that the cause of a lack of carbonation would have anything to do with your sanitizer. There shouldn't be a strong enough concentration leftover if using bleach (since your supposed to rinse well with bleach) to kill enough yeasties to prevent carbonation. |
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By bostonbrewer on Sep 28th 2005, 7:44 pm
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I racked my BW into a 3 gallon tertiary. It smelled and tasted great. I wish I had taken an OG reading so that I could know the % alcohol. Oh well. It didn't really have a huge rocket fuel bite- maybe it is masked by the hops. Nonetheless it is going to age till January or February. Also rebuilt 4 corny kegs last night. Not very difficult at all- just have to remember which parts go where. I have 3 corny and 1 firestone (which really annoys me) because they don't take the same parts at all. The only gasket I could replace was the lid. Now I just need to get the rest of the kegerator going when my freezer gets here next week. Can't wait! |
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By bostonbrewer on Aug 17th 2005, 4:40 am
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I brewed my first barley wine recipe two weekends ago using Bob's Evil Twin recipe. I resized it down to be a 3.5 gallon batch but didn't hit my mash temp and ended having to add boiling water to bring it up. So I ended up with a 4.5 gallon batch. I figure I will lose some to the hops from dry hopping. I also forgot to take an initial gravity reading. This is what happens when you go to the homebrew store and bring a couple of bottles of your own brew for the shop owner to sample. He cracks em open, pours one for each of you and then the conversation starts to flow as fast as the next 3 or four bottles. I did try Stones IPA which is awesome! Well 2 hours later with ingredients and a slight buzz, I head on back to brew. Oh yeah, no propane so I had to get that filled. So with intentions of starting at 12 in the afternoon, I finally get brewing around 3:30.
So, I racked to secondary tonight and dry hopped with 1 oz. Cascade, 1 oz. Galena and .5 oz Chinook. I know this is a bit different from the original, but I had all three on hand and thought I would get creative. I tried the Safale 56 too. It seems like a good yeast, but I didn't get much more flavor than rocket fuel on the sample. I was kind of surprised too that with such a high gravity beer there was not as much yeast slurry as I am used to. I did take a gravity reading and it was 1.02 so I am pretty confident that the yeast did it's job. I figure I will dry hop this for a couple of weeks and then rack to a 3 gal carboy to age it till at least Christmas time.
It had an awesome aroma once you got past the alcohol fumes (smell) I am pretty anxious to see how this comes out. Next I am going for the Sharks tooth. |
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