Comments for Maine Brews

Comment on First Year Hop-Growing by Hop Head

Hop Head — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:45:04 +0000

Congrats and welcome to the growing hops club! You won’t regret it. Your broken off bine should be replaced by new shoots soon – keep smiling. They do take a lot of water until they get established – use some mulch on top to retain moisture. I look forward to pics of your hop success.

Comment on Stone Levitation Ale Clone Recipe by Joel Mahaffey

Joel Mahaffey — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:22:46 +0000

Hi Dave,

This was pulled from the Jamil show, and the recipe was formulated with the help of Mitch Steele, the head brewer for Stone. I haven’t made it myself (though I plan to this summer), but I’m sure it’s going to be about as close as you can get without buying it.

Thanks,
Joel

Comment on Stone Levitation Ale Clone Recipe by David

David — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:00:48 +0000

So how did this turn out? I’m preparing to brew this next weekend and I’m wondering if that recipe was spot on. Nice blog BTW.

Another Maine Home Brewer.

Best,Dave
Denmark, Maine

Comment on Using a yeast cake by Doug

Doug — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:57:48 +0000

Ok, so I just bottled the first batch of beer. That one fermented from a fresh liquid yeast starter and had I.G. 1.060. It came out of the secondary at 1.014 after about 21 days total. The batch I put on the yeast cake (the one I mention above) also started out at 1.060. It fermented for 10 days and just went into secondary at 1.010. So… I won’t worry.

Thanks for the yeast washing article. It looks like something I will try this summer.

Comment on Brewing Apfelwein by Joel Mahaffey

Joel Mahaffey — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 23:31:20 +0000

It came out great! The lager yeast did a great job, it finished out to about 8.5%ABV, and is very, very smooth. It goes down a little too easily, so be careful! I am very glad that I didn’t use wine yeast, it finished with a little more residual sugar than with the wine yeast, which I like.

Comment on Brewing Apfelwein by justin

justin — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:37:18 +0000

how did this turn out

Comment on Using a yeast cake by Joel Mahaffey

Joel Mahaffey — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:21:25 +0000

How much yeast was there at the bottom when you pitched? If you didn’t mix up the yeast cake well, you may not have released much of the yeast into solution.

I know there was probably a lot of hop trub in there, which would have re-settled back out anyway. Ideally, there woudn’t be that much trub to get in the way of the yeast, but homebrewing is usually not the ideal scenerio.

Given how much trub you had in there the first time, and definitely after the second batch, I wouldn’t re-use the yeast cake, just due to concerns about infection from all the other sludge in there.

Check this out for a good method to clean your yeast, and get it back to a more or less clean product:
Yeast washing

Comment on Using a yeast cake by Doug

Doug — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:15:15 +0000

I should add:

I’m not worried. Unfortunately I’m not having a homebrew right now.

Comment on Using a yeast cake by Doug

Doug — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:08:53 +0000

I just used this method but fermentation seemed to proceed at a normal rate. The new wort went on the yeast cake about 11 or 12 days after the first batch started fermenting. In hindsight, I didn’t aerate the new wort vigorously for fear of washing all the junk from the first krausen into the new brew. I’ll check the gravity when I dry hop it.

Due to the limitations of volume in my secondary carboy, some of the fermented beer from the first batch had to stay and be mixed with the wort. We’ll see how it turns out.

Comment on Big beer in a small space by Joel Mahaffey

Joel Mahaffey — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:33:04 +0000

great advice erik. I’m also going to try returning to my earlier methods or pseudo-fly sparging to see if that helps at all.