Homebrew Beer Blog

I've been pretty busy here brewing up a storm lately, so just some mini updates...

I'm still working on ethyl acetate. There doesn't seem to be a direct relationship between excessive oxygenation and EA. If I ever get this down, I want to do some split batches with recommended O2 and tons of O2 to see how it affects the beer. My casual observations seems to be faster starts with more controlled O2. My guess is that the yeast are getting to work faster on fermentation rather than aerobic respiration. I've done a number of additional batches since last posting. The latest will look at my water profile and taking out my usage of phosphoric acid. Also I'm changing pitching rates a little.

I've been kicking around the idea of seeing what happens when I put an aquarium pump and sterile filter into the mouth of my starter on the stir plate. I don't want to put it into the starter, just in the head space. I'm kind of curious if that would result in more yeast. Lately I've been using these foam stoppers that should allow gas exchange, so it can "breath" but I'm a little curious what some oxygen will do.

Also, on latest German Lager test batch, I'm playing with some brewer's corn syrup. The idea is it's a way to add some sugar while lightening the flavor and color of the beer. Supposedly, the syrup has similar fermentability as wort, so it shouldn't dry the beer. Kind of interesting. I used it for 20% of the recipe, and it definitely lightened the colored. We'll see how it finishes out in the FG.

The oxygen stirrer is pretty cool. I'm having some fun using a new system that works so well.

The Red Ledges are doing a competition for an English beer. The winner of that will have the beer brewed at Harpers, so I've been messing around with English Summer Ales. It's a bit of an obscure style, so I've been trying some different recipes. The latest is in the fermenter now.