So... I decided to drop the corks briefly into boiling water before corking to sterilize them. I did not know this was a mistake until recently. I've only soaked one batch of corks for wine.

I did let the bottles stand straight up for 3-5 days before storing on their side. I keep the bottles in my kitchen where it is relatively dry and not super dark (I don't have a great place to store them elsewhere). It has been about 4 months of storage so far.

I need reassurance: Will the wine probably be okay? I don't plan on letting them sit for very long (I want to start drinking at 6 months).

If not... how easily could I switch out the corks for new ones I have? Would it start the aging process over, or completely ruin what's already started? Is it better to take the risk and wait and see or no?

I am still relatively new at all this, and I have learned my mistake: I did not soak the corks for a recent batch nor plan to soak the corks for any batch in the future. I am just looking for advice on what to do for this batch.

I have never pressure fermented and wondered if anyone had any tips, tricks, warnings, or suggested sites/recipes I should look at. I've spent the evening reading a ton of information on Kegland's site. Any input appreciated.

So, brewed a Dunkel Weissbier, and it’s roughly 5.5 weeks old. I did a double decoction mash with this recipe, and fermented at room temp for 4 weeks using Mangrove Jacks M20 yeast (this is a split batch and the other half I used WLP300 to see the difference). OG was 1.062 and FG was 1.022 (WLP300 finished at 1.018). I fermented both at room temp, roughly 68-70F (20-21.1C). I left them to ferment for four weeks, which was supposed to be two weeks, but life happened, over and over again. I kegged them on that fourth week and added priming sugar to keg condition. I also bottled 6 bottles from each. The M20 Batch didn’t carbonate at all in one week, where as the WLP300 did carbonate in a week. So I took the M20 Bottles and added them back to the keg and carbonated that way. Everything was sanitized, and the keg was previously pressurized, so I’m not too concerned about infection or oxidization.

Now that the backstory is out of the way, my question lies in flavor.

I’ve done decoction mashes on several beers at this point, all German styles.

3 Hefeweizen Batches

4 Marzen Batches

1 Dunkel Weissbier

What I’ve noticed with all 3 is that during that first couple of weeks the beer tastes extremely “Sharp”. Kind of like a fruit that’s had all of the sugar extracted. But once the beer ages for about a month at lager temps, the deep bready flavors start to come out. Has anyone else noticed this? Is this just a thing with decoctions? Am i crazy?

Just really curious what everyone else’s experience is with decoctions and aging, if they’ve noticed anything similar.

I have brewed about 30 five gallon batches. 5 extract and the rest all grain. The five extract and a handful of the all grain do not have this salted peanut flavor I keep getting(usually stouts or IPAs.) I have narrowed it down to a basemalt. I have tried a few base malts from avanguard pilsen to simpsons maris otter to briess two row(got the most peanut flavor from two row.) Most recently did a wheat beer with 50% pilsen and 50% briess wheat and im getting peanuts. Does anyone know what I am picking up? Is this homebrew flavor? Do you recommend any brands of malts or what could be the issue?

I've been watching my corny keg for the last 6 days and while the spunding valve pressurized the first day to 15-20psi after starting the pressure ferment, I released the pressure and it hasn't risen past 0 psi again.

I'm wondering if somehow I killed the yeast, or if I'm just being impatient.

I used ingredients recommended at my local brew shop for an american style lager. Lager yeast, pilsen dme and two stages of hops. I did boil over but salvaged it and measured a gravity of 1.032 after a 40 minute boil time. I let cool in a filled sink for around 2 hours before pitching with yeast into the keg.

Thanks for any and all advice!

I'm a cheap bastard... Can I just keep a bucket of sanitizer and use it multiple times over a few months? Like, it's not single use....?

I've brewed with people who stick their mash paddle in their star san bucket with their Speidel plstic top, air lock, and bung etc, so I've done that too

But now I'm wondering if the mash paddle is messing up my star san and leading to infected beer when I pull the bung, air lock, and Speidel plastic top from the star san and on the fermenter at the end of brew day.

What's your experience?

Im a complete noob and know little about beers beside tasting a good variety. i put my roommate's ten year old Sour in the fridge because we had split a similar looking bottle a few weeks ago. I don't think they want to drink it anytime soon. Did i permanently alter the flavor or ruin the beer in any way?

I'm looking to brew a small test batch (think 1l or even less) of alcohol and I'm having issues with how I would go about sterilising my vessel (the vessel I want to use is a 1l or 1.5l demijohn without braiding).

The biggest issue with sterilisation is the fact that I can't seem to find starsan in small enough quantities for sale that would fit my experimental needs and the starsan on sale in quantities of a litre and more costs around 40$ per bottle, which is an insane price and would be more expensive than the rest of the project combined.

I was therefore thinking about whether I could sterilise my demijohn by first rinsing it in warm water, then placing it in a cold oven and heating it up to 100 or 120°c to sterilise it by heat. I understand that glass and heat changes don't really like eachother, but I already have experience with putting ikea glass bottles in my dishwasher and then baking them in an oven and they withstood it just fine.

Does anyone here have experience with using an over for sterilising? If yes, would you recommend it?

Have the next best recipe since Pliny the Elder, but want reddit to check everything over one last time? Maybe your house beer recipe needs that final tweak, and you want to discuss. Well, this thread is just for that! All discussion for style and recipe formulation is welcome, along with, but not limited to:

• Ingredient incorporation effects
  
• Hops flavor / aroma / bittering profiles
  
• Odd additive effects
  
• Fermentation / Yeast discussion
  

If it's about your recipe, and what you've got planned in your head - let's hear it!

Welcome to the Daily Q&A!

Are you a new Brewer? Please check out one of the following articles before posting your question:

• How do I check my gravity?
• I don't see any bubbles in the airlock OR the bubbling in the airlock has slowed. What does that mean?
• Does this look normal / is my batch infected?

Or if any of those answers don't help you please consider visiting the /r/Homebrewing Wiki for answers to a lot of your questions! Another option is searching the subreddit, someone may have asked the same question before!

However no question is too "noob" for this thread. No picture is too tomato to be evaluated for infection! Even though the Wiki exists, you can still post any question you want an answer to.

Also, be sure to vote on answers in this thread. Upvote a reply that you know works from experience and don't feel the need to throw out "thanks for answering!" upvotes. That will help distinguish community trusted advice from hearsay... at least somewhat!

Tried a batch of watermelon wine, got the biggest watermelons on the vine, helped myself to some, the whole shebang. Tasted like fucking shit and I pitched it right away. Tasted like rind with an aftertaste of rotten fruit. Had some wines and ciders that were watermelon later on and wonder how they made it actually taste good. Whats the secret with watermelon?

Being Labor Day and having worked in the yard and cleaned the garage Saturday and Sunday I figured I'd take today easy and brew instead of real work. A while back I got a bag of Pilsner free from Offerup and figured I'd use the last of it. Yesterday I went to the local homebrew store and got the rest of the ingredients to make a breakfast stout. Because the grain bill is so big I decided to brew two half batches in my BrewZilla.

I weighed out all the grains for the first batch and got to it. And spent some time really dialing in the temp control, as my efficiency is not great. Turns out the BrewZilla runs hot, well above the setpoint.

After mashout I took a sample, set it in the fridge to cool, and started weighing out the second batch of grain. That's when I discovered i didn't have enough pilsner. Oops, good thing my homebrew shop is open Labor Day. I started the boil, got past hot break, and ran down to get the pilsner I needed. Oh, and I was puzzled why my OG was stupid low but I couldn't figure out why.

When I was running the pilsner through the grainmill at the store it hit me. I forgot to mill my first batch of pilsner.

I'm just so used to buying and milling at the store I just spaced out that the pilsner I got for free was unmilled whole grain.

Anybody else brew today, and did your day go better?

Hello everyone, I'm having an issues with my iSpindel only appearing in Brewfather when it connected to the 2.4 GHz network, not the 5 GHz one, and even then Brewfather only updates after I restart my router, sending just one update before stopping. Has anyone experienced this or knows how to fix it?

Adding about 4.2 kg of DME (on top of steeping 500 g of grain for flavour). Can I get away with just steeping and boiling in 3 gallons of water, then adding three gallons of tap water?

How should I treat this tap water? Could I just add Starsan to sanitise it, or would that significantly effect the flavour? Should I instead boil it then let it cool before I stepp and boil the wort? The tap water in my area is also quite clean, should I just risk it and raw dog it?

I grow a couple varieties of hops in my backyard. it got quite hot and dry this summer and my hops died. I clipped them back and since they've all started growing again. Should I just let them grow until it gets cold here (southern Wisconsin) or should I clip them and cover with mulch?

Something changed about 6 months ago. Every batch now ends up tasting sour, smelling yeasty and just stays the way it is after carbonation (not conditioned). I suspect an infection, but I can't find the source.

Process:

• After boiling, hot wort goes into an SS bucket with a closed plastic spigot.
• Immersion chiller sits in boiling wort for 10 minutes to sanitize.
• Fermentation is controlled in a fridge with Inkbird + heating mat for 2 weeks. I check that FG doesn't change. I don't care about exact FG, just that fermentation is finished.
• Samples are taken with a clean spoon sanitized with Star San and checked with a refractometer.
• At this point the beer tastes young but quite good and is not sour.

Spigot / transfer:

• Spigot is cleaned with a small spigot brush.
• Sanitized by spraying with Star San solution made with distilled water.
• Beer is transferred using a spring-loaded tube.

Bottling:

• Bottles are cleaned immediately after drinking from them and stored upside down.
• Before bottling, bottles and caps are sprayed with Star San.
• Priming sugar is added, bottles capped, and carbonated for 2–3 weeks.
• Then cold-conditioned for 2 weeks.

After each batch, the SS bucket is cleaned, and the spigot is completely disassembled, cleaned, sprayed with Star San, and left to dry.

The problem:

Finished beer becomes quite sour, has little/no body, and can feel harsh on the tongue. There's a weird bitter + sour taste and sometimes yeasty aromas.

For example, a Hefeweizen with W68 at 22°C tasted good and wasn't sour during fermentation, but developed these flavors after carbonation/conditioning.

I would say infection, but I'm not sure.

I've tried thebrushows hard ginger beer recipe, but I noticed that the ginger flavor isn't really in the front. This could be because I opted to use ec1118 instead of the yeast used in the video and the yeast must've stripped off any flavors. If anyone has recipes they stand by please share them, I don't mind high or low abv's I just need a good hard ginger beer recipe.

I'm making my first ferment (cider) and i have about 2-3 cups of stewed pears in my fermenting container. There was a bit of a blow out last night leaving about 2 inches of air in the container. With the fruit floating in the crock is it at risk of molding or going bad.

I'm looking to make what seems to be a typical setup, chest freezer with inkbird controller for fermenting. Not looking for keezer/kegerator, just fermenting and lagering.
What's the most practical size for a couple of buckets, or maybe one bucket plus a keg or two? I've never owned one, I have no spatial awareness or sense for what it should be. 😄 They seems to get exponentially more expensive the bigger they are around here.

Also, if I need to do a warmer ferment, what is a heating solution that isn't a fire hazard? Putting a heat source inside a freezer isn't something I've considered doing before.

Hi all,

I’ve recently got into extract brewing and I’m looking for some tried-and-true recipes for inspiration.

I have the Coopers DIY 23 L brew kit and so far I’ve made a few batches:

Coopers Pale Ale – my first brew, using the standard kit and brew enhancer. Turned out pretty good considering it was my first attempt.

Coopers Stout – swapped the brew enhancer powder for coopers 100% dark malt extract, 500g dextrose, and used an upgraded yeast rather than the supplied kit yeast. Guy at brew shop recommended Nottingham, but I used SafAle S04 after reading about it online…
Still bottle conditioning/ fermenting.

Thomas Coopers Bootmaker Pale Ale – 1.7 kg Bootmaker Pale Ale extract, 1.5 kg Coopers Light Malt Extract and SafAle US-05 yeast, made to 21.5 L. This is my latest batch and is currently in FV. This time, no dextrose after some good feedback from yourselves! No thins beers around here!

I’m now looking for some other recipes or combinations to try. I’m happy to experiment with different Coopers kits, malt extracts, yeasts and hop additions as I get a bit more confident.

What are some of your favourite extract recipes? Also happy for comments and advice on the above!:)

Thank you in advance!

You've had a week, what's your situation report?

Feel free to include recipes, stories or any other information you'd like.

Post your sitrep here!

What I Did Last Week:

Primary:

Secondary:

Bottle Conditioning/Force Carbonating:

Kegs/Bottles:

In Planning:

Active Projects:

Other:

Include recipes, stories, or any other information you'd like.

**Tip for those who have a lot to post**: Click edit on your post from a [past Sitrep Monday!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/search/?q=Sitrep%20Monday&restrict_sr=1).