On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 08:55:11PM +0200, Matthias Schack wrote:
> Jeg mæsker ca. 90 min. Ved 67 °C og derefter ca. 15 min. Ved 76 °C.
All this sounds very good and reasonable. But I feel there is one thing
missing in the discussion. Some may call it a little detail, but for
some of us it is most very important: Does your beer taste good ?
This is a bit more than a silly jab at the discussion. If you are happy
with your beer, but your numbers sound wrong, then there may be
something wrong with the way you get those numbers. Have you calibrated
your measures? By your thermometer, does water boil somewhere near 100
degrees? Does a liter of water weigh something like 1 kg on your scale?
You do not need laboratory-level machinery to measure your stuff, but
some instruments are way off [1]... How is the gravity (by your
hydrometer) of plain water / a known sugar solution / diluted whisky?
If you try to put your figures on beercalc, do they seem reasonable. Do
you get a decent mash efficiency, and a realistic OG from your mashes?
Does your all-too-high-FG-beer actually taste too sweet and heavy? if it
does [2], we can start to look at reasons for it:
- too many non-fermentable sugars in the wort. The yeast can not eat
them, so they stay in the beer, making it sweet and heavy. Mashing
temperature, special malts, bad extracts, ...
- Fermentation that has - for some reason - not progressed to the end.
This could be something simple like not enough time or wrong
temperature, or a weak strain of yeast, or something
- Other heavy things in the wort, screwing up the gravity measurements.
Finally, there is the possibility that things Just Go Wrong. Most often
they go wrong only once, but sometimes they keep doing so. Do your
problems survive from batch to batch, occur every now and then, or only
in this one batch? Brew a few more, and see how things develop...
In any case,
best of luck to your brews
Heikki
[1] I have seen medical thermometers that were more than two degrees
off, on a scale of 35 to 45 degrees. In actual medical use!
[2] and only if
--
Heikki Levanto LSD - Levanto Software Development <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
