bbq beer

[delboy]

few bottles of spring water

Spring water isn't sterile - nowhere near it.

Thanks for reminding me steve, i'll just treat, boil and cool some, cheaper anyway

IIRC though I thought that tesco table water etc was treated with ozone to sanitise/sterilise it which oxidises any organic compounds (killing the bugs) before decaying to leave plain old diatomic O2.

[mysterio]

I'd definately get it diluted down so the malt is balanced by the hops. I've had brews that seemed so cloudy at pitching that I thought they'd never clear but they turned out brilliantly clear & vice versa... sometimes it's just luck.

[delboy]

This was done on the monday its now wednesday and i haven't had a chance to top up the fermentor. Have i missed my window for topping up, ie yeast have well and truly kicked off, whiff of CO2 so they are in anerobic stage.

Also although i only got just over 4 gallons in the fermentor i would say there was about 5 gallons in the boiler (i lost a lot due to the stuck hop strainer). Will this still leave the hops ands malt out of balance seeing as there was actually 5 gallons as such.

[mysterio]

Probably best to wait until the beer has finished fermentation before adding water now.

[delboy]

Just tried my BBQ beer after two weeks in the primary, have to say mysterios suggestion of doing a single hop addition (80g cascade) at 15 mins has worked magnificently, for the first time i have got the really wonderful floral, citrus flavour of the cascades to come through.

So much for it being a bbq beer its coming in at over 6%, but i won't be watering it down because everything still feels in balance.

Mysterio what prog did you use to calc the bittering when making this suggestion, im keen to try it again on something else.

[mysterio]

Glad it worked! Now I can try it

I use Beersmith... you can get a 30 day trial here

http://www.beersmith.com/

When you're selecting the hop for your recipe remember to fill in the proper AA% rating and tell it that you're using whole hops (not pellets).