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Esters indeed. Not acetaldehyde, which is extremely rare now in the mid 21st century.

I like hops that don't taste like cat piss. I'd venture outside of Citra, Galaxy, Mosaic, and Simcoe. See what else is out there. And maybe learn whether you're disliking the yeast or the hops or both.

Oh bummer. Yeah I guess it was too cold. Might take several weeks for the diacetyl to get eaten by the yeast, now that fermentation is complete and the yeast mostly inactive.

In my experience, US-05 doesn't make diacetyl, but when fermented cold it sometimes does produce more peach esters. If your winter ale turns out unusually peachy (maybe a 50/50 chance?), you'll know why.

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=584875080&rlz=1C1VDKB_enUS969US969&q=wort+coolship&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjH0NSqwdqCAxXiHDQIHV9RBe8Q0pQJegQICRAB&biw=1422&bih=972&dpr=0.9 We don't fully know why this stuff works. It just does.

Don't make a starter. Severely underpitch. +1 to unpressurized fermentation. A coolship would be ideal, otherwise use the broadest and shallowest fermenter you've got, with no liquid in the airlock, only a piece of aluminum foil or cloth over it.

As long as you crush the malts finely, you can get away with 45/45 or even 30/30. I wouldn't take it down to 20/20 unless you enjoy poor brewhouse efficiency. You could compensate for this by using a lot of extra malt. You'll end up with more haze the shorter you go. Which may or may not be...

Too much biscuit I think would taste like burnt biscuits, or would just be overpoweringly biscuity, if that is possible.

Whew, that's an awful lot of biscuit malt. Usually about 100g is plenty biscuit. Maybe 200g if you really want a lot of it. Swap the rest of it for more Maris Otter. Recipe looks tasty other than that. Or you could try using a ton of biscuit just as an experiment to see what happens. Might...

Small batch of what style? Just use half as much of every ingredient as would be specified for a standard 19-23L batch.

It is simply not necessary for most homebrewers. It only takes a few minutes to heat our batches up beyond 75C on the way up to the boil. Not hours like it might take for some commercial breweries. Waste of effort for most of us homebrewers to stop for a mashout rest before taking it the rest...

At 1.010 it is finished. I would wait a couple more days just to be sure, then package it up or do what you like with it. No need to wait a full 14 days, it's done.

True, true. Perhaps much of the benefit of an overnight mash comes not from the beta amylase, if denatured, but from the slow continuation of the alpha, buzzing its way through every little piece of starch and dextrin to make more fermentable sugars. If you keep mash temperature low enough to...

Great discussion everybody. You're correct, I don't own a Grainfather or any robot. If I were to mash overnight, it would just sit untouched for 8 hours or whatever. And I think it's possible that you *might* get even better results from doing it this way, allowing the temperature to drop a...

Are you using a refractometer to measure your "final gravity"? When alcohol is present, a refractometer will not read accurately unless you enter results into a conversion calculator such as this one: http://seanterrill.com/2012/01/06/refractometer-calculator/ Whether you are using a...

As you have seen, conversion occurs at 62°C, but the effect is very slow and incomplete. If you wanted to conduct a mash solely at 62°C, the amount of TIME matters a lot. If for 60-90 minutes (pretty standard mash time for most people), you will end up with a lot of unconverted starches, which...

Lager yeasts won't ferment very well at high temperatures. Quit using lager yeasts unless you can keep the temperature down to something reasonable. You're a perfect candidate to be using kveik yeasts. I don't like them, but if I was fermenting at 35-40C on a regular basis, it would be just...

Apples are mostly air. You can't just chop them up and hope to ferment them to make many gallons of cider. You might end up with a few liters of cider instead of gallons. And it would be an absolute mess to deal with. Don't try it. If you don't want to deal with pressing them properly, then...

<--- Here is one more vote for "Guinness never tasted sour to me, ever."

I've done the Belle thing at least twice now. Good idea, it works well.