Recent content by andylegate

White Table Sugar mostly comes from sugar beets and is known as Surcrose. It's suppose to give your beer off flavors, or even a cidery taste if you use it to prime your beers for bottling. Corn Sugar is Dextros, and is using for priming in many brew recipies. Normally does not cause any off...

I had to pick "Other" since all my batches come from my well water. We've got some of the best tasting water straight out of the ground here where I live.

LOL! This is the second time I came home from work to find a blow out! :D First time was with my 2nd batch of Cherry Wheat ale. I hadn't added the pureed cherries yet, so it was just the wheat ale fermenting. That was a case of me filling my fermentation bucket up too much. Heck of a mess to...

I've got a scotish ale fermenting right now and it looks like a mini tornado in the bottle. That much activity is good. Your yeast is working hard at make your beer. Just imagine a 100 billion little guys working away for you! Don't worry about the blow out. It happens sometimes. And don't...

SilkkBrew is right! You should rack your batch to another container and let it sit for at least a week before you bottle it! It's called Secondary Fermentation, and while your yeast might be done turning the simple sugars to alcohol, they are still alive and well, eating away at the more complex...

Wheat ale would be a good base for your fruit. I've done a cherry ale that worked great that way. As a matter of fact, I had to make a second batch since my wife down all of the first batch! I used canned dark cherries straight off the store shelves. I then pureed them in the blender and added...

Pound the stopper? Woah! I've never had to pound my stoppers in. I just push them on, firmly. The air lock will let the gas out just fine, or it should. Your stopper is simply to hold the air lock or blow off tube and to make a form fitting seal. But if you go to pounding it in, you just might...

My first extract brew was from a kit, Brewnet Brown ale. The kit came with hop pellets and dry yeast. The batch turned out fine and tasted great. The dry yeast was Safale US-56 which seems to be very hardy and temp tolerant. It also seemed to make a high ABV with most of my batches. I agree...

You know, before this batch that I've got fermenting right now (Merlin's Ale), I've always had my brews in a orange plastic bucket. With this brew, I put it into one of my carboys. Watching the foam build up was fun, but I never really noticed, until tonight, the leave fragments from the hops...

The company in NC wouldn't be West 1 would it? The reason I ask is that we had some people drive up there and try to strike a deal with doing repairs for them. Cracked me up since they took the lab manager and he was put on the spot for technical questions. Problem was, he was asked about...

ROFLMAO!!! You remind me of my step brother who's with the county sheriff dept.

I've made two batches of my Cherry Wheat Ale. Both have turned out great! Beer with cherry flavor, but not over powering. ABV of about 6.8% or so. I add 5 cans of Del Monties Dark Cherries that I puree in the blender first and add it to the secondary. It changes the base wheat ale to a dark red...

LOL! Actually, I DID work for the goverment, for 10 years. I was in the United States Navy from 84 to 94! However, micromanagement was not tolerated. You had a very strict chain of command, and you used it. But, when I needed parts of the radar system? Like pulling teeth! But that I did...

Ever worked at a place that was just fine at first, but then down the line the boss starts to micromanage everything? It drives me up the wall! To the point where even comming home and having one of my homebrews still doesn't settle my nerves! We're a small business (all of 10 employees!)...

Let's hear it for Belgium! :mug: Actually, everytime I hear the name Belgium I think of a movie from the 70's, "Murder By Death" a comedy with Peter Falk, James Cocoa, David Niven and others, it was hilarious. But there was a line in the movie where Peter Falk's charactor (Sam Diamond, a...