Recent content by Bates_Foreman

Wow... sorry guys. All of you are right. Somehow i miss read the reading on the hydrometer! (Rookie mistake :( ) Thats awesome news for me though! I thought all was lost!!!!! :) It has only been about a week from when we bottled, so I'm not as worried about the beer carbonating. My first...

The beer tastes great though! just not carbonation and no alcohol... :(

The beer was definitely at 1.14 FG. I checked it multiple times because i was in disbelief. I pitched my yeast about 4 weeks ago and everything looked just the way it should. The yeast was happy, they were doing their thing! But when i took my FG, it was at 1.14, which makes no sense to me...

This is my 4th time brewing. My first batch of beer was excellent, the last two have not been that great. This fourth batch i brewed was an ESB. I made sure i did everything right, and still came up with negative results. The Original gravity was 1.044 (Exactly what it should have been)...

I may have misunderstood his information. He definitely knows what he is doing, and any false info was probably on my misunderstanding. I just thought too high of a temperature would kill the yeast. All the directions stated were to ferment at about 70-75 degrees. Im using a safale us-05

So the owner at my local brewstore told me to bring a small amount of water to a boil to sanitize, let cool to about 70 degrees, and add the yeast to the water before pitching to the wort. The yeast kind of clumped up and i used a sanitized spoon to stir it but it seemed like a big hassle...

Thanks for the quick responses everyone... This is only my third time brewing, and although i have had pretty impressive results in my last couple of brews (For a beginner), I'm still in the learning process and want to learn as much as possible. I guess after a couple of weeks, I could rack to...

I just brewed two beers. One is an english style ESB, the other an APA. On the ESB I used a 7 gallon carboy and poured everything into it, including the leftover pellet hops from the boil. I then pitched my yeast. Are you supposed to pour EVERYTHING from the boil into your carboy? Is it...

I'm brewing a chocolate porter and am planning on adding milk sugar to sweeten it up a little. I've read 4 oz. is a good start for 5 gallons. Do i need to do anything? Bring water to a boil, add the lactose to the water and add it? Or do you just add the sugar directly to the bottling bucket...

I believe that recipe from Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer is the exact same recipe i used. My local brewing store had a book that I looked through and ended up picking up that recipe. Unfortunately, I thought the recipe was for a 5 gallon boil... Any idea how the beer will come out if I did...

Thanks!

Thanks for the response... I've read other posts about adding lactose to the brew. Would I add the lactose during bottling? As i said, I am beginner at brewer, and don't want to get ahead of myself in trying to overdue things.

I've heard different stories about using cocoa powder. I used a full 8 oz batch of hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder right at the end of my boiling. I've heard some people say that if you let the cocoa powder sit too long, it can cause a bitter chocolate taste in the beer. I'm going for a...

Hey guys, Brewing a chocolate porter right now. It's been about 10 days since it stopped fermenting. I'm using cocoa powder and I am going to transfer to a secondary carboy. Should I wait as long as possible before transferring to the secondary? First time using chocolate in a beer. Also...

Do i really need to wait 3 more weeks before I bottle the brew? I keep getting confused by this. Some people say wait a week, some people say 2-3 weeks to a month. I'm brewing an APA. It fermented for a week, then I dry hopped. It's been about 3 days. I don't mind being patient, I just need...