Recent content by BruDaddy

The 'Yellow Dog Pale Ale' from the Home Brewery has always been a reliable kit The Home Brewery Beer Brewing Kits - Classic Ale (bottom of the page) It's a DME kit with steeping grains and S-05 yeast. Nicely hopped and pretty forgiving to the new homebrewer.

I don't see how you can get differing alcohol content from the same batch. You probably are either getting off flavors from inconsistent cleaning and/or sanitizing or inconsistent carbonation that is being perceived as a higher alcohol content. The carbonation could be from the primining...

You can leave it in secondary for a long time. I've left ales in secondary for well over a month a basement temperature (65-70 degrees) with no problems, either in flavor or bottle carbing. As for cold crashing, as already stated - if it's a lager, by definition it will be at cold temps for 6+...

No worries. If you were in secondary for 3 months you'd maybe add a little yeast but there will be plenty left for carbonating in the time you're talking.

Borrow some fingernail polish from SWMBO (or if you want to use your own, no one will judge you here!). This works really well for graduating your carboy and is relatively impervious to oxyclean (I refresh the marks every year or so, as needed)

I did a wit that was a combo of Papazian's and one I found on these forum's. It turned out great Here's the recipe... 3 lbs light DME 3 lbs wheat DME Bittering Hops (60 minutes) ¾ oz Tettnanger ¾ oz Saaz Finishing Hops (may leave out) ¼ oz Saaz 2 lbs Orange Blossom Honey (½...

I wouldn't worry with a starter. I made a wit with WLP 400 and it blew out the top in less than 24 hours

With the larger boils it will be harder to cool and could result in a lack of good cold break. But this won't impact the flavor at all - it's just cloudy. Learn to love the cloudy beer or get some porcelain beer mugs. If you just have to have really clear beer, look into better cooling...

As double E5 says, the type of yeast will determine what you have. As for advice, I've made a couple of wheat beers - one just a straight Wheat Ale and the other a Belgian Wit and both times got a very quick starting and violent fermentation, so would recommend using a blow off tube.

Just a curiosity here...I've heard the discussion of StarSan foam as yeast food before, but I don't get the science here. StarSan is a sanitizer, it kills bacteria, yeast is really just a bacteria that we like. So why is StarSan good for yeast? Note that I use StarSan all the time, I do not...

I have 2 BBs. The first I paid for the spigot and while I don't hate it, I don't think I would do it again. For one, I find the BB spigot to be relatively slow compared to a good autosiphon. Also, the autosiphon is really easy and just don't see the need for the extra expense.

I'm kinda surprised no one has posted this yet, but... Get an auto siphon - this is the best low end investment you can make for homebrewing.

Now that I've got a fridge and thermostat, I'm thinking about cold crashing an ale that I have in primary. I'm about ready to transfer to secondary and wonder should I cold crash now prior to racking to secondary. Or is it better to do it after it's in secondary?

Congrats...yeah, most beers improve substantially with age. Most of us never really discover this until or 3rd or 4th batch because it's just so frikkin' cool to drink your own beer! If you can control yourself try to keep some of your beer for a longer time - almost every one will tell you...

Menschmaschine...when you rehydrate do you rehydrate in warm water, then cool to the pitching temp before pitching?