Recent content by chrryghst

These are all great questions. Here's my 2 cents... (1) "How long should I ferment?" > The general consensus here on HBT is the longer the better. However, in practice, I give my beers 2.5-3 weeks to ferment. Higher gravity beers will require more time than lower gravity beers. The absolute...

To address the limitation of malt variety... There are other quality websites for purchasing supplies besides Northern Brewer. Personally, I like Midwest Supplies as a secondary to my LHBS. I like that you support your LHBS, but it sounds like you feel trapped.

The owner of the LHBS shop told me I should not use the removable strainer in my funnel when pouring the chilled wort into the fermenter (i use a 6-gal carboy). He said the junk you filter out will just settle at the bottom of the fermenter anyway, but when you use a strainer you are also...

Yes, I am fermenting in a closet. I will admit that my temperature control isn't very good. I keep my thermostat below 70 but I don't control the sharp temp increase due to fermentation activity. I don't have space or money for a fridge, but I'll try the swamp cooler method next time. Also, I'll...

Yeah, there are plenty of breweries around here I could ask. I think I'll take it to a home brewing supply first though. I'm guess I'm just a little ashamed at my imperfect beer lol.

I've never really paid attention to how fresh the extract and grain are. I order from midwestsupplies.com and usually brew a few days after my stuff comes in. I bottle condition and I fill with a bottling wand until beer reaches the top of the bottle. When I pull the wand out ;) it leaves about...

How did this turn out? I'm about to brew a similar beer.

Hello experts! Can you review my brew day process and tell me if I'm on the right track to preventing a certain off flavor from appearing my next batch? I've brewed three extract w/ specialty grain batches so far. They were all good, but all contained a certain flavor I wasn't fond of. After...

When I bottled my first batch a few weeks ago, I only came out with 37 bottles, and I attribute that to some siphoning issues. When I transferred to secondary, I left at least a 6 pack behind in the primary. I have since then got my technique down and got every bit of goodness out of my last batch.

+1 on waiting until the following friday... or the friday after that. There are literally thousands of threads on this forum where expert brewers suggest that the longer you leave the beer in the fermenter, the better it will taste.

Two options: (1) You can rack it to a bottling bucket, then proceed by adding corn sugar and bottle. Or, (2) rack it to secondary (do not add priming sugar yet) let it sit for two weeks for clearing. Then after at least 2 weeks transfer to the bottling bucket-> prime->bottle.

Actually, I brewed my first batch on 12/31/09 and waited 3.5 weeks before bottling day. When I decided to get into this hobby I didn't want to just brew beer, I wanted to brew good beer. However, I did crack one of them open early just to see how it was coming along. :cross:

Thanks guys. i'll do some more research before i buy the grains! hoppymonkey-- Unfortunately I don't have any beer software yet, so I was just using a free online recipe program. Let me know if there's anything out there that is free or cheap that works on a mac. jsullivan and dcp-- I think...

Chris, how did this turn out? My next batch will be a porter and I'm curious if you can taste any difference with brown sugar.

For my third batch, I'm going to try my hand at putting together my own extract recipe. I think this looks pretty straight forward but I just want some kind of approval before I spend the cash. Here's what I'm going for: a porter with a high-end, smooth, full bodied, malty character. It will...