Recent content by PaddyPotatoes

I have a question I thought I'd throw out and see if anybody might have an answer. I typically use White Labs yeasts if my beers, and this spring brewed about 5 batches of English style bitters using London Ale and British Ale strains. While they all came out great, I noticed they had very...

I have found that dark beers always require a blowoff tube. For whatever reason they go crazy. Nice fermentation though!

Went to a friend's house to discover he had an IPA I made about 9 months ago still in his fridge. It was a black IPA, not too crazy on the hops and with a generous amount of roasted barley. We drank it to find it resembled more of a brown ale with just a pleasant hint of hoppy after taste...

I made a coconut stout a year ago. I toasted the coconut and added it to the secondary. You are correct that the oils prevent any head retention. Maybe the toasting really does matter, cause it had a rich and distinct coconut flavor. If I remember right, I used somewhere around 3/4 to a...

Many thanks!

Not for nothing, but I made a watermellon wheat over the summer. I added the watermellon (pureed in the blender first) after pasteurizing it (direction can be found online) to the primary fermentation. Sure, the watermellon fermented, but what I was left with was a very nice and mild flavor of...

Thanks! I actually did get my hands on some whole leaf Hallertau from the US, but then I read it was a terrible addition for an authentic Altbier. I may be too fussy and should just use the Hallertau I have. Besides, the real fun in replication are the little regional tweaks as it were that...

Hello! I'm beginning to brew some Altbiers and want to use German leaf hops. Problem is, the few sites I have ordered from claim country of origin is Germany, but in fact they are American grown. Does anybody know of any online retailers who sell German hops? Prost!

Hi! I'm planning on making a 3 gallon batch of Russian Imperial around 10% alcohol from extract. My question deals with the yeast. I typically use Safale English yeast, but was wondering if there is something better to deal with the high algocol content and excessive amount of malt that will...

Personally, I have never done a starter with the dry yeasts and have never had an issue. I just figure it's one more step in the process that doesn't really need to be done. Im sure someday that will change, but for now... And my LHBS swears by the dry yeasts. A good point is that the...

That's funny. I am making an IPA tonight and the local brew store ran out of East Kent Golding so I bought Hallertauer instead. I figure the Hallertauer is a quality hop, so why not. Actually, I've been wondering why you can't use German hops in English ales. You might stumble onto something...

Thanks for the replies. The only reason I added the water was the recipe I formulated was for a 5 gallon batch. I had meant to top off the primary at 5 gallons and simply forgot. I was very careful about adding the water, using a syphon, so as to create as little splashing as possible. I'm...

Still new to this and made a fatal error when brewing my Octoberfest. When transfering from the primary into a secondary I realised I was short about a 1/2 gallon of liquid. Not thinking, I added spring water into the beer, and only then thought to myself that I may have introduced oxygen into...