Recent content by Parks

As a general rule, NEVER throw out bad tasting beer. Oxidation and its cardboard/sherry taste may be the one exception since my understanding is that it only gets worse with age. Let your beer age and try one every couple months to see if it improves. If it never does, then oh well. If it does...

The point that people are making when questioning your recipe is that you are going to waste a lot of time with trial and error by not working off an established base recipe. Building off a recipe that you know works is going to be a much better way to experiment than randomly tossing in various...

I use the spigot to pour a sample into a vial barely big enough to use a hydrometer with. I suppose it gives a small chance of infection in doing so (I've never had a problem with it), but its certainly less than the chance of opening it up and using a sterilized wine thief/baster. Opening the...

Huh? I use a hydrometer with my Mr. Beer fermenters. Why couldn't you? I would either make 100% sure fermentation was complete with a hydrometer reading, or I would wrap the bottle in a plastic bag, put it in a box, and leave it somewhere that you wouldn't mind getting beer all over.

Rite Aid had Mr. Beer Premium kits on year-end sale for $9.99, so I grabbed their last two. However, I am having a lot of trouble regulating the temperature. Can I use the standard water bath with ice/aquarium heater with these fermenters? I am unsure if that would risk infection...

Revvy, that's exactly what I was looking for. On a side note, the search leaves a lot to be desired on the thread level. Finding this info is difficult at best without making a new thread.

Anyone with Mr. Beer experience want to weigh in on this?

Rite Aid had Mr. Beer Premium kits on year-end sale for $9.99, so I grabbed their last two. However, I am having a lot of trouble regulating the temperature. Can I use the standard water bath with ice/aquarium heater with these fermenters? I am unsure if that would risk infection...

I've had really good experiences with Safale US-05 recently, so I have some extra Mr. Beer yeast that I don't really plan to use. I think I'll be buying better yeast for all future batches depending on style of beer. I remember someone talking about pitching extra yeast into a hot wort that...

Anyone know about Beck's bombers? They're the cheapest 24 ounce bottles around here, and I want to make sure they don't need a euro-sized cap.

I don't think there would be any harm in just leaving it in the keg for a month or two to see if it dramatically improves. If it doesn't improve after some time then chalk it up as a loss to autolysis or infection, toss it, and figure out what went wrong so you can avoid it next time.

Do not stick your penis in the carboy. You will save yourself a lot of embarrassment and Crisco.

I have some nylon hop socks, are they just for dry hopping or can you boil them in the wort? Also, what's the difference between a nylon hop sock and a muslin one?

Was that in the cheese shop? Cheese samples and a nice beer selection. I have some swing tops from there.

That raises the question about why the search syntax is not explained on the "Advanced Search" page. Why should you have to search to figure out how to use the search? It should be right there. I've also had problems using the search, because it is tough to find information on anything...