Recent content by slafaive

So are Brewer's Best kits not good then, or did I probably just get a bad one?

Thanks for the information. Sounds like my kit might have been wacked out. It was a Brewer's Best kit. I'll just wait four weeks and pop open a bottle to see how it tastes. Brewing beer certainly sounds like more of a chemistry project than I had thought. Does anyone have a good book or site...

Recipe 1. Steep one pound of crushed crystal malt in two gallons of water for 20 minutes. 2. Boil and then add 6.6 pounds of plain amber malt extract syrup. 3. Add two ounces of Columbus hops (bittering) 4. Boil for 55 minutes and add one ounce of Columbus hops (finishing) 15 minutes prior...

Oh, I agree. It should have some bitterness. But not this much! It's very, very bitter, like a dirty boot stomping on your tongue bitter. :D

This is my first batch ever, so I don't really know what to expect, and it probably is my first time tasting very young beer. Perhaps it is just a case of needing to age it more. The directions actually said to ferment for two weeks but to add another 4-6 weeks for better flavor, but the beer...

I just tasted my first bottle after letting it all sit for two weeks. The kit was for pale ale, but that first bottle was very bitter...definitely not pale ale. Anyone have any ideas for what would have turned a pale ale to something this bitter? Meaning, what did I do wrong? :(

Good point. I actually bought a kit that was on sale for my first batch, thinking I might screw it up :D Turns out the kit was probably screwed up.

Oh, and concerning this missing DME, I found it odd that the DME was called "amber malt" when it's a pale ale kit. Does that sound odd to anyone else or am I wrong in thinking that "amber" necessarily means an amber beer?

Yep, it has the sugar to add prior to bottling. And thanks for the immersion chiller idea. I'll look into that and see if I can manage to create one.

Thanks for the reassurance. The starting gravity was actually pretty close. The batch was still pretty warm (90 degrees), so I had to calculate it with the heat in mind. On that note, I put my pot in very cold water before taking the reading, but it just wouldn't cool fast enough. Any...

First post here!! Anyway, my first batch ever (pale ale) has been fermenting for five days now, and I opened it today to check the gravity (the stopper quit burping about a day ago). First off I noticed that there is a bunch of sediment mud ringing the barrel at the top. This worries me since...