Recent content by yodalegomaster

I just stopped by midwest and tried to buy a bottle of star san and it was 24.99 for the large bottle! What happened? I checked the NB catalog and it's listed at 15.99 and since they are the same owners now. Anyone have a recipe to make it yourself?

35 points is an great score, I would say it's going to be in top 5 of any normal judging round. What style was it, what were the ratings of the judges, what was the feed back they gave you? In a normal flight of 25 your going to have 2-3 teams of judging, every other beer, and the placement...

Welcome to the world called "finings", almost all beers have some form of fineing or filtering. The Mild you brewed if done in England would have some Isinglass added as a fining agent, it becomes part of the flavor profile too. The most common fining is Irish Moss, which is added to the boil.

Two days to ramp up is going to introduce some off flavors, that's why most people have some dry yeast that they can use if it takes too long. "Some off flavors" means that some one who knows like a beer judge would be able to tell there is a problem. It doesn't mean that a normal brewer will be...

I would go with what you have, It's plenty of yeast.

The internal packet is there to show you that you have live yeast. just break it and leave it set on the counter, don't put it back in the refrigerator. Most people will do it the night before.

Well Liberty is descended from the noble hop family, so it's right at home with the lagers, it's quite clean and very hard to come by for home brewers, the last thing I would want to do is mix liberty with a "Big C family Hop", it's going to get lost. As for the columbus simco debate above...

I am making lot's of session beers, Like a Mild split into 5 batches. or a light blond with fruit extract, nothing over 3.0. from a ten gallon batch to 25 gallons of session beer. I just did one with a huge difference in hops that took some fooling with, but it works. I made 10 gallons of Kolsch...

You could also use the white labs version. It will restart fermintaion and drop the fg near .05 the sweetness will be gone. but it will not be a milk stout, more like a Dry stout.

I ask Denny Conn what's best. I have used the second method myself where I add the beans to the secondary and bourbon to taste. It's all about tasting along the way to get balance.

You need to soak the wood in bourbon for a couple of weeks, and use a very small amount. I use less than an 1.oz for 15 gallons. It's extremely easy to over do it. Then Taste it: you can always add more but you can't take it away.

What they are talking about is the specific Malts they use at the brewery, Each area in the country has it's own malt suppliers. So, I would go with what you can get locally, I would substitute any brand of "marris otter" Fawcett Optic: Rahr or Bries pale. the Simpsons crystal malts and naked...

It will just be a little bit estry\fruity.

I don't know about what the weather will be like but I do know if your brewing in the sun make sure to keep the direct sun light off of the brewing beer. It takes as little as 10 min of direct sunlight to skunk a beer so you can taste it. This is important only after you add the hops though. so...

I think it's a matter of mixing style categories. Which I think of as "The C's" = Citirus; "Nobel" which are the German noble type and then the "resiny" which are the English hops. I don't mix between the familys in a same beer. Then there are some hops that I just don't like at all like...