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My first fermentation explosion. Sixth brew now, a German wheat beer kit from Brewer's Best. Went with 6 gallons instead of the 5.5 I usually put in the 6.5 gallon brew bucket. Added an extra pound of DME, and also two tsp of gypsum to bring the hardness up from the 25 ppm total hardness of my...

Doing a Brewer's Best American cream ale today. It's a combo LME/DME kit with separate hops pellets. It's basically just an ale version of the American lager style, so it'll be light. The yeast is Nottingham, the hops Willamette. The hops are in two packages, each one ounce. It's a 60-minute...

And it was good! :mug: Thought I'd pop one of the Muntons Export Pilsner hopped LME ales to see how it was coming along. Carbonated in the bottle for 16 days, in the fridge for 1. Very well carbonated, lovely amber color and mostly clear when poured into the tall, rounded, elegant pilsner...

So I was away for a week over Thanksgiving and put my nut brown ale in the garage fridge @ 35F to cold crash. It got quite cold the last two days I was gone, and the wort was at 29F when I got home just now. Not frozen, of course. Just brought it in and plan to bottle tomorrow with the wort at...

Well, I've brewed my first two batches with very soft lake water from a deep cold clear Canadian Shield lake near my home. Total hardness is only about 25ppm. Tap water the same (comes from the same lake before being treated). I've been told on here not to worry, that water that soft can brew...

It started at 107 degrees after I did the boil and added 3 gallons of 50-degree water. Put the fermentation bucket in a big cooler in the back yard and ran the garden hose into the cooler. Pretty cold up here, and groundwater temp is about 50 degrees. Kept the hose running half speed to...

Bottling today, and three weeks at room temp in the bottles means I'll transfer to the fridge on Nov. 30. So what else happens besides cooling the beer that it takes a week? Do more particulates settle out when it chills, etc?

I'll be pulling my first brew in a few days after a week of cold crashing and wonder if it's fine to mix in the sugar and bottle right away or if it's best to let it warm up first. I'm using the 2 bucket system, and will be transferring from the fermentation bucket to the bottling bucket when...

Well, after two weeks to the day fermenting and no airlock activity, took a reading and it is 1.010, right on the money. Tasted a little and it even tastes like beer. :D It's the Muntons Export Pilsner extract kit (really an ale), with a bit more DME added than called for. Just took the bucket...

Left my wort fermenting at 66 degrees two days ago. Gone to close down the seasonal lake propery, and back home with a couple days to spare before I whip out the hydrometer and check it two weeks after initial fermentation. Here I am at a paradise of a lakeshore cabin in Northern Minnesota...

I realized last night that the can of LME for my Muntons pilsner style ale was 4 lbs, not 3 lbs. I added 3 lbs of spraymalt extra light DME to bring it up to what I thought was 6 lbs of fermentables, but was in fact was 7. And because I was a bit worried about the head room in my 6.5 gallon...

In order to keep my office cool enough for the pilsner style Muntons extract ale I brewed Saturday, I've left the fermentation bucket under a slightly open window, and that was keeping it at 69 F. But last night it got colder than expected and windier, and cold wind blew in all night, washing...

So I've got the 2-bucket Brewer's Best brewing kit, and my first brew, a Muntons Connoisseur Export Pilsner (brewed yesterday), is busily fermenting here in my office as I type this. Instead of transferring to a secondary, once fermentation is complete I'm going to cold crash to settle more...

So the kit is a hopped LME, with the add-on fermentable 3 lbs of spraymalt extra light DME. Doesn't seem like there'd be a lot of sediment in the first place, so I'm wondering how much it'll matter regarding clarity if I don't do a secondary fermentation. Brewing today and have the 2-bucket...

So I'm going with an extract tomorrow, a Muntons export pilsner, and have an additional 3 lb bag of extra light DME to bring it up to 6 lbs of fermentables. Muntons' directions don't even call for a full boil with all the fermentables, but I was told in another thread about it that a full boil...

Hey all: About to start my very first brew, a Muntons Connoisseurs Export Pilsner. Now, I've read widely on this forum and a couple books, so I'm confident I have a good enough grasp of the details of basic brewing. And the instructions are quite easy to understand and follow. But it says I...

Hey all: As the title says, that's what I'm looking for. The huge majority of corn and processed products derived from corn in the U.S. come from genetically modified corn, and I'm hoping to find something else. Really don't like GMO. Any alternatives? Thanks!

Hey all. After a chance comment received in another thread, I've been reading up on open fermentation, and like how it seems to allow for more intense and varied flavors to build (according to my reading). I'm getting ready to brew my first ever batch of beer, and am getting started on the...

First, the background. I guide for lake trout on Burntside Lake, a deep, cold, clear lake with very soft and pure water in NE Minnesota. It is my favorite lake by far, and I consider it a very special place. Our town gets its water from Burntside, as well. So I want to take water from the lake...

In anticipation of my first batch, I'd been saving brown Samuel Adams bottles, with about 20 gathered, when someone on our local Freecycle e-mail net posted they had 60 Grolsch bottles to give away. Yep, I was all over that like a German on lager or an Irishman on Laphroaig! :D Anyway, about...