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of salts and other common ions or whatever? I feel like I should know the answer to this, but I don't. I currently DO NOT filter my tap water, we have very nice water and the beer is quite palatable. But I have a filter housing on the way, for other reasons, and I'm wondering now...

Currently my system looks a little like this: 2-3 active carboys/buckets (4 in a pinch) swamp cooler action when necessary (only a few weeks this year, Bay Area) I often skip secondary or 2ndary in kegs unless dry-hopping 3 kegs on tap, with room for a 4th (keezer) many spare kegs...

moved....

My fiance and I are brewing beer for our wedding coming up in a couple months. As a practitioner of "dirty kegging" (whether voluntary or not) I am at a sort of a crossroads. I have yet to successfully produce a sediment-free keg, wheter after a secondary, I've tried cold crash and...

So I've been trying to diagnose this on my own, but to no avail. This is a red ale (american amber) with wlp048. I made the recipe once before (AG), and the only alteration was to increase roasted barley from 2 oz to 3 oz. ----------------------------- Fermented in primary for 3 weeks...

Recently I had a heating device fail at boil, leaving me with a very watery hefeweizen. Then yesterday I mistakenly turned the heat to the wrong setting on another beer. Which all leaves me wondering.... Is there an ideal rate of boil-off, or perceived boil vigor? Are there effects of...

So I cooked up a batch of slants a while back and have been collecting and reusing yeast happily for a few months now. Until I recently had a problem crop up. I store these in the coldest part of the fridge, and up until now have had no issues. I think the fridge had slowly been turned warmer...

My Fiance and I want to serve only our homebrew at our wedding this fall. Esp. because whatever we would have budgeted for beer otherwise can go towards whatever ingredients and equipment we need to make it happen. But we're struggling with how best to transport/serve it. We're...

I did an Amber ale that wasn't perfect but when drinking I thought "this would make a nice base to an IPA" So basically I took the grain bill for that beer and kicked it up a little in weight, lightened the color a bit, and then tossed in some honey malt which I imagined from the start to give...

I have a whole batch of cider bottled up that is just not carbing. The juice itself was cloudy so I guess I couldn't tell the yeasties had all left the building. Since it's already primed, I'm thinking two solutions.... 1) loosen the caps carefully and toss a few grains of dry yeast...

So this is regarding my 3rd batch of beer and it's quite odd. First batch was very similar and came out nicely, 2nd batch was a hef. that is quite delicious. 4th and 5th batches were darker but simple all-grains that are now on tap and quite tasty. But this one, was in primary for 11 days...

Sort of by accident, I ended up with Pilsner Extract for one of my very first batches, an Extra Pale. Now I'm sort of hooked on this idea, as it was 90% of the way to an elusive brewpub beer I had once apon a time. Now I've done a couple all-grain brews, and I want to work on this style...

A week ago, I was trying to harvest the WLP005 I had used to brew an english bitter. I had a really hard time separating the yeast from the trub. This was one of our first all-grain beers and for whatever reason, there was a lot of trub in this beer. The WLP005 is highly flocculation, so I...

Well I did post this over at the BTP forums, but they look like they're pretty sparse traffic and there seems to be a good number of people over here using it. I'm trying to get my Mash Tun calibrated, after missing various targets on mashes several times. Obviously sometimes I could just...

So I just racked a batch of an Ordinary Bitter over to a corny keg to 2ndary / age a bit before (at least the plan was) to force carbonate (at about 1 volume or so is recommended for the style). So out of curiosity I hit the calculators and if I chill to say 50 deg, they say <0.1 PSI !? So...

I'm looking at a Lager recipe that calls for: 20 min rest @ 122 45 min rest @ 151 45 min rest @ 162 (or 161.2) So far I've only done a couple of single-infusion ale recipes, but based on what I've read I can't figure the purpose of the 162 degree rest. It's not listed in my reference as...

Does anyone know if 'brewers yeast' actually comes from brewing? I ask because a there are a lot of dog biscuit recipes that call for 'brewers yeast', but I know dogs and hops is a no-no! So I was wondering if it really comes from brewing leftovers or not... and I'd assume that home brew...

So my first cider experiment has gone a little off track. I had limited equipment and skills when I started (and have since pieced out quite a setup). Regardless, I was just following a recipe and not using a hydrometer, and now realize I was really making an apple wine. (5 gals juice plus 4...

I recently built a heatstick a-la the ubiquitous instructions on the web. (http://www.cedarcreeknetworks.com/heatstick.htm) I just boiled 6 gallons very successfully with the heatstick supplementing my electric stove. However I have some lingering concerns about materials safety. All the...

So I've found that the consensus is 10gal for the Mash Tun if you're building one from a water cooler. Since a 5 gal isn't enough for 5 gallon batches of a big beer. But I can't figure out definitively how big the Hot Liquor Tank should be. Many setups match, but is that necessary...