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I harvested a yeast from a bottle of commercial belgian beer, hoping to make a nice belgian beer. I let the beer ferment for a month, and due to circumstances I won't go into, I had to bottle it ASAP. So I didn't get a gravity reading until I was all set to bottle and there was no turning...

Around christmas, I brewed my first sour beer. It was an extract beer, with a little lactose, I added white labs sour mix. I've been adding a little maltodextrin every few months along with the dregs of a number of sour beers I've been drinking. Its been 5 months, and I know that I should let...

So, I'm not exactly new to brewing, been doing it for 8 years, but have only recently tried to become serious about it. Last fall I started washing yeast, making starters, and just this spring I went all grain. I still don't have any fermentation temperature control in place, but hadn't had...

I usually dry hop my pale ales and IPAs. I usually don't dry hop stouts, porters, saisons, etc. Lately I've been making mostly pale ales, generally with a good amount of late boil hops, and I'm wondering if there are any reasons not to dry hop a beer like that. I've got the hops, the beer...

I'm not really asking for advice or anything, I know where I messed up and I assume that my problems will be fixed next time I brew... which is tomorrow! So my first all grain batch, I didn't get my water volumes right. About 2.5 gallons came out of the mash, maybe a little more from the...

I'm doing 5 gallon batches in a 15 gallon keggle with a side dip tube. I think my estimated 6 gallons to boil was actually more like 5, and when I finished cooling it was exactly 3 gallons. Oops! I'm at about my limit for water in the mash (3.5g in 5 gallon cooler) and I sparged with 3...

I'm making a beer for a friend's wedding. I thought to make something similar to Three Floyds Gumball Head, though I'm not trying to make a clone. Just looking for some advice on what I've put together as far as making something friendly to the masses as well as interesting and flavorful...

So I've seen this graph around here that says you lose the flavor of hops after about 30 minutes (and aroma in even less time), so when considering bittering hops, is there really anything to consider other than alpha acids? Is any hop different than any other in a 60 minute boil besides the AA...

I had a great, thick, bubbly pellicle on a saison. After about 10 days, the pellicle seems to have broken up. There are a few big bubbles and clumps of foam on top, but not the web of thick fuzzy stuff there once was. Does anyone have any idea what that means? I've heard of the pellicle...

I've always done my dry hopping after racking to a clean carboy. I'm wondering though, if this is at all needed. Why not just wait for airlock activity to stop (or FG reading) and just toss them in the primary? Seems like it would save you a step, and I can't think of any problems.

I'll be making my first beer with brett and bugs this week. I decided to go with the WL sour mix (from their website "Brettanomyces, Saccharomyces, and the bacterial strains Lactobacillus and Pediococcus."), I'll be using some acidulated malt, putting in some french oak chips for the bugs to...

Hey guys, first time kegging here. I bought 3 cornys, split up my 15 gal. batch between them, and conditioned with ~.5 cup corn sugar per keg, as I didn't yet have the rest of the equipment and was more than ready to get out of primary. Also dry hopped each keg with flowers and pellets. Got...

i'm going on a trip to eastern europe (czech, poland, hungary) and was wondering what the great beers in this area are. any input would be great. im assuming they'll have imports from germany and belgium too, so i'll be able to get plenty of that, but ive never heard much about eastern...

pretty much all recipes i've seen say to add fruit (or anything else) into the secondary fermentation, rather than the primary. im wondering what the logical reasoning behind this is - and i couldnt really think of anything. so whats the deal, why do things go into secondary? also, why is...

i made a wheat beer with a lot of chocolate malt with the idea of it being a chocolatey wheat beer, but now im liking the idea even more and i want to add actual melted chocolate into the carboy. has anyone done this, adding chocolate into the secondary fermentation? will it just harden and...

hey all, i just brewed a deliciously hoppy IPA 10 gallon batch, and for the tertiary fermentation i transferred it into 2 5 gallon carboys. the first carboy got a lot of foam on the top and i'm guessing was quite oxidized. the other carboy didnt get any bubbles in it, and should be fine. i...

hey all, i was wondering if anyone had ideas for making a very inexpensive beer without sacraficing much taste. i have been doing 10 gallon batches for a while now and my prices have ranged from $55 to $90 for one batch (depending on how fancy I get), but i am curious to see if i could get the...