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A friend of mine recently gifted me with his old refrigerator to use as a lagering frig. It's pretty big and would hold 4 buckets or carboys. But I'm wondering how to schedule multiple lager fermentation/lagering temps with only one fridge. The only thing I can think of is to cook up...

First and worst brewing disaster was 2 weeks ago. The hefeweisen was done and I was giving the carboy a last rinse with starsan and it slipped out of my hands, hit the top of the basement stationary tubs and exploded. Fortunately I instinctively backed away instead of trying to catch it, but I...

Just my personal choice, but I'm in the same spot as you and I'm going for Fridge with Temp Controller next. I think it's the cheapest way ($100-$150) to improve my beer and I'm really looking forward to being able to make lagers. Mike

:off: I know this is OT, but my lovely SWMBO made a wonderful Beer Cheese Dip this past weekend out of some aged cheddar, cream cheese and some of my Bohemian Pale Ale. Just fantastic. She also makes a quick beer bread that uses the yeast in the beer to make the bread rise. So getting back to...

We have 3 cats and 2 of those sometimes show up while I'm brewing. Mostly to yell at me for paying too much attention to the boiling pot and for not petting them this instant, when I'm trying to keep my hands clean. I'm sure a bit of cat has has found itself in my brew. We call this "House...

Yeesh. The busiest day I've had is a boiling a 5 gallon extract batch and bottling 5 gallons on the same day. It was nice to have something to do during the boil and to be able to re-use the starsan bucket. But when I was done all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and drink beer. Mike

So when are they going to update my Beersmith software to reflect this? It currently shows that I can get ALOT more IBUs by holding back some of my extract until 15 or 10 minutes before flame-out. Should I be ignoring that and just looking at the IBU rating it shows for adding all my extract at...

A blow off tube is simply a plastic tube that makes an air-tight seal on the top of your fermenter and then runs to a container with a bit of sanitizer in the bottom. Make sure the end of the tube is below the sanitizer level and that there's enough space in the container for excessive blow...

I like hops, but not burn-your-nose-hairs-off bitter IPAs. If I'm buying beer I'll go for a bock or Scottish ale since I prefer the malty goodness. My second batch was a honey amber ale at about 35 IBUs and that was plenty bitter for me. Now that it's a few month's old the bitter balances the...

That's exactly what I do. The floor of my basement is consistently 60-62 degrees so I just put the bucket and carboy right on the floor. They can get up to 64-66 during fermentation and then settle back down. My last few batches I've started using liquid yeasts that like it a bit warmer...

Looks fine. Did you use a different yeast in this batch than your other batches? The first time I used a "top-cropping" liquid yeast I freaked our about all the floating yeast after fermentation since I was used to Notty and S-05 dropping out completely. Mike

I've used honey in a couple of my batches. In one where I just added it to the boil I got nothing. Then for my Honey Amber I added 8oz of honey malt, 1 lb of honey to the boil, and bottled with honey as the sugar. Even with that the honey flavor isn't overwhelming, but a nice counterpoint to...

An inch of kraussen is pretty normal, especially if your OG was low (around 1.050 or lower). It sounds like you fermented warm and they yeast took off and got the job done in a day or two. I'd wait until 5 days or so and take a gravity reading, but I think you've made beer. Mike

I'm still new to the game (9 batches) and haven't amassed very much equipment yet. I loved getting a second fermenter (actually converting the secondary that came with the kit into a fermenter) since it doubled my pipeline. Over the summer I'm looking to get an old fridge/freezer and temp...

Yah, that's the one I use and it works great. Also useful for cooking, like testing that the Thanksgiving turkey is hot enough in the middle Mike

This is a common question and if you need more answers do a forum search for "adding cold water". The long and the short of it is that some home brewers boil their tap water and cool it in the fridge, or use purified/bottled water. And some just use their cold tap water straight from the tap...

I give my beers woman's names on the day they are born, er, brewed. There's Samantha, my first. She was a wonderful cream ale. Then Veronica, Madeline, Melinda, Sasha, Kathleen, Isabella, Diana, and the latest Gabrielle. The names roughly match the type of beer, like Kathleen is my Irish Red...

A spray bottle with starsan is the most useful tool ever invented for brewing. Even after dunking in the starsan bath I tend to giver everything a good misting with sanitizer right before it touches my wort or beer. Other than that, relax, don't worry, and have a home-brew (or store-bought...

I compost it right away with a lot of carbon-type compost. In the spring and fall it all gets mixed into my garden and converted to heirloom tomatoes. Mike

Great story! I think it's a tribute to him that he could make a decent ale with whatever he had on hand (bread yeast, honey, tap water, etc). Mike