Search results

So a few weeks ago I tried doing a 1 gallon batch of blackberry wine. I must have used a bit too much potassium metobisulphite because the yeast never took off. It didn't ferment at all. Here's the recipe that I used. It ended up at 1.092 5 lbs blackberries 2 lbs sugar 1 quart water .5 tsp...

My dad bought a restaurant a couple of years ago and there were a few bottles of beer sitting in his cooler from the previous owner. One is a Breckenridge Christmas ale from 1996 in a 1l fliptop bottle. It's hand numbered. Another is an amber ale from Coors Field from 1995 in the same type of...

A week or so ago I built a stir plate and decided to try to collect some wild yeast with it. I put a little wort on it and let it fly. After a few days I threw in the dregs from a bottle of saison de buff. Up until then it still smelled like wort. By the next day it was smelling...

I'm not even sure if this is possible but I'm interested in using beans in a brew. I've got a three sisters garden that I'm growing this year and I'd like to try to figure out how to use the butternut, blue corn and scarlet runner beans in a saison. I've also got some hops growing along the...

So I keep a bottle of prune juice in the fridge for my baby. I bought it about 3 months ago. I haven't needed to give her any for a few weeks. Last time I opened the bottle I noticed that it had mysteriously become lightly carbonated. It still tasted OK so I thought nothing of it. Fast...

So I just kegged an oatmeal stout a few days ago. I probably brewed it three weeks ago. I also did a batch of very low gravity beer with the third runnings. Both batches taste strongly of bandaids. Is this a flavor that's permanent or will it go away with time? This is the first batch of...

It seems like there are a lot of cheap, improvised options out there for brewing equipment. You just never see them in one place. It would be nice to put it all in one thread so the cheapasses like myself who want to get into brewing without a huge investment have a one stop thread for brewing...

I just picked this up and thought that it would be good for small batches. It's a 1 gallon pot. I'll just use a one gallon nylon mesh bag inside of it. Anyone else use something like this? At first glance it looks like it will work pretty well. Time to start experimenting.

Anyone ever tried using blue corn in a brew? I've read that it has a much higher starch content than "normal" corn. I've got a bunch growing in my backyard and hope to have a good supply by this fall. I mostly grew it so that I could make corn meal but I'd also like to brew with it. Any...

In just about every article on kegging that I've read they suggest pouring off the first quart or so before you start drinking. I've never bothered. I've tried but then I just shrug and drink it instead of dumping it. I haven't noticed much of a difference between that first drink and the...

I decided to try to collect some wild yeast with a DME starter. It's been out for about a week or so now and this has formed: Should I toss it or just let it keep doing it's thing for a while? It's kind of scary looking....

What do you have planned to ring in the apocalypse? A truly huge and epic RIS is pretty much a no brainer for me. I'm probably going to start doing one every couple of months till I get one nailed that I think I can sock away for a couple of years. No I don't put any stock in the whole 2012...

I just ordered 2 kegs online. They seem to be in good shape but they don't have pull rings on the pressure release valves. How do these work? They seem to be pretty old. The rubber on them is pink.

Has anyone ever tried this? I just finished a 5l keg of Newcastle. I ripped out the dip tube and managed to keep the hole in pretty good shape. There's something banging around inside, though. I have no idea what it is and I'm not sure if I can get it out without completely ripping the top...

I ended up with a high OG on my oatmeal stout so I think I can squeeze a good 1.03ish OG out of a batch of second runnings. So what hops would you go with? The original recipe was as follows: 7.5 lbs pale malt .5 lb toasted flaked oats .5 lb crystal 60l ..5 lb chocolate malt .2 lb...

Fermentation in my IPA didn't finish. It got down to 1.030. OG was 1.062. It's been dead for a few days now. How long should I wait before I repitch?

I was thinking about this earlier after grinding a 15 lb grain bill for my next IPA by hand. I fully expect to end up with 1.07ish OG. That's a lot of malty goodness left behind in the mashtun. Perhaps enough for a small ale or something. I consider that wasted effort. Every beer that I put...

I've got an extra gallon of wort from my last batch that I collected from my mash tun after gathering the wort for my boil. OG was 1.036 so I'm going to make a small batch of beer with it. The original mash was 8 lbs pale 2 row + 1 lb crystal 40L at 148 for an hour. I've got an ounce of...

I have a gallon of wort that's 1.036 OG. I want to raise the OG to about 1.045ish. How much DME do I need to add to accomplish this. Is there a good formula online? I know that 1 lb of DME in 1 gallon of water = 1.046. I'm not starting from scratch, though.

So I've been storing my sodium metabisulfite in an 8 gallon bucket for a few months now. I decided that I wanted to use it for a primary fermenter with this last batch I did. I cleaned it, aired it out and sanitized it as normal. I didn't smell a hint of it when I poured my wort and pitched...