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That's what I was thinking about doing, but I don't know how often I should be checking it. If it's going to take longer than a few weeks, I shouldn't be pulling samples every day (but if it will only take a week or 2, maybe I should pull more samples).

My wife surprised me with a new 5-gallon white oak barrel for my birthday. I have decided to go ahead and funk it up with a sour beer, and I will use this vessel primarily for aging sour ales. I brewed up a Sour Ginger Apricot Ale from a recipe kit that I slightly modified from AHS. I...

So my awesome wife got me a counterflow wort chiller for Christmas! The only problem is, I don't have a march pump and my brew kettle does not have a spigot. What is the recommended way to get my hot wort into the chiller? Should I drill a hole and install a spigot in the side of my kettle...

Oh, good call on the vacuum! Man, this is the best board on the interwebs!

This wasn't at DFW was it? I had the exact same experience at a TGIFridays in DFW a couple of weeks ago. I don't mind most of SA's beers. Unlike a lot of people on this board, I enjoy the Latitude 48 (though I won't go out of my way to look for it). However, the Chocolate Bock tastes too...

So I've brewed up 6 different styles of beer in 6 different kegs for a friend's party. I have all the kegs and picnic taps, but I only have 1 CO2 tank/regulator. I don't mind pushing the same PSI into each keg for the party, so I was hoping to engineer my own pressurizing system stemming from...

There's a lot of hate for the Cherry Wheat in here. I'm not a huge fan of it myself but I wouldn't pour it down the sink. For some reason I seem to recall that they had a home brewing contest among their employees, and the prize was a national distribution of that beer. It was won by some...

My brew buddy has been helping me since he was just a few weeks old. Now he's almost 6 months and he helped me brew his 6th batch last weekend!

I like to collect the hot water that first comes out of my immersion chiller in my HLT. I then use that hot water for cleaning. Once the runoff gets cool, I'll run it into a tub where I'll stick my kettle. I'll usually dump some ice in the tub as well to help cool it down. I've recently...

I suppose it's already been "crash-cooling". After I put it in the secondary fermenter (2 weeks ago), I set my fridge back to 40 degrees. I guess it does look like it's starting to clarify at the top; I'll give it another week in the secondary before I rack it to the keg. My "brew club" is...

Yes, I used two vials of yeast because I did not make a yeast starter. The fermentation seemed to go great once it got started. It fermented for almost 2 weeks straight, but it took 3 days to get started. Do you think it picked up some kind of wild yeast? I did have it fermenting right next...

Those pictures above are from this morning. I haven't tasted it since I put it into the secondary a few weeks ago, so maybe I'll sneak some out this weekend and get some tasting notes.

That first picture was taken as I was pouring the wort from the kettle into the primary fermenter. It's now a month later, and it's now uniformly cloudy. Is it worth trying the gelatin, or should I just chalk it up to my first botched batch? Here is what it looks like this morning after...

Here's a picture I took just before I added the yeast. You can see that it's clear, but it's got a milky cloud forming in the middle. I had never used whirlfloc before, so I had just assumed that the cloud was the proteins coagulating and dropping out. However, now everything is the milky...

Is there a way to clear it out? It's been in the primary for almost 3 weeks and the secondary for another 2 weeks. Should I try letting it clear out before I put it into the keg, or should I go ahead and keg it and hope it clears up in there?

Yes, I wouldn't bother with trying to aerate before the boil, but I was more concerned about the "incidental splashing" from the mash tun into the kettle. My system is gravity-fed, so I've been known to let the wort just trickle out of the spigot on my mash tun into the kettle below (about 3...

Different question on the topic of aeration: What about aeration during the mash process? I always figured it wouldn't hurt to aerate before the boil, since that should add oxygen anyway. But I've heard of people trying to minimize the oxygenation of the wort going into the kettle from the...

I attempted to make a North German Pilsner Lager, but I'm afraid something went wrong. It's an AG recipe I picked up from Austin Homebrew, and I double-pitched the White Labs German Lager yeast. I also added whirlfloc in the last 10 minutes of the boil to help it clarify. I started the...