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I brewed a mango ale last year, using a lightly hopped honey ale as a base, then 10kg of fresh, very ripe mango flesh in the secondary. I dipped the fruit in some iodophor sanitiser before adding to the fermenter. The beer went VERY sour for a long time - mangoes are very acidic, and it was only...

I really need to speed up my brewday. At the moment a 10 gallon batch is taking me over 8 hours. The biggest bottleneck is chilling - my wort chiller is really inadequate for the volume I'm brewing. Adding this to high ambient and tap water temps and it takes much too long to get down to...

I agree completely with this article. I am in the process of (very slowly) building up a nanobrewery business here in the Philippines, but its trial and error along the way. I am brewing only 10 gal batches to start with, which means if I brew a batch that I feel is even slightly below par, I...

Hmm... thats quite a high FG for a cider in my experience. Watch those bottles carefully - you might end up with bottle bombs. My ciders usually finish at around 0.991-0.995 depending on whether I use ale yeast or a special cider yeast (Youngs) I would expect a champagne yeast to be working...

Did you then continue on to boil the wort? How long for? Did the recipe call for late hops, and if so, did you add them before the boil started too? If you managed a good rolling boil for 60 minutes or more, you should end up with a decent beer. If you were supposed to put in late hops but...

Not much choice around here. If I'm out of homebrew I can buy San Miguel Pale Pilsen, San Miguel Red Horse or San Miguel Light. The Light is like a nasty alcoholic soft drink without any sugar - so that's out. Red Horse is only tolerable with an ice cube in the glass, so most of the time I...

Signed up and I'm in please!

I normally let my cider ferment for a full 5 weeks, until it drops nice and clear in the fermenter. You can drink it earlier, but it tastes MUCH better if allowed to ferment longer. You then have the option of back sweetening it if you don't like it dry, carbonating or jacking it. I usually like...

Smoked malt is easier to tell by smell than taste, though you should be able to taste the smokiness too. As soon as you open up the container it is stored in, it should smell strongly of woodsmoke. If not, its probably not smoked malt.

I bought a cheap glass lab-style spirit thermometer (0-100 degrees C) like those I used in science classes back in high school. Checked all my thermometers against it and found some were a LONG way off. Some of the dial type ones can be recalibrated by turning a nut or screw on the back. Digital...

No. Racking early to secondary is likely to rouse some semi-dormant yeast from the lower yeast cake, while bringing along all the active yeast that is currently in suspension. This will be more than enough to continue fermentation at a good rate, it may even speed up for a while following the...

My first AG batch was slightly grainy in the first couple of weeks in the bottle - it was a very lightly hopped, malty Scotch style ale. Things to check are: the age of your grain - I was using the last of a friend's stock of malt that had been sat around for a while, my own grain hadn't...

I agree with all those posting above that nothing you've listed should actually taste of smoke - the chocolate malt may make it taste a bit burnt though. If there is too much burnt flavour to enjoy the beer, try blending it in with something lighter. A nice simple SMASH ale would work well - or...

Not sure about everyone else, but I am trying to start a nanobrewery business :) If I was only homebrewing I wouldn't care at all if someone else had got there first with the name.

Mine is Black Hart Brewery, to try and incorporate some part of my name (my surname is Hartland) but still keep it interesting. Here's the logo. As far as I can tell, no-one else is using it as a Brewery name. A few beers are called Black Hart, there are a couple of breweries called Black...

Your recipe is very similar to mine for an English IPA, though yours is extract rather than all-grain and mine had a further flame-out addition of Williamette as well as the late addition. If you are expecting it to taste like an American IPA it probably won't. English IPAs are a bit more malty...

Having said my system was working well - it did for a while. Then it was time to demonstrate my brewing skills in front of a group of High School students I'd been teaching the basics of brewing to. On that day, the copper tubing blocked totally with hop debris and refused to clear. :o I...

In the end I decided to try out the idea I had originally, of running hot wort out the spigot of my brewpot, through 25 feet of narrow bore 1/4inch copper tubing (bought from an aircon repair place if anyone in the Philippines needs help finding some) The copper tubing is bent round like an...

+20 = 27,434

Glad to hear of another British cider maker in the tropics... I think I read you are a Northerner too? I'm from Sheffield but living now in the Philippines. I'm making cider for myself and selling some as a sideline to the neighbours. To be honest I haven't gone out for the effort of...