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I am going to a wedding of a friend and band mate who works for a beer distributor. He himself is into craft beer and has gone to one of those places that will help you brew 15 gallons of whatever beer you want. He has invited me to his wedding and is letting my girlfriend come with me so I...

Dear HBT, The HBT search engine used to be better... not sure what's going on there. Anyway... my two-week-and-a-day-old sour mashed rye saison tastes really good *knocks on wood* from the gravity readings I've taken. It's got me encouraged to do it again, but this time with 100% pilsner malt...

I'm looking to improve the efficiency of my Blichmann floor burner over a series of fairly simple projects. My first step is to make a close-kept wind screen to keep the hot gases in contact with the boil kettle. I need an insulation that: 1) doesn't catch fire 2) is rigid 3) can be...

So I found a smack pack of Irish Ale that was manufactured last may (2014). I figured I would brew a reasonable (1.051) brown ale (featuring oats!) tomorrow and use a starter made with that Irish Ale yeast. Well I made the starter today... with less than ideal ingredients. Turns out my last...

I performed a sour mash for 22 hours and brewed 5.5 gallons of a rye saison. I completed the boil yesterday. I typically have a 65-70% BHE, but I ended up with 83%. There are two things I did differently: 1) I used uncrushed barley at 117 degrees Fahrenheit to sour the wort for ~22 hours. 2)...

I just tried to make a low ABV "bitter" with 100% munich, nottingham, and nelson sauvin. This was just for fun- not to recreate any particular style. After a 2 hour mash at 152 while I got my tooth drilled, the wort tasted and smelled awesome. Well the bad part is that I [accidentally]...

It's currently still racking into my bottling bucket. I used the muslin bag to prevent my dry hops from making it to my bottling bucket. The only problem is that it seems to be knocking a whole lot of CO2 out of suspension in my beer. You can see all of the bubbles gathering in the lines and...

This post is mostly to grieve and get out the fury from within, but I welcome any experience anyone has to offer. I'm very careful. Oh so careful. I have 28 brews under my belt, and I have a good idea of what I'm doing. These were both "collaboration brews" with a close and dear friend who...

Trying to follow AJ's primer: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/brewing-water-chemistry-primer-198460/ The LHBS is perpetually out of acid malt. Any ideas? I'm brewing one low gravity "English bitter" (5.5 gallons) and one amber wheat (1 gallon). The "English Bitter" is all munich malt. The...

Following Yooper's idea, I weighed out 9 grams of gypsum for my 5.5 gallon IPA I am working on. I'm using distilled water. My scale was accurate to within 1 gram. Is this really the amount I'm working with? It seems to piddly. I got back to my digital scale to make sure I it zeroed...

This is a curiosity to me. A friend of mine (second time brewer) made a Russian imperial stout using a kit and Nottingham Ale Yeast. He ended up calling it "Bananas Foster Stout" because it was banana-y. I was expecting some banana, but when I smelled it and then tried it... well it was as if...

I made an "American style" bitter using the stats for the traditional bitter, but all hop additions were 15 minutes or less. It turned out great and generally impressed my craft beer loving, rare beer hunting friends. One of them suggested that I make an IPA, because he seems darn sure I could...

I know this is an issue for a lot of folks and finally it has caught up with me. In my hour of need I found this thread, which gave me hope. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/barleywine-not-carbonating-286538/ I also liked how a kindly forumer in their hour of need tried to revive it. This gave...

I've been cleaning up and overhauling a (new to me) used ball lock corny keg. It's my first, but I am familiar with stainless steel- how to clean it, etc. It has only been used for soda. My cleaning began with two day long soaks in oxifree (inside and out, right side up and upside down)...

My water seems to produce good beer. However I'm going to play with basic water chemistry to see if I can improve the results. I have a friend that works in a water analysis laboratory, whose customers are generally companies that need to regulate water pollution. She provided me with a free...

I don't know everything about brewing. I'm sure you don't either. But if you're on HBT and you do a little reading you know enough. Can we agree on that? I have a few homebrewing friends, and none of them seem to ask themselves the questions like "what does a lower water to grain mash ratio...

So I'm at Washington and Lee for the Law School graduation. My brother just got his JD and we're celebrating this weekend. I even brought the homebrew I had made for the occasion which turned out well. We're at this place called "The Palms" in downtown Lexington; supposedly under new...

The book was a great read and taught me a lot about beer formulation for long storage. I would go into more depth of my readings here, but I would have to re-write the book. I recommend it for any homebrewer- I learned a lot of the science of aging beer and the changes it goes under. One...

Just bought a four pack today- 12 bucks in CT for this triple IPA. I love the hop content. Fragrant and almost peach-like in flavor. I feel like triple IPAs might as well be hoppy barley wines- this one perhaps poorly designed. I noticed this also with devil dancer. This Alpha Seeker was...

Just sometimes I feel like I'm the only one. I come on here and I see all these threads "help! I chipped my nail and it fell into my brew kettle", "Oh no, my bangs got into my bottling bucket!" and "My boyfriend keeps begging me to brew more". It's just so alienating. I had no idea that...