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I am going away for a month soon so I want to do a lager style that will require fermenting at a lower temp for this time so I don't have to play as long a waiting game. With this in mind I want to try my hand at a bock but a lot of what I read calls for multi-step or decoction mashes, which...

Hi all, I did a brew yesterday and was going to do up a yeast starter to pitch the next day (I realise this is the wrong way round), but then found out I have no DME at present. Can I just bring out some of my wort that I prepared, and use that in my starter or is there a particular reason I...

I've had a go at doing a cider and it turned fairly bad as I stuffed up the back sweetening process. Apple Juice concentrate is really hard to find in Aust so I just used Orange and it turned out awful. This isn't my question. Anyway, I want to give it another go and want it to end up quite...

I did a brew tonight with a mate and we each took half the load in each of our fermenters but didn't sanitize them first. They were clean, just not starsan clean. The reasoning was that the boiling wort will kill any bacteria in there. Seemed to make sense to me but I wonder if any of you had...

Two weeks ago I did a cider. Pure apple juice, dextrose and a bit of brown sugar. OG = 1.064. I took a gravity reading yesterday in preparation of bottling tomorrow and it was fizzing and bubbling. This is my first cider and I'm just not sure what to expect. In terms of bottling, where should I...

I brewed an extract imperial stout today, aiming for OG of about 1.071, ABV of about 8.1%. My method was steep the specialty malts in 2.5 gallons of water, add DME and bring to the boil, add hops, boil for 60 min, cool and add 2.7 gallons of water and pitch yeast. I ended up with an OG of 1.098...

Looking for some feedback for my first chocolate stout recipe I've done up. I want it to be big with strong (but not overpowering) chocolate aromas. Apologies for being Australian Fermentables: 100g Patent Malt 400g Chocolate Malt 350g Crystal 120g Roast Barley 600g Dextrose 3.5kg Light DME...

I have been brewing beer for a while now, I have a decent setup and want to try my hand at cider making for the mrs. I understand from beer brewing that the sugars in the juice will ferment away leaving it quite dry - she will not like this. Is there a process to to make it really sweet post...

So the sanitiser I use to sanitise my equipment is a standard sodium percarbonate powder that came with my original Coopers home brew setup. Now I know that starsan does not need to be rinsed but would this? Also, I'm not sure how much I should be using. The bottle says 40grams (4 cap fulls)...

So I went to bottle my beer today. Added the priming sugar and to the bottling bucket. But when I went to put my bottling mechanism onto the spigot I couldn't find it. Is it bad for my brew to just sit in the bottling bucket ready to go for a day or two?

I'm making the switch to partial mash from the "just add water kits" because they are terrible. My problem is the largest kettle I have access to is 8L (just over 2 gal). Is this too small to do a decent sized batch with steeping grains? If not what procedure (volumes of water etc) would you...

I use a plastic fermenter or a 6 gal bucket to ferment in with spigots. So to take my hydrometer readings I generally just use the spigot to fill up my hydrometer then discard the beer that I've taken out, as this seems the easiest way. My problem is...I'm wasting precious beer by doing this...

So I bottled my second batch about 6 weeks ago. It was a Morgan's Dark Ale kit with a tin of their caramalt added as well. They spent 2 weeks fermenting before I bottled the 330ml (12oz I think) bottles with a sugar drop each. My problem is, now that I'm starting to drink them, a few have been...

Hi all, I've just started creating my own recipes and loving it, I seem to have a firm grasp on all the ingredients except for yeast. How do I know how much yeast to use? Is it dependent on the expected OG? What will happen if I use too much or too little yeast? Cheers

Hi all, I'm fairly new to this whole home brewing business. The next brew I want to do is a porter, and I've done a bunch of reading of recipes and ingredients and such and I have come up with one I think will be good. I'm aiming for strong chocolatey and honey flavours and aromas with an ABV of...