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My understanding is that, for the most part, Trappist monks brewed beer for daily consumption, particularly during winter months, because their styles of beer lasts longer than if it were stored as grain. Sour beers aren't great as a substitute for bread, both because of their strong sour...

The big ones I can think of are Duchess, the -tion beers at Russian River, and Tor Rouge, none of which are affiliated with any particular religion that I know of. Why the interest?

When you say your thermometer broke. . . do you mean that there is mercury in your beer, or that your digital thermometer stopped working? Mercury is toxic both to yeast and to you.

I think bitter is a better flavor for Belgians, but others may disagree.

Revvy gave a great breakdown of this in another post. Here's what he had to say:

The flavor from jam comes almost entirely from fermentable sugars, so I'm not sure how much would be left in the final product. Unless you used sugar-free jam?

Why not pitch both? I've gotten WLP002 to attenuate and floc really nicely while keeping it's flavor profile when I pitch it with WLP001.

I decant if the starter is more than 5% of the total volume of the beer. If it's less than that, I usually just pitch it on in. There are some beers that will require starters larger than the volume of (my) flask. If you want to brew them with an appropriately sized starter, one way to do...

Unfermented beer (wort) contains sugars, proteins, and long-chain dextrines that are not fermentable by brewing yeast. As a result, normal brewing yeast will stop fermenting and the beer will be "finished" at anywhere between 1.003 and 1.018ºSG. There's no need to remove the yeast or try to...

(1) If you like nice dry IIPAs like Pliny, then you need to cut way back on your fermentables. Of the 1.08 original gravity, at least ten percent should be simple sugars. Otherwise, you'll end up with a syrupy sweet mess. (2) In my opinion, it's better to do a 90 minute boil for an IPA. It...

170°F will not kill the bacteria on grain, so if you leave the mash for long enough you will definitely sour the beer. The question is how long is too long? I've gone six hours from the beginning of a mash to the beginning of the boil with no souring that my palette could detect. You could...

Sure could be—Heinekin in the US tastes VERY different than it does in Germany. If you're used to the taste of cardboard in your IPAs then you might grow to like it.

I guess my big objection to the "patience" argument is that it has no clear end point. None of the patience-people ever says "four weeks is the perfect amount of time, no longer, no shorter." Instead, they say "four weeks MINIMUM." One poster on this site even told me that his favorite beers...

Yes. IPAs are meant to be consumed quickly because hop oils will volitolize out of solution. That's why the Pliny the Elder label includes a warning that says: Three weeks is shorter than I would have expected to lose as much aroma as you describe, but it's in the ballpark if you were...

I clean a mason jar with PPW, then sanitize it in the microwave, and finally cool it in a bath of room temperature iodophor. Once it's completely clean, I skim it across the top of the kreusen to collect as much yeast as I can get—it's usually about a teaspoon. Once I've got a full jar...

When I add sugar, I do it after active fermentation has finished. The reason is that yeast lose the ability to consume maltose after just a few generations in a dextrose-rich environment; adding simple sugars to the boil means that many of the yeast you pitch quickly stop breaking down the...

I repeat my request for this to be a sticky and, in addition, request that the admins then delete the (many) requests from me and others so that the thread is less cluttered.

Sticky.

DMS precursers form in wort that is in the in-between temperatures after boiling and before pitching. Wort that sits for a long time at 120 is therefore more likely to have a lot of DMS in the final beer. If you don't like the flavor of DMS, then yes, rapid cooling will improve the taste of...

Your higher OG is caused by greater-than-anticipated efficiency, not by (or not just by) your higher-than-anticipated mash temperature. The result is that you have two variables working against attenuation: extra sugars in the mash, and also extra unfermentable dextrines. There are a couple...