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Wow! I homebrewed for about three years before getting hired on as full time brewer at a small microbrewery and I never got this advanced in equipment. This is an incredibly awesome looking first-time AG rig. Congrats!

Any type of bag (be it for grain in a mini-mash or hops) can cause problems if the bundle is too tight. A dry patch could form in the middle reducing extraction/efficiency. Make sure it is loose or alternatively use a paint straining bag for a 5-gallon paint bucket. Just take the bag and...

1) I'm in the camp that believe HSA(hot side aeration) causes very little harm to the beer. However if I am reading your question correctly, spaying water over the top of the grain bed during sparge/lauter works fine. I'm a little confused by your wording, but you don't need to be...

Yeah I agree there are optimal temps for rehydrating different strains, but I've never seen any evidence that some strains do worse with rehydrating properly than without rehydrating at all. I usually double pitch rehydrated dry yeast cause dry is so cheap anyways.

I can't find any posts about that, but if you could point me in the right direction. I'd like to make sure I'm not gimping any of my dry yeast batches.

I don't know how well black malts stand up to age compared to other grains, but if I were you I would just replace them with fresh grains. No point making a sub par batch of beer when you can fairly cheaply replace 2 # of grains.

1) I've always rehydrated my dry yeast and its always worked well. You don't have to but if you are sanitary I don't think it can hurt. 2) You can toss the hops straight in or you can use a bag. I just toss them in and strain them out when I'm moving to my primary. 3) When I do extract I'll...

+1 on same day clean up. I know it sucks at the time, but it is so worth not having to clean it the next day after its had time to set in and hang on for dear life.

I used DeathBrewer's partial mash dunkelweizen recipe and it turned out great. It was really easy to do. It's a great thread on how to move from extract to partial mash. Here it is: Dunkelweizen

Sweet thanks. I figure it will turn out great no matter what. Out of curiosity is there a sweet spot temperature that most people try to hit? I've read 153-158 is good.

So I'm doing my first AG: 10# 2 row 2# chocolate malt 0.5# crystal 120 0.5# carapils 1# lactose My strike water was about 170 which is what beersmith told me to do. But then after adding my grains it was only about 148, so I added about a gallon of boiling water, which brought it to...

Right now I've got 8oz of Hershey Cocoa Powder. So I'm thinking I'll combine some different ideas. First make a cocoa soup with the lactose and put it in at flame out and then put in some nibs in secondary and let it go for a few months before I try some out to see if it needs more time to...

After looking up "emulsify" this seems like its gonna be a bit more involved than I originally thought. Also seeing as this is my first AG batch its gonna be fun! Do chocolate stouts benefit from sitting in the secondary for a long time or will my usual 3 weeks to a month work fine? Also...

sweet, thanks for the input guys.

Technically rehydrating isn't necessary. The yeast will do its thing no matter what, rehydrating just helps it out. Pitch that yeast in, have a beer and relax. Your beer will turn out good, it almost always does. (like 99.99% of the time)

I'm making a chocolate stout for my wife, here is my recipe: 9# 2-row 3# chocolate malt 0.5# CaraPils 0.5# Crystal 120L 1# Lactose 0.5oz Warrior Hops at 16% AA White Labs WLP004 - Irish Ale Yeast I plan on adding some chocolate, maybe baker's chocolate or semi-sweet and I need some opinions...

I've seen this said many many times before in this thread, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it again. I used this method and your dunkelweizen recipe tonight and it was so easy! Thank you for helping me get past doing Brewer's Best kits over and over!

I'm not sure how much this is going to help, but there are some heating solutions for cold houses, although I don't know how well they will work to combat 0º weather. Check out these just for an idea; NORTHERN BREWER: Fermentation Temperature Control

So I got a corny kegging setup for Christmas and I've read 2 different way to carb. 1) 20-25 psi and shake the hell out of it and let it go. No priming sugar. 2) 1/3 cup of sugar with 5 psi for a week. Anyone got any preferences or advice on which I should do?

So I got a corny kegging setup for Christmas and I've read 2 different way to carb. 1) 20-25 psi and shake the hell out of it and let it go. No priming sugar. 2) 1/3 cup of sugar with 5 psi for a week. Anyone got any preferences or advice on which I should do?