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I've been using oxy-clean to clean my equipment since beginning brewing. I switched to a generic brand, Truly Oxy Active (from Zellers) not because of price but because it didn't contain the blue detergent crystals. I liked the idea of oxy-clean because it has been said that it just uses...

My last four batches have been plagued by a strong phenolic taste and smell. The strange thing is that it varies from bottle to bottle which leads me to think that iodophor, far from being a no-rinse sanitizer, is a you'd-better-rinse sanitizer. All the usual suspects are accounted for -...

After having gleaned hundreds of great tips and techniques off this forum, I thought I'd add my own ideas. I've been doing all-grain along the lines of Revvy's boil-in-a-bag stovetop method with great success. However, I found that the pot was not keeping the temperature very well. I read...

I should know the answer to this having already brewed and bottled 6 batches. The literature, however, is remarkably woolly on this subject, or more likely, my head is remarkably woolly as soon as I encounter this subject. The way I understood it was that you proceed exactly as if you were...

Walking home today, I noticed a toploader washing machine that someone had left out for the garbage people to collect. It's been there a few days. As one does in this hobby I thought "I wonder if I could use that to brew". I looked inside to see if there was stainless steel or, I don't...

Hello everyone, I've been having syphoning issues. got less than half my brew into the bottling bucket before the syphon went on strike. Try as I might, I couldn't get it going again. In the end, I poured the beer straight from the fermenter, leaving most of the trub in the fermenter, as...

Could someone please clear up for me what's going on with the mash/sparge water ratios? I've read that you should mash with a third of one's pre-boil volume, so that you are sparging with twice as much water - two batch sparges. I also read that you should mash with close to half then top...

When you're a new brewer, RDWHAHB does not apply until the pipeline kicks in which is partly why newbies are so paranoid. Hence this post. Trying to get a pipeline going I brewed twice in 3 days. Once on Wednesday then I tried to perfect the recipe on Friday. Wednesday's brew was...

Er, bit embarrassed to ask this. Erm, how do you read recipes? I've brewed Orphy's Mild https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f67/mild-mannered-ale-ag-e-uk-us-52776/ but I mashed and sparged as I had done on previous recipes. I want to try his porter -...

I'd like to brew some porter this weekend and have some chocolate malt for the purpose. What do I do with the stuff? Do I crush it and throw it in the mash tun with the pale and the crystal malt? I ask this question because homebrewing for dummies had a throwaway line that went...

Hello Folks, I just finished my second ever brew. Stepped up from 5L to a massive 10L. How will I drink all that beer!? Had lots of finicky little problems that come from trying to do this on the cheap. One larger problem was that the wort didn't cool down quickly. It took more like two...

Now I'm off to buy Mr Beer. It was good fun, though. Nobody mentions the smells. It smells so good, especially that first hop addition, but everything else, including the crushed grain. Had a few problems though. The first was my grain mill, amaco's finest pasta roller. I was too eager...

Hello Brewers, I'm new to this forum and, until two weeks ago, had no idea what home brewing was. Since then, I've been all over the internet and round the hardware stores. I now have a kit for a 1 gallon all grain stove top mash and a few kilograms of grains but no stinking mill, and my...