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I have a strawberry wine that I made this summer and would like to get it into bottles after stabilizing and sweetening. I know I need potassium sorbate to inhibit any fermentation of the back-added sugar, but is it absolutely necessary for me to add metabisulfite to stabilize? My problem is...

I just added 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite to 14 lbs strawberries in 2.5 gallons which I intend to make up to 5 gallons of water. However, after adding this along with pectic enzyme and grape tannin the whole mess went from a nice strawberry red to a hideous brown color. Is this...

Does anyone know what the alcohol tolerance of Munton's Standard Dry yeast might roughly be? At the moment it might be my only option for making a strawberry wine from fresh strawberries.

With the very wet spring we've been having here in Eastern Iowa the conditions seem to be perfect for producing beaucoup strawberries, so I have more strawberries than I know what to do with. I was considering making a wine, but I have the following problems: 1) No K or Na-metabisulfite or...

Has anyone ever brewed something with a barley malt light DME with hefeweizen yeast? I'm curious what the result would be like.

Hi all. Its been a while since I've posted here. I need a make a few purchases for brewing and was thinking about buying a couple kits because it seems hard to find hops otherwise. Does anyone know how the AHS's, Midwest Supplies, and Northern Brewer's of the world are handling hop...

There are quite a few hop bines growing around the edges of some timber my family has. Last year I dried some, but then never actually did anything with them because I always had other beers already picked out and didn't have a use for them. I decided to pick some off the same bine today...

Would it be okay to lager a cream ale? I'm not sure that it would do anything, but I only have one temperature controlled fridge. I'd like to move the cream ale in with my Harp Lager clone in the the 38 F fridge to free up space in my closet for another primary fermenter. Or: Is this a bad...

Does anyone know of any LHBS's in Madison, WI? I'm going to a wedding there tomorrow, but will want to leave early (I like getting traveling done early) so I thought I'd stop at an LHBS and oogle and maybe buy a few things before the wedding. Any suggestions of places with a large selection?

I'm having problems with condensate forming in my brew fridge. What I've done is something I saw on these forums and consists of a 2" pink foam board extension to a dorm size fridge. When maintaining temperatures at around 58 deg (right below dew points in the summer here, I get large amounts...

I didn't know this in reading about lager brewing, but you can shut your yeast down by holding them at too high of a temperature. Apparently when I brought my current lager up in temperature to about 70 F for a diacetyl rest I lost all yeast activity for a week. I got fed up with it and took...

I'm fermenting a lager (Harp Clone) right now, and it seems to be stuck. I've had it up in the 65 degree range for the last 4 days for a diacetyl rest, and although some of the diacetyl is gone, the gravity is stuck at 1.024 with fallen krausen and no detectable airlock activity. I used 3 lbs...

Okay guys, I need some input on whether I should do a diacetyl rest now or later. I've read things that say you should raise the temperature late in the primary fermentation stage, after you've had about 75% attenuation to clean up diacetyl. Right now I'm at around 1.024 from an OG of 1.054...

So I have a huge ethical dilemma on my hands. My roommate wants me to recommend a Mr. Beer kit for him to get his dad for Father's Day. As a serious brewer, can I even ethically recommend one of these things? He says his mom would have a fit if his dad were to boil hops in their house (my...

So I went into the LHBS with a list... one for a pale ale and one for a lager (Harp clone in Clone Brews) figuring my small LHBS doesn't always carry much so I should have a backup. But I completely forgot to pick up the 10 oz of 10L crystal malt for specialty grains after deciding on the...

I'm currently conducting an experiment in homebrew drinking. I have a batch of American style wheat I brewed about two months ago. After having the second brew out of the batch, I got a case of gastroenteritis/"24 hour flu". I couldn't decide if the sickness was from a virus, some sketch...

I'm brewing Dude's Boulevard Wheat clone this weekend. My only question is: When, in everyone's experience, is the best time to bottle a wheat? Should I do it straight from my primary vessel after I'm sure all attenuation is done? Or should I do a short secondary? I definitely want the...

I've notice this before, but when I brew I always get the scale out and weigh my hops before I add them, and every time the nominal 1 oz of hops in the vacuum sealed package weighs 1.2-1.4 oz. Unless of course my scale is off, but it seems to calibrate right with volumes of water. I guess you...

I'm going with the following recipe, can anyone give me suggestions as to whether my planned hop schedule is okay: MALTS 4.5 oz British Crystal 50-60 L 6 oz Caramunich 6 oz Caravienne 6 lbs Light DME HOPS (all pellets) 1.1 oz Cluster 6.9% AA @ 60 min* 0.3 oz Magnum 12.3% AA @ 60 min...

I'm back at homebrewing after a break over the last half of the fall semester due to a lot of work to do. However, I have come into possession of 18 lbs of light DME due to a colleague and her husband moving and giving up brewing for a short time. So I have something like 20 lbs of DME waiting...