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Folks need to work on their reading comprehension. Guinness FOREIGN Extra Stout is an entirely different beer than Guinness EXTRA Stout. There are about five different Guinesses out there. The bottled Extra is different than the Foreign Extra, and the canned and bottled draught are nearly the...

I cannot disagree with any of them. One of the biggest myths is that competitions make you a better brewer. Its like most competitions it only strokes your ego and playing to ego is the easiest way for someone to make money off of you. I have been brewing for 26 years and have done the whole...

I tend to vote with my wallet. I've spent hundreds through N. Brewer in the past, but will have to forego doing business with them in the future. If you read anything about the strategy espoused by the CEO of ABInbev, you understand that the man wants to control the commercial beer market. If...

Take your numbers and plug them in here: http://www.brewersfriend.com/water-chemistry/ Then see if you can get your local water into one of the sweet spots for the style of beer you are brewing. I live on the gulf coast with lots of residual alkalinity in the ground water. I gave up and...

One caveate on using champagne yeast to prime: Its important that you use a higher mash temp to retain body in the beer if you plan to use champagne yeast to bottle condition the beer. I have been using it for not only barley wines but also big belgian ales. The champagne yeast is tenatious...

Here is something that makes sense and would not be so wasteful of a fine tasting seafood. In the description of the Harpoon Oyster Stout they say that originally in New Zealand, shelled oysters were boiled, as in cooked in the boiling wort, thereby opening the shells for consumption, and...

As a geologist, I would not expect much mineralized calcium carbonate would be imparted to the beer by boiling oyster shells in it. A lot of the assertions I have read here sound more like marketing hype down through the decades. I can say that having read The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky...

I am grateful for bad commercial beer. It makes me less apologetic for beer I brew that does not appeal to everyone. I sometimes make beer that even I don't like, but I feel better and question my homebrewing skills less, when I taste commercial brews that taste like or taste worse than some...

I have been toying with the idea of a quick and inexpensive way to simulate used wooden kegging of some of my bigger beers. After watching a segment of Brew Masters where Dogfish Head Brewery used wood and steamed it before adding it to the beer, I thought the same technique could be adapted to...

Instead of a bucket, I made a couple of Burton Unions of sorts, without the recirculation, which you could do it you wanted to. I bought two of the snap lockable food keeper boxes at target. They are about 5" x 5" x6" tall with snap locks on all four sides of the lid. I drilled two holes in...

You guys are lightweights, don't you know beer is great on cereal? Milk? Thats for kids. Nothing like Capt'n Crunch with some pale ale, or for something really rich, Capt'n Crunch and a double chocolate stout, like a Reese's Cup in a bowl. Really, beer is grain, grain is a staple at...

I live on the Texas Gulf coast and have been a brewer for 20 years. I never had a problem with my beers of any style until making the move to all grain. It was then that I ran into the problems with my local water. High residual alkalinity made brewing lighter style beers nearly impossible...

I just finished a batch of this from the recipe listed above, from the book Clone Brews. I like to brew a holiday beer to cork in belgian bottles and send out as gifts for the following year. This fit the bill. I mashed in at 7am and didn't finish till 11pm. Lol. I had to collect more wort...

The only thing in the picture that could have been construed to be part of an illicit still, was the conical fermenter. All the other "contraband" was mere beer making equipment, hops, yeast starter etc. The addition in the pictures of the guys hunting rifles was pathetic, like the Barney...

Scratch Alabama from my list of places to visit. Alabama being next to Mississippi, it does not surprise me. A wise man said people get the government they deserve. In this case, the people obviously elected a clown as county sheriff. As we all know, most small town and county lawmen were the...

It was a pale ale served at a brewpub just off of 6th Street in Austin Texas. I believe a place called Fado's Irish pub is there now. The original place was called something else. Worst beer ever. Second worst beer was the stout my wife ordered. I believe they went out of business, which...

The rule of thumb is do not use twist offs and do not use newer thinner long neck bottles. I had a whole batch of sparkling meade go nuclear on me, all but a few bottles. The difference was just that, new bottles verus old. The new bottles are not as robust as the old ones. The other wild...

Check you temperatures, was the fermentation temp of your first batch higher or lower? If lower it took the whole ten days, if your second was higher, it probably fermented out in three. Most of my ales take no longer than 3-5 days tops to ferment out and I keep them in the mid 70'sF. This...

I have to say that Bocks, particularly Dobbel Bocks are an acquired taste. The malt predominates over hops by a mile. If you have pedestrian tastes it isn't something you'd like. Best stay with the commercial stuff, the N. European Pils, you know the kind that comes in the green glass, or Lt...

Watch your mash temperture, if it goes to high the PM runnings won't attenuate and you won't get as dry a beer as you might want.