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Folks, THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST, BUT I SOLD THIS TODAY.

In my experience, a flat beer always tastes much sweeter than the same one once it's carbed. So go ahead and bottle (or keg) and see how it comes out.

My tap water is 68 degrees, so I decided to make a pre-chiller too. I got a 10-foot section of 3/8" copper from HD for something like $10 just the other day (get the refrigerator tubing). It comes already coiled in a box, so all I had to do was make the coil a little smaller and hook up the...

But the L-braces will come off, and the caulk can be trimmed out pretty cleanly with a razor or sharp box cutter. I think this is a good solution if you can make it work at all. Once the new piece is in place (held in by glue and a few screws), you can put the brackets back in against that...

Wow. Even assuming that you misread the OG, and it was higher than you thought, it sounds like you got basically no attenuation. Like the yeast wasn't even there, in spite of the fact that you saw at least a little evidence of fermentation. Did you get proper carbonation? Weird. If your...

Temps over 120 degrees are where you're really going to start hurting your yeast severely. And that's not all THAT hot. Unless you're really heat sensitive, you can wash your hands in 120 degree water and not feel like you're scalding yourself. It's hot, but not intolerable. Temperatures lower...

One last try, and then you've exhausted all I know here: How long has it been in the bottles? Under-aged beer is often described as watery. Even if it's been a while, give it another week and taste again. If it's still watery, give it another week, etc, etc, and like that.

Maybe you're serving it too cold? I dunno. If it tastes like the beers in question, and is carbed properly, I can't say what the issue is. Alcohol can play a big part in how "rich" a beer seems, so if your OG was kind of low and your FG was high, it could be low in alcohol. Or if your OG was low...

Can you help out with what you mean by watery? There aren't that many hard-to-identify flavors in an Irish Red. What are you after that's not there? What beer are you comparing it to in your mind? Is it not hoppy enough (not bitter or lacking the floral/herbal flavors of a late or dry...

This makes me think of what Julia Child said in her first book. She'd heard a lot about how you shouldn't cook vegetables too much or you'd destroy all the vitamins. Her response was that if you are worried about that you should simply eat more of the vegetables you prepare. Veg are low in...

Just to be anal about it: It's not really a secondary fermenter. Secondary fermentation is just another stage of regular ol' fermentation and should happen in your primary before you consider racking to another vessel. What most people think of as a secondary is really just a vessel to get...

A water taste? What's that mean? First, are you familiar with these styles of beer? Are they what you usually drink? If not, maybe your expectation is just off. For example, if you're an IPA man who wants every beer to taste like a punch in the mouth, the beers you brewed are going to be...

Calories are going to be a function of alcohol or unfermented sugars. You can lower calories by reducing one or the other or both. But they're kind of dependent on each other. Looking for low calories by starting with higher gravity (more sugars) wort doesn't make any sense at all to me...

I recently bottled a brown ale at 1.020--thought it was stuck, but attempts to rouse the yeast with gentle stirring and another two weeks in the fermenter didn't budge it--and it's actually turning out pretty good. It'll make a session beer, since it's not particularly strong, but it doesn't...

For a normal gravity wort (not a high gravity Belgian or something), you should be fine with the Activator used as directed on the package. It's designed to come up to pitchable volume within the package. When your gravity gets high, or you have difficult fermentables (bog only knows what that...

No offense, but a search on "water bottle" turns up plenty of info about the primary debate on using regular ol' water bottles for fermenters. It's about oxygen permeability. Now, go type "water bottle" into the search, and read a few threads to see what the general consensus is.

I saw that Instructable too. British - Stinging Nettle Beer I'm pretty sure the nettles were the bittering/flavoring agent--I do know that nettles are supposed to be bitter. I don't know enough to know if the amount of sugar added was enough on its own to make for a proper wort (in terms...

Is it the last three batches you've done, or just three times you've made darker beers, with pales and/or IPAs coming out OK in between dark (sour) batches? I ask because if it's happened on your last three in a row, maybe it's not the style of beer. Maybe you have an infection that's not...

Pretty much a noob here myself, but I've heard here and elsewhere that some suspect dry yeasts (Munton's, I'm looking at you) don't attenuate very well. I looked into it and asked around because I found that my first batch wouldn't go below .020 after a little over a week. Finally I decided...