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I'm a fairly recent transplant from Michigan, and my understanding is that because of the huge and thriving wine industry, the state has made it pretty easy to acquire a small winery license, especially as a microbrewery. I spent 6 months at Saugatuck Brewing, where we had a proprietary cider...

Yeah, man...I'm with you entirely on the lack of tools. I have a hacksaw, a screwdriver and a couple pairs of pliers. I agree, the stainless braid is a great way to get going on a MLT, and that's usually the route I recommend for people (I work at the local homebrew shop) to get going at first...

Yeah—the way I see it, 14 or so pounds of specialties and spelt and wheat and almost 5oz of hops is well worth my investment of time and 9.5lb of pilsner...and I won't feel bad about being a bit on the less cautious side.

Grain, not gain. Damn this iPhone and the app not letting me fix typos!

Eh, more than half of the gain and all of the hops and yeast were given to me, so I'm not overly concerned about control this go around. As long as there isn't any gusher bacteria/yeast (which I know there isn't) I'm fine with letting this one err a bit on the wild side. I'll definitely post...

And I do, too, but in this case, I'd been thinking of adding bugs anyway. I just want to hear what others think about the idea. If it were any other sort of beer, I'd suck it up and go buy another carboy, or run something into secondary a bit prematurely, but I prefer my saisons a bit on the...

I'm brewing a 10 gallon batch of saison today, but all of my carboys are full of beer. I have a few buckets, most of which have been used for either sours or kombucha. I'm planning to pitch some fantome dregs into the saison, and had planned on racking half of it into a bucket that I'll be...

I used a braid for years. I used a very similar setup, but instead of having one straight piece of braid, I had a T attached to the bulkhead so my braid went in a loop. I used zip ties instead of those hose clamps, too, as I've seen too many of those 'stainless' clamps covered in rust, and don't...

Oh... Celery and ginger, too!

This is what I want to promote: brewers that don't care what the literature says about what can and can't be done, but instead try adding whatever the hell they want to their kombucha. I'm using an early batch kombucha to ferment a batch of carrot pickle I have going. As a brewer I'm baffled at...

I look forward to hearing the results of your test! I'm hoping to try something similar with a single batch—half in glass half in plastic, but at the moment I have way too much souring, and not nearly enough clean beer ready to drink.

I've often wondered if putting the fermenting bucket into another larger bucket (or even stacking it inside another of the same size) filled with water would reduce the rate of oxygen pickup, and thus keep the sour fermentation slower (the ultimate goal). It sure would be nice to have the ease...

I've gone about 16 months in a bucket. The beer was alright, definitely not stale, but I think I like the results better using glass/Better Bottle (actually been using a 6gal Vintage Shop plastic carboy that I like a lot better than the Better Bottle—no ribs and thus thicker walls!) That...

Well, the real fun experiment would be taking some of that once it's carbed and putting it into CO2 purged bottles to see if anything forms.

I had a keg of my hoppy kombucha and an American pale ale on tap at the same time. Those two were GREAT blended together—I'd like to try blending a bit of the kombucha in right at the end of the boil to pasteurize it, but I wonder if the cold and O2 starved environment of the keg might be...

A quick update: the SCOBY has completely re-formed across the top of the kombucha, so it's definitely not affected in too negative a way by the hops. The other thing I forgot to mention: I tend to starve the fermentation of oxygen just a bit for the first week or so (I keep the lid on over the...

For the last batch I've consumed, I steeped the black tea (starting it at 212ºF) for ~6 minutes, removed it and then added a bunch of whole leaf simcoe (I don't have my brewing notes on me at the moment, and it's been a while). The last batch I brewed, I decided to try a few new ideas. With...

I've been brewing beer for about 7 years now, and drinking kombucha most of that time. I've been brewing it the past couple years and feel like there's a whole lot of bulls**t that people seem to hold to. I'm a big fan of brewing and drinking sour beers, and have plenty of experience working...

Not only does that look like mold, but looks almost like acetobacter forming with those pale orange circles. When I get time a bit later I'll post some pictures of my kombucha. The SCOBY looks a lot like those orange patches... No mold on it, though. I introduced Brett. L. to the SCOBY...

My IPA (1.070 OG) uses 007. The last batch seemed to crap out at 1.016—not terrible for a 1.070 beer, but not where I wanted it to be. The oxygen pickup in moving it over to secondary ended up getting it restarted, and I finished up at 1.012.