Search results

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?? I recently started to brew lagers. My third one is lagering as I type this. All three have tasted very buttery after primary fermentation and I can't figure out why. Perhaps this is normal? Here's what I did: Transfer wort from kettle to carboy...

Everyone, We as homebrewers need to band together and contribute all our knowledge on fermentation for the bettering of our obsession. This thread is an attempt to get this ball rolling. First, there are many theories out there on the best methods for fermenting a batch of beer. I think we...

In BS 1.x, if you selected grain mass units to be grams and liquid measurements to be liters, the brew sheet would tell you to add 0.00L of strike water to your mash tun. This is because the mash ratio was very small (liters per gram of grain) and it must have internally rounded to zero. Thus...

Just sayin'.

Just dug into water chemistry a bit to try to improve my less than stellar ordinary bitters. I used the nemograph in the back of Palmer's book to arrive at the need to add 3.5 to 5 tsp of gypsum to 5 gallons to get in the ballpark. Seems like a lot. Comments?

While reading Ray Daniel's Designing Great Beers, he references a book from the 90s called The Real Ale Drinkers Almanac. It sounded like it had a ton of information on I'm assuming British ales including recipes. Still available used on Amazon. Anyone seen this book? Thoughts?

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to London where I sampled a number of fantastic British ales. My personal favorite (and has been for years) is Young's Original Bitter. It is only available in proper form in their pubs--the bottled version they sell is nearly 25% bigger than the...

Brewed my first lagers a couple of weeks ago using Brewing Classic Styles. I pitched cold and started to raise the temp on day 6 from 50 to 60 as both beers were between 2/3 and 3/4 fermented. Not wanting to shock the yeast, I did this temp change over 2 days (5 deg/day). I'm wondering now if...

It seems to be common knowledge not to shock your yeast by lowering the temperature too quickly, but is there any real harm in raising faster? For example, I am currently fermenting a pair of lagers that are ready for a diactyl rest. I've slowly raised the temperature 10 deg F over two days, but...

I'm thinking of upgrading to an electric mash tun using my existing cooler based MLT, but I plan on upgrading to a 10 gal kettle setup in the no-so-distant future. I'd rather not buy parts twice, so does anyone know if I could buy a false bottom that fits both a cooler and a keggle?

Alright folks--now's your chance to hire four aerospace engineers to design your beer rig. I am working on my masters degree at night here while working full time. For my current class project, we need to define a product and/or system and work through the entire system design cycle. I'll...

Has anyone brewed this? If so, how was it??

I myself am the type of person that will buy the good stuff and do it right. I do not like shortcuts or half @$$ing a job. So, naturally, I wanted to buy a conical because that is what the pros use and there has to be a reason. So, I thought about this. I briefed SWMBO on the upcoming...

Did anyone else see that episode of that new show on Discovery, Brewmasters, that profiled the Dogfish Head Brewery? They said that a 5% ABV batch goes from brew day to bottling to out the door in 2 weeks. My question to the masters out there: what do they know that we don't??

Being an aerospace engineer by trade, I make lots of charts. I like charts. In fact, I might love charts. And tables for that matter. Anyhow, I was going to put together some handy full page color charts and tables for use while brewing. I know that BeerSmith and other similar software...

I'm in the market for a new kegerator. I noticed that most people are using chest freezers with temp controllers instead of a full sized fridge. Does anyone have any strong opinions about either way? Why the freezer/controller approach and not an old fridge from Craigslist?

Anyone tried making cider out of one of the many 100% fruit juice fruit punches available in the typical megamart?

On my first all grain batch, I accidentally drained the mash tun before adding sparge water, I then proceeded to add sparge water to the drained tun, drained again, then repeated for a total of three runnings. I realized my mistake at that point. My question is how would this affect the...

I am considering going to dinner with SWMBO this evening for the sole purpose of obtaining bottles of Young's Special London Ale. She, of course, does not know this. My question to anyone out there is has anyone cultured this strain and is the bottled yeast the primary fermentation strain...

Has anyone made a cider from muscadine juice? Or any other grape for that matter? I live in southeast Georgia and have access to lots of muscadine cider that could potentially make a wonderful carbonated beverage! Any ideas?