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Thanks guys. I think I’m just gonna buy a few more and do a big batch in the carboy and bottle in the grolsch bottles to give as gifts.

For a few years now I’ve purchased a gallon sized glass jug of organic apple juice at Whole Foods each year at the holidays and fermented it right in the jug with a pack of red star. I’d like to give some of these as gifts this year but the bottle carbonating is a mess for such small amounts...

The compressor on our fridge just went out and we're looking to buy a new one (sticker shock :eek: ). This led me to wonder if it would be more reliable to buy an upright freezer and put a Johnson temp controller on it vs. a standard refrigerator. Does using an external controller like...

I remember John Palmer saying to do the DR when you see the krausen begin to fall back into the wort. Doesn't sound very scientific, but it seemed to work in my case. There was enough action left to give me roughly a 48 hour DR, even though most of the yeast had flocc'd by then. YMMV.

When I went to pitch the yeast on my first lager Sunday night, I accidently dropped my home made temp controller on the garage floor. It didn't look broken, but the relay must be damaged/stuck because it won't turn off now. I hear the click, but no dice. Needless to say I was piznissed. To...

thanks guys.

Yesterday, I pitched my lager starter(WLP820) straight from a 35F fridge into 3.5 gallons of 40F degree wort. I set my fridge temp controller to 55F. My plan was to allow the temp to creep up throughout the course of fermentation as I do with ales, ending at around 60F, and then do a DR at the...

Cool. I think I'll do a variation on that idea and put 1 in the temp controlled fridge at a constant 50F, and the other just in the garage where the temp will be allowed to fluctuate naturally and see what the difference in taste is.

I just brewed a Marzen and ended up with 2 better bottles with exactly 3.5 gallons of wort each. This seems like a great opportunity for an experiment. Stats: OG: 1.048 IBU: 20.1 Grain: 5lb. Pilsen 4lb. Munich 3lb. Vienna 2lb. 2-row...

My last batch was a Swarzbeir made with WLP060 that was leftover from a previous batch that i'd made over a year ago. I saved just enough of the cake to fit back in the original WL vial. I dropped the vial into a 2L starter and after about a week it had revived and was ready to pitch. Beer...

I sure will. My only concern is not knowing how much of those sugars are unfermentable, seeing as the mash went through a broad range of temps. I guess we'll see.

Just calculated my effic. From yesterday's brew. I got 75.6% (6 gallons @ 1.070 - 15 pounds of Munich 10L). What I did was strike 26 quarts for a 154F initial temp. This was around lunch time. Then, I just left it in the cooler until the kids went to bed at 9:00. The temp had dropped to...

In general the length of boil increases gravity(through evaporation), reduces DMS and isomerizes alpha acids from the hops. I'm no expert, but 90 minutes seems to be better for mash brewing. Anything over 120 minutes seems like a waste of time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a hotter, more...

BrewWiki notes the problem with color calculation when using special b: "This malt is always dark, but the color and flavor vary more than most other malt styles; most of the commonly available varieties are in the 110-160 L range, but it may be even darker. Don't depend on homebrew software to...

Beersmith defaults to having Special B's color at 180. AHB has it listed on their site at 140-155 though. Once I changed it to 150 the color estimate comes out looking much better at 22.4 using the following recipe: Boil Size: 6.75 gal Batch Size: 5.25 gal Boil: 90 min Efficiency: 70% OG...

i'm struggling to get the color/gravity to come out right on this with the given grain bill. what's the color supposed to be?

I was actually shooting for 1.042 to have this as a low-ABV beer, but the long boil and wort-loss from BIAB got it all the way up to 1.052. I just dumped the whole starter (2 liter) instead of decanting to hopefully dilute it a bit. I'm thinking about doing an identical brew and using S-04...

which yeast did you use?

Just pitched the starter into a batch of Helles Bells. This is my first lager AND my first attempt at BIAB, so gimme some HBT karma.

Ok, after aging the intensity off for a couple of months this is actually a really good beer. I can't say that I know what a true Rauch is supposed to taste like, but this is really good. The first one I opened up was just over the top smokey. Now that it's aged for 2 months it's very good...