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I have four second-year hops plants here in central Kansas. We had a horrible year of heat and drought. Three plants seemed to survive, but with difficulty. My other plant died back to the ground about six weeks ago. Nothing since then has emerged. How can I tell if it is dead or dormant? There...

Last year I planted four varieties of hops, Zeus, Mt. Hood, Centennial and Willamette. All survived, but the Mt. Hood barely did. The Zeus actually bore about and ounce of dried cones. In the second year here in Kansas, the Zeus broke out like a Medusa monster. There were nice looking bines...

Okay, so I have used the yeast washing sticky before and it has worked for me. That said, I recently posted the question about whether some yeast drops to the bottom first. I think the upshot of that was that some yeasts are denser and drop much more quickly. Today I am doing a starter from...

Agrisupply has incredible prices on burners. The BG14 is only 29.95. Does anyone know of another seller with similar prices? Agrisupply is out of stock at the moment with up to a month wait.

I washed some Nottingham yeast from my last batch of beer. I poured off the first water after 20 minutes and then repeated that twice. What I got after the final quart of liquid stratified (days later) was what looked like about 1/2 inch of pale, creamy colored yeast at the bottom, about two...

I know this exists somewhere on the forum, but I can't find it. I'm considering converting a BG-14 (a high pressure propane burner) to a natural gas burner. I don't know the pressure of my natural gas, but assume it is low pressure. I know the orifice will be quite a bit larger on the...

I'm thinking about building a single tier system and eventually might go with the HERMS way of keeping the mash at temp. I see brew sculptures with a burner under all three pots including the MLT, and, maybe this is dense, but why? The strike water for mashing comes from the HLT, correct? Then...

Let's say I'm setting up a brew sculpture indoors in my basement using natural gas. I'm wondering what is acceptable venting. Is a standard range hood that moves about 200 cfm a safe bet for preventing carbon monoxide issues? I have access to a vent to the outside. Does the type of gas burner...

I picked up a Samuel Adams latitude 48 IPA. It's tasty, but why does it still taste so much like a Samuel Adams Boston Lager? I mean, the yeast has to be different. I find it odd. Do they intentionally try to keep a distinct flavor or is that totally by accident? Of course, I find that all...

I just bought two ball lock connectors, a tap, some hose, clamps and a gas shut off valve from this guy at brewersdiscount.net. With shipping I only paid 28 dollars and change. That was significantly cheaper than anyone else I looked at. The shipping was really quick. When I got it, he had...

Was wondering if these handy little solid food stakes for shrubs and trees would be suited to hops. I can't find any thread here on that. Anybody try this or know a pro or con to the concept?

I'm going to be in Wichita in a couple days and I wondered if there is more there than I know about. I once visited a place in Wichita that was small and seemed a bit... out of date on things. Any suggestions or is there only one game in town?

Tell me if I'm thinking straight. The Wyeast website says that if a slurry sediments out to between 40-60% solids, you can figure that the slurry will correlate to about 1.2 billion cells per ml. When I rinse my yeast, I finish with the small mason jars. They hold about 200 ml. So, if I...

Is it just me or are people a little on edge right about now? I hate April 15th with a passion, but even on my favorite forum, people seem a bit on edge. After I pay the tax man my pound of flesh, I'll be glad to get this behind me for another year.

When do most of you take your first gravity reading from your fermenter? I'm excluding the OG reading. Do you wait until you get no more airlock activity and then take it again in three days?

Currently I mill my own grain with a Corona style mill. I do a double batch sparge after a 60 minute mash. I'm hitting around 80% efficiency, but I feel I'm starting to get a tannin quality in my beer. So, should I try to increase the gap on the mill and not go so fine? Try conditioning...

First, for clarification purposes, color blindness is usually not like seeing in black and white. I see color, just not correctly. They should call it color confusion. Green is a challenge for me anyway. It may look tan or red. That said, the hops look pretty green to me, and when I put...

For calculating starter: So, am I thinking straight? It seems to me that for a 5.25 batch of beer you are looking at plato by a factor of 2 (give or take) and then put your decimal point where it belongs? If you figure a million cells per plato per milliliter times 20,000 milliliters to the...

mrmalty.com has the input for a liquid yeast. I'm guessing that is based on an activator packet. The smaller propagator (Wyeast) has 25 billion cells. Does anyone know how to calculate that into the equation for starters?

I was at a liquor store with a bit more choice. Unfortunately, I searched in vain to find and try an ESB (my latest quest). But, I found the legendary Anchor Steam. For ten dollars a six pack, it was a bit more expensive than others, but I wanted the experience. The beer was hard to describe...