Search results

I'm putting together a NEIPA recipe, and at the moment only have it written with whirlpool hop additions and ample dry hopping (subject to change). I have some questions and consideration regarding potential IBUs from the whirlpool addition, that I'd appreciate some input on! This is...

Hi everyone - I'll be doing my first L plantarum 299v starter (from GoodBelly capsules) either today or tomorrow. I have been reading a lot about cell growth rates for lacto starters and the different ranges you can expect. I am planning to do a 500mL starter to kettle sour 5-6gal of wort for...

Hi everyone - I finally got around to buying a pH meter as I'm starting to get into brewing sour beers. The instructions I received with it don't go much into the best care for this type of pH meter. This isn't the exact one I got, but it's this type of meter: What can I do to best take care...

I'm looking to get more into experimenting with newer hop varieties and really getting a sense for their aroma, flavor, etc. I have some particular favorites but there's a huge variety of great hops these days I'm probably missing out on. My goal is to have a standardized recipe (in the pale...

My faithful Johnson A419 seems to have a problem. I think I've a good grasp on the issue but wanted some input from people who might know better. Just about everything works... it's getting a full 120V input, the temperature probe is operating fine, and all of the settings work. But the...

When I brew a beer with a large percentage of wheat malt (hefeweizens most often), I usually only get about a 60% mash efficiency with a single infusion mash. However, when I do a double decoction mash schedule my efficiency jumps way up to 91-93%. What exactly is the mechanism that gives me...

Here are a few photos I snapped of them: http://imgur.com/a/pG860 I'm fairly new to kegging (as in I've never done it and hope to soon!) Does anyone see any reason I couldn't use these for a modern setup? There's absolutely no visible damage with any of the components, and they look to...

I really don't know what's typical, but this is the yield from a 2nd year cascade plant which I thought was a pretty great yield. Just harvested them a couple of hours ago. Is this around what should be expected for a 2nd year? Will it be about the same in the coming years? Haven't weighed them...

I was recently listening to the High Gravity episodes of Brew Strong and a couple of questions came to me. Unless I was misinterpreting multiple times, it seems like they were saying that the maximum pre-boil gravity attainable with all-grain, within normal mash thickness, is something like...

I had a few requests from people to share how we recently brewed Sahti. It was really fun and an interesting project. We really wanted to take a stab at replicating an ancient style of beer. Our goal was to do half traditional (as reasonably close as we could), and half with a somewhat more...

I have a bottling bucket that I'm retiring from brewing, since it's kind of old at this point, stained, and I just wanted to get a new one. I hate to throw it away, so does anyone have any cool ideas for what to do with a retired bottling bucket? I was actually thinking of making a lot of...

This is one of my favorite recipes to-date. If you can't get WLP566 (it's a platinum strain) then WLP565 I'm sure makes a fine substitute. Let it naturally rise after the two days at 68F until it hits 80F, then hold it there for the remainder of fermentation. It helps dry the beer out, and...

I'm brewing up my first attempt at a RIS, to be aged until winter. I was hoping to get some feedback on the recipe before I made it, as I haven't made a RIS (nor a beer this big before). Batch Size: 2.5gal OG: 1.109 IBU: 74 Grains 5lb 2-row 1.5lb Midnight Wheat 1lb Munich 1lb...

EDIT: I feel kind of dumb. For those of you who notice this, just click on "Water Volumes" in the recipe and you'll see if you can fit the mash. The more you know! I'm having an issue with BeerSmith 2. In BeerSmith you used to get an error in your Brew Steps if your mash was too big for your...

Just got a Johnson A419 controller that is being used on a 5 cubic feet chest freezer for a fermentation chamber, and I have a question about setting the temp for fermentation. The controller is currently set at 63 degrees, but earlier today it was reading a temperature of 46 inside the...

So we decided to make some cards (on Avery 8871 business cards) for our blog that we can give to people when we tell them about our site (in my signature). So I plugging away in Photoshop when I realized I kind of suck at design. I'm hoping I could get some ideas/design tips from people who are...

Would a historical American Mild (around 1900-prohibition) been similar to an English mild of the same time period? If not, what would have been the differences as compared to an English Mild? I did some searching around on the subject and couldn't find a whole lot (as in, none) about...

It seems that both Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors are raising prices to try and drive consumers to purchase their "premium" beers. I threw a quick post up on my site (in my signature) for anyone interested, but since I don't want to get accused of trying to drive traffic to the site, here's...

I just bought a mill today (Barley Crusher) and I have a question about crushing dark grains. The mill is set at the factory setting, 0.039in, and I was testing it out with some spare grains to get a sense of what the crush looks like at this setting. Some 2-row I ran through came out looking...

My brew partner and I threw this beer together from extra ingredients we had laying around at the time, and it came out pretty well. We're submitting it to a local competition, but we're not 100% sure what category we should put it in. Thoughts? Unless the consensus is otherwise, we were going...