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When brewing goes smoothly it is wonderful and relaxing. When brewing goes wrong it is a time of irrational questioning panic and terrified paranoia. This story falls into the latter category. My brew buddy and I whipped up a batch of Belgian IPA from extract and went through the usual steps...

Bottle Harvest number 2 worry. I am using a 2 liter flask with about 500 ml of liquid at this point after a couple of step-ups. I looked in the flask today and below the neck but above the starter there is a green spot about the size of a pencil eraser head. Am I doing something wrong? I...

Another point to note is that our S.G was at 1.066 for the recipe. The beer smith estimates were about this for extract and about 1.075 for partial mash. Not sure if we did acheive attenuation or whether it was not truely a partial mash. We added the 2 lbs of grain to 3qt of water at 150 and...

So we brewed up a 5 gallon batch of this Saturday night and finished up around 9pm. The yeast smelled sour instead of bready like most yeasts I have used in the past. After looking Saison yeast up online it did indicate that they do often smell slightly sour. Treating it as a learning...

I guess I made it even less clear for you than haha. The hazy layer is at the bottom. When I have done starters from smack packs in the bottom, completed the fermentation and then put the flask in the fridge the flask has an almost sold white layer of yeast on the bottom. This, while easily...

Shouldn't the hazy layer drop out in the fridge though and create a nice white ring/layer in the bottom of the flask? I did not use foil. I used the upside down sanitized beaker method so that it was within mm of the rim of the flask. Basically a one way barrier style.

Alright so I ultimately stepped up the starter to 1500ml. I let it ferment on the stirplate until there was almost no foam on top. The final result was that there is a peach almost rubbery consistency line at the liquid level, the inside of which is a greenish gray? I was curious regardless...

That is something I was wondering if we could do. I agree about the warm temps being gone for good now. So what do other folks think about using the garage?

Thanks for the input everyone. The yeast provided with the kit is a satchel of lager yeast. The kit is at my brew partners right now so I can't check it at the moment for the exact kind.

I got the kit below from a friend for my birthday. Unfortunately I have no lagering equipment. It has instructions for fermenting as an ale but I am not sure how well those will work especially as the basement is a constant 68 degrees. So my questions: 1) Is there a way to lager this without...

Alright I got a small starter mixed up (250 ml), added it to the original flask once cooled, pitched the yeast from bottle number 2 and away we go. On a positive side note I got home from work today and while there was not a layer in the bottom there was enough shadowing to create a very...

When I originally pitched I did let the yeast warm for about an hour and a half after pouring off the beer. So I think tonight I am going to try this. Get home and take the original attempt flask out of the fridge (already covered) and put it on the counter to warm. Crack open the second...

So would pitching the new yeast during the stepup process cause any problems? For example if something other than the ommegang yeast already took hold with too few viable cells or too large of a wort to yeast ratio in the first attempt?

Thanks for the input kanzimonson I will try it. bknifefight I used a bomber of Ommegang. So one bottle, yes but wouldn't the larger volume (22 ounces) yield a larger yeast sample? I may be wrong in assuming that is how it would work. I have a second bomber. Do people think I should use...

So I want to do a Hennepin Ommegang clone and figured the best way to succeed would be to pick up a couple of bombers and harvest the yeast from it (verified that bottle and primary strain are identicle). I followed the rule of 1 g of DME to 10ml and made a 50g 500 ml starter. Unfortunately...

That's what I was afraid of. We put the hose (which is a couple of feet longer than need be) in a coil at the bottom to cyclone stir it but I guess that was not enough. We started stirring after opening that one though.

Brewed up Midwest Supplies' Octane IPA and bottled on 7/24. Starting was 1.068 and ending was 1.018. Bottled with 5oz of corn sugar and it has been conditioning at 70 since for just over 6 weeks now. As of now there are some that are very flat while others are actually pretty solid. With...

Good to know. Still being new I figured that that would be the tradeoff but was unsure how subtle it would be. Thanks a lot folks!

My buddy and I mad the Advantageous Weizenbock extract kit from Northern Brew today and made a mistake. Instead of adding the Hersbrucker hops at 15 minutes, we added them at 45 incorrectly. What impact will this have on it overall...

Last update with some new progress. I think I have been able to get the magnet to at least stay in the center and possibly spin. It is not enough to create any vortex though, just some bubbles on the surface of the starter in the very center. The axis of the HD magnet was about 2/3 towards...