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Hey all, About six months ago I moved to the oppressive state of Alabama for flight school, where homebrewing was illegal until about a week ago. I decided to get my equipment out and see what kind of shape everything was in and, with the exception of my mash tun, everything looked pretty...

Just an update: I ended up using balloons without any issues. No infection, no apparent oxidation.

Hey all, I recently acquired a run down kegerator and fixed her up to be a show piece (in my mind). The of the taps work flawlessly, however the fourth is being stubborn. For some reason the beer doesn't want to come out how it is supposed to. Instead, it pours foam and immediately after...

Hey all, So I went to the brew store tonight and while I was there spotted some glass carboys on sale. I bought 2 not not realizing that the mouth is a different size than my better bottles that I normally ferment in. I was planning on moving 10 gallons of cream ale into the new carboys...

You're going to want to rack the beer off the yeast once fermentation is near completion and onto your fruit in the secondary. And don't worry about running the oregon fruit through the juicer, it's already pureed.

Diacytal is a byproduct of fermentation, when you boil you're getting rid of dimethyl sulfide. As for the lack of stoutiness, try to grind your roasted malts finer, that could help.

Jamil Zainasheff recommends .5 lbs of fruit puree/gallon of beer to start and adjust it from there. Since a stout is a bolder beer you may want a slightly greater ratio.

It's tough to say if it got infected or not. All the pressure and foam coming out of the top could have prevented any bacteria from entering, but you will know when you taste it! What I do is use a blow off tube to let the kreusen leave the fermenter without exposing it to the ambient air. Once...

Me and a group of new friends were sitting around the breakfast table the other day the night after they tasted one of my homebrews. They wanted to know all about the hobby, and I was more than happy to impart my knowledge on them; however my one friend thought he knew plenty more about beer...

:( that's depressing :( is the liquid seeping out from underneath the disconnect or from the hose attached to the disconnect?

Good stuff, I've been living by Mr. Malty's calculator for yeast pitching and haven't had any bad fermentations since!

I agree with your stating that it shouldn't be any colder than 40, but google what temperature beer freezes. Everywhere I looked said 28 degrees.

+1 on that. It's been a while since I've had chemistry, but last time I checked water doesn't freeze at 37 lol. Beer freezes closer to 28 degrees because of the alcohol, but that's still very cold for serving beer. I have a haier kegerator with a thermostat too. I have a small fan that I...

It's.....beautiful.... :ban: How much did the whole setup cost you?

You'll probably want to get yourself a thermostat that you can plug the freezer into. http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/johnson-refrigerator-thermostat.html This is the one I use, it keeps the temp +-3 degrees.

You're right, always probably wasn't the best word to use; however if we're going to nitpick, on the vials of white labs yeast the instructions state that it is not necessary to make a starter for beers with a gravity of under 1.060, something that most homebrewers would contest. Rehydrating dry...

With dry yeast it's always a good idea to rehydrate it and test it for life before pitching it, especially when you get it in a kit. It is important to do so because dry yeast cells are dehydrated, and adding them directly to the wort puts a lot of strain on their cell membranes as they try do...

If the yeast is expired, it could take a while for the fermentation to start. I've had starters that have taken 3 days to kick off. Or, the fermentation could already be completed. The wort in yeast starters has a very low gravity as to not strain the yeast and allow for fast, efficient...

Are you using smack packs or dry yeast?

When I made my first MLT out of a cooler I had the same problem; did a test run with just water, the temperature dropped about 10-15 degrees over an hour, and I freaked. After doing a little research I found an article about thermal mass. Thermal mass is an item's ability at maintain heat and...