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Hey everyone- I recently posted about my first attempt at making a beer with some brett and other bugs added (via dregs of some commercial bottles). I did a primary fermentation with a saccharomyces strain and then transferred to a secondary carboy and pitched the bugs. After sitting in the...

So I've been brewing for over two years now and have attempted a wide variety of styles. My wife loves sours and I occasionally enjoy them as well, so I figured it is time. My favorites include Russian River Supplication and just about anything by Jolly Pumpkin. I have done a little reading...

Hey everyone- A couple weeks ago I kegged my first batch of beer after bottling for a long time. I have my keg in a kegerator, but I'm not running the beer out through a draft tower or anything like that. It is just being dispensed through the beer line out through a plastic faucet. It is...

I'm getting married in July! Go me, right? It is going to be an outdoor wedding, and I'm brewing the majority of the beer for the party. I can only do five gallon batches, so I'll be very busy over the couple months. The plan is for four different brews- two batches of each. Here are my...

I'm not sure if Metropolitan is available outside of Illinois... but I am enjoying an Iron Works Alt right now and need to highly recommend this beer to anyone who can get it. I enjoy a good IPA or imperial IPA as much as the next beer geek, but Iron Works is so ridiculously well made that I...

My (very awesome) SWMBO got me a great present for my 30th birthday. She booked a trip to California to do some beer tasting. We fly into Sacramento, stay one night there, drive to Chico, stay one night there, then back to Sacramento for another night before flying back to Chicago...

Hi everyone- I just attended my first real BJCP homebrew contest last night and got the scoresheets back. It was a big competition, they claimed the biggest in Illinois. They had about 800 entries. I had no delusions of grandeur about winning any medals or anything, as I found out about...

I always see lots of info for homebrew competitions in Michigan and Wisconsin... but very little for Chicago and the nearby areas. I've looked the Chicago Beer Society website- they meet monthly to drink beer, which is cool... but it doesn't seem to have that big of a homebrew focus. Does...

I do full boils on my gas stove- placing my pot over two burners that are each on full blast. I try to make sure everything is clean as possible before I start brewing, but inevitably I get very hard black crud all over my stovetop, the burner grates and the burner covers. I'm pretty sure it...

I've been brewing a lot of APAs lately- in fact I'm on a mission to craft my perfect pale ale. However, the three batches of pale ale in my pantry (and a fourth fermenting) are leaving me wanting a short detour into something totally different. I want the funk. I have been drinking a lot of...

My relationship with bottles, that is. So I'm about 15 batches in on this freakish obsession and I've bottled every batch. I don't find it to be too big of a pain and I've been very happy with the bottle conditioned results. What I've noticed is this: I don't get much head AT ALL on my...

Aloha. I've been dry hopping a lot lately and I've been wondering if there might be a more efficient way to get great hop aroma. So I've been doing a lot of reading around here about hop teas, but I'm not sure I saw anything about using a hop tea the way I've been thinking about using one. I...

So while I was brewing last night, a friend came over and we did a little beer tasting to refine our palates. It was a really great exercise and I learned a lot from it. I was wondering if anyone has done anything similar and also just wanted to share some of the notes from the tasting...

I got an idea recently for a personal brew quest that will last me for at least the next year or so. My idea is to brew basically the same recipe over and over, changing only one or two variables each time. My hope is that this will really increase my knowledge as to how each aspect of brewing...

Hey all- Just bottled my first hefeweizen. Looked awesome, the sample I tasted was great... very excited about it. My OG was 1.053. When I checked the FG, it was 1.007. First off, I've never gotten a FG that low. Second- that is 87% attenuation! Is this crazy? I used Wyeast 3068 and...

In some places I've read to make a starter 12 to 24 hours before brewing. Then the starter is pitched at high krausen into the fermenter. In other places I've read to make the starter several days ahead of time, settle the yeast out in a fridge, then decant off the top part of the starter...

I haven't brewed a stout... but I'm really looking forward to taking on an oatmeal stout sometime soon. For those of you who regularly brew stouts, what's your favorite yeast? I'm leaning towards Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale... just based on descriptions from the Wyeast website. Any input...

Thought this might be a fun thread... and it will help me out a lot. I've been brewing for several months now and the addiction keeps getting worse. I'm a little stuck as far as what to try next... as I want to try something different than what I've brewed so far. So what's a GREAT recipe...

I had a delightful night of brewing tonight. Made my first all grain batch- a hefeweizen. Everything went great- got great efficiency, nice full boil on the stovetop, the SWMBO made a great dinner, etc. Only problem: I didn't make a yeast starter. I have been on all my other batches... but...

I just recently received my specific gravity refractometer (with ATC) and I used it for brewing last night. It shows both specific gravity and brix. One thing I noticed is this: the brix measurement doesn't seem to match up with the specific gravity when compared to the online calculators...