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Regarding my first all grain recipe and my first lager: I didn't hit the efficiency I was hoping for during the mash, and the OG fell a bit short of what I wanted. The beer fermented for about 2.5 weeks at 50F, then 3 days at 68F, and has since been at 40F for about 4 weeks. Its at about...

So I'm new to kegging, I just kegged my first beer on Saturday and I was very pleased that it was almost completely ready to drink by Sunday evening (after a lot of keg shaking to encourage dissolving). But unfortunately the beer that I kegged didn't have the floral hop aroma that I was aiming...

I thought it would be a cool idea to try to catch some wild yeast from my backyard so I put about a half gallon of wort that I brewed that day out on my porch and left it for out uncovered for two weeks. I just brought it in yesterday, the wort was partially frozen and after thawing it and...

My cider has been consistently bubbling for 4 weeks. I've read about people saying their cider went from 1.08 to like 0.98 in two days or something crazy like that, and I was just wondering if my results are to be expected. Recipe: 4 gal of natural, non-preservative apple juice 2 lbs light...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41E5ZPQNDBL._SL500_AA300_.jpg I ran across these at the grocery store for $7 a piece and thought of buying a few so I can always have a batch or two of cider going (its so much cheaper, so why not..). Are there any problems I might run into with using...

Background: So the day after my brewday, I realized I forgot to rinse off my wort chiller after cooling wort/pitching yeast. So needless to say there was nasty trub and hops dried on it. So I decided to give it a chlorine bath (1 tbsp bleach/gallon water) and the only thing I had that was big...

Not sure where to put this so I'm posting here and in yeast and fermentation. I brewed an arrogant bastard clone a while ago, gave it 5 days in primary and let it sit in secondary for about 3 weeks. When it came time to bottle, I used about 5 oz of corn sugar, stirred gently, and bottled as...

A few questions: I posted this in response to a thread in the cider recipe forum, but haven't gotten a response. So I'll ask here. (Here's the link to the original post.) After backsweetening, why can it not be bottle carbonated? It seems like your adding more sugars for the yeast, is it...

I've been learning a lot about all grain mashes by reading John Palmers book and still have one question I can't find the answer to. Why do a lot of recipes for 5 gallons require 6 or 7 gallon boils? What do you do with the extra gallon or two of wort? I know there will be some volume of it that...

I just made a great discovery/realization. I've seen ads for the BeerTheif, which is a thing used to take a sample of beer out of your carboy with ease (to take a hydro reading or a taste, etc). I thought it was a pretty neat idea because I've always taken samples either with an auto siphon or...

I bottled a small (2 gal) batch of beer today and think I made a mistake. I used http://www.makebeerathome.info/online-beer-calculator/bottle-priming this site to calculated the amount of priming sugar I needed. It said use 2 ounces of cane sugar and, like the idiot I am, I thought it meant fl...

A recipe I'm about to make called for WYeast 1084 Irish Ale yeast but my homebrew store supplies White Labs yeast. Apparently they were out of white labs irish ale yeast (WLP004?) and he said that the White Labs Burton Ale (WLP023) would be a good replacement. First, was he right? Second...

Is it possible to grow a yeast culture from the sediment from the bottom of the primary? How bout the secondary? And if so, how exactly would I do that?

What is the rule of thumb on how much yeast to use? Is it just one starter tube or one packet of dry yeast per 5 gallons or something? I brew using extract and have only bought either kits or recipes that the homebrew store owner assembles for me. I wouldn't know what to do if I ever decided...

I'm looking for a 5 gallon recipe for a Smithwick's clone that uses extract. I really like Smithwick's and I've found quite a few clones that use AG mashes, but I'd prefer to use extract since this is only my third batch. Also, on an unrelated note, when steeping specialty grains (such as...

For a while now I've been brewing 5 gallon batches on my propane stovetop and I think it's time to move to a burner outside. I'm only 22 and can't afford a $100 burner, but am considering building one out of a free propane grill from Craigslist. Is this a plausible idea? Has anyone here done...