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The barrel only has a facility for a single airlock. I have been using four of these for two years now, pretty well all busy all the time and this is the first time that I have had this problem. I bottled the beer today and the beer itself looked OK, I will know more in a few weeks.

I started a brew a few weeks ago. I used a commercial extract in a tin (Coopers Aussie Lager) and a #62 Czech Pilsner enhancer and some 1118 yeast and low carb enzyme. I have made this recipe many many times with no problems. This time, when the fermentation started, the brew foamed up and...

I use glabels. It is not fancy but I can set it up to print 30 labels on an a4 sheet. I only use the labels to id the bottles and not to impress and it is good enough for that.

I buy a purple powder cleaning compound from my local hbs. I clean my buckets and barrels by putting a couple of teaspoons of the powder in, filling with hot water and leaving overnight. That seems to clean everything away.

There are a few things that I do not like about my local shops so I will offer those to you as things to avoid: 1) Scuffed, dusty wine kits. If it looks as though it has been lost in the store room for two years, I do not want it. Rotate the stock, keep it fresh, keep it looking fresh and be...

What vessel were you using for the primary? I use 30 litre vessels for my 23 litre (6 US gal) primaries and however strong the fermentation, there never seems to be any risk of the airlocks not coping.

I have been making wine from kits for a little over a year. I have tried almost a dozen commercial grape juice concentrate kits. The best so far, without a doubt, was a Heron Bay Chilean CabSav/Merlot kit. I have made up two of these, one is almost gone and I still have a dozen bottles left...

But how would you push out of a fermentation bucket or barrel?

The level of suction in the carboy is equivalent to the force on it created by filling it with liquid - in the other direction. If a carboy was liable to fracture under those circumstances then it would also be likely to shatter when you filled it up. Besides, others have used a similar...

Yeah, but the tube that I suck on is only ever carrying water from the carboy that is generating the suction, it is never in contact with the brew.

I spent some time over Christmas looking at my leg, the stitches came out a few weeks back. I really did not want to have to lift another full carboy off the floor. You can picture the scene, slip, drop, smash, glass flies everywhere, look down at leg - Oooh, I can see the bone at the bottom of...

Thanks guys, I just needed patience. Even a couple of days made a big difference.

My first batch was from a kit that came as part of a home brew starter pack. The kit was Mangrove Jacks Munich Lager and I made it with the enhancer pack that also came in the starter kit. I now sit at my desk with a bottle and a glass so here goes! The bottle opens with a small fizz...

Thanks for the encouragement, the bits settled out by themselves the same day though I could see enough through the bottle to tell that it was a little cloudy. By this morning, it had spent 2 weeks in the bottles so I put some in the fridge and went shopping. Now, I am home and the...

Hi, my first two batches of beer are now in their bottles. Batch one was bottled 11 days ago, the second batch was bottled 7 days ago. Yesterday, both were looking good. They are in brown plastic bottles that I got from my local shop and I could look through the bottles and both were crystal...

That's interesting. It makes me wonder if a screw cap may well be better than a cork because you will probably have much less air in the bottle. Is there anything to stop you from filling the bottle to the very top if you use a screw cap? I can see that you might be concerned that a small...

Any experiences or opinions on the use of bag-in-box products? I know that some suppliers do say that they supply the home brew market. After finishing the original contents, I took a commercially produced bag-in-box apart. It was quite easy to take the tap off the bag, fill it with water...

Look at the commercial wine industry. Each year, the first Beaujolais comes out in the middle of November. (Third Thursday to be precise.) Variations in the dates of both the harvest and that third Thursday mean that the time between harvest and the first consumption varies between 6 and 8...

Wine industry sources do not agree on the level of taint. Cork manufacturers admit to about one percent and folks who want to sell screw caps or artificial corks claim up to one in three has a degree of taint that can be detected by professional tasters. The guys over at winspectator.com say...

Thanks a lot guys. Today, I picked up my wine equipment kit and of course, it comes with a corking tool and a set of corks. I also bought a case of swing top bottles. I will start my first batch tomorrow and then bottle it in a mix of traditional wine bottles with corks, swing top beer...