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It's a little more work, but I brought a keg of Czech pilsner to one cousin's wedding and a keg of dunkelweizen to another cousin's wedding...neither one survived the night and the DW kicked before any of the commercial brews. +1 to the notion of Biermuncher's creations...I haven't made the...

They've got to *catch* you over the limit. As long as you're rotating the stock like you should be, it would be really hard to have 200 gallons of homebrew on hand (good on you if you can though).

We ported another keggle, replumbed the propane manifold to handle two burners with modern fittings, and made our first 20-gallon batch (lautered into three vessels, then combined to equalize volumes and OG's in two keggles). So far, so good!

The carnage thread is enough to scare a guy, that's for sure. Any time a story includes the phrase, "and the doctors say I'll make an almost complete recovery" I get spooked. I have a few glass carboys but more plastic ones (and buckets)...the glass only comes out when the plastic is all...

We had a little light frost here the last couple of days and it isn't slowing my hops down a bit. Tallest ones are up to 7'. You pretty much can't kill 'em. A few years ago the weed guy came by and hosed 'em down by accident...they were pretty much killed back to the ground on May 5, and they...

Extract or all-grain? Mashing schedule, if all-grain? Yeast type? Did you make a starter? Questions aside, you can often kickstart a stalled fermentation (regardless of yeast type) with some agitation (not necessary to open and stir or re-oxygenate - just swirl or rock the fermenter) and/or...

Malted wheat is actually some of the hottest (most diastatic) malt out there. Victory is toasted enough that it has no enzymes left. The flaked wheat and crystal won't convert themselves either, but with luck there should be enough enzymes in the wheat malt.

Yes, this is your problem. 3 lbs of sugar in 1 gallon puts the OG at around 1.120 (give or take; I'm not looking up the exact ppg), and you're even higher than that. Without a lot of babying, that's a very tough wort to ferment even with a rugged wine yeast. You can probably ferment an OG...

This is your problem. At the end of fermentation (when the gravity stopped dropping...you did confirm this, right?) the yeast have eaten everything they can...either there is no fermentable sugar left, or the yeast have made enough alcohol to essentially poison themselves. Other posters have...

You said that the west side would be shaded by the fence...can you move them to the other side of the fence? Or is that the neighbor's yard? I have a fairly open yard (no fence) so I located a hop trellis away from other obstructions - they get good air circulation and plenty of sun, so they...

Did you add any more priming sugar when you bottled? If there are no more fermentable sugars left from the brown sugar (seems unlikely but you did mention it was sweet), there will be nothing for the yeast to eat and make CO2. It is also possible that your yeast have succumbed to high...

I haven't bought any kits from Ritebrew but I do a fair bit of business with them (they're local so shipping is free) and I'm happy. Quite a few higher ABV styles can use 10-20% sugar, like some strong porters or big belgian styles. The sugar will raise ABV without adding a lot to the...

None of that stuff is any good for you, so you may as well have the real thing - especially if you're only going to have a little bit. I don't have that many fried eggs, but you know for damn sure they're going in bacon grease. And margarine? Please...even if I *wasn't* from Wisconsin (where...

The fence will work pretty well, but the hops will twist around it. Also make sure that whoever is on the other side of the fence is ok with the hops hanging over; my dad has hops growing against his picket fence and the neighbor on the other side cuts the bines dangling into their yard. It...

I live in Wisconsin (short-ish growing season, ~44° North) and my hops typically want more than the 14' of vertical space they get. Liberty and Willamette do ok with that much pole, but the Cascade could probably get up to 18' without much trouble if I let them go higher. Instead, I go horizontal.

I have encountered ultrasonic level transmitters at work and we had a lot of trouble with them in steamy applications. There are new ones that work on higher frequencies that supposedly can see through the steam better, but those start at $4k. You could use 2 dPT's (one with a fixed range to...

True enough. I know I'm always a lot more mellow after a couple hoppy DIPA's.

If you're trying to capture the essence of the poppy seeds, you may be able to put poppy seed pie filling into the secondary (or into the primary after the krauesen settles down. I'm not sure what else goes into your aunt's recipe - lemon, vanilla, ? You could use flavorings in secondary to...

I just ordered the grains so I'll see how it goes. I switched the caramel to 2 lbs Caramel 80L because the Caramel 20 won't add a lot of flavor in comparison, but the 80 will be a little stronger than the 60. There are a number of other recipes, often Baltic Porters, using Munich in...

Can I get some suggestions from porter veterans? A number of years ago I made a batch of porter for a friend of mine. It was heavy on extract, but now I'm brewing all-grain. I converted the LME based on what Briess says goes into their Traditional Dark LME, and the result didn't seem right...