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I haven't worked with a lot of softwares. I recently put Brew Mate on my PC and I've played with Beercalculus as well. A curious thing I noticed with Beercalculus is the big differences in calculated IBU's depending on the hop fourmula used (the two formula's I compared were Tenseth and...

I'm an extract brewer at this point and spend a good bit of time looking for my "next" recipes. I've also been playing around with a couple of softwares. I don't have BeerSmith which seems to be everyone's favorite, but I've been looking at Beer Mate and Beercalculus. I've noticed the...

I'm planning some future beers and don't currently use a secondary. So I was doing some research on past theads concerning dry hopping in a primary. A couple of interesting topics came up in those threads and I'd like to see some discussion on them: 1. While it seems like dry hopping in a...

I've got an Irish Red recipe that I'm planning on brewing. The recipe calls for 6 lbs. LME plus 1 lb. of various specialty grains to be steeped. My LHBS only sells the 3.3 lb. can of the extract. I don't really want to cut out any of the specialty grains, but how do I handle the situation...

When you're transferring your wort to your primary, it there any generally accepted opinion on whether or not to strain out the hops (or does the hop residue benefit the beer during fermentation)?

I'm trying to get my dad into homebrewing. I get a kick out of bottling and making labels for each batch, but I think he'd be more interested in kegging. Is there any problem with brewing up a batch and splitting it at bottling time, half in bottles, half in a keg?

I don't have a secondary, and haven't really worried about it up to this point. All of my beers thus far have been straightforward, no additions or dry hopping etc...The prevailing opinion from some much more experienced homebrewers on this site seems to be that conditioning in the primary is...

While looking through recipes it appears that there are a couple of methods by which brewers like to steep their specialty grains. One way is to get the water up to about 168 deg., put the grains in, let it settle back to 150-160, cover and steep for 30 min. The other way is to put the grains...

I live in Mobile, AL and sometimes keeping my primary at optimal fermenting temperatures (even for Ales) is a challenge. I generally keep my primary bucket inside a rubbermade trashcan with a "door" cut in the side so I can monitor the stick-on thermometer on the primary. This gives me the...

I've brewed a few beers with just a primary, and simply modified the 1,2,3 rule to more of a 3,3 rule, just leaving the beer in the primary for 3 weeks. My beers have turned out just fine, and I've recieved input from other brewers that this will generally not impact the quality of the beer...

Ok, so I've done a couple of extract kit brews to iron out the inevitable newbie issues, but don't have the equipment to go all-grain (and frankly don't think I'm ready for it yet). I'd like to take things slow and step up to maybe extract plus steeping with specialty grains to get a better...

So I'm in the middle of reading "How to Brew" by John Palmer online as recommended by HBT (picking up a chapter here and there at work when the boss isn't watching). It seems as though Mr. Palmer is an advocate of pitching at least 2 packets of yeast (when using dry yeast) to insure a good...

I've brewed a couple of batches thus far and have used One-Step sanitizer which was recommended by my LHBS. I was reading some of the "NOOB Advise" sticky, and someone posted that One-Step "isn't really sanitizer." Based on what I've read on this site, the consensus is that Star-San and...

Greetings all. I have a couple of questions concerning brew pots and brew volumes. I've only brewed 2 batches thus far and have gotten by with a 3-gal ceramic coated brew pot. I've been following True Brew kit instructions and only boiling about 1.5 gal. of wort and then diluting up to 5 gal...

This is my second batch, an amber ale. I did a partial boil (about 1.5 gal.) then mixed it with cool water up to the 5-gal. volume. I assumed that mixing would aerate the wort sufficiently. My water was not as cool as I wanted and it took several hours for my wort to cool to about 78 degrees...

I brewed a batch of amber ale this weekend (Saturday), pitched the yeast around 78 degrees. Sunday morning the temp. was around 68 and fermentation had started nicely. Sunday night temp was around 66, and this morning, down to around 64. I don't think it will get too much cooler than that...

I'm sorry if this gets a little wordy, but I know more information = better advice. So here's a quick story of my first homebrew. It's a True Brew Pale Ale kit with LME and DME using Muntons dry yeast. My fermentation was sluggish taking two weeks to get close to desired FG. I don't have a...

I know when taking hydrometer readings it's common practice to dip out a sample into a test cylinder. I've tried the plastic one that my hydrometer came in, as well as a pyrex graduated cylinder. The problem is that the hydrometer wants to stick to the sides and I have trouble getting an...

When conditioning for your 3 weeks (at least), should that all be at the same temp (60-70 deg.). I know it doesn't need to be refrigerated while it's still carbonating, but for those of you who age your beers for up to 5 weeks or so, is all that at "conditioning temp." and then refrigerated, or...

Ok, I brewed a batch of "True Brew" pale ale from a kit last Saturday. Fermentation started slowly (approx. 35 hrs to start seeing air lock bubbles). Everything went ok for a couple of days, then slowed down and pretty much stopped on Wed. I left it alone, didn't even open it up to look until...