Recent content by bigebrewer

If you go the recipe database on here there are several good ones that are toward the top that also have a lot of feedback. This is what I did last year and will be doing again this weekend. This was very well received at tailgates at football games last fall...

I currently have the Double IPA bottled and ready to go, my first BB kit so I was a little concerned how it would turn out, but it may be my best kit beer yet.

So if someone says the world is flat, they aren't wrong, they are just being archaic? My favorite thing said was when one of my buddies came over right after I started making home brew. I showed him my equipment, etc, and showed him the cabinet that I keep my bottles in when they were...

Gulf Coast Rocket Fuel Ale?

My first 2 batches I only ended up with about 42 beers, it took me awhile to perfect racking around the trub and getting the last bit of good beer out, my last 4 batches I have been between 48 and 53 beers and I fill just over 5 gallons.

Yes, while that may have been humorous to those of us that have a few brews under our belt, new brewers are scared as hell when they start that first batch are worried that everything is going to go wrong, and may not know if you are being serious or not ( I realize it was pretty far out there...

Especially since you said you did a good job of cleaning and sanitizing, you don't have anything to worry about. With your first brew in what I am assuming is new equipment the chance of getting an infection is slim to none.

Did you actually add the ice cubes to the wort, or just to the ice bath outside of the kettle?

Use a blow off, don't even think of using an airlock.

3 weeks, it will be disappointment if you open one earlier. I just hit 3 weeks on my batch on Monday, I had one at 1 week and 2 weeks just to see the changes it would go through and thought I was in trouble as it tasted really strong. I had 3 last night and couldn't believe the difference, I...

Using a hydrometer, and it was calibrated right on in water. It is definitely sweeter than I would like but it is tolerable.

I brewed an extract batch of Midwest's Happy Holiday Ale. It has been in primary for 3.5 weeks ( I don't use a secondary generally). This is my 8th batch and I have had no issues to this point. The gravity had been reading at 1.025 for 5 straight days. The target gravity per Midwest is...

I am ordering my ingredients for my Holiday Ale today actually. Making 10 gallons instead of 5 as a buddy of mine tried some of my amber ale while tailgating last week and liked it so much he wants me to make a batch for his family to celebrate Christmas with.

I was making my extract pumpkin ale and had the wort sitting in an ice bath cooling, it was under 100 degrees at that point. I looked over and saw a 3 lb bag of light extract that was supposed to go in as a late addition (oops!). So I made it a really late addition and stirred it in quickly...

In my opinion if it is your first time making that kit, just follow the kit exactly and see how you like it. Then if you decide you want to try another batch with some tweaks you can. I haven't been brewing very long but I think it is best to keep it simple at first and then go from there. I...