Recent content by bsimonssays

Hey guys, I'm getting ready to brew my 2nd batch tomorrow (first one turned out great thanks to your advice!). I have two quick questions that I'm hoping you can help me out with. 1.) If you clean your equipment after you use it on one batch, do you need to clean it again before you use it...

Quick update... I cracked open the first bottle last night after conditioning it two weeks and I definitely made beer! It was quite good... even great (humbly) considering it was my first one! It is significantly more bitter than a lot of the IPAs that I'm used to but maybe that will change...

Yeah. It sounded like crazy talk when he was saying it to me. The claim is that these bottles are actually a composite of plastic and glass and that they won't stand up to the re-use. Anyone heard of these composites before?

So I've been collecting pry-off bottles from commercial beers that I drink... Then one of my co-workers who homebrews tells me that some bottles are actually not reusable. He said that if the bottle says "No Refill" on it that its not a pure glass bottle and will not stand up to being filled...

A few more questions then: 1.) Now that I've used the soap, how do I remove the residue? 2.) When you say oxiclean, do you mean this stuff? http://www.oxiclean.com/ 3.) So I shouldn't worry about the odor?

I just bottled my first batch last night! It smells delicious and the small sampling that I sipped tasted great. So thanks to everyone for their advice so far. After bottling I rinsed all of my equipment thoroughly and washed the trub and krausen (?) out of my fermenter with warm, soapy...

What mistakes did you make for that first batch that is turning out so well? I know there is another topic on that in these forums but it's nice to hear from another beginner.

So here's the catalog of mistakes that I made tonight: 1.) Forgot to add dried malt extract... see original post and "don't worry replies" 2.) Add too much water to the wort in the fermenting bucket and brought my OG to 50(?) when the intended range was 65 - 61. 3.) When inserting my airlock, I...

Thanks for such fast replies! I'm cooling the wort off now and getting ready to siphon it into the fermentor. Definitely feeling a bit more relaxed now... Thanks again!

I just stopped my one hour boil and was about to move my brew pot to the sink to cool down when my wife asked me "What's this bag for?" Aaargh! I was so intent on adding my liquid malt extract that I forgot to add the pound of dried malt. I decided that the beer would need that to have the...