Recent content by Cherry Bottom Brewing

The main reason that I went with glass was that i wanted to be able to see what was hapening inside. I keep my carboys in a dark closet, but it's nice to be able check on them to see the beer clearing in the secondary, and I wanted to "see" what hapens during the primary fermentation. I will...

Thanks for the advice. I just picked up the 6.5.

I was thinking about picking up another carboy to use as a primary fermenter. Up to now, I have been using a 6.5 gallon plasic bucket, but I was thinking about getting a carboy in addition. Since this will be used as a primay (I have two 5 gallon carboys for secondaries) should I get a 6.5...

I was at my LHBS yesterday looking for bottles for Apfelwein, and my wife saw some just like that but they were blue. The owner tole me that I would need a corker and corks for those bottles, but did show me some cabable champagne bottles, that had a crown similar to beer bottles. I would ask...

We just opened the first bottle of a Brewers Best English Brown Ale kit that my wife and I brewed on 04/21/07. I tenitively smelled the cap. It smelled like beer so we poured it into a glass. It looked like beer, so I tasted it. It tastes like beer. I was so happy. I was worried that we...

I have made three Brewer's Best kits so far, and I would reccomend following the included directions since this is your first brew. They usually have you start with two gallons of water to steep the grains, and then you remove them, bring to a boil and add the extract. I use my stove top and a...

Barley-Davidson makes a good point. We started a brewing notebook where we list the kit ingredients and the procedures that we followed. SWMBO has also been keeping a tasting notebbok of the beers that we buy to help identify what we like. If you don't already have The Complete Joy of Home...

You may want to consider using a secondary on your next batch. We have been using the 1-2-3 method that many others on here use. 1 week in the primary, 2 weeks in the secondary, and 3 weeks in bottles. We are brewing our third batch today, waiting for the wort to cool. As they say practice...

I second the brewer's Best kits. They seem to be a step above the pre-hopped extract that you have been using. I have done two (my only two batches besides EdWort's Apfelwein) and both required steeping grains and adding boiling and fininsing hops. I havent been able to tase one yet at we...

I think I'll just leave the lid off. The directions did say to move the chilled wort to the primary and add water to make 5 gallons. Thanks for all of the good info.

Add my 5 gallons to the total. 1207 + 5= 1212

Thanks for the quick reply. What exactly is DMS? Next batch I'll try keeping the lid on 2/3 of the way. I started with 2 gal. of water, steeped grains for 20 min at 160 and then brought to a boil and added 2 cans of LME and boiled for 55 min with bittering hops and then 5 min with...

I am working on my second batch today, a Brewer's Best pale ale, and the directions do not say whether or not to use a lid on the brew pot during the boil. I am most of the way through the 60 minute boil, and I have noticed that quite a bit of the wort has boild away, maybe an inch or two in a...

Very nice. I really like how simple it is.

Hello, Today my wife and I started our first batch. We are trying a Brewer's Best English Brown Ale. Things went well. The fermenter seems like it is getting ready to bubble. There is a slight buldge to the lid, and if I press on it, it does bubble. We are looking forward to trying it in a...