Recent content by GingerBeer515

Hey man, whatever floats your boat. But bear in mind, you'll probably get a totally different reaction from brewers in your community than on the Internet. For all we know, you could be a thirteen year old girl whose only experience with making food items involved an easy bake oven. The mistrust...

I recently tried New Belgium's Belgian Abbey ale. It tasted like someone made Fat Tire with Mothership yeast. It didn't have any of the body or mouthfeel I'd expect from the style and the hops just clashed with the yeast flavors. I have no interest in a second glass of that!

Maybe we're all going about this the wrong way. By all means, try as many beers as you can to find out what you do like, but in the meantime, why not just focus on brewing techniques? Find recipes that call for techniques you've never done before, to interest the science lover in you. Maybe try...

Might try some Citra in place of the Centennial or chinook. It has a nice mango/passion fruit flavor. It really lacks any of that pine-y grapefruity flavor that you're going to get plenty of from the other hops, IMHO. I'm kind of a sucker for Citra.

And based on this, I would have to go back to: Mayhaps we have plenty in common. 'cept for the kind of rack we're talkin'.

I've worked a lot with both wyeast American Ale II and Irish ale. They have a fruity characteristic. The Irish Ale is the fruitier of the two. They both throw some banana flavor for me, but I ferment at about 72 degrees. A little colder and it would probably be lessened. I used American II for...

I just had this beer tonight. I expected it to be really gimmick-y, but I found it to be just a cleverly marketed smoke beer with carmelly undertones. I'm a fan of the traditional rauchbier style, and I love Schlenkerla. Felt like one if their lighter beers. It didn't taste like bacon, but was...

Lat year I did a dark Belgian style infused with cranberries and a little hazelnut extract. It was well received, but I was still extract brewing and didn't have quite the belgian flavor I wanted. This year, I have an entirely belgian grain bill, so here comes Blitz'ens Brew, 2.0! After reading...

We have a hot smoke box so I used that to smoke the pumpkin. I wasn't really going for a rauchbier style, just wanted a little campfire/fall type flavor. It's the first time for this recipe, do we'll see what happens!

Smoked pumpkin ale in the primary, citra IPA in secondary.

So, I just had one of those "duh" moments and realized the true flaw in my plan. I can pull off the sediment from below, but how do I introduce the syrup without disturbing the krausen? Answer? I don't. You all are right, the bottling bucket is the way to go. I don't suppose I'll lose too much...

Ok, thanks, this is all good stuff. I think I might try bottling direct from the fermenter after I drop off the yeast and stir with a spoon. I just want to know if it works, but if I run into any trouble, at least I'll know why. Thanks again!

Ok, I feel like this is kind of a silly question, but it's troubling me. I'm using a 27 gal conical fermenter for the first time, and would like to bottle from it, mixing in priming sugar before bottling (not tablets.) so the question arises, how do I mix in the priming sugar without...

So, late to the party, but I have to ask, why not just reboil and add some DME? I haven't had a problem batch come out, but I keep DME on hand just in case. Is this a bad plan? Is there something I'm not considering?

Thanks for the answers! I do a bunch of flavoring in secondary, so I always am interested in keeping things clean. I never had any problem just dropping in hops, but I'm glad to actually know that's ok now!