Recent content by hudsonj6

It turned out just fine.

I literally just bottled something that looked just like that on sunday! I hadn't gotten around to bottling (made the low gravity batch 2.5 months ago) because of school and was pretty worried when I saw that. It smelled and tasted fine so I racked from beneath it and ended up leaving about a...

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Never used pbw but oxyclean works great. Lots of people on here will say you need to get the oxyclean free (without any fragrances), but I've been using the regular oxyclean since I couldn't find any of the free stuff and haven't had any issues with it. You just have to make sure you rinse...

I think there's an old book kickin around my house somewhere that was given to my parents as a gift before I was even born that has tons of recipes that just call for adding fruit/spices ect to vodka and a few other hard alcohols as well.

More liquid than dry but I've not experience using liquid.

If it tastes fine you're probably alright and as far as the lower carbonation levels in the second batch, give it a couple more weeks to bottle condition and it should improve.

I was curious about the difference between stouts and porters, since both can be very dark and have similar flavors. I did some searching around on here about a week ago and the consensus seemed to be that stouts have at least a half pound of roasted barley for a 5 gallon batch and porters...

It's only really when you go all grain or partial mash that you need to worry about mineral content in the water, and usually as long as the water tastes good you're probably alright.

Absolutely! This is the only way to accurately determine when fermentation has both started and finished.

Check out the link I posted above. If it's a simialar bucket then there's no real need to get a new bucket or lid. I've used mine for every batch with no issues. That being said, if you find the hobby as addicting as many of us do, you might be buying a new bucket anyways to have multiple...

All depends on the size of the bucket. I have the 10 gallon bucket and mostly do 6 gallon batches and even my wildest fermentation (and it was pretty crazy), didn't threaten to blow the lid off.

It turned out good but nothing like granvilles. I haven't tried the recipe posted above yet but I've found that vanilla flavor comes out better using pure vanilla extract (not artificial) rather than vanilla beans. They're selling GIB beers regularly in my area now so when I eventually get...

1.040 is a pretty low starting gravity but it's doubtful that the beer was finished fermenting at 1.018. If the caps are bulging you may be risking some bottle bombs. I've never had an issue with this so my best thought would be to release the pressure but in the future you should make sure...

I use beer smith to convert recipes, but I really wanted to try out all grain so I built a 5 gallon MLT and just finished my second 3 gallon AG batch today on the stove so that's another option.