Recent content by Jim Gamble

Going to be brewing a porter in the next couple of days and want to give it a chocolate flavor. So my question it this, which will give me the beat chocolate flavor, the coco nibs or the coco powder? And which is easier to incorporate into the beer? Will most likely add the chocolate into the...

As already mentioned finding a LHBS within driving distance but, if you can find one in your area, find a home brew club and join it. I did and its been a big help with my brewing. Good luck and welcome to the craft.

Going to be brewing another beer here soon. Its going to be a porter with fruit in it, most likely strawberries. I've been told that if I boil the strawberries that will set the pectin and make the beer cloudy but, as this is going to be a porter, and be dark to begin with, is that something I...

Being still new to the craft I've been watching lots of youtube vids on brewing. One thing I see a lot is people adding air/O2 to the beer when its in the fermenter. So, what exactly does this do? Cause I thought oxygen was bad for the beer. Can anyone explain this to me? Thx

Being as I'm still new the craft, I've only brewed three beers, I would try adding less strawberries. Boil them down then smash and strain them and use only the juice. I say this because the last one I brewed I boiled, then added the boiled strawberries into the fermenter, then got chunks of...

I can't identify which might be the cause. I used deer park bottled water and thought I had everything sanitized. I just tasted that batch and it taste like beer, not fully finished beer mind you, but like beer. It has no band-aid taste to it so I'm going to let it finish fermenting then bottle...

This follow up question goes along with my post "it's got a funky smell". That batch I brewed is still in the fermenter and still has that band aid smell. And, after reading some replies to that I think I may have under pitched the yeast. I used US-05. You can view the recipe in my post High OG...

Hmmmmm, don't think its the water, I used Deer Park bottled water. Although I guess it's possible. I think it might be a infection from a different source. Not sure where though. I sanitized everything or, at least I thought I did. Thanks for your response.

Sunday I brewed a new batch, a porter with some strawberries in it. You can view the recipe in my post titled, High OG, and this batch has a funky smell to it. Its kinda hard to describe. It's almost like it smells like the plastic from the fermenter, which I bought new and cleaned with PBW and...

I was going for two gallons. The original Mr. Beer recipe does call for additional hops. So, I'm not sure if their extract has hops in it.

Making a porter. Thought I'd need the FG to calculate the ABV

Not sure if there were bittering hops in the extract. The recipe called for the hops so I'm assuming there were none in it.

Posted the recipe

Posted the recipe

The original recipe came from Mr. Beer and I got the ingredients from my LHBS. Here's the recipe: 1 can American porter extract 1 pnd dry lme 1 1/2 pnd cooked strawberries in a simple syrup (addition to the original recipe) 1 oz US brewers gold hops 1 pnd german dark malt grains (addition to...