Recent content by Mikesterbrau

I've got the Ricki Carrol kit and I'm ready to try my first batch of cheese. I'm having no luck at any of the local grocery stores finding milk that looks usable, though. Most of it is ultra-pasteurized, and even the stuff that only says "pasteurized" is always "pasteurized, homogenized...

Back to the original poster's question (If I may at this point ;) ): I have a Kolsch in its lagering period right now that I made with WLP029. My starter looked almost exactly the same as the op's, and after a couple of days in the fridge the yeast settled to a nice layer of yeast-concrete at...

I did let the WL tube normalize to room temp before pitching to the starter. The starter itself had been in my 'fridge for a couple of days.. and I pulled it out of the fridge to warm up when I first started warming my strike water. So far it sounds like this is normal WL behavior, and it...

This is my first time using a White Labs tube rather than a Wyeast smack pack. I've done a Kolsch with the Wyeast before, so that's my reference for how Kolsch yeast "should" behave. The tube I used was WLP029 with a late June 2010 "best by" date. When I pitched the White Labs tube into my...

This is my first time ever growing hops. I started them off in planters just as an experiment, but now it looks like they're growing fairly well on my balcony. I haven't been watering them every day, but yesterday I caught up and gave both pots a decent amount of moisture. Today when I went...

Do you know of any special legal issues with sending rhizomes internationally? I'd like to get some of those, but not at the expense of Gitmo or wiping out the North American hops industry. :)

This is the end of my first year as a homebrewer so I wasn't around for the hop shortages of the last couple of years. A few of the recipes I've worked on so far have called for Challenger hops or other types that my LHBS doesn't carry any more. I also haven't had any luck finding a source for...