Recent content by TropicThunder

If you added water to the wort, your OG reading shouldn't be off due to the wort hanging out at the bottom, they'll mix. You'll have a lower ABV than you targeted, but I'm willing to bet it's still tasty. Congratulations on your great first adventure in homebrewing - definitely a story you'll...

Congratulations! I still remember my first brew, I was reading instructions, adding ingredients and then reading more. At one point I put in the hops, turned to read, and the pot boiled over. I scraped hops off the side of the kettle and put them back in, and when I read the next line on the...

I've got a batch of Belgian Tripel in the fermentor right now! The main thing I saw as the differentiator was the clear candi sugar and the yeast. Here's the recipe I'm using: · Malt o 9.9 lbs. Gold LME o ½ lb. Belgian Carapils · Hops o 1 oz. Perle (7.0-9.5% alpha /...

Just as a follow-up, I cracked a bottle and took another FG reading and it hasn't budged, so the yeast is done. RM-MN, thanks for the feedback - would agitating the fementor every few days help keep the yeast in suspension? Our basement stays a constant 66 degrees, but it would be tough to...

Thanks for the feedback! That's an easy way to do it. I'm looking at strainers over at Amazon - what micron size strainer do you use?

As for question #2, I could probably wait for a few days, crack a bottle and then measure again, right?

1) I stirred it like the other batches I've done in the past and have had good luck with, but this was a higher gravity than I've done before. Other than getting a device to aerate the wort, are there other techniques? I was thinking of passing it through a fine strainer when I put it into the...

I used Briess Golden Light malt: http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Assets/PDFs/Briess_PISB_CBWGoldenLightLME.pdf Both it and the yeast was not expired.

I just bottled an Imperial IPA and I didn't hit the attenuation numbers I was hoping for, so I'm hoping you have some ideas! It was disappointing because in the past the same setup on smaller beers attenuated properly. Here's the recipe. Style: American Imperial IPA Malts 9.9 lbs. LME 1 lb...

I bottled a black IPA in bombers before it finished fermentation and had them conditioning on top of our basement freezer. The wife heard the bottle explode from the next room and thought it was a bottle falling off of the freezer and shattering. The bottle sent glass out in a 10-foot radius...

I've got to vote to go with one with a spring as well. I used one without a spring and sometimes the valve would get stuck and not shut off when bottling. It happened 3 times with a 5-gallon batch and I probably lost a full bottle of beer that day. That was the last time using a non-spring...

I don't think it matters if the water his hot or cold, but it would probably dissolve better in hot. I usually dump in the whole bag and then mix it and break up the clumps. I'm sure it's just personal preference.

I just brewed an American Wheat with straight DME and an Irish Stout with a partial mash and LME, and here are the differences I noticed. (5 gallon batch) With 6 lbs. of DME, I got an OG of 1.060. With 6.6 lbs. of the LME and steeping 1 lb. of roasted grain, I got an OG of 1.056. Anyone else...