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Living in a country where liquid yeasts (e.g. White Labs, Wyeast) are almost impossible to obtain and unreliable when found (due to bad conditions during storage and shipping), I'm pretty much used to use dry yeasts only. After having tried (and getting a bit bored of) the usual suspects...

Friends, brewers, barmen, lend me your beers. :-) Many English and American fullgrain beers contain ingredients such as flaked wheat, flaked maize and flaked barley. Discussions in this forum tell me that these adjuncts have had their starches gelatinized by the flaking process, which...

I have a few barrels of grains that have been mislabeled by one of our employees (now a former employee). I wonder if there is some kind of test that will allow us to determine what grains we have here. I have a batch of grain that could be either chocolate malt, black patent malt, or roasted...

I think you've just made my day! That looks to be just what I needed! If you're ever in South Africa around Johannesburg, I owe you a few beers. :-) Thanks! // FvW

Thank you! However, the pre-isomerized hop I have is in the form of pellets. The hop I have right now has an AA rating of 10.6% and comes in T90 pellets. // FvW

Hi, everyone, I'm about to experiment with PIH (Pre-Isomerized Hops). Needless to say, Beersmith and similar calculators weren't designed for that. PIH can be added as late as you want (I'm looking at a 10 minute boil) because to all intents and purposes they behave pretty much like hop...

Thanks for the info, guys. It tells me what I need to know: not to even bother trying this. Once again an ounce of your experience is worth a pound of my stuff-ups. :-) It's greatly appreciated. Cheers! // FvW

Hi everyone, Short and sweet question. Can I add my Irish moss to the hop bags that also holds the finishing hops (10 minute boil before flame-out) or would this be a bad idea, with the carrageenan extracted from the Irish moss clogging up the pores of the hop bag? Your opinions would be...

Thanks for the many clarifications, everyone. It has been enlightening. Ironically, because i'm in South Africa the only LME I can get which is produced locally (importing from overseas is horridly expensive here) is light LME. So the wider variety in colors and quality is a moot point for me...

That's what I thought. So then why do most extract recipes that use DME also use LME? // FvW

I had a discussion like this with one of my brewing mates recently. He uses both hydrometers and refractometers, and so far I've never seen the two agree on anything except the gravity of distilled water at 20 degrees Celcius. However. Said mate is also notorious for taking erroneous gravity...

For reasons best known to myself, I've become curious about extract brewing. I've never done it, I've always done full grain. Most extract recipes I've seen so far either use LME or a combination of LME and DME. I'm looking into the possibility of brewing from DME only. However, if most...

Hi everyone, Some time ago I brewed a Belgian style using Duvel yeast which I had grown up from a bottle deposit. The beer fermented apparently normally, although I may have gotten my temperature wrong (I fermented it at room temperature, whereas I now understand this yeast is happier when...

That tells me all I need to know. :-) Thank you very much!! // FvW

Cheers, everyone, I'm hoping to brew an Irish Red Ale, which calls for 11.25lb (5.1kg) of British Pale Ale malt. Here in South Africa the staple malt is pale malt, which is essentially American 2-row. Other malts are all imported from Far Far Away Land and are therefore rather expensive...

No, no. Read the original post. While in primary, the initial fermentation was volcanic, then dropped dead. In due time the beer was secondaried (as I do with all my beers) but that was after the primary fermentation had fallen flat on its face. I am aware that primary and secondary...

Well, the long and the short of it is that after two weeks of apparent non-activity in secondary fermentation, the gravity of the wort had come down from 1030 to 1019. At that point I kegged the beer, pressurizing the keg with a bit of CO2, and I gave it another three weeks. After that the keg...

I post from South Africa. It's late summer here. :-)

Good point. I will try a larger volume, and add a little nitrogen (in the form of ammonium bicarbonate) too because I've been told by serveral people that wort made from LME might be a bit low in nitrogen. Let's see what happens! // FvW

I simply measured the thickness of the layer at the bottom. It does not increase. I have shaken the flask twice a day. No stir plate. No temperature control (i.e. the wort is at room temperature). No cold crash; just normal flocculation at ambient temperature over the course of several days...