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I'd add another washer, and you may also try plumber's tape on the threads. cheers ~r~

I don't filter my beer, I let it naturally clear in the secondary. You have to be real careful with your filter sizes. What you're getting in clarity, you give up in flavor, because as it's stripping out some of the haze it's also taking flavor with it. Cheers ~r~

Just broke my first hydrometer last week, 15 year old one at that. Got a refractometer off of ebay and a finishing hydrometer to replace. I just used the refractometer today for the first time, love it. And I also got one of the 30 dollar specials. ~r~

Wow, I hadn't even thought about snow this early. It's about 80 and foggy, rainy down here ... but still brewing. Ommegang Three Philosopher's clone here. Wish I had some of that cold ground water! cheers ~r~

I have never been to Australia, but I've never heard of customs not letting yeast through. Now hops are another question ... a lot of countries have rules about letting fruits, vegetables and plants in. If you can find a loophole in the customs declaration, I'd print it out and have it on...

Yep, that's just one of the advantages of switching to all grain ... more fermentable wort. Also, don't be surprised, if you pitch a good sized starter, if a future batch kicks off within a couple hours. cheers ~r~

Back before the micro brews took off, I was driving by this shop in a semi-industrial part of town that advertised "craft and home brewing supplies". Of course this caught my attention. I stopped and talked to the guy for a good while and he told me about a meeting of the newly formed local...

Interesting. That has to be the most pumpkin I've heard of being put into a beer. ~r~

A notebook is one of the most important tools a brewer can have. You may think that you're going to remember everything, but after several years you want to come back and brew that "insert beer type here" and you don't have the recipe with notes on what you did right and what you did wrong ...

Yeah, I agree. Everything is going fine. I'd leave it for 7-10 days, rack to a secondary for awhile and then check it after a couple weeks. Once it's come down below 1.015, then it's probably went as far as it's going to go and you can bottle or keg it. cheers ~r~

Yep, fardy just beat me to it. I was about to say, get a small tub and sit it in your bathroom or somewhere, put your fermenter in it and put some water around it, then just add ice or ice packs once in awhile during the primary fermentation. It will keep the temps down a bit. Another...

I also have a shirron and our ground water is usually around 80F or so. I've had to use various set-ups as far as pre-chillers go and I agree that the trick is pre-chilling the water before it goes into the plate chiller. Currently I have a mini-copper pre-chiller that I hooked inline...

Yeah, generally it's not the stresses of the liquid on the glass that make those things fail ... it's the moving around. ~r~

That's funny. Must be something heavy. ~r~

If you do choose to get a 6/6.5 glass, I'd consider putting it in an area where you can rack in and out of it without having to move it around. cheers ~r~

Your beer should be fine, just a little heavier on the body then the original. With the style, you probably won't notice it much. I've brewed Oktoberfests from 1.045 to 1.065 over the years and they all have about the same flavor, just some are heavier. I think the biggest difference will...

It should be fine. The real answer to your question is that each yeast is different and has different temperature tolerances. If you're fermenting in the 50s that's pretty low for an ale yeast, but if it's going along nicely, don't disturb it. You'll get a nice ale out of it. The higher...

Chuggs makes a good point. Also I'll add that when I have a beer that I want to bottle a portion of and keg the rest, I boil my dme and add it to my bottling bucket. Siphon my beer into the sugar and let it mix then I bottle what I need and then just hook a hose to the bottling spiggot and...

Sorry, yeah I misread, the dme usually just replaced the base malt. The other malts are just there for flavor, so keep them in there. carry on :) ~r~

I've always used 5 gal glass carboys and kinda wanted a 6 over the years ... but in the recent past, I've seen so many accidents with the 6 gal glass ones, both in my brew club and on the online forums that I won't buy one. My opinion is if you need something bigger then 5 gal, think about...