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Underpitching can lead to somewhat lower attenuation, but can also give you more off flavors. It's also very hard to predict how much less attenuation you'll get. You might consider stopping fermentation with potassium sorbate when the beer has reached an acceptable FG. This will require...

You don't have to bring them all the way to boiling; you can pasteurize at 160F for 10-30 minutes. That will kill most everything without driving off a lot of the aromatics that would otherwise end up in the beer. It'll also reduce the amount of pectin you extract, which might obviate the...

I bottled this yesterday after cold crashing for 48 hours. FG was 1.013. Smell was rich and malty, taste was great even though it was green and flat. I'll report back when it's carbed up and ready for drinking.

Two things happen: big proteins are broken down by protease, and the endosperm is softened, allowing more extraction of starch (which is later broken down during the saccharification rest). If the malt is already well modified, you won't get any further increase in starch extraction, but you...

Protein rest will substantially improve your efficiency. I could see it being pretty abysmal otherwise. EDIT: hmm nope, thought about it again and realized that malted wheat should be pretty well modified. Might still give you better efficiency, but I don't know that it's 100% necessary.

If you can only get one size, go big. Small ones tend to be pretty cheap, though. Worst case, you can use a bomber for smaller sizes.

Looks pretty normal. Take a gravity reading if you'd like; you're probably pretty close to final gravity. It shouldn't hurt to let it go another week or two to let the yeasties clean up, though.

I usually sample my starter hooch. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's absolutely awful. Strange flavors are often present. As long as your sanitation was good and if you're sure that fly didn't touch the starter itself, you're likely good to go.

If the fruit fly got into your starter, you're going to want to toss it and start over. Fruit flies carry around huge colones of acetobacter. No sense risking an infection in your beer.

I did a Marzen with WLP810 (San Fran Lager), and the hydro sample yesterday smelled very clean and malty. It's way too green to comment on the flavor (getting yeast bite at this point), but I'm very happy with the results. I fermented for 2 weeks at 62, then raised it to room temp (75F) to...

There's a thread somewhere on the forum where someone talks about fermenting at 15 PSI. Note that if you did this with water, you'd need a ~33ft column of water in your airlock :) ^^^^ beaten by seconds :)

I'm sorry, I was unclear. In both scenarios, the final starter volume would want to be 2L (since you're pitching into a high gravity wort). You could get there either by way of 500mL or 1L as the first step, and then 2L as the second. 500mL is slightly preferable because it's gentler on the...

I don't know a whole lot about this subject, but I did read a patent from one of the big brewhouses wherein they disclose a process for brewing lagers at high temperatures by maintaining enough pressure to hold an amount of CO2 in solution equal to that which would be in solution at atmospheric...

With the money you saved by not doing one brew every 3-4 weeks over that 11, you should buy yourself a 6 gallon Better Bottle :)

I made my Thanksgiving beer last weekend. Brewed up a simple Blue Moon clone. Once vigorous fermentation is done, I'm dumping in four pounds of mashed up cranberries and maybe one orange, letting it sit on the yeast for another 6-7 weeks, then bottling.

+1 to cooler-based HLT with water heater element. I use a rectangular cooler, so I use a pump to keep the water circulating so the temperature is even throughout the cooler, and I've gone as high as 185F with this system with no issues.

Chico will be basically flavorless in the low to mid 60s. I recently did a Chico fermentation on a dIPA at 70F and it's hard to detect any resulting flavors (though the hops are probably helping mask anything that's there).

By stepping it up, you're adding another stage where you have the opportunity to screw things up; as long as you're conscientious about sanitation, this should be OK. I've done it both ways without a problem.

Once you've poured the first vial into a starter, its age is categorically irrelevant. That starter is producing new, healthy yeast, and the yeast from that starter have good healthy glycogen stores. EDIT: to be clear, as long as you let the yeast completely finish out the starter wort, the...

The calculator is assuming that you're pitching 2L of yeast that you grew three months ago and then threw in the refrigerator. If you take your 3-month-old jar of yeast and make a 1L starter, the age of the result is now effectively zero again. If you split a 1L stirred starter into 5 jars...