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A reiterative step mash seems like it would take forever. If you can do it with minimal personal input (I.e. using a programmable mash tun so you can just program it and let it run), that might work, but if you're hands-on the whole time you're looking at a what, eight hour brewday? I've done...

In a way, it makes sense. Merging makes them a bigger economic entity which gives them a bit more weight with distributors so they can compete better with AB-Inbev in bars and supermarket shelves. Not that I like it or the system that makes it make sense, but there you go. Also, I'm surprised...

Good point. I definitely plan to taste before making any decisions on hops, but I hadn't even considered the potential for bitterness from the coriander and osmanthus.

I've wondered about this as well. Certainly it would be nice to have a slightly bigger bucket, maybe with an old T-shirt or towel between the carboy and the bucket bottom and walls for added padding, but I'm fine as is for now, since the prospect of catastrophic failure doesn't include much...

Did my first no-boil a week ago - a Gose. 2.87 kg local 2-row (incidental weight after vac-sealing the rest of the 50 kg sack - was aiming for +-2.5 kg) 2.4 kg flaked wheat (0.4 kg milled with barley, 2 kg whole) RO water with some gypsum, CaCl, and a bit of lactic acid in the mash. Boiled...

I've got a 5 gallon carboy that came with my beginner's kit. It gets use every once in a while bulk aging a beer that benefits from bulk aging (Brett Saison right now). It lives in a 25L bucket. Being tapered a little like most buckets, the bottom of the bucket hugs the carboy nicely - I think...

There's a decent chance that it's a combination of those things. You may have left a couple points worth of sugar in the kettle and gotten a slightly wrong reading somewhere in there. How's the East Bay these days? I lived in Concord until just before I turned six then again for most of my...

Can you elaborate on this? I've had tartness in rice wine - in fact I'd say it's characteristic of the stuff in my experience - but I'm not really sure what a tart rice wine has to do with a sour beer, so I'd like to hear what you're thinking about this.

I don't know about your efficiency, but there's a problem with your data. 3.66 gallons of 1.034 pre-boil wort won't boil down to 2.5 gallons of 1.040. Water goes, sugar stays. If your pre-boil numbers and post-boil volume are all correct, then your post-boil gravity should be 1.045 as predicted...

This is what I was thinking.

I've pretty much only ever used pellets. I'm sure both options would be fine, though.

In my experience, sparging a BIAB batch tends to give me an extra 3-5% efficiency versus full volume, though I've got a pretty small data set for full volume mashing since I almost always sparge. If you hoist your grains or otherwise drain them directly into the kettle, a quick pourover sparge...

Yikes. I'd probably toss it and send an email to Five Star asking for a replacement. Okay, let's be honest. I'd probably put on some gloves, relocate it to some kind of container (a flip-top, maybe, after doing some research to see if concentrated Starsan reacts with glass), rinse the hell out...

Yeah. That's on the low end for most fruited beers, though it varies across a very wide range depending on the type of fruit and the style of beer, among other things.

Brew a simple wort of 50/50 pils or 2 row and wheat around 1.035, pref acidify with lactic acid to 4.5 pH or lower. Pitch lacto Plantarum and seal it up for a couple days at room temp. Give it a brief boil with a handful of something tropical like Citra, them chill and ferment with a clean ale...

5 gallons APA (drinking) 5 gallons Brett Saison (aging) 6.5 gallons No-Boil Gose (fermenting) =3211

One of the local supermarkets stocks a lot of no-name German beer in half liter cans and it's always on sale. I'm convinced that Feldschlosschen Kellerbier will always be 1.9 RMB a can there (about 30 cents) because the sale price has held for over half a year now. It's not the world's best...

Hoppier as in more bitter, more hops flavor, or more aromatic? Adding hops in the beginning of the boil adds high bitterness. Late boil adds high flavor, moderate aroma, and moderate bitterness. Post-boil (steep/whirlpool) adds high flavor, high aroma, and variable bitterness (depending on...

It's best if you can insulate the wort so it doesn't lose too much heat in that time period. You don't want it to drop into incubation temps for anything that will make you sick or significantly alter your flavor profile (e.g. botulinum for the former or lacto for the latter). I'm another who...

Brain farts... I knew this, and yet I did it anyway because sometimes my brain decides to keep me humble by doing less-than-brilliant things like this.