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A week is oftentimes enough to reach FG on low-to-moderate OG beers and with certain yeasts, but in my experience ~10 days is a better guideline for minimum primary duration in a sporty fermentation schedule. The "not yet finished fermenting at time of transfer to keg" explanation seems...

You can probably dilute it down with no issues but it seems like you'd just be introducing opportunities for things to get screwed up, for questionable benefit. I guess my point is, it's homebrew... who cares if you miss your target? Just roll with what you have and if you want lower gravity...

My bet would be that the caps aren't sealing properly and beer/foam is leaking out as pressure builds from fermenting the priming sugar. PET bottles can be flaky in my experience. When they work, they work... but I remember several years ago I bought 2 cases of 24 PET bottles from my local...

Yeah, having air moving around really speeds it up. I opened the garage door for the last hour in the final push to pitching temp and it did the trick. Although, for me the long duration that I saw is not a problem in itself, I just want to have some sort of idea of what to expect so I can...

Yeah, agreed. I've had Chinook mixed in with others and it was fine but once I did a SMaSH with Chinook, including lots of late hops, and I thought the beer was pretty terrible.

Well, I gave it a whirl last weekend. When the boil was done, I just left the full 10.5ish gallons of wort in the kettle with the lid on, and pushed the brew cart to the corner of the garage. Ambient temperature in the garage was right around 0C / 32F give or take a degree or two. It took 17...

It's not easy to say for sure with such limited info, but my bet would be that you're simply tasting the hops that you put into the beer. If the recipe called for dry hop additions, then this is almost certainly the explanation. In my experience, dry hops almost always have a detrimental...

I've experimented with this kind of split batch technique through the years. Here is one where I attempted to make an amber/porter combo. I did an amber "base" then steeped some dark grains on the side to add to one of the fermentors prior to yeast pitching. It turned out "OK." By far...

Exactly. It's not that there is no way of making it work, and to those who get it to work perfectly every time, good for them I guess. But when you consider the number of hours that you invest into a batch of beer from lighting the kettle to cleaning the fermentor after packaging, $3-$4...

^^ agree 100% and I will never stop saying it to people who ask this sort of question. IMO, dry-hopping is not necessary to make pales and IPAs that are tasty, but it is almost essential to get that burst of delicate fruity aroma. I say "delicate" because in my experience, that is exactly...

The only kind of "reusing" I do anymore is done by over-building yeast starters by about a liter or so, and saving that in the fridge to form the basis of a future starter. My most recent batch was a 10gal pale ale (~1.050) that used some WLP001 I saved from an overbuilt starter 7+ months ago...

Rocket science? No. Fiddly and frustrating to do well? IMO, a resounding yes. At least, it is so until one develops a reliable and sound process. To the OP - I remember very well walking in your shoes. I tried over and over again to brew an IPA to be proud of, and I had some batches that...

Thanks all. I had no illusions that there would be a "definitive" answer, just looking for real world experiences people have had. Since the wind seems like a huge wild card, it would probably make more sense to use my garage instead of outdoors on the patio. It would take longer to chill...

I've been actively all-grain brewing for 6 years and every batch has been chilled using the same copper immersion chiller I built back in 2015. I would like to try brewing a 10gal batch of beer and chilling it right in the brew kettle using nothing but cold winter air. I am able to find...

My vote would be, if you accidentally get overzealous with the top-off, just roll with whatever beer you get and try to do better next time. Adding plain sugar to the beer will get you ABV, but potentially this will also result in a notably thinner/drier beer.

The question of whether to start with extract or all-grain does not have a straightforward answer, as there are several things to consider. A big one is that people have widely varying learning styles. Some people need to see and touch things to learn anything. Others do very well with wordy...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume by "not very hoppy" you mean that your beer doesn't provide that lovely little burst of fruity/citrusy aroma and flavor that you associate with your favorite commercially available IPA. If achieving these delicate flavors and aromas in your...

Never done it, but I'd be willing to bet the farm that a persistent flavor flaw is not being caused by keg o-rings.

The argument for the 20# tank is definitely a good one. I guess I'd revise my earlier post to say, the key takeaway should be the usefulness of having 2 tanks of at least 10# size (5# is a bit small, IMO). If you choose to go with a single tank to start, just understand that you really need...

On my plastic bucket fermentors I run a steady flow of CO2 in through the stem of my 3-piece airlock while I quickly drop the dry-hops in through a ~1" drilled port on the bucket lid. I just crack the 1/4 turn valve on the CO2 manifold until I get a gentle but obvious flow of gas into the...