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I had a similar conundrum a while back. All my beer tasted great except IPAs, which had an overly harsh, soapy, stinging bitterness. I did some reading (danger!) and decided that maybe it had to do with the extreme hardness of the local water. I went to 100% of a relatively neutral bottled water...

and fish farts

Biologist/Environmental Consultant

became wet reality

I'm not sure about the oak. I oaked 5 gal. of a rye beer a year ago with 2.5 oz of cubes for a few weeks and it tasted woody. I'm going to experiment with oak again on an RIS later this month. As for the other two, last winter I put a porter on 2 beans for about 14 days and then added 350 ml...

I prefer to use bourbon soaked spam cubes in the bright tank; much cleaner.

with mash paddles

Belgian lawn gnomes

Great article; so true that experience is the best teacher. I think I've also had a variation of all of these things happen to me along the way over the years. The only one that still seems to get me is the occasional boil-over; I blame it on my cheap defective kettle!

You have 2 beers on tap, 3 in various stages of fermentation or aging, but feel an extreme urge to fill your last available carboy with wort and yeast ASAP!

S-04 and S-05 are my workhorses for the sake of simplicity and ease, but WLP002 and Wyeast 3711 are the ones I use when I have the time to spin up a starter.

panel

off

and stinky cheese

end

Befuddlement

bug

I had the same reaction the first time I used WLP002. In my experience, yes it is lumpy/clumpy. Flocs like crazy, love that yeast!

I've used oxy quite a bit and had the same haze on the bottles if I leave them in the solution too long. I've read somewhere that this is a reaction of the oxy with really hard water. I've used a 50/50 vinegar/water soaking solution, and then a really good hot water rinse to get rid of the haze...

Get at least a 40 qt. and give yourself a little head room pre-boil.