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Those little cheap 10 gallon tank aquarium heaters would definitely struggle in the winter time to keep the bath water warm. What's cool is, you can use more than one of them. Pick another one up and hook it up on the opposite side of the container. Once the wort warms up, you should begin to...

Depends on your brewing technique and your efficiency. I would search the site for how to calculate your efficiency first and then once you know what your average efficiency is over the course of a few beers, then you can adjust your grain bill to suit. You'd probably only need to adjust your...

Boiling water in it would be your best method. Remember, nothing bad grows in beer and by boiling water in the pot, you should kill off or at least largely reduce any potential pathogens. Iodophor would be a good sanitizer choice for you. If you're having trouble tracking it down, look for a...

There's no need to do a secondary racking at all. You are correct, if it sits on the yeast in the primary, it will only improve. I'd let it go about three weeks in the primary before adding any adjuncts to the beer. If you want to add vanilla bean, simply hose it down with sanitizer (star san)...

Have you considered SCrOG growing? It works wonders for hops cousins when you can train them to a grid/trellis system and keep equal parts of the plant suspended directly under your light system at an even height. If I were the one investing in an indoor hops hydro grow, SCrOG would be the way I...

Recipe Specifications -------------------------- Boil Size: 2.82 gal Post Boil Volume: 2.60 gal Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal Bottling Volume: 4.60 gal Estimated OG: 1.086 SG Estimated Color: 20.6 SRM Estimated IBU: 19.6 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 % Est Mash Efficiency...

I agree, that looks like a very uneven crush with a lot of flour and a lot of untouched grain, both. I still trust my LHBS to crush my grains but since I do BIAB, I always pad my grain bills about 10% on the base malt and ask for a double crush. My grains are usually very broken up but not quite...

My Wife would never go through that kind of effort. I'd get the "I carried your child for nine months" speech if I even brought it up.

I've never used them in combination so I can't say for sure. Both are noble hops with very mild bittering qualities. You'll get plenty of soft floral and herbal notes from each which is why they're so popular in the lightest of ales. I'm wondering why you're going with these hops choices over...

Will do. After doing some reading up on Ken Schramm's The Compleat Meadmaker, I decided to modify the extra nutrient additions slightly and use my pure oxygen wand for brewing to oxygenate the must just once (one really good blast of pure O2 for one minute). I had to degass the must with a few...

Yeah, you're racking over to secondary too soon. Use your hydrometer to keep track of your fermentation and don't rack it over so soon. When the FG reading is stable for 2-3 days, primary fermentation is over BUT... you should give your beers a diacetyl rest to clean up precursor alcohols. It...

I'd sanitize it. Just unhook one side (usually a hose clamp) with a screwdriver and spray the hose, tap and ball/pin lock with starsan or iodophor water. Then, hook the hose clamp back up, tighten it good and attach it to the keg. Push a cup of beer through it and discard, then serve up.

The only beers where I would pay attention to the dates would be IPA's and lighter beers. Breweries want you to drink them young so that you get the fullest effect of the hops flavors before they fade out too much. No worries, Brah. IPA's just fade out into a PA in flavor over time. If it tastes...

My worst brew sessions have been when drinking, too. A buddy of mine and I brewed up a Belgian Stout (which has an odd flavor profile to begin with if you aren't used to it) and thought it would be a good idea to add some absinthe to it. The real deal absinthe, Suisse Le Bleu #4, tasted like...

I agree with the "no flavor" aspect of honey completely depending on the variety of honey that was used in the beer. Some varieties of honey are so gentle and subtle in flavor that you won't taste a thing in the finished beer. Specifically, tupelo, orange blossom and gallberry honey. These...

1) Bittering, Flavoring and Aroma additions. 2) Yes. 3) Yes, some hops are terrible together. 4) Yes, too heavy on the alpha acids in the bittering and flavoring additions can be detrimental.

No harm other than to the color of the beer. Just use a food safe food coloring without preservatives.

Agreed, let the bottles sit a full three weeks in a warm dark closet and then chill a test bottle a full 24 hours in the fridge. See what the carbonation level is like. If it's acceptable, great. If not, you can crack open the bottles and reprime with 1/4 teaspoon of dextrose.

Yep, it sure can. The fats in chocolate can be a real head/foam killer in beers. I brew a chocolate stout that I call "Headless" because of using powdered cocoa in the recipe. It wouldn't hold a head to save it's life and the krausening on it was very minimal to almost none. This post is a good...

I had to make this mead in the middle of the winter blizzards of 2014. Fresh berries were impossible to source so I used frozen. It's useful to have a nylon paint strainer bag to handle the fruit and a big large funnel makes pouring must and cold water into a carboy a breeze. Ingredients: 12...