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Hi: I'm at the point in my brewing where I'm trying to learn from my sessions, not just brew stuff. I decided to start with a "basic" IPA, and tweak it on subsequent brew sessions: - different hops - different hop schedules - different mash temps - different base grains -...

Wow. With a pre-boil gravity of 1.041 and a post-boil gravity of 1.075, you boiled off a lot of water! brewersfriend gives these gravities for pre- and post-boil volumes of 10.0 and 5.5 gallons! (Or 6.4 and 3.5 gallons, for example.) What was your volume into the fermentor?

You didn't say what your batch size was. Assuming 5 gal into fermentor, brewersfriend says an expected OG of 1.073. An actual OG of 1.080 is not that much higher than the target, especially given the variations in crush, in volume measurement, in extract quality, and in boil temps (at least...

I'm curious about "post boil" additions. You say you add them at 170F; how long are they in the wort? I.e., I assume you're chilling immediately after flameout; if so, how much time does it take to go from 170F to pitch time? Thanks!

To the OP: What did the crush look like? My LHBS' mill is really variable. I crush myself at the store, and I always double crush, but sometimes put it through 3x, if after 2 I see intact grains. I've had the LHBS people tell me the crush looked fine, but in fact it was terrible; when I've...

I had to post about my happiness in finally doing a successful AG brew. My first one: I measured gravity post-mash (pre-boil), and it seemed low, so I added 2# of DME. Little did I know about the difference between pre- and post-boil gravity, and so I ended up with wort that was 20 gravity...

I had my first real brew disaster yesterday. Okay, I've had lots of problems in the past 1.5 years of brewing (bottle bombs, forgot this or that), but everything's ended up drinkable. But yesterday I was *finally* going to bottle an American Wheat that I brewed up on July 7 -- I didn't rack...

The last time I brewed, I took a sample of my post-mash wort (BIAB), before starting the boil, to test the gravity. I wanted to do the measurement before I started the boil, to see if I needed to add some DME, but was in a hurry and didn't have time to cool it properly. When I went to...

I didn't see anybody else specifically call this out, so... I think your starter here had way too high gravity. According to the White Labs site, you should be using 2 pints of water for 1/2c DME, not 2 cups.

Hey: So I've been brewing about a year now, and the one issue that consistently bugs me is: over-carbonated bottles. Yes, I bottle my beer, with corn sugar for priming. I've cut back on the amount of corn sugar I use. I religiously check that fermentation is complete before bottling...

Using instructions I found on HBT (but can't find right at the moment), I did the following: - Made a 1L starter from a vial of WPL002 (English Ale Yeast) - Decanted and saved off half of it into two sanitized mason jars - Used the rest in a 3gal brew So now I've got 2 mason jars...

Starter was created ~48 hr before pitching? Never saw krausen in the starter, but then I rarely do. No, don't think it's done. What I got in the thief looked like barely colored water :-( . Didn't even make me want to taste it -- though next time I will for sure. I haven't done a...

Yes, the grain was crushed at the LHBS I bought the grain at. I'm no expert at grain milling, but it seemed crushed to me :-). Just one more piece of background: My first BIAB "all grain" brew was an English Bitter a few weeks ago. Since this was my first, I was prepared for terrible eff...

So here's the deal: I brewed my second all-grain BIAB brew the other day, and I forgot to take a gravity reading before I pitched. Oh well, no worries, I just won't know what the ABV is of the final beer. (I understand that taking a gravity reading of the wort+yeast is just going to give...

I'm a total noob with respect to AG. But I wanted to understand the OP's problem better: What was mentioned was . Are these really two different problems? Or is it just one -- too much volume, which results in too low an OG? Or am I missing something? Thanks!

Thanks everyone. I stupidly thought that an "auto-siphon" was a different critter than what I now see onlinke -- a friend has a siphon just for his carboy that locks over the carboy mouth, and you blow *into* the carboy to start the siphon through the tube *out* of the carboy. The pump-style...

I've been brewing for a year or so, but I haven't run across an answer to this question. What's the best way of starting a siphon from a pail, not a carboy? I've seen carboy siphon starters (auto-siphon), which look fine. But I've been happy doing primary fermentation in a plastic bucket...

Every time I open a vial of White Labs yeast, I get a vigorous expulsion of stuff from the vial. I finally learned to expect this, and so I StarSan the vial before pitching now. This is fine when I'm pitching into a bucket -- there's a nice wide target to hit :-) . But last night I pitched...

So another noob question on stepping, sorry in advance. First starter will be in a 2L Erlenmeyer flask. Okay, I get to krausen, cold crash it, now I want to go to step 2. But the yeast cake in in my flask; do I need a second flask to boil the next starter to add onto the yeast cake? Or...

I've often wondered about this. How the heck do you do this in a practical manner? Do you brew extra small batches? Do you brew them the same day, or nearly so? Thanks!