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I was visiting Portland this weekend and was disappointed several of the breweries I was going to visit closed up on Saturday evening when the warning came out. The Deschutes and Bridgeport taphouses closed. They have to be able to serve water in order to be open, and I guess they didn't have...

That's awesome. This is a genius idea to make homebrewing more accessible. Those are really good, reasonable prices too. They're selling Wyeast yeast for $6, cheaper than the $7.50 my LHBSs sell it at. They're also selling their grains at significantly cheaper rates - $1.25/lb for US 2-row...

"cardboard-like" is a classic description of oxidized beer. http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html Blandness as you've put it could also be similar to that. Try leaving one of your beers exposed to air for a day or two and see if the "blandness" / cardboard-like gets stronger...

How many batches have you done? You said you've been brewing for a year, but many people have very different brewing frequencies. If you've done only 4 or 5 batches then I'd say it's too early to get frustrated / discouraged - at least they've been drinkable! Another thing you might want to...

Those gravity numbers are way off. AB should be about 1.074 OG, 1.018 FG. So maybe your problem has been that you're missing target gravities on your mash and as a result are getting watery, low-body beers?

What is the size of your brew kettle? What water to grain ratio did you use, and how much grain did you mash? Was this a 5 gallon batch or a smaller batch? If 5 gallons, you must have a larger brew kettle than 5g or have done a low gravity beer. Also I'm curious how you and DRoyLenz are...

That's interesting that you're using such a low water ratio and still getting good efficiency. Deathbrewer's stovetop PM tutorial said to use high water ratios (at least 1.5 qt/lb, preferably 2.0 qt/lb) because a super loose mash is needed to get decent efficiency with BIAB. (I'm not sure what...

To put in my 2 cents, since you asked how we'd rate it, I'd say fairly poor - like 4 on a 1-10 scale. I usually ignore the bottle selection since at most of the restaurants I go to they already have a number of good beers on tap and they have most of their good local microbrew stuff on tap. If...

How can you have "Black and Tan" on tap? A black + tan is usually Guinness plus Bass, with the Guinness on top. Or do you mean that since they have Guinness and Bass on tap they can make a Black + Tan?

Not me. If I had to choose between being allowed to brew for the rest of my life but not teach, or being only allowed to teach but not brew for the rest of my life, I would choose brewing. Therefore my passion for brewing outweighs my desire to teach others about brewing. Only by a little though.

Doesn't look like an infection, I wouldn't worry about it.

I think like a dozen people already warned about the size of the leaf hops, you just must have missed it. :) If you search in the past hopsdirect threads there were a few people who mentioned the large size of the leaf hop bags. Now you'll just have to do a giant double IPA this weekend to...

I do it, but I would not wait until 90 F to throw the ice in. Unless you really want to go to the trouble of calculating exactly how much is needed to get the given volume of wort down to pitching temperature. Otherwise you risk overshooting or having to deal with fishing out a block of ice. I...

Your picture is a perfect explanation of why I buy pellet hops :) Got 10 lbs in my freezer currently, if they were leaf hops I'd have no room for food.

Did anyone else, when you saw the picture in the article, think - mmm, an improperly poured stout, yum, that head is gonna take a while to settle.

Oh, and I forgot to add why I brew / drink ales: To me it seems like there's a much larger diversity of styles and tastes in ales. I can try a porter and a pale ale and easily detect a big difference between them. And there are a ton of variations on ale styles. Lagers have a pretty good...

You guys talking about ease of brewing one vs the other are all missing the point. The question was "Why do we brew/drink ales?". What if the answer is "because we like ales better!" It's not because they're easier to brew, it's just because they're what we drink the most. I've never bought...

The wit yeast always is slow. I use Wyeast 3944 and it usually takes 2 weeks. On my last batch I used a 1 L starter. Not sure if that helped or not, but it was done bubbling after 1.5 weeks and gravity was at the FG so I bottled at 2 weeks. But, the yeast still hadn't flocculated (there was a...

Nah, don't worry about it. It's cider, you're supposed to be lazy with it since it's so simple! : ) There should be plenty of yeast still in suspension. By the way, most people don't use a secondary on cider. 1 month in a 5 gallon carboy with no reracking is pretty standard. So I'd say you...

Just use regular ice. Some people have done that with good results. I did it on my last brew and actually had too much ice (the wort reached 70F in about 20 minutes and still had a small iceberg in it). I froze about 0.75 gallon of water in a plastic 1g milk carton, and then cut off the...