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I always pour my home brewed beer into into a clear mug so I can appreciate the color and clarity (hopefully) of my creation. However, when I finish the mug I still drink the yeasty bit that remains in the bottle. That last bit looks about like Sam Adams Summer Ale (and tastes better).

Look at the bright side: a person learns a lot more from messed up brews than from brews where everything goes smoothly! There is intellectual learning that a person gets from books, and there is gut learning that a person gets from drinking several gallons of beer that tastes like cardboard.

I brewed this amber not long ago. I liked it! You would probably need some new yeast, and sugar, of course. This is for a five gallon batch. I am not experienced enough to say if it is better than any other amber LME.

I like the car option! Maybe someone will market a steel plate setup for using with the car. In the mean time, I would go with the grain in a bag and a rolling pin, and save the mallet for a last resort.

I ferment in a small space under the stairs (much smaller than Harry Potters, unfortunately). When I open the door and step in I can smell the fermenting beer or cider. It is not strong or at all unpleasant to me, but that is subjective. I never notice the smell from outside the cubby. I think...

I would give a little more time and see what it looks like. Last time I fermented using apple juice, it took about three days for the fermentation to really kick in. I was using beer yeast, not wild yeast.

Thank you so much for putting that thought into my mind! Now I need to go down to the garage and check my carboy ... I use regular tap water to top off my batches. So far I always get beer, though I suppose that I have no way of knowing if it would be better if I did not use tap water.

Regarding your yeast: the beer is fermenting, so I would take that as an indicator that it was good. The headspace does look a bit small, but I have brewed batches with not much more than that and never had a misadventure like the two that Homebeerbrewer posted. If I were you I might put a towel...

Maybe a top loading washer would work. We have one and it sure spins up: much more so than a dryer. Then three or four two gallon containers evenly distributed around the axis to balance the load. Or one fifteen gallon container right in the middle . . . With a little jiggering you could spin...

I have never left my beer uncovered. Like others say too may bugs here. But when I brew a small batch I just cover the container with cheese cloth. I miss the gurgling from the airlock, but other than that I do not notice any difference. I have never done a side by side test with cheese cloth...

Good point!! Maybe I should not reveal this info, but I do not have a clue what p values are. I just skim over that part of the Brulosophy posts and look at the actual numbers of folks who like, prefer, or cannot tell the difference.

Some interesting discussion here. Reading the comments about how 20 people is too small a sample made me think about all the times I tried a beer because one person recommended it! I can see the point that new brewers do not need to be exposed to possibly misleading info. Still, I enjoy reading...

That does not look half bad to me. If someone sat that down in front of me I would not complain about the color!

Very interesting discussion. I also am not a fan of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and similar beer. Thanks for the tip about avoiding using Cascade Hops in my beer making to avoid that flavor?

You sound kind of like me. I brewed a lot for a few years in the 1980s. Then all kinds of things involving life got in my way. I just started up again. It is kind of funny, but I learned every thing that was essential from a 20 page booklet from Bierhaus International. Now there is soo much...

If you have access to mature berries, have you tried just planting them? I have never tried to root elderberry. But, I have to uproot it every year. It definitely springs vigorously from the seeds here in my garden. (Alabama) I think it takes only one summer to go from sprout to six feet tall...

That is a pretty good list off the top of your mind! I agree with most of those. I would add Peter F. Hamilton's books: especially The Great North Road, Pandora's Planet, and Judas Unchained. And Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye and The Prince series. What is the best new scifi you have read in...

That kind of depends on your breweries! Based on my experience with extract kits there is an excellent chance that you will brew a very good batch of beer if you follow the recipe closely and keep your equipment clean. Save the experimenting until you have a few kit batches under your belt.