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Actually have done starters with my own harvested yeast twice now with great success. Not so much about saving the 8-9 bucks as the good feeling of doing it yourself.

This is fantastic! Made 5.5 gals 8 days primary/8 secondary w-dry hop 1/2 oz Cascade/3 cold crash ---been in keg only 48 hours @ 20 psi-still not totally up to par as far as carbonation but it's already great! Will make more real soon-it's in the 90's here already-this baby hits the spot!!!!

I realize patience ain't my long suit-but I also didn't want to waste 6 gallons of wort. Every time I used a viable smack pack I saw results within hours-just as I did when I added the next smack pack the following morning. I am also in Florida in an ambient temp of 75-80 degrees right now so...

Had a Smack-Pack German Ale 029-decent date (late Feb) and I had placed it in my frig maybe 20 minutes after purchase-had it in frig 2 weeks-anyway-smacked it about 3-4 hours before I pitched-no real pressure in the bag-just a bit of inflation from the increase in temperature. I was...

Challenger-great and underused. Has just this tremendous fullness and thirst-slaking/dry mouth cutting power. I make a Challenger pale ale that is always a favorite after a hot day on the gold course or work. Not too complex but does its job. No it's not Beef Wellington in Bernaise sauce but...

Brewed this Saturday-used the Wyeth smack-pack German Ale (a good date--late Feb) but in 3-4 hours it barely puffed up at all. Sunday morning the carboy was dead. Luckily I managed to find a supplier open Easter Sunday. Keeping my fingers crossed.....

Ybor Gold Calusa Wheat. Bloody awful! I won case for long drive in a charity golf tournament (I think second longest was 2 cases!). Tasted grassy--not as in "wheat" but as in aging fermenting piles of grass clippings in the hot August Tampa sun! Sort of a putrid vegetable smell that could also...

sorry--154 not 164..mashed at 155.2 and it fell to 154.1 over the hour in the mash tun. Water was at 168 as I pre-heated tun. I kept a pretty good eye on temp and didn't have any dry spots in mash-worked water and grain in pretty evenly--no "hot spots" in tun. I was wondering if grain could have...

OK made a brown ale -consisted of 9lb Maris 1lb Munich 10 1lb Chystral 60 .5lb Choc Malt Mashed at 164 for an hour--but all that grain showed OG of only 1.036. Yes I checked twice. Fed an extra half lb of corn sugar to my wort --final gravity landed at 1.012 after 10 days...

No its just the pressure will vary greatly from room temp to inside frig--I know my tank may read 500-600 in frig and will be 900+ at room temp......first----are you bleeding kegs "dry" of gas --with reg down to virtually no pressure---before you open regulator up? And are you running one reg or...

My 1st question--do you have the co2 jug in the kegerator or outside? I am willing to bet it's inside with the cold, clammy, wet stuff.

Look--go get a 12 pack of sierra nevada pale ale and set them on their sides in your vegetable crisper in the frig for a couple of weeks and you'll find some caca in the bottom corner of every bottle. They say it's bottle conditioned ale-anyway even the big-time outfits get some trash settling...

Tried to make beer with my brother at UF in like the mid-80's and it was truly awful. Weasel piss. No--it was worse than that. I guess the fermentation temps in the high 80's to mid 90's outside in Florida in late summer had something to do with it. Oh yeah the fact we bottled right from primary...

Once you go to kegs--I mean I still save bottles--I still bottle stouts and porters--but to be able to brew a nice simple drinking ale--and to be able to go from mash to drinking it in just over two weeks-you just can't beat it!

Taste it after 5-6-7 days--it will probably be flat, sweet, insipid, pretty lousy. Barely a 'whoosh' as you pulled the cap. The experience will probably even bum you out a bit. Lot of work for nothing! Give it 4-5 more days. Better. Not as flat. Certainly not good-you would be embarrassed to...

I use Knox gelatin when I cold crash. It "sinks" the loose hops I use when dry hopping after 3-4 days. I use about 10-12 oz off water and a half package of gelatin---careful not to boil but to let it get hot enough to be gin clean. Let it cool-pour in already chilled carboy (I'm maybe a day into...

Drip tray? Get a welding shop to fab a stainless steel sheet with 3 holes about 7/8" to run your taps through and have them break bottom of sheet and weld sides into about a 4" drip tray and brother you will be stylin' BIG TIME! Even if you just use a plumbers escutcheon plate for 3/4...

In the interest of science, and in the happy fact its about 76 degrees outside and pleasant in the garage bare footed, I drew a little off each of my two kegs I have going right now--one a slow hiss--the other silence. I think amount of empty space may play into equation--but purely a guess. Co2...

Been around regulators/spray rigs/pressure pots for 30+ years--sometimes you get a creaking door sound, sometimes a hiss, sometimes a gurgle-at the main tank, or the reg, or downstream---but it you aren't losing gas I wouldn't worry about it. I think it's gremlins personally. Make sure you...

I no longer have a wife. I do however have a carboy cold crashing in my "inside/house" frig, along with a keg I am gassing up. My ceiling fan is festooned with air lines currently dripping star-san into the middle of the carpeted floor. In the garage, besides my Harley, extra propane tanks...