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That will look great as it grows out. Hopefully you don't have the bird and squirrel problems I have growing grapes apparently meant for their consumption instead of mine.

Definitely has the look of a pellicle.

What you see is a pellicle which is fairly common to brett and sour beers. Nothing to worry about. If you rack out from under it, you'll see a new one form. If you only pitched WY5112, the only way you will make a sour beer with brett alone is if you have an excess of oxygen exposure. Brett...

You can get banana out of some lager yeast when fermented out of their comfort zone. That's true of a lot of yeast, actually. Most people just don't want that flavor outside of a hefeweizen or certain Belgian beers.

Depending on the gravity, three weeks might be a little early for some meads. If you didn't check the FG to ensure the mead was done, you may have some dangerously carbonated bottles. That said, you may have some CO2 remaining in solution even with complete fermentation. If you didn't...

I'm kinda in the same boat. I want to brew faster than I drink and I don't have enough people around who want to drink pint after pint of the 5% beers I put on tap. I wouldn't want to brew several kegs of hoppy beers and leave them to languish, especially at warmer temperatures. You probably...

There's no meaningful difference between the two suggestions. Neither the oak or beer cares in which vessel they meet. I agree with @DBhomebrew I wouldn't oak unless you can give it the time it needs. A lot of oak quickly usually produces a lumber-y wood taste rather than the...

Unless you're plastic-adverse this is by far the easiest approach. They are HDPE even at smaller sizes. If you don't care about completely sealing the vessel you can rest the lid on top. The lids are easy to drill so you can either insert a grommet and airlock or drill a larger hole for a...

That seems odd for Fuggles. I would wait to see what the supplier says if you can. Does the package say it's Fuggles or just AA%? I've never opened a package of hops and not had it be what I expected. I've never thought about whether I might receive the wrong hops.

Based on what you said you want the beer to be, I'd look at robust porter recipes and sub out some of the base malt for smoked malt. If a recipe calls for lager yeast you could get away with an ale yeast. If you really want smoke, give it a go at 50% smoked malt and adjust up or down as you...

I made a wit with tips from the blue spruce in my yard. It's a unique flavor. I pulled off a gallon to try souring. It's still slumbering nine months in. I was worried that the spruce tips might inhibit souring but doesn't seem to be an issue.

As long as you fertilize well, harvest at the right time and dehydrate well, the difference should not be substantial. It might take a few harvests to get your process close to the same quality as commercial hops.

Looks like a normal krausen. I remember the first time I opened my bucket during primary and mistakenly freaked out.

A beer that is pretty close to an arrogant bastard clone but with London Ale 3, milder late hops but a firm amount of dried peppers. It's a solid heat but not brutal like Crime and Punishment.

After 14 years of looking at the Delerium Tremens close recipe on here I'm finally going to give it a try this weekend.

They aren't fruity like American or NZ hops. More like styrian goldings can showcase orange but isn't aggressively citrus like cascade or amarillo.

Sort of a Belgian amber or pale ale. I suspect you'll end up with a slightly lower FG. Like @Zambezi Special I'm not a huge fan of leaving those beers too sweet but that's well within the range for Belgian beers of that gravity.

I had the new recipe last week. It's...fine. It still has some of that biscuit malt taste but it's toned down and a less interesting beer. I tried it out of curiosity but I bet I'll buy it as often as I did the old recipes these days, which is once every few years. Fat Tire was one of the few...

I like them. IMO they are fruitier than styrian goldings in sort of a gentle fruit punch way. They play well with a lot of Belgian strains. I also like using them for hoppy lagers. It does a good job rounding out a hop profile in those lagers (and I'd toss cold IPA in there, too) in the same way...

New Belgium uses lager yeast for their sour beers. Their sour team feels it gives them a little more predictability. I've used all sorts of yeast for sour beer and don't feel it results in a huge difference.