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I used to order from them a lot. I only stopped because I started buying more in bulk which is cheaper locally for the most part. I wouldn't hesitate to buy from them again. Good product and service.

I think the recipe is fine both ways. You could even use the witbier yeast in both batches. You'll lose all the sacc character to brett flavor development. You could use the witbier recipe for both parts as well if you want. Personally I think brett beers without a fair amount of bittering or...

What? No. Brett isn't affected by hops. This is entirely incorrect. Look at brett IPAs which are north of 60 IBUs.

Pretty sure RRBC came around after 1990 but in the early to mid 90s.

Great Lakes and North Coast both opened in 1988 as well but I'm not sure what the lineup was at the time or if you could get any of those beers today.

If the grain smells and tastes ok, it's going to taste and smell ok in the beer. If it is slack--soft and squishy--you may want to add some rice hulls in the mash to help avoid stuck mash/sparge. With hops if they smell ok they are at least fine for later additions. Depending on the variety...

Figuring out what pests enjoy the plants may be your biggest hurdle. When I lived in Dallas I struggled with heat but pests were the real killer. No matter how much I watered, I'd get beat down by spider mites every year and several years locusts decimated them. Locusts probably not an issue...

Hops Direct gets most of my business mostly because they're always running sales at the same time I seem to need to restock. I've ordered from YVH in the past as well as Farmhouse (for 4oz packs). All good vendors IMO.

Yeast and bacteria are everywhere.

I have a small army of four liter wine jugs I use for one gallon batches. A little fermcap solves issues of blowoff unless they get filled almost up to the mouth. For 2.5-5 gallon batches I use a standard brew bucket or now that I am spunding batches that go in kegs I'm brewing in a five...

For most brewers the question is do you like the taste of lagers with corn? If so, brew with it. If not, don't. Most of us are brewing with typical brewing grains which don't need adjuncts to deal with problems with grain (e.g. high nitrogen) so adding corn is mostly a matter of taste. It can...

Started with a corona mill and moved on to a cereal killer. I think the cereal killer is absolutely worth the price. Big problem I had with my corona mill was shredding the husks. It uses two grinding plates to rip apart grain which means tearing up husks along the way. I had problems with...

Mead isn't incredibly difficult to make but it's a different skillset from brewing. You might want to try some other meads before racing off to buy honey, which is a more expensive ingredient than grain or hops. You might find your taste for mead veers away (or into) those sweeter meads.

I went through a spell of making bread with it. I had trouble getting the bread to bake all the way through (which probably had nothing to do with the spent grain) and it made a heavy bread. These days it goes into the compost bin to turn into great fertilizer for my gardens.

I bought a peleton towards the end of covid because my wife and I didn't know when we'd feel comfortable returning to the gym and in our laziness and drinking during quarantine had packed on some weight. It was good for a while but neither of us really enjoy biking. After a few months of not...

At the end of the day, brett is yeast and not really any more resistant to cleaning and sanitation than any other yeast. You do need to be diligent about cleaning and sanitize well. I would avoid starsan or anything similar as a sanitizer. Iodophor would be more effective than most acid-based...

I'd recommend going back in time to threads in the early 2010s discussing IPA techniques. That was the time when brewers were really getting away from the old crystal malt heavy recipes of yore and some of the newer hop varieties were popular but you can still find the classic C hops, too...

Water has a lot to do with the quality of those beers. Many breweries in Europe brew from well water that has been used by that brewery or others in the area for decades or longer. Those styles were designed and dialed in with that water in mind. They know how to work with the water to make it...

I've used lemon juice without problems. I don't see why lactic acid would be problematic. After all, that's what you get from cheesemaking bacteria. Most home recipes use vinegar or lemon juice, so it may take a little work to figure out the right amount of lactic acid. Not sure how much you...

I gave up on the toilet braid a few years ago after having the same kind of problems typically running low on preboil gravity and volume. I think the braid collapses and gets clogged which makes it difficult to drain effectively. When I would clean out the mash tun after brewing I always felt...