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Just tried German Tradition; liked it a lot in a SMaSH I did.

It's close. I've had one mess with a 5.25 gal batch in a 6 gal BB fermentor so far. I like the BB, but there are a few drawbacks I see: 1) Harder to clean. I know, Oxyclean is supposed to clean everything, but it doesn't get all the crap off the very top. I often end up resorting to brushes...

If you're doing extract brewing, I'd go with water that just tastes good. If your tap water tastes good, use that; boiling it first will drive off most of the chlorine. If you're doing all grain then you have more issues to deal with, because you need a certain pH range in the mash. But 90%...

I strained a few times but it doesn't seem worth the effort. You still get a layer of crud in the bottom (yeast, particulates that don't strain out) that you have to be careful with anyway. I haven't noticed a difference in final result. All my problems with cloudiness/bitterness were due to...

Yes, but not by much. A 12 oz bottle that contains 11.50 oz will shrink to 11.48 oz when you take it from 70F to 38F. That's only a 4% change in headspace.

For me it's sorta brownish, and seems concentrated where the heat is (i.e. alongside where the burners are when on the stove.

If you are doing this to save effort, you might consider a Better Bottle with a racking adapter. The racking thing lets you position the outflow tube just above the crud. You'd have to stir the bottling sugar very well and let everything settle out again before bottling, though.

Many people here don't like BMC, but the reason they sell so much beer is that a lot of other people do like them. To a lot of people Bud et al really are superior - and yes, that's even when they try beers we consider better. Fortunately there's room for all tastes.

I thought that. Then I went to Ireland and had it there. Whole different experience.

Well, since small brewers pay taxes via the same structure that AB-Inbev does, that may well be a reason it's harder overall - but is not a reason that small brewers are at a disadvantage.

Try whatever you like, but you can get 8lbs of 2-row (enough for 5gal of 4% beer) for about $11. Then you can start adding stuff and at least it will start out tasting like beer. >sunflower seeds, burdock seeds, amaranth seeds, etc. If I crush them, boil >them with some amylace-B enzymes...

Ah, so the LME got the fermentation started. Heck, it would even be beer when it was done! But if you add the dissolved DME you'll bring it back closer to what the recipe intended.

I did a wheat last week, and the mash profile called for 10 minutes at 120F and then an hour at 150F. So I figured out water amounts, and a plain infusion would have required too much boiling water in the mash to get to 150F. Instead I tried doing a sort of a decoction mash; taking off...

Had to wash some bottles/get the labels off for a bottling run, so I filled a largish cooler with warm water, added a scoop of Oxyclean free and dunked the bottles in. I let it sit overnight. The next morning the labels came off easily but there was a gritty residue both inside and outside the...

Try Smashing Blonde (search for it here.) Very simple all grain single malt-single hop recipe. 11# two-row malt, 2 oz German Tradition hops, that's it. Made it last night.

That's what I was missing; thanks.

OK, so I'm planning a SMaSH blonde with 11# of two row. I have to figure out strike and sparge water amounts. Guideline I've seen is 1.5 quarts water per pound of grain. So that's 16 quarts initially. Sparge water (per guidelines again) should be at _least_ the same as strike water, so...

Not stainless, but I just picked up an 8 gallon aluminum kettle from Target for $19.99. (They call it a "tamale steamer.")

Should be no problem, unless you're using a carboy with a spunding valve set way too high (as Kevin at Hangar 24 discovered recently.) Doesn't apply to fermentors with normal airlocks tho.

Six batches. (Not that I'm off extract; that's just the point at which I got the big orange cooler.)