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I think on the balance, you are probably going to end up with a sweeter beer than you were expecting, but chalk it up to experience. If the recipe called for using half of the extract at knock-out, it was doing that to keep a higher water content in the initial pot, which would mean that you...

Adding all the extract at the start of the boil is one standard way of brewing. Adding it late changes the colour (makes it a bit more authentic) and also will make the beer more bitter (boiling the hops with a higher water content for longer increases bitterness extraction). The extra...

I suggest using 2L bottles instead of 20 ouncers. I live in MI, keep the ambient temperature in the apartment at 73, and I can keep the temperature on my primary down to 65 pretty easily by using a basic bucket full of water and frozen water bottles. I have a couple of 20 ouncers that I...

Interesting topic...thanks for bringing this up. OK, related: how hot does the wort have to be to actually be extracting IBUs vs. aroma oils from the hops? I cook on the stove top, and then take my kettle, set it in my tub in an ice bath, and aggressively swirl the water for the first 15...

Good suggestions guys, thanks. I have some Oxyclean in the house, so I'll try the soak method first, if that fails, then it's time to break out the brushes. :mug:

I think I let my Hefe sit for about 2.5 weeks from brew to bottle. I just bottled it last night and it already tastes extremely good, even without carbonation or final yeast cleanup. I think, based on what I've read and seen, that you just have to take some blow off for granted with those...

I had a similar adventure when I made a Hefe using about 5 pounds of wheat and a couple of pounds of honey. My understanding is that both wheat and honey create very active fermentation, and that putting them together is basically a recipe for a blow off.

Hi guys, Quick question: When I was brewing a Hefe the thing was threatening to blow the lid off my bucket. So I cobbled together a blow off from some 5/16" tubing and the bottom of a 3 piece airlock. It worked like a charm. Now my question is how to clean the stuff with the trub inside...

Do you like sour beers? If so, I would finish it out like a normal batch and see what it tastes like. My understanding is that wild often equals Brett, which is a wild yeast that winemakers think of as a scourge, but which is the basis of many tasty sour beers. Of course, it's wild, so who...

The reason to partial mash is basically because it gives you many of the options that all grain does, but that it's much less of a hassle. As the other posters have noted, doing pure extract batches limits you to base malts and specialty grains, but takes a lot of other grains that require a...

American cases are 4 six packs in a cardboard box, it's how beer is shipped to stores in the States.

Agreed on the frozen water bottles. I keep the apartment at a solid 73, but I keep my beer in a rubbermaid tub full of water and rotate frozen 20 oz. and 2 L bottles full of water to keep the temperature down. With some care I've been able to keep the temp (as measured by the thermometer on...

Question: For those of you who have brewed Barley Wines like this, how necessary is the cold conditioning to get the beer to taste right when it's done? I like Old Foghorn a lot, and I'm tempted to use this recipe, but there is no way that I could condition the final beer like that. What kind...

Hi all, I'm a newbie brewer and I'm interested in using Horizon hops for their resiny flavour. My question from those who've used them, how much do you need to use to get a big resin flavour in a heavier beer? (1.080ish). I'm thinking of using them in an American Barley Wine, but I'm not...

I just wanted to offer some final thanks to the people who started and contributed to this thread. I had a huge gain in efficiency yesterday when I took a rolling pin to my Midwest milled grain prior to using it. Huge protein layer and nice gravity that was a couple of points higher than I was...

In my (admittedly limited) experience, hot breaks do have a huge variety. I've had just a modest amount of foam to thick, syrupy protein consistency. If you make bigger beers and mash at least some of your grains that seems to affect the break. The big 1.084 beer I did yesterday had a huge layer...

Hi all, Just put a bigger IPA in the primary yesterday and I was beginning to think about ways of reusing the WLP001 yeast cake that will be left when I move it to the secondary in a couple of weeks. One thing that came to mind was a longer aging beer, and I started thinking about doing up an...

Sanitizing in the dishwasher is fine as long as you're just using the steam dry feature...I wash out my bottles with my jet washer and then steam them for sanitizing...works like a charm. If you have food bits in your bottles there must be some part of a wash cycle happening, which is going to...

This is an extremely useful thread. I shop at Midwest and do PM batches, and I didn't realize that most folks used more heavily milled grains in their batches. That would explain why my efficiency was lower than I'd hoped for. A grain mill is definitely on my shopping list as a result of this...

Good temporary fixes are easy. I had a minor blowup earlier in the week and the friendly folks here suggested just putting a 5/16" hose on a disassembled three part airlock. It worked fine, and I plan on using it for the next few batches until I get around to getting a large carboy and a larger...