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This weekend, I helped my sixteen year old son brew his first batch of beer (for a school science project). tl;dr - took a long time, had some snafus... didn't matter, made beer. Full blog entry here.

Cool! I hope that it works out for you.

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by a guy who was wanting to start a new blog dedicated to the pursuit of the perfect kolsch. Obviously, getting a blog off the ground can be tough, and I was happy to help out. He's done a couple of guests posts over at Homebrew Dad. His next post...

Notice the article does recommend a 2 gallon plastic bucket for said experimental batches. Plenty of headspace. I have one of these going at home right now!

Only issue I have with that is for people who don't have a mill. Though, I suppose, you could carry it to the LHBS.

To say that an O-fest NEEDS crystal or roasted malts just feels wrong. If you are trying to be authentic - to either the traditional, darker versions or the newer, lighter "fest beers" - neither of these would be appropriate. Decoction will absolutely do it. You could "cheat" with some...

I understand, Darwin. But...

I can't fit everything! lol To be fair, I *did* mention two books - Designing Great Beers and Experimental Homebrewing.

Ah, great reply. I meant to include aeration gear.

I see these threads all the time - especially at this time of year - so I put together a post about some good homebrewing gift ideas, but limited all but one item to under $100. Full post here. If you'd care to share thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

Great article.

A couple of weeks ago, the guys at JaDeD asked if I'd be willing to review one of their immersion chillers. Um... yesyesyes? So, they sent me a Hydra. tl;dr - I lived a comedy of errors (leaking hoses, running around like a moron), but it still killed my puny standard immersion chiller...

Listen to mabrungard (aka the king of water chemistry). Test strips are crap. Really, cheapo meters are crap, too. If it's not accurate and precise, why bother? If you're not using a good meter, you're spinning your wheels. Incidentally... by the time you buy that cheapo $30 meter and...

My good friend Greg was cool enough to record some screenshot video walkthroughs on exactly how to set up and use Bru'n Water by Martin Brungard. If you've ever been intimidated by water chemistry, or if you're wondering how well this tool works, come check out the tutorial.

I cannot recommend the Omega PHH-7011 enough. Here's the review I did on it. Note that I am not paid for this review. I got the meter as a birthday gift after doing my homework on them.

Awesome. I am continuing to work on this; please let me know if you have any issues.

It's good stuff. I've never used wood before, but he has me wanting to try, now.

Some people will tell you that cloudy = ineffective, but that's false. Star san works off of acidity. My water has a fair amount of mineral content, my Star San is immediately cloudy, but seems to work great. Also, there's this: That's cloudy starsan that's two weeks old. Seems to...

Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate your input. It's hard to make the thing auto calculate steps, but not do it if you tinker. And honestly, a lot of times, you still *do* want it to auto calculate subsequent steps after you change a given step. I may look at adding a setting to...

It's a fun idea in principle... but your yeast growth is going to be drastically reduced if you aren't stirring, and now, you have to worry about washing the yeast... unless you want to pitch old hopjunk and such into your new beer. Meh.