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I would take a hydro reading, but most partial mashes are more for character than gravity. Get plenty of DME and definitely have leftover. It's great for on-the-fly bumping of gravity, making a starter, or a quick malted shake on a hot day. Keep it around.

Only thing I can see is that your OG will be effectively somewhere in the low 50's after fermenting all those blackberries. Don't know how much juice is in a pound of blackberries, but the juice itself is going to be about 1.028 SG, so we'll call it about a half-gallon, which "dilutes" your...

Mine are usually just Golden Promise to whatever gravity, then a touch of roasted barley (like an oz of 675° for 5g) and then sometimes a quarter pound of wheat and/or chocolate, or chocolate wheat for that matter. Some people put crystal in, but I'd recommend a half pound or less (any color...

Good choice. I realize you said sanitized, but I was just pointing out that there will be bugs in there competing with your bottled yeast, and the outcome is sketchy. One of the more important factors in making a wit is using a wit strain; why I said it wouldn't be a wit. Like making a hefe with...

I've been using muscovat sugar in some ESB's and it is nice. Have to try it in a nut brown. Sounds really good.

I do the decant method, but from what I understand it's important to let the starter totally and fully ferment so tha it can go through the stage of building up glycol reserves. If you chill to soon just to make the yeast settle out, you may have weak yeast going into your beer. Leave it 36-48hr...

I wouldn't do it. Culturing properly from a bottle is already an iffy proposition; put it into hard-earned wort and you're asking for heartbreak. The yeast may even be viable, but not able to do a good job in such a large volume. And the extremely long lag time that would be required would just...

Looks great. I've never used near that much roasted and it always is a bit too roasty for my tastes. But style-wise, I hear they put up to 3% in, so go for it. I also like a small hop addition around 15m, but that's just me.

One thing I've done is to "empty" the vial and the put in about 10-15ml of areated sterile wort, cap it with aluminum foil and leave upright (the tricky part) for a day. Then screw the cap on loosely and put it in the fridge on its side. The large surface area helps keep autolysis down, and you...

Depending on the fermentation temp, it wouldn't be unheard of to finish completely in three days, though that's a lot of sugar to work through. Why not just get a reading? I sometimes take two or three readings during primary, just to watch the progress. Doesn't hurt anything.

I second that. I've only made four beers with significant rye, one with a wee over 20%, and none of them have had haze issues. Then again, I made a wit that came out crystal clear as well, so grain of salt and all!

Yeah, that's a cool yeast. I get a mandarin orange aroma off it. Great with Amarillo in a subtle APA.

As far as making up a recipe for a given style, I'm right with you the_bird. Ray Daniels' data on BU:GU of winning homebrews and commercial examples is a great place to start as far as the bittering goes. Too bad we don't have more of those ratios, like AA:HBU or BU:TGU. grrtt78's original...

double post!!

Well, for something like this, where you're using a lot of hops, I would have either boiled off more and taken less beer (and used a straight percentage of the hop pitching rates equal to the difference after boiloff) or decided a smaller beer was fine and adjusted the hop pitches according to...

I totally and wholeheartedly disagree. The thing you need to do is taste the beer, and if it's too bitter, back off the hops a bit next time. Trying to design recipes off of a chart is like playing darts in the dark. Looking at twenty popular recipes of a given style before creating a beer is a...

First off, it's not an IPA because of the extra 30m of boiling, it's because of the massive amount of 10% AA hops! Even if you'd have gotten your anticipated OG you'd stil be looking at ~75 IBU's, which is pretty hefty even for an IPA, let alone a Pale Ale. Where did you get recipe from? Also...

Sorry! My BAD! It's: Apparent Attenuation (as in (OG-TG)/OG as percentage) and If You Know What I Mean! :P

Is there no local homebrew store around? Most of them are happy to give price breaks on whole sacks. May or may not equal the cost of shipping it over, but you're supporting the local guy, and you have the convenience of going to pick up more when you want. Not to mention there's a face to talk...

Posted there, but basically, you need to set your efficiency at whatever it normally is, then divide the gravity points up. I doubt you get 90% efficiency on your system! If you get 75% on average, set one up for 45% and the other for 30%. Easiest way to do it once you have the recipe is to...