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How does it taste carbonated? Carbonation can definitely soften some of the bitterness. I tend to think saisons are usually best when left simple and dry, but the beauty of the Randall is that it's not permanently altering the beer. I would probably stick to fresh tangerine/orange peel and/or...

It could be an infection. It could be CO2 gassing out. What kind of beer is it? What yeast did you use?

I think it could add something to the beer, though it's certainly not tradition for this style. Kudos to you for trying to tackle something like a double/triple decoction so early on in brewing. I'm curious as to what sort of equipment and process you're using. Your low efficiency with...

I associate metallic flavors with astringency, so it could be a result of over-sparging or scorched extract. It's possible that it could be an off-flavor from stressed yeast, as well. What was your recipe and process?

What was your recipe and process? Some Belgian yeasts can throw off tart flavors, especially when stressed out. I'm thinking that if you have an infection, you would have seen it while it sat in secondary that long.

Apple cider is acidic, so when you ferment all of that sugar, you're left with a fairly tart beverage. Of course the pH variable with what sort of varieties are in the cider. While brown sugar will leave some residual flavor, sugar is only going to dry it out more and enhance the acidity. Unless...

If you're doing a big beer, fermenting it in a 6.5 gallon bucket/carboy, you can definitely run into issues of your airlock clogging with krausen, especially with some specific yeast strains. Cooler ferment temps definitely help, but as someone who as experience the extreme mess of an imperial...

Keg conditioning warm will require much more co2 because warm beer won't keep as much co2 in suspension. You may have flat beer when pouring off the kegerator.

If you want it to be sweet, don't use corn sugar as it's incredibly fermentable and will dry out the beer and thin out the body. The molasses will do this a little bit, especially depending on the kind of molasses, the lighter stuff being the more fermentable. The spices seem to be good to me.

Looks solid to me. I think Cascade will work fine as a bittering addition. As far as dry-hops go, from what I have read, several commercial breweries do dry-hops for almost that long. The only downside I can think of is that you may extract some more vegetal flavors. You could experiment with...

A lot of people do this. Other common grains to use for head retention are Carapils and flaked barley.

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Hey guys, just wanted to ring in with my 2 cents. Most beginners are doing late extract only when the directions tell them to, so I don't know if it's something that should be accepted as a "universal rule" or anything. The main bulk of recipes online are still old recipes and don't call for...

This is a little bit of a sticky wicket. Most of the micro-biology and carbonation scientists I've listened to and read actually say to not worry about it unless you are introducing Oxygen in massive quantities (i.e. splashing and stirring vigorously etc) getting a bottle conditioned beer to...

I second jeffmeh, stirring definitely helps. The other thing to be really careful of is making sure the bag doesn't rest on the the element if you are using it during the mash to maintain temp, I've seen an element scorch grain and wort when they're in direct contact like that.

I'm thinking I'll wait until next summer to use the 3724 strain, and I'll just brew it in June so I can still drink it in the summertime. It sounds like this is going to take 6-8 weeks to completely ferment out... I'll just use 3711 for now. Lots of good suggestions in here too. Thanks!

How did you aerate it? I had problems in the past of aerating it too little, and it finished high. Then I was paranoid, so I shook the crap out of my next batch and it finished really low. Now I shake vigorously for about 5 minutes, and it seems to work well, but almost always ferments lower...

I have a heater that I can set the temp on to make sure that it stays over 85 at night. It's pretty hot in there in the mornings though, so I'm not too concerned about temp swings.

What is the warmest that people ferment this yeast? I've heard it likes to stop around 1030. I was thinking about doing the secondary in my garage, which usually is around 85-95 degrees this time of year. Will that get the job done?

Couldn't have said it better myself!