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@ Revvy It is an ESB, rather than a bitter, so he might want a bit more bitterness to balance the somewhat bigger beer. @pivot676 I do agree that 30 minutes should be fine and the recipe was designed that way for a reason. That said, it's your beer and you can do what you want...

Assuming average alpha acid percentages (alpha acids provide bittering when boiled) and a 5.5 gallon batch, you should have around 28 IBUs, which is a little on the low end but not unreasonable for an ESB. If you want you could extend the boil by maybe 10 or 15 minutes (still add the others at...

Keeping the lid on is probably important with an unstirred, unchilled pot which takes 60 minutes to cool down; that's a lot of time to be exposed to the air. But with a chiller, you're down to pitching temps in 10 to 15 minutes, even faster if you also use an ice bath, so there is much less...

What are the alpha acid % and weight of your hop additions and what IBU are you shooting for?

I keep a spray bottle of starsan around. To make sure that it keeps its potency, I mix it up strong (maybe double the normal concentration), use distilled water, and keep it in the fridge. You should sanitize the inside, just in case a few drops of wort drip back out into the beer...

It's certainly possible. Boiling for 30 minutes means you might get some hop flavor as well as bitterness coming through, but it shouldn't really hurt anything, assuming that 30 minutes is enough time to extract enough bitterness. I've deviated from the standard 60 minute boil several times...

Just be patient for now. I wouldn't worry about items 2 or 3 at all and it's unlikely that you did any damage with the measuring cup - you'll know if the batch was infected and at this point there is little that you could do anyway. If you have no activity in another day or two, then you might...

Thanks for the info, the Pils is now in the fridge and coming down slowly.

I am planning on using a secondary, so I guess I should rack, then cool, then lager?

I have a Pilsner going right now and it's just about done with the diacetyl rest. My question is this: should I rack out of the primary before or after I bring it down to lagering temperatures?

ThickHead, Thanks for the feedback and that looks like it'll be a bruiser of an Oktoberfest if it drops a few more points! I guess that my concern is that I'm now just shy of a month and between days 5 and 27 I only dropped 1-2 points. I probably should have been monitoring more between days...

Reading more from a number of threads, I think that I will rack the beer off of the yeast cake and then harvest some of the yeast to make up a "starter" to get the yeast active and fermenting again. Then I will add this back to the beer in the second fermenter. Sound reasonable? After I...

Also, should I repitch before or after any diacetyl rest? And I should probably mention that I already tried rousing the yeast and raising the temperature by a few degrees.

Hi All! I'm looking for some help on my Oktoberfest, which seems to be stuck at a gravity of 1.028 (OG of 1.059). I used WLP830 German Lager Yeast in a half gallon starter, pitched at 72F and then put in the fridge and brought it down to 50F. Five days into the fermentation, I took a...

Very nice project, I'll be excited to see the final product. One question though, where did you get the cases of Köstritzer? I'd love to get some more flip-tops, especially if they come with the plastic German cases. I considered having some friends in Germany mail a few cases to me, but it...

So I made up a starter last night for a batch of hefeweizen and pitched the last of the yeast that I saved from my last batch of hefeweizen (about two months ago). Anyway, I came back about an hour later to check on it and swirl it around and found that the airlock had either been knocked out...

This really should be stickied...

I just used that yeast for brewing a kölsch, and it turned out nice and clean, just like a lager (your Oktoberfest) should be. My only concern would be that that yeast attenuates fairly highly and might not leave as much maltiness behind as you are looking for in an Oktoberfest, although you...

Sounds like the most likely cause is that the extract I'm using may not be as fermentable as partial or full mash wort. I'll have to read up on doing partial mashes, as I don't have the equipment for all grain yet...

Yeast can live aerobically (with oxygen) or anaerobically (without oxygen). When fermentation is just starting, the yeast use the oxygen in the wort and the fermenter to reproduce. After they oxygen is depleted, they (mostly) stop reproducing and just go about eating the sugars and turning...