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brewd00d, that was my gut instinct. there was someone on here a while back saying essentially "if it won't come off, it won't come off in my beer." I guess I'll find out soon enough. turtle, I'd take you up on that, but you're so far away! Gregscsu, yes, tried a brush. LHBS told me "Try...

I picked up a couple of glass carboys a while back on craigslist. One of them, I later realized, had some stains on the inside. I tried cleaning with a hot oxyclean soak, then with starsan, both to no avail. I'm now soaking with distilled white vinegar but I think these stains, or deposits...

my first +5 has been bubbling away for a few weeks now. = 19771.5 should the person who hits 20,000 get a prize? :)

Maybe you could dry "hop" with them? Anyway, I just had to comment because I also have a little kaffir lime tree, and I'm brewing a hefe at this very moment!

You used a kit, but everyone else just goes to the liquor store. Who's the superstar now?! :)

Of course you can downscale. I've been doing 2 gallon all-grain batches for a while and it's worked out well. I have a 3 gallon carboy, 14 qt kettle, 5-gallon coleman cooler for mashing, and two 1 gallon glass jugs for secondaries. I started small because of space constraints and the desire...

Since I didn't see this question get picked up, I want to paraphrase Stuntman's question from page 5. What's preferable: making a starter large enough to save and spread over several batches, or washing yeast after the ferment? Or does this fall under the category of "equal but different"?

What temperature was your wort when you took the gravity reading? Hot wort will have a much lower gravity.

Water bath is 10 gallons, carboy is 2.5 gallons full. Aquarium heater is 100W and should have had no problem with this volume. As of this morning, temperature inside the garage was 9C and in the water bath was 12C. I've been measuring all this with a lab thermometer (thus the celsius only...

Good ideas, thanks. The yeast is Danstar Windsor, btw. I also tried turning up the thermostat on the heater a little, think it might be badly calibrated.

"Going slowly" means that I wanted drama! No, seriously, my main concern was that the relatively cold water surrounding the carboy was going to pull even more warmth out of the ferment. It's 60 in there at it's warmest, and from what I'd read, ales like to ferment a bit warmer than that...

Hi everyone! The aquarium heater I just got to keep my fermenter warm in my garage is inadequate. The beer in the fermenter is an ale with Windsor yeast, and although it's fermenting, it's going slowly since it's only at 60F. So here's the question: is it better to keep it in the water bath to...

I recently picked up a 5-gallon food grade bucket for free. It originally carried Kikkoman soy sauce, and when I received it it seemed to have also been used for used fry grease (maybe for biodiesel). I'd like to be able to clean it well enough to use it as a bottling bucket, but I can't seem...

I was reading the thread below about the bottle bombs and it got me thinking about the weather in my apartment. It fluctuates a lot this time of year, from 70s in the day to probably 50s at night, and there's not so much I can do about it. I don't have enough beer stockpiled and conditioned to...

No limit as long as they're intact and clean. In some countries, particularly in Latin America, they refill the glass beer and soda bottles rather than crushing them down. You can tell the really old bottles because the glass is scuffed on the bottom corners. I was just in Peru, where the...

A couple months ago I was posting on here with the same problem as you! I discovered just a few days ago that what my beers needed to carb up was a couple months at room temperature (since my apartment is cold), and at least a week in the refrigerator. After that, perfect! Just wait it...

That's why it's such a great idea to just have them over and demystify the process for them. I'd been wanting to brew for a long time, and when I finally brewed my first batch what struck me was how easy it actually was. If you show them that, they'll be way more inclined to get into it more...

I did that a few weeks ago. Put one in the freezer, then forgot about it and fell asleep. In the middle of the night I thought I heard a single gunshot (my neighborhood can be sketchy). Next time I opened the freezer I was relieved that it wasn't a gunshot but bummed that I had broken glass...

I had the same problem with my first couple batches, and since I remember seeing your post this morning, I HAD to respond. I just cracked a bottle from my second batch, which I brewed on 11/8/08 and bottled on 12/18/08, and it is finally carbonated and is great!! All the previous bottles I...

I have a bunch of those red-alcohol thermometers at work. One of them broke recently, and the smell of it was really strong and nasty. I don't know what type of alcohol is inside, but it smelled like gasoline or kerosene or something, and not like ethanol or anything you'd want to ingest. I'd...