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On the Magic Chef 5.5 CF*, can you set the comes-with thermostat up to warmer temps (say, 55-65°F), or do you still have to hack it with an external unit? Thanks! ----- * Same question for any of the others, if folks want to chime in, but I'm specifically liking the profile of the MC5.5cf, for...

After all of this discussion here and elsewhere and some late night noodling over the various issues, I decided... 1) Brew normally, in a fermenter, like it was beer. 2) Carbonate normally, like a 4 volumes beer. 2a) That is, I put it in glass bottles and added sugar as if I were carbonating 4...

62°F sounds warm for a lager, but I don't actually have any experience there (came here looking for your answers! :) ) So, how'd it turn out?

Great link, thanks! Do y'all not "pre-heat" your coolers? Like just put a couple of quarts of boiling water in and slosh it around to get the sides "warmed up"? Good idea? Waste of time? Thanks! (Yeah, yeah -- ancient thread. Such is n00b-life!)

Well, Zombie thread will just have to get over itself, won't it... ;) Ok, seriously: Wasn't trying to be picky, just wanted to augment the information available for future readers. "Teach your children well" and all that! If Zombie thread is ever in town, I'll invite it over for some beer...

(We're diverging a bit now, but I think the original question has been answered and, well, it's the internet, so... :) ) A few things: * My stovetop burner can barely keep 3 gallons of wort going. (Next batch, we'll be experimenting with the turkey-fryer burner.) In fact, if I keep the lid...

That's what I mean: stuck to the side above the water line. What appears to happen is: the "powder" floats on the foam which, as it waxes & wanes, deposits them on the side of the pot (above the wort). The only stirring I do during boil is to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom. And...

Well, the debris has always settled out in the end, so isn't really a problem. I was mostly curious if I wasn't "getting full benefit" of my hops with it spending so much time on the edge of the pot. ...But the beer tastes good and appears properly bittered, so I suppose it's not really an...

TL;DR: My hops seems to spend more time stuck to the side of the pot than in the actual boil. Is that A Thing? It's common to see recipes with something like: Start the boil, add 1/2 your bittering hops. After 20 min, add the rest of the bittering hops. After 40 min, add your finishing hops...

Yeah, I think I just made a bad inference because sugar + yeast. Thanks!

Huh... Maybe I'm reading this all wrong, but it sure seems to me like 90%+ of the home-brewed root beer recipes I see are alcoholic. Oh! I wonder if I just assumed that because you put sugar & yeast into a container & wait. Maybe I need to go re-read. 40psi does seem high for glass. That's...

Just a minor nit: It takes more pressure to push liquid further uphill, but you can push liquid as far as you want horizontally with the same amount of pressure. This can be demonstrated with a simple (say, 100') garden hose siphon, or a 1000s-of-miles oil pipeline (granted, they use pumps for...

Ok, I confess I didn't thoroughly read every single root beer thread -- there are a gazillion! -- but I did check a few here, and also elsewhere on the web, and can't find this important (seeming to me!) bit of info: I've got my root beer recipe ready to roll as far as ingredients, but I'm...

I am not. Just straight recipe, like printed in the book. Malt (extract, steeped or mashed, depending on the recipe), yeast & water. I think I got more hot-break this last time, and I think it may have had to do with a more "rolling" boil, where I kept the foam going but not overflowing. On...

Hey all... So, I'm boiling batch #3 here, and the Palmer book led me to believe that I'd be seeing little strands of protein that look like "egg drop soup" (his words) floating around indicating a successful hot-break. Never seen anything like that -- no noticeable "solids" of any sort in the...

Oh I know it's good for quite a while; was just exposing some of the stuff bouncing around in the back of my head. It's quite a mess back there! ;) My current over-supply is of SafeAle S-33 (Fermentis?), which has a best-before date of Feb-2020. I intend to use it all well before the end of...

Ok, thx. One of the reasons it struck me was, my 1st yeast purchase (for beer) was a 12-pack, thinking "well, if I'm going to get into this, I may's well stock up...", and I know it keeps fairly well in the fridge, but not forever so, in the back of my mind, I was thinking "oh great, now we're...

So, bottom line, what I'm hearing from y'all is... A1: No particular reason. Author may have just been trying to change things up a bit. A1b: No benefit. Author may or may not have intended that reader infer making a starter. (Unclear.) A2: No particular harm, just a waste of yeast...

Yeah, this section is definitely all about steeping grains. The general progression is: fundamentals, all extract walkthrough, steeped walkthrough, all grain walkthrough. Then some stuff about debugging, experimenting, etc. Book Yeast: Yeah, recommended by others earlier; on order :) I get...

Elsewhere in the book, he talks about how liquid yeasts are generally less desirable because they contain 25-50% the yeast cell count of dry packets. In the build-up of this recipe, he doesn't talk about making a starter and growing a stronger culture. As I said above, I'm not looking for...