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I've only had to make one starter so far, I think I "brewed" it some weekend morning and put it in a growler with sanitized aluminum foil over the mouth, and just simply swirled/shook it every time I walked by. After a day or two of fermentation, I just put it in the fridge, and then when...

This is true, but the idea is that those would be taken care of in the boil. The big problem, I think, is that it might start to sour or take other unpleasant or unpredictable characteristics overnight. The grain in the mash is going to be COVERED in lactobacillus at the least, so it's not an...

Or my worst nightmare as a new kegger, a leak arising on the liquid side and the CO2 pushing the whole keg's worth of beer out onto the floor while I'm out.

There's a sticky right at the top about this: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/ (lots of other threads on it, too) When bottling from your tap you want to avoid foam and oxygen exposure, so that's what these kinds of devices are for. They fill from the...

I got this Danby from Costco and am quite happy with it so far. It gets quite cold without any of the control board modifications I read about (I actually froze a bunch of bottles when trying it out). The "deal" seems fine to me as you get the fridge, CO2 bottle, regulator, tower, faucet...

At first I thought the idea of 3-4 of those cartridges for a 3 gal keg was crazy, but it might be about right based on personal experience -- I have used the Miller/Coors homedraft thing for homebrew, closing them up and naturally carbing and using the cartridges for serving. I had one of them...

People seem to use them all the time -- I can't ever seem to find any that aren't #7, personally. Some people use those, I think, but I'm not really comfortable with that.

Mine did this too when I repurposed it. I fixed it by wrapping a couple of layers of teflon pipe thread tape around the neck/shoulder of the CO2 cartridge. This seemed to make it seal better against the rubber washer thing around the needle. It seems to be a bit of a trick to find cartridges...

I think even if they settle, they should still contribute flavors, oils, etc. To take care of both dissolving and sanitizing the addition (I'm going to add it at bottling) I made a tincture of sorts by using some vodka (with a bit of vanilla-infused vodka and whipped cream flavored vodka mixed...

THIS guy has it right. To my knowledge, I haven't ever tasted anything like buttered popcorn in a beer. I *do* somewhat frequently get the bandaid/burnt plastic. I had a local craft Octoberfest about a year ago that I bought at the store, brought it home, and poured down the drain because of...

I accidentally put double the bittering hops into a stout I made a while back. It ended up fairly nice, but I wish I had realized the mistake in time to dry-hop it; that might have been really good.

:p Ok. Really? Just shake it up a little bit, should give you some foam :mug:

I came to a realization after being (not so nicely) corrected by a member of another forum about the actual mechanism by which StarSan sanitizes. It's not the low pH that burns/melts/destroys organisms, apparently. StarSan is classified not as an "acid sanitizer," but as an "acid-anionic"...

Another plus for Starsan -- as recommended by some other threads I found here in a search, I dropped some Stone and Rogue bombers (you know, the ones with those screened/painted labels that don't scrub off) into my Starsan bucket for a week, and when I pulled them out the paint just rubbed right...

When you add the priming sugar to put it into bottles, the clock starts on a "refermentation" inside the bottle. The yeast wakes up again because of the new food (sugar), and starts eating it and doing all of its fermentation business again. The CO2 produced from this fermentation, rather than...

I think you're just tasting the byproducts of active yeast. I've had a couple of beers do this...one was with Nottingham. The taste from a green/young bottle was similar to the taste of the hydrometer sample after a week in the fermenter (still fermenting). Unpleasant, bitter, astringent...

Yep, I had Midwest Irish Stout kit that I left in primary for over a month, roused yeast, raised the temp., etc. and it never did get below 1.020. I bottled and it turned out fine, but the ABV calculation was a bit disheartening. An Irish stout isn't a big beer to begin with, but with the...

Founder's bottles have a fairly short "collar" around the neck, about half as big as a Sierra Nevada or other standard crown cap collar. The bottle capper clamps around the neck and lifts against this collar as the bell crimps the cap down around the lip. The short collar makes the capper feel...

All good advice so far. I can never resist opening one a little early (usually at about a week and half). For future batches, though, if you're the worrying type, you can always bottle one in a 20 oz plastic soda bottle, that way you'll feel the bottle harden as the carbonation happens. Just...

This is correct. I'm always baffled to see this question come down to issues of oxygen permeability and the like. There's a reason for a change in both the shape AND size of the secondary container -- not only are secondaries always carboys, they're smaller carboys, too. This is because when...