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Very interesting that you mention this -- I often use one side of my SS double sink to soak bottles in, and there were a couple of little rusty spots that had developed (before I began using Oxiclean for my bottle-soaks). I kind of figured I'd have to keep an eye on those spots, because steel +...

The gravities from those kit instructions look a bit high to forgo a starter with liquid yeast. 1.064 and 1.087. The 1.087 definitely should have had a starter (assuming you only pitched one pack) -- the 1.064 is a little more borderline but really most people seem to think anything over 1.050...

I agree it's probably not from the plastic itself. I guess an infection is possible. As for water and chloramine, here's an article that was published in Brewing Techniques in 1999 that covers pretty comprehensively what happens to chlorine and chloramine with different types of treatment...

Yep, this too. Someone gave me a Brewer's Best Russian Imperial Stout kit for Christmas. I brewed it up and then put it secondary for a couple of months with some bourbon I had infused with a vanilla bean. Now it'll age in bottles for at least a few more months and I'll probably be drinking a...

Ah, yeah, I didn't think about the piston seal here. That's a really good point. I ran across some advice somewhere that I'll pass on here, too -- if you have an autosiphon, don't store it "put together." Remove the racking cane/piston from the siphon tube when you store it. In the...

Even though it's not under pressure there's still some CO2 dissolved in the beer, and it'll turn into a bubble given some kind of nucleation point (bumps on a rough surface, pieces of hops, etc). I think what's happening is that as it passes through that mesh any dissolved CO2 is nucleating...

I started with doing a few kits. Yeah, that can be a bit paint-by-numbers, and there's really nothing wrong with that. It was kind of like baking a cake, but the end result is healthier, lasts longer, has better side effects, and so on. :mug: A little over a month ago I had a commercial...

Are you doing full boils with these kits, or topping off? If topping off, what kind of water?

Thanks! So according to google 1 tbsp = approx 15 ml, and MrMalty says 77 ml for my Patersbier, so I'd need just over 5 tbsp or so. And about 10 tbsp for the Tripel. Hmmm. And 15 tbsp is .9 cups (I'm basically trying to convert ml here to things I can visualize). It seems like it might not...

Like the others said, you can dry-hop in the primary. If your primary is a carboy and you're worried about getting the bag in and out (seems to be the point of your post)...well, you can always dump the hops in without a bag, and tie the bag around the siphon inlet to act as a filter when you...

I have Northern Brewer's Patersbier finishing up in a bucket and it'll be going into bottles soon. My plan had been to brew up a Tripel, which uses the same yeast, and while it's cooling siphon the Patersbier over to a bottling bucket and dump the cooled Tripel onto the yeast cake. My...

Obviously I can't say for sure what you're doing: but I would note that yes, the part that clamps around the neck sort of lifts up against the collar of the bottle and pushes the bottle up into the bell of the capper, which forces the cap down around the lip. In addition to unnecessary downward...

Jeez...you don't have to wedge that thing in immediately for an airtight seal. Just put it on there wet with sanitizer if you must and let it sit wherever it'll stay. Nothing will get past it. When it dries you'll probably find it's stuck well enough, but you can always give it an extra...

I would hope not, but you never know.

Could be Notty, or depending on *how* "little" the packet is it could be regular Munton's brewing yeast -- little square packet (like a take-out parmesan cheese packet or something), yellow with green letters if I remember correctly. I didn't really like that yeast. Muntons...

I was just about to suggest the siphon myself -- once it's chilled you can just siphon. And I don't see how aeration is any more difficult if you do this, you actually have a few options. What I did, that seemed to work fine, was to put the siphon output right up against the side of the neck...

Yep, I did the sanitized foil thing on my bucket fermenter -- taped a piece of foil down so that it covered the hole in the bucket lid (I only used tape so that it wouldn't float away on a passing breeze, on a carboy you can wrap it down around the neck of the opening a bit and it won't go...

Starsan is just an acid (and fairly mild when diluted...the active ingredient is a major component of Coca-Cola, after all). Mixed with oxiclean it shouldn't be any more "poisonous" than the oxiclean itself -- which I seem to remember the crystals dissolve causing a reaction that creates...

What was the yeast? Regardless, my first two beers, one with dry Munton's and another with Nottingham, both had a really unpleasant taste at the end of fermentation before conditioning time. I guess it could have been described as bitter. EDIT to add here that I mention my first two tasted...

I just made a pale ale with Columbus for bittering and then 20-10-5-dry hop of Cascades. Bottled it two nights ago, the smell was amazing and tasted great too. I think I'm in love with the Cascade dry-hop. There's a brewery here who does what's essentially an IPA but it has this intense...