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Who wants to give me head advice? My first two beers (hefeweizen-extract, 1554 Clone - AG) do not seem to have much head when poured. These are bottle conditioned beers and have bottle conditioned for at least 3 weeks. Carbonation is ok.... but seems a little low. I am a little aprehensive...

I agree with getting a bigger container. I don't plan on going to 10g batches anytime soon (if ever), but there are a couple bigger beers that I want to make that are going to be really tight (if not impossible) unless I want to switch up my process (I batch sparge). I suppose I shouldn't...

I respectfully disagree. Yes, AG has more complexity but there is something to be said for having the basics figured out, so you can focus on your added variables. Extract and AG share a lot of the same process. Simple stuff like how to transfer wort from boil kettle to fermenter, how to cool...

I am far from an experienced brewer.... so take what I say with a grain of salt. Just buy a basic homebrew kit from one of the online homebrew shops. I purchased one from Midwest and it has everything I need to brew and bottle beer minus the boiling equipment. Order yourself an extract kit...

I did my first brew this summer. What seemed to help was writing down my steps so I can check them off as I go. Fortunately... nothing went wrong. I have had subsequent brew days where a step was not going as planned, forcing me to improvise. In this situation, it was good to have my "game...

When transferring to secondary and/or bottling bucket, do you tip your bucket/carboy and leave it for a while? I grab a scrap of 2x4 and set one edge of my bucket on it and leave it for an hour or two. Trub slides right down to the "corner" and settles. I don't lose much from transfer by...

as part of my "operation", I have a 5 gallon bucket in the garage filled with oxyclean solution. Whenever I have a beer with a label, just take it out and dump it in the bucket. When the bucket is full of bottles, just take them out, rinse and store. I change out the solution every so...

+1 for Austin Homebrew. They give you the recipe with your kit, but don't post online. Fine by me.... They do other things (like good prices, good shipping, customer service, knowledge, etc) to keep me coming back and don't have to resort to tricking me or treating me like I am going to...

nice... and thanks.

I was just curious because I realized that hooking up the garden hose outside might be problematic during these Colorado winters.

any confirm on 5.25 into a 5 gallon? or should i just get my water bucket and check myself?

I have 5.25 gallons sitting in primary that has been there for a week and a half. I wanted to free up my primary for another batch, but wanted to let this beer sit for 3 weeks (at least). I tried looking it up... but only found a couple posts on the interwebz about fitting this much beer in a...

with a chest freezer... you shouldn't have to worry too much about a leak from the seal. Cold air sinks. That is one advantage to a chest freezer, it does not lose all it's cold air by opening the lid... makes it more efficient. Any cold air that the freezer makes will tend to stay in the...

I would have to check on how many feet my emersion chiller is... but i go from boiling to 80 in about 6-7 minutes using hose water. Some posts made me think of an idea.... could you freeze water bottles into ice blocks and dump them in the wort (after sanitizing of course) to speed up the...

Well..... thanks for the advice. Now what am I going to do with that extra 20-30 minutes? I am thinking something beer related :)

I will experiment a little on my next batch. I haven't heard anything in regards to negative effects of letting it sit. I thought that perhaps the high temp of the sparge water might cause some ill effects if left sitting.

It is starting to sound like "shut up and enjoy your buzz" might be my answer, unless I want to really get scientific and find a way to calculate the sugar additions from sliced peaches. It usually takes more than two beers for me... but I noticed a difference as well. Wife really likes...

I use the batch sparge method and had a question regarding the sparge(s). When you add your sparge water, do you let it sit? or varlouf and drain right away? I have been letting it sit for 10-15 minutes for each sparge. I usually have to divide my sparge water in two because my mash tun is...

My first beer, I made an extract hefeweizen and decided to rack onto 5 pounds of peaches to make it a peach hefeweizen. All went well and everyone liked the beer.... but something is bothering me. The wife made a comment after drinking two beers to the effect of "how much alcohol is in this...

This helps a lot actually. I would assume I could make a larger starter (not using a stir plate) to get two batches of 100 million cells (original amount of smack pack). From there I could store one and use the other to make a new starter for pitching.