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Here you go: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?p=7362591

Two weeks in the primary sounds pretty good provided that the yeast is viable enough to ferment completely. I don't do a secondary so I can't speak to that. It sounds like you don't have a hydrometer if you are not confident that primary fermentation has completed. I would suggest you get a...

How long are you letting these beers ferment? The fact that you are getting excessive foaming and then the sweetness makes it sound like primary fermentation is not complete by the time you bottle the beer. This would cause the beer to continue fermenting in the bottles which would be causing...

Personally I would just do it the day of. Boiling and cooling 2 cups of sugar solution doesn't take too long and I typically have that going while I am getting my other stuff sanitized so there is no time wasted. I really doubt it would introduce an infection but I would hate to take the risk...

I used a 7.5 gallon turkey fryer kettle for 5 gallon batches for years. It works, you just have to really watch your boil and be prepared to avoid boil overs by whatever method works best for you. I've since moved to a 10 gallon aluminum stock pot so I don't have to obsessively watch the pot...

Looks very nice! You'll find that nearly every mishap or mistake that happens has happened to someone else on HBT. I've had the rubber grommet fall into my fermentation bucket as well but I just said screw it and left it in there. So now you just need to figure out what you are going to brew...

I have the equipment for 5 gallon batches but 2 cases of beer per batch is actually too much beer for me to consume in a timely manner. I've done several 2.5 gallon batches as well but my 1 gallon batches will be used for more experimental beers. If those experiments end up being good, I can...

Yeah, temp really shouldn't matter with a refractometer since the small sample will cool extremely quickly. If you ended up with 4.6 gallons of 1.042 and you started with more than 4.6 gallons, something is not adding up...Was it a rolling boil for the whole 60 mins?

You could get a cheap refractometer to check the gravity. Although refractometer readings after fermentation are not accurate because of alcohol content, if you keep getting the same reading after sampling a few days apart, you would know that the beer has finished fermenting. You only need a...

Wow, good information about flaked oats. I assumed they would aid in head retention but also didn't know about the high oil content. For me, the creamy mouthfeel the oats give far outweighs a long lasting head so I'm not going to worry about it too much. Always learning something new on HBT!

Had two bottles this weekend that have been in the bottle 3 weeks. This is a delicious stout. Just enough roast but not too overpowering and a super creamy mouthfeel. My only issue is that I don't have much head retention at all which is strange. It pours with a beautiful tan head but it...

Being that this is going to be luizffgarcia's 3rd brew ever, it is highly doubtful that he/she will have the equipment necessary to harvest yeast or will have the time necessary to get it all together before the weekend. Until the OP has the capability to make starters and harvest the yeast, I...

Someone should tell my LHBS that then because all of their dry yeast is hanging on the wall! I agree about liquid yeast, but I have had dry yeast packets of S-05 sitting in my kitchen cabinet for 6 months or longer and have used them with no issues.

Thanks for this link! I think I will be ordering one of these soon. Just like the OP, I had a 50 foot coil burst on me last year after storing it in my shed over the winter. That was a serious bummer.

You probably got the wire lead wet. Try putting the probe in the oven and baking it at 250 for about 20-30 mins. Let it cool off and then try calibrating it again and see if it has corrected itself. As I said in this thread, once the wire gets wort on it, mine will start really flaking out and...

Tasted my first bottle during the Super Bowl last night. 2 weeks in the bottle and carbonation is great. Very small amount of head which was disappointing but it could have been my friend's glassware. It was very good! A little hint of roast and super creamy mouthfeel. I know it will get...

I had the exact thing happen to me with the last beer I fermented a few weeks ago. The blow-off tube was producing no bubbles at all. Pulled the stopper out and saw plenty of krausen in the bucket so I cranked the lid down harder and put the blow-off back in. It instantly started bubbling...

The article actually has numbers for both stirred and passive vessels. The passive vessels had less aroma and flavor from dry hopping than the stirred vessels, but the time to achieve most of the benefits from dry hopping was still around the 4 day mark with both methods. Interestingly, the...

Probably just a bad seal on that one flip top. If you start to get other flat beers from that batch, it could be that you didn't mix the priming solution thoroughly enough, but in this case it just sounds like a bad seal since it has only happened with one bottle

I use a Starsan (non-rinse sanitizer) solution in my blow-off container in case any of it gets accidentally pulled back into the fermenting beer. You would rather have sanitizer go in there than your tap water.