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A buddy and I were brainstorming way to add hop goodness to bad beer. Not necessarily bad beer, but beer that needs hops. Picture this: You're at a bar with your buddies and they order a pitcher of Bud Light. You don't want to be rude and decline the offer of free beer even if it does suck...

Well, I left the house for a few hours to run some errands and there appears to be some activity finally. I may have to delay my brew plans by a day, but at least it appears to be waking up now. :ban:

I made a yeast starter on Thursday from a White Labs Abbey Ale, 2.7 quarts of water, and 9 ounces of DME. Temps have been between 70-76 the whole time. Not sure of the date on the yeast vial since the ink was smudged, but I bought it from my LBHS the same day I made the starter. Since then...

Thanks, Yunus. I should have searched first as this question was easily answered that way. :o I am definitely going to make a yeast starter for my next high gravity batch!

Late last year I made Northern Brewer's Belgian Dubbel extract kit and it was fantastic. People liked it so much that they asked me to make another batch and sell them some. Which I did, but they said it was "meh". My buddy made the same thing and I sampled it tonight. Compared to my first...

Happy ending, fortunately. I used e-mail to contact the proprietors and they were very apologetic, offering store credit to my friends and assurances that the scale would be fixed asap. I told my friends they owe me several home brews since they were too wussy to say anything. :D

Thanks, these are good responses. Specifically, my friends bought 3 lb. bags of Briess DME that had been repacked by the store. When the one friend weighed different bags at the store he saw that they consistently weighed 2.75 pounds. I will encourage them to contact the store by e-mail. I...

Two brewing friends use the same LHBS and coincidentally (they thought) had recent batches come in well below the ABV amount they expected. Both used repackaged DME they had bought from the store and that made them suspicious that they had been shorted. One of them went to the LHBS last week...

I've pretty much abandoned flip tops and now use a combination of Party Pigs and 22 ounce bottles with caps. The advice I give all newbies when they ask is, once they are sure this is a hobby they're going to stick with, to buy big. I've wasted hundreds of dollars on buying items incrementally...

I think I know what's going on. I bottled half of the batch and put the other half in a Party Pig. I believe that I cut down the amount of priming sugar because of the Pig. I tapped the Pig (I'll be using it for the party) and it's fine. The bottles are for my personal use later so I'll just...

I'm hosting a beer tasting one week from today and I made a Belgian Dubbel for it. The Dubbel tastes wonderful. But there's a problem - it's flat! I think I put priming sugar in the bottling bucket but there's a possibility I just forgot. I've tried two bottles so far and this combination of...

That was pretty harsh to call you out for having moldy LME! I opted not to buy my LME in bulk this time. I went with cans of Muntons and then added DME to get to the total weight of extract needed for the recipe. Going forward I will probably use DME unless there's a specific reason a...

Let me ask this then: Generically speaking, are there tangible differences between LME and DME in terms of taste and body in a beer?

My LHBS does sell LME in bulk, but it's sounding pretty impractical at this point. Maybe I can talk them into selling it by the pound. :mug:

My oldest kid gets his driver's license today which means less money in my pocket each month (insurance, gas, new car for me :D ). I'm an extract brewer and it's generally cheaper for me to buy kits from AHS or Northern than to buy the ingredients outright from my LHBS. That said, I want him...

Hilarious!

This past Saturday I got all set up on my back porch to brew my new Belgian Dubbel extract kit. I had everything sanitized and was ready to boil the water when I decided to check my smack pack one last time. It was steadfastly refusing to swell so I decided to wait one more day just to be...

Pretty damn impressive, Chriso!

It helps that the woods behind my house and my storage shed act as wind breaks. Next year I'm raising the trellis up to 14 feet so I may not be so lucky going forward. I did notice that all my supporting strings for the trellis were literally blown away so I'll need to switch to something...

Jacksonville! Small world, eh?