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Welcome fellow Tucsonan! After my first batch the first thing I did was build a fermentation chamber (look up "son of fermentation chamber" on the net) and it has been a real God-send. The general rule of thumb for priming sugar is 5oz per 5 gallon batch. Brew Your Own Brew has perfectly...

When I started to get away from kits I decided that I wanted to learn about flavors of grains, first. I started with a basic 3 lbs light DME, 4 lbs 2row and added 13 oz of some random specialty grain. Use whatever hops you want to a low(ish) IBU (BeerSmith is great for calculating this) and...

Actually I kind of like the cleaning/sanitizing. It reminds me of back when I worked as a dish washer in a restaurant: I could just turn off my mind and let my muscles go as I scrubbed pots, pans and silverware. It was a very relaxing time. What I'm not a big fan of is having to remember to...

You might also want to watch the temperature of the fermenter. I used a blow-off tube on my last batch and didn't see many bubbles but at about 48 hours the temperature spiked up 6 degrees in an otherwise temperature-controlled environment. This tells me that those yeasties are active even...

I read Palmer's How To Brew online but it was Craig's Easy Home Brewing series that convinced me it really was easy to start brewing. His videos are simple and epitomize RDWHAHB. I'm definitely going to keep watching even though I'm working towards AG.

My first two batches were kits and while I enjoyed them they left me unsatisfied, kind of like when I use a cake mix rather than baking a cake from scratch. For my third batch I developed a simple partial mash that I hoped would help me eventually ease into all-grain and, if my tasting of the...

As mentioned before I wholeheartedly agree with the admonition that if feedback is not requested then it should not be given (unless, of course, said comestable is likely to cause food poisoning or other negative physical reaction). With that said, as is true for any creative endeavour I prefer...

I personally use a combination; I use a water bath until I'm below 150, replace the water with icewater and used 2 sanitized plastic ice bottles to stir the wort. I can get the wort down below 90 in about 20 minutes that way.

I use a couple of plastic Sobe bottles. I fill them 80% full with a saltwater solution and use them to stir the wort with no plasticy side-effects. And yes, the obligatory sanitize like crazy before dunking.

When I was growing up my mom kept a sourdough starter and every week or two made several loaves of bread. Since we couldn't eat all the bread ourselves she shared the bread with her coworkers but made sure they knew that she had a strict list she kept on who was next. They were much...

If there's one thing I learned from my high school calculus teacher it was "do it the hard way first and then be a wimp and use a calculator." So, after years of doing it the easy way (a trip to the local grocery store) I decided to bite the bullet and learn how to brew. And my, what a tasty...