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I'm pretty sure Yooper meant % of total bill.

Yikes, that sucks. I would still try and culture out your jars to find the source, then you'll know for future brews. If there's a small scratch in your bottling bucket or something, you might not know until a few more bad batches later. And no one wants that! Also, I'd say if you have a glass...

Lol, did your beer come to you in the middle of the night saying "Daddy, I had an accident?" I'm surprised you didn't blow the lid off that thing.

It's a mish-mash of two acronyms. Freak The F*** Out, Worry, Have A Home Brew. Either way, worried or not, you're drinkin' a brew :mug:

RDWHAHB, indeed! Or, FTFOWHAHB. Either way, have a brew. Always the best place to start. Changing airlocks does have an effect on the yeast as you are changing the pressure in their environment, and I have seen this occur (though not as hardcore as you saw). Depending on your blow-off tube...

Lots of things could affect that, but just to be certain did you measure the volume of wort collected that went to your boil, and then post-boil also? There's a change you simply just boiled harder and lost more water than usual.

WLP820 or WLP 830, I don't have my notes in front of me. It was a marzen style grain bill, though, but I can't remember which yeast we settled on. One week in water bath in the sink kept it at ~45F, then two-three weeks at 50-55F. After that, lagered in the fridge for a month, probably 35-38F.

Well, to be fair, I've only ever done one lager, and I pitched a white labs vial into 74F wort and got the a super clean, crisp beer. No bad after tastes at all. In fact, I think it was one of our best brews ever. Even with out that experience I'd still say it's the water source over any yeast...

If you're really adventurous, you could do a split-combo batch! Mash the entire amount, collect half of the wort for the first boil, and boil everything as half a recipe. Once you have that in the fermenter, pitch your yeast and continue on to the second half for boiling! It'll take a bit...

Assuming the blow-off tube was sterilized before use, you can rinse it into a sterilized mesh screen or a sterile muslin bag to re-collect the hops. Toss them back in (being very careful not to infect the beer!!) and knock down the hops stuck to the walls once fermentation has calmed down. You...

If you're feeling very experimental and curious, I'd recommend keeping all of your collected/washed yeast in the fridge. In the meantime, get yourself some cheap-o plastic petri dishes and agar. Make a culturing dish for each jar of washed yeast and grow a small sample from each of your jars. If...

Abbey malt still has some enzymatic activity (allbeit a lot lower than ideal in this case), and since you sat in the lower regions for a longer time, you may have pulled a decent amount of conversion all the same. I wouldn't be surprised if your OG was a touch on the low side as far as...

False. I feel a well-sharpened and honed finger would do wonders for my seek-and-destroy missions nose-side. But shaking/swirling the fermentor a few days into the fermentation isn't a bad thing. If the fermentation hasn't sky-rocketed, there will still be some O2 in the head-space that you...

Haha, now THAT's insane. Letting a giant tub of fermentable sugar water sit around an extra day is just inviting all sorts of issues. Get those yeast in there to take over as quick as possible! Also, did you warm the smack packs at all BrewLou, or did you pitch the yeast on the cool side?

What I want to know is, how are so many people regularly getting bulk grain for 50-70 cents a pound?? Our LHBS has it available for over a dollar in bulk. $55 for 50 lbs, to be exact. And considering that, I know this was said in jest, but honestly, I thought about it before (for the...

Lol, Pelipen. She's in Florida. Us folk in the arctic blast zone may know better than to move it to the garage haphazardly, but it doesn't make a big difference for her. You may have noticed that line about "turning the AC off" while she was gone...

Be sure to give the fermenter a good soak if you're going from the porter to the IPA in the same bucket. It won't make a gigantic difference, but since you're looking for the "why" of your recipes, it's best to get into a VERY rigid cleaning approach. If you're just in it for the fun and not...

BrewLou, two things. One, Never shake your fist at the 4 trippels you had. That was awesome and I am currently insanely jealous. Two, RDWHAHB... and then pitch in a pack of dry yeast. But like they said, give it the ol' 72 hour wait before cracking it open just to be safe. pitching at 84F...

Yeah, I'm gonna have to back Cleveland up on this one. No one with good brewing experience--especially if its your job to help brewers and sell them proper equipment--should have told you to cap a finishing beer. If I were you, I would make a little noise about it next time you're there and get...

Excellent plan. You should post your recipe and any brew notes (temps, times, etc) for the whole process so we can observe the outcome.