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Taste it. If it smells like sourdough and tastes sour/acidic, you have a lactic acid bacteria (lactobacillus) infection. This bacteria lives naturally on grains, and all over (and in!) our bodies. It's what makes sourdough sour. Bleach the heck out of your equipment and pay close attention to...

Don't know for sure, but a google search leads me to guess that is mostly glucose, but with some residual maltose because it's made by industrial-scale mashing. Almost certainly not a perfect sub for LME, or more cheap people would be using it. Probably you should use it like corn sugar for...

Oh, two other things: 1. Maybe way too much clove. My experience with baking and using it as a mulling spice leads me to think 0.5 tsp will be overpowering. I think it's nasty and bitter when too much. Maybe add it little by little at the end of the boil until you can only barely taste it - it...

I personally like to have just a little residual sweetness in my hefes. I think it helps bring out the flavor. So I would leave out the honey, which will ferment out to make it a little thinner bodied and dryer. Though, I know some like it to be light-bodied and tart as a refreshing summer beer...

I've done this before, and +1 to leaving more headspace than you'd think. Mine blew off about 1/4 of the gallon I put in each!

I made a saison with about that gravity, using that yeast, and it took about a month to finish. And that was in August with no A/C. I like the flavors it makes, but this yeast likes high temps (even up in the 90s F), and is picky even then. This is a well-known and much complained about problem...

Hi jkarp or anyone else who has brewed a recipe like this one, I just brewed a version of your Pink Elephant recipe. This is the highest gravity beer I've made so far. I scaled it to 5 gal and substituted in some pilsener LME to make a partial mash version. Before my regular sparge, I did a...

I read an article somewhere around here - maybe from the brewing science or DIY sections - that said some of the really big industrial breweries ferment in pressurized primary fermenters. For some magical yeast biology reason, this lets them ferment at higher temps (therefore faster) without...

The amount of iodine in iodized salt is tiny compared to the iodine that ends up in the fermenter beer if you use iodophore sanitizer. Should be too little to have any effect whatsoever.

Hi. You might get too much color and roasty flavor from the stout transferred to your IPA, unless you wash your yeast. Washing yeast is easy as long as you pay careful attention to sanitation. Search for yeast washing tutorial threads.

caffeine can be toxic to yeast at high doses. This paper (http://www.springerlink.com/content/fq7656v10j018209/) used 20 millimolar caffeine as a toxic dose for a different yeast (S. pombe). That converts to 115mg/oz. You are planning to use 1/12 of that concentration, so it should be fine. But...

Triples don't usually have spices added - you get fruityness and spicyness from the Belgian yeast. You can add if you want, it's your beer - but in my opinion, I like to keep the recipe simple to let the yeast complexity shine. What ingredients are provided in the kit? If it doesn't come with...

Here's a link that says how regulators work. (http://www.cheresources.com/questions/process_control-319.html) I have no experience with O2 tanks, but I have used the regulator from a CO2 tank on Argon/Nitrogen tanks. I would guess that as long as both tanks are pressurized within the range of...

I guess to simplify my question: this recipe seems to be somewhere in between a Belgian Pale Ale and a Belgian Blonde. It hits the stats (gravity, IBU, color) for a Belgian Pale, but lacks toasty/biscuit/spice that the style guidelines say are characteristic. The caramel and fruityness seem to...

Hi all, I'm trying to educate myself on Belgian styles by making them. If there are any experts out there who could take a look at critique my recipe, I'd appreciate it. I've already brewed this one, so I'm mainly looking for educational critique so I know what qualities to look for in the...

Sorry to throw a wet blanket on this idea (which is a cool one), but I read somewhere that most of our domesticated brewing and baking yeast strains are not anywhere near normal - they are aneuploid (i.e. neither haploid nor diploid) - meaning they don't have a normal number of chromosomes...

I assume you want a scope to use with a hemocytometer to count yeast cell concentration. If so, make sure to get the kind of hemocytometer that has the grid lines physically etched into the glass. With some of the more expensive professional hemocytometers, the grid lines can only be seen using...

Watch out - some dried cherries I've bought were very lightly coated with some tasteless vegetable oil to keep them from clumping together. If you get oily cherries, they might not rehydrate/soak very well and could reduce head retention. I would try simultaneously rehydrating and pasteurizing...

Regarding Bell's Eccentric Cafe, I went there wanting to like it, since I like their beers and it's a local institution, but wasn't impressed. It was an off-peak night, the rest of K-zoo had rolled up the streets. They were nowhere near closing time, yet the place was empty. They were blasting...

Hello from Michigan! The three you mention are great. Are you looking more for brewpub/restaurants, or taprooms, or factory tours? I haven't been to Bell's factory (if they even do tours?), but their taproom in Kalamazoo was disappointing when I visited. It was small, empty, and uninteresting...