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Have you capped 740 ml bottles with your hand capper before? Maybe they take a different sized cap, and the breakage occurred by a wrong bell on the capper. This may have "cracked" or otherwise compromised the bottle that broke later, as CO2 production raised pressure after priming.

Grady- You can use cane sugar-- just use a little less. If you use 5 oz of dextrose (corn sugar), you can substitute with 4.8 oz of sucrose (table sugar). I use it all the time and I have never had an off flavor. It is usually preferred to weigh priming sugar since not all measuring cups are...

If you tell us how much malt syrup and sugar (if any) you used, and your volume, we can calculate the original gravity and alcohol content for you. I think Young's bitter is about 3.7% abv, though, if that's what the kit was trying to reproduce. Ideally, you should take your original gravity...

Nordeast- I think you meant to say the iodine/wort will turn dark blue or black if starch is still present.

Check to be sure you have 3/16" ID tubing. Some systems have 1/4" tubing, and that doesn't have as much resistance as 3/16". 3/16" should give about 2 - 2.7 lbs resistance per foot. You also have to consider the height of your taps above the center of the keg. You need to have as much or more...

I've only had this at a pub with the raspberry syrup. It was at a Winking Lizard here in Ohio, several years ago, so this may not be correct or traditional. It was served with a small plastic shot glass of syrup (room temp) on the side, so you could add as much as you liked. I've heard the...

I have not tried fermenting p-Lambics at lager temperatures, so this is all guess work. I believe the yeast strains included in WY3278 are a Belgian ale strain, a sherry strain, B. lambicus, and B. bruxellensis, all of which perform best at >60F. In the low 50's, you might not have much or any...

You can steep between 150 and 155- that way if you overshoot a bit, you won't risk extracting tannins. But be sure you remove the steeping grains before you take this wort up to boiling temperature. (Wasn't in your post, although you are probably aware.) The DME additions don't add up to 6...

It looks like these are intended to produce only 10 l of beer. These contain dried malt extract rather than the cans of liquid. The site claims the kits include the hops in hop bags that are then vacuum sealed. It appears that if you want a 20 l batch, you will need to use two kits, or else the...

Do these batches all use the same yeast? Are they dehydrated yeast like Nottingham or Windsor? Do you taste your gravity samples for residual sweetness? I really can't explain why this might be happening to you, if stalling is even the issue. The kits you mentioned using are usually designed to...

Is it possible your fermentations are stalling? You're reading, say, 1.017 and inferring that it is done, even if it has a few points to go. Two gravity points is all it takes to give 2+ volumes of CO2. Why might it be stalling? Are you fermenting at cool temperatures? Maybe the yeast is...

There could be a couple of problems here. If you have pretty hard water and you steeped using NB recommendation (1lb of medium crystal in 2.5 gallons of water) the pH of the steeping water may remain too high and result in astringency. You may want to try steeping in less water. I steep...

I have done several Saisons with 3711 and it is fully capable of dropping your sg to 1.004 to 1.006. If you warm up your fermenter a bit, let it go as low as it can-- the resulting beer will not be overly dry, even at such low fg.

This pours hazy golden with a 1" white head that quickly dissipates. The aroma is wheat and slight citrus that doesn't divulge the full on sourness. Flavor is high lactic and citrusy sourness with very little Brett caharacter, leading me to believe this is pretty young. It is pretty highly...

In my experience, there is a lot of foaming and a slight hot break associated with late DME additions, and much less so with LME. For that reason, you should be really careful when adding DME late, with heavy stirring and/or Fermcap S to avoid boil over. In late additions, I add DME with...

I have read that aging of lambics will lead to softening of the sourness, although I have never been patient or fortunate enough to experience this first hand. I was lucky enough to have several glasses of a single vintage 2007 Boon lambic this spring in Bruges, and it was quite sour and very...

Brewer's Best "technical" sheet says that each drop has 545mg of a combination of dextrose and BB Pilsen light DME. That is a little more than a half a gram. If your beer fermented at 65F, there should be 0.9 volumes of CO2 already present in the beer. Say you wanted 2.5 volumes in the bottled...

Do you want 5 gallons of malt vinegar? Actic acid will likely predominate even if you add other souring bugs. Pedio will form a pellicle to prevent oxygen and acetobacter. But if you already have it, forget about that. Fruit flies are notorious for introducing acetobacter. Dust can also...

I have never tried to culture bacteria, but from what I've read, it is pretty difficult to do. There's a section about culturing pediococcus and other species on the following website: A Liddil Lambic Lesson: The Cult of the Biohazard Lambic Brewers I don't think you need $30 worth of bugs to...

Depending on the fermentation temperature, you will need about 0.9 oz of table sugar. You can boil it for a few minutes in two cups of water, cool a bit and add to the keg. There are several priming calculators online that are quite helpful- here's one I use: TastyBrew.com | Homebrewing...