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I've recently started making yeast starters and harvesting yeast from overly sized yeast starters. A buddy of mine is really into cider, and often uses ale yeasts to make it. So I wondered... Could you use apple/grape juice (appropriately pasteurized and preservative free at the appropriate...

Dear fellow brewers, First off, I'm a mechanical engineering student. I've been working on calculations for a homemade counter-flow chiller, or basically an improvement over my 25" immersion chiller I'm sick of waiting on (30-45min cooling for 5-6 gallons). I just finished reading the...

I'm new to all-grain, and I'm still working on mastering my process. How "clear" do you want your wort coming off of your grains? (I'm infusion mashing with 2 low-volume batch sparges). From what I've read, you want to run water out until you are getting "clear" wort. Then you return the...

I've come to the conclusion that my chocolate stout is infected for three reasons: When transferring from the primary to the secondary, there was a gunky top layer on the beer ( I racked under this into a secondary, a film did not appear in the secondary or bottles). The taste of the beer has...

First of all, there's nowhere to buy new bottles around here. So I went to a local bar and asked them for their pop-cap/crown-cap. Unfortunately bud light is the favorite around here and they could only scrounge up 20 or so corona bottles (clear :( ). But, they gave me a couple aluminum 16 ounce...

About a month ago I brewed a cream stout exactly a month ago. Due to some dire circumstances I had to move the brew to another location a week ago, and was just now able to get a gravity reading since post-boil. It's at 1.022 after a month. Doh! It isn't infected, so that's a plus. I plan on...

When brewing all-grain, I've heard you normally heat your water to 170, add your grains and hope you hit around 150 degrees. Would it hurt your efficiency or taste to add the grains to the water around 100 degrees and slowly heat all of it up to 150-155? It seems like this would make it pretty...

I've been trying to get together the equipment for an all-grain batch. One expense I'm hesitant about is a $60-80 pot that can hold 7'sh gallons for doing the hour boil. Could this be done with two 4 gallon pots (have one, can get another for $15). I figure managing two 4 gallon pots with 2.5-3...

So, this is my second batch of beer, but the first I've made based on a recipe rather than out of a kit. I brewed a bock with an extra specialty grain or two. I'd planned on building an enclosure with a mini-fridge to keep the primary in the necessary lager temps (used a bohemian lager yeast...