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Chrome plated brass (which is what these are) has issues in that the chrome is slightly reactive in the fairly acidic environment of carbonated beer. Eventually this will wear away the chrome and start pitting the brass. This creates a few problems, such as drinking flakes of chrome and brass...

My tap water tastes fine if it's filtered to remove organics, but I also have to remove chloramine (which I forgot to do once and ruined a batch). Rather than doing those two steps, I decided to just start using RO and following the water primer. My first two batches with RO were an English mild...

A few weeks definitely won't make a difference. These guys are saying if you age it 6 months then *maybe* it will be slightly less jet fuelish. I agree, however, that fusel alcohols do not age out to any significant degree.

Dimethylpolysiloxane, sound yummy? Post-fermentation, it binds to yeast and according to the FDA it should only be used in filtered beer, since the yeast and the bound Fermcap will be removed. I'm surprised the number of people who are willing to take the risk. No, it's not going to cause...

Recipe, as well as your water profile.

If you've already mixed the sugar in, it will take quite a while, but I can't give a specific range myself. I've always been told you should carb your water first, then add sugar and flavor -- water alone will carb up insanely faster.

What kind of hops did you use? Have you ever used 4oz before? That's really a lot, and with the hops sitting in the cold keg, hop oils are going to be constantly falling to the bottom of your keg, making it a hop oil explosion in every glass. Anyway, I can't imagine it will hurt anything to...

3 years ago I detested beer; every beer I had tried just tasted like "beer". However, a few of my friends had started homebrewing, and I really liked the rich tradition that beer had in history, so I set out to make myself like it. I realized that the first flavor hurdle I probably needed to...

Oxygenation of wort doesn't cause off flavors. There's an entire step in the process dedicated to infusing as much O2 into the wort as possible. You only need to worry about oxygen once your wort has turned into beer.

Ok, most important part of your question: you need some LME in your boiling water or your hops won't get properly utilized. If you add half your LME at 60 minutes and half at 15, you will get better utilization out of your hops than if you added all the LME at 60. The largest disadvantage to a...

Just heat your oven up to 150 (if it will go that low, otherwise kill heat manually using a temp probe) and use a pot that will fit with only one rack in on the lowest rung. You should now have very little temperature droop without needing to constantly meter out heat on the stove.

Guinness in a can or bottle is pretty bad. Guinness on tap in the US is decent. Guinness in Ireland is lovely. I know it's cliche, but after a trip to Ireland, that was my experience; it could be somewhat psychological, I admit. It's still certainly not a complex beer, but I would say it's...

As long as nothing else went wrong, it should definitely be drinkable -- the front end will just be really fruity, as well as the aroma. I lost all the hop aroma of my first batch to esters with a 70F ambient.

Was the ambient 70 or was the wort 70F? If ambient was 70, the wort was probably closer to 75-80, so you may have a bit of a fruity beer due to ester production. You may have gotten even more esters if you only pitched 1 vial of WLP023 (and didn't make a starter). With an OG above 1.060, you...

1.5 gal of water for 1.5 lbs of grain sounds like too much to me. Too much water and you risk extracting tannins. I've always read and been told 2 qt water per pound of grain. Same goes for your temperature re: extracting tannins. You should mash in at 160F because the grains will cool down the...