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It was a Wyeast... Britannia I think. Anyways, thanks for talking me off the ledge.

Problem is all of those old posts in the sticky thread have expired pictures so I can't see what you guys are talking about. :p My first two batches, after the krausen settled to the bottom the top was pretty clear. This batch did this. It's for a friend, so I really hope not... I'm always so...

The water here is a bit hard but there's a layer of powery stuff at the bottom (and it's a little hard to see in the pic, sorry about that). I'm probably just using too much PBW. But thanks for the vinegar suggestion. What ratio of vinegar to water should I use?

Every time I clean out my carboys, I get this white residue left in it, probably from the PBW. The problem is, no matter how many times I rinse it out, there's always some left. And the cleaner brush doesn't seem to do diddly squat, either. What can I do? And what can I do to avoid it? More...

Nope, time to move to a secondary for about a week and a half, then bottling. :)

These recipes really ought to give what they expect the FG so I don't keep waiting for it to go any lower. :P It's been in the primary for about 2.5 weeks and was fermenting rather strongly for a full week. I hadn't seen those little filmy air bubbles on my wheat ale, so I just wanted to make...

Normally I only ask this question of my doctor, but I'm a little concerned about my pumpkin ale. There are some rather funky looking bubbles (and a gravity that seems to be stubbornly stuck at 1.013 - OG was 1.057) going on. Here's a picture, let me know what you think.

Alrighty, the beer has successfully racked to the secondary. I'm afraid I may have oxiginated the beer a bit more than was strictly necessary, but overall I'm happy with how it. Here's another list of mostly-no-big-deal things I screwed up written to both new brewers and my future self: Don't...

Did some math and answered my own question: you'd need about 4 20 oz bottles to have the same volume of ice as a 5 lb bag. Though due to the surface area issues, I'd probably add 2 more and have 2 more waiting in the wings.

Apologies for the threadcromance, but I was testing out my siphon and found similar issues. The 3/8" tubing is definitely a problem, but the other thing I noticed is that the final moments of the siphoning will let a few gusts of air in. Is there any way to avoid that?

All the waste water concerned me when I did my first boil a week ago. I'm glad to find out there are ways to conserve that. Buying ice is impractical for me since I don't have a car, but I'm using old 20 oz soda bottles filled with water that I just freeze and refreeze in my poor man's swamp...

Hah, I didn't mean 'kosher' literally. I was asking if it was ok to use hand sanitizer on my self while touching brewing equipment. :) And don't congratulate me yet! Moving to secondary is going to be the hard part...

Things are going better! I checked at 8pm (roughly 22 hours after pitching) and there was a decent amount of krauesen and lots of bubbling. The fermometer read about 75F so I put the first part of my swamp cooler together. Right now, as you can see, it's just a tub of water and a wet t-shirt...

"How to Brew" - as well as this very informative post - indicates the correct way to re-hydrate yeast such they achieve the greatest efficiency during fermentation: toss into water that's about 105F, for about 30 minutes. However, in "How to Brew" it also says that, ideally, the temperature...

Thanks for the advice, guys. Tonight's purchases: zipties, a clear plastic tub, and an aquarium pump. Then I'm just gonna fill some 20 oz soda bottles with water, freeze 'em, and dump 'em in. Should work well enough for now.

The bucket is filled with Star San solution, so I'm not too worried about it. I tried to put the bucket on the floor, but the hose is too curly to stay that way. :( The IC leaked right where the hose met the cooler on the intake portion. There's already a clamp there, and I don't have another...

That took a lot longer than I'd planned on, but I got to listen to a bunch of Radiolab while working so that's never a bad thing. :) No major mistakes, but a few small issues did crop up. I know, I know - wait and wait (and wait some more) and my beer will turn out fine. :) Still, for the...

Yeah, my basement runs on the warm side, too, but within range. I'm officially starting the boil right now - wish me luck!

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Yeah, this is a little anal, but making detailed checklists has served me well in the past. Mostly this was an exercise in seeing how well I'd internalized all the knowledge I've been gathering since I wrote this from scratch without looking anything up. Seems...

Bumping this since it fell off the first page before it even began due to being inspected.