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I was just gifted a brand new 3 gallon ball-lock cornie keg kit as a wedding gift from a very generous fellow homebrewer. I hadn't planned on getting into kegging for a while, but he has forced my hand :). I've read through some docs online and some of the stickies on here, but I don't think any...

I'm about a month into my first wine kit. I've been homebrewing beer for about a year and a half with no infected batches so I'm quite confident in my sanitation. However, after racking this wine into a secondary and degassing it with a wine whip, I have mold. Lots of it. At least I'm 99%...

What kind of efficiencies are all you SS braid users getting? I have a round, 5-gallon cooler I use for 2.5 gallon batches. It looks like a standard 12 inch braid will be a little too big for my cooler. I imagine this will cause the end of the braid to bend or kink - will this affect efficiency?

Over a few homebrews, one of my fellow brewers propositioned me with the Wal-Mart Challenge. If anything, it has got me thinking, so I thought I would share it with the community. The idea behind the Wal-Mart Challenge is to pick a big box retailer, such as Wal-Mart, Target, CostCo, etc., and...

I bottled my first batch of mead last night. It had been sitting in the secondary for over 4 months and was still pretty hazy. I would have kept it in the secondary longer, but I'm moving soon and I would rather move bottles than a full carboy. To speed up clarification, I threw in a little bit...

I just started doing partial mashes, following Chris Colby's countertop method []Brew Your Own (BYO), the How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine. Didn't think of hot-side aeration on my first batch so I just let it fly out of the spigot into the kettle. This time I want to do things a little more...

While writing the recipe for a batch of stout, I predicted the SG to be about 1.075. I got this number by working off of (4.1 on FAQ 1-4 Answers @ Williams Brewing) which didn't have an estimate for the pound of lactose I added to the brew. Come brew day, as soon as I was tucking the carboy into...

I came up with a recipe which can best be described as a honey kolsch. It is as follows: Orange Honey Kolsch (2.5 gallons) Prebrew Tea: 8oz Briess Carapils 6oz Rahr 6-Row 4oz Briess Wheat Boil: 3oz Whole Leaf Hops (see below) @ 60 3.3# Munton Light LME @ 30 0.25oz Dried Sweet Orange Peel @ 15 1...

Here's something that has been bothering me for a while: I made a batch of chocolate stout and a batch with a fair share of honey and every single one of the bottles erupts with foam when opened. Anywhere from a fifth to a half of the bottle is lost to these foam volcanoes and I was wondering...

I'm planning on some half batches (2.5 gallons), but I don't have equipment geared for half batches. I know that in secondary fermentation you want to have the least amount of head room in your carboy as possible, but what about primary fermentation - can I get away with 2.5 gallons in my 5...

How do you scale a 5 gallon extract recipe down to 2 or 2.5 gallons? I've gotten pretty experimental with my brews lately with hit or miss luck. I would rather ruin 2 gallons of beer than 5 due to cost. Can I just cut all the ingredients in half for a 2.5 gallon batch? I currently do extract...

Are there any good barley wines that are also pretty common? I've never drank a barley wine before and I'd like to mark that off my list. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find anything too different from the Bud Milloors that overrun the college town I live in. I'd be willing to order it online...

I'm thinking about making a dark beer not unlike Guinness Extra Stout and I want to make sure this beer has a lot of body. Most recipes I know of call for 1# of lactose to add body - including a clone recipe I found for Guinness E.S., but I want more than that. Is it overkill to create a beer...

I'm in the process of making of a fruit hefeweizen and I decided to try adding some of the fruit to the primary to see what happens. It was only about 1# but now I'm wondering if it was such a good idea. I know in most cases the fruit is added to the secondary and I plan on doing this as well...

Before I begin, let me say that I've never kegged a batch of homebrew in my life, and that I'm fairly new to the HB scene. I'm not ready to make the investment in a full keg system, so I was wondering if anyone knew of a good, inexpensive mini keg kit. Good as in easy to use and clean...

I'm planning on brewing a fruit hefeweizen soon and was hoping for some general guidance. I've never brewed with fruit before and I haven't found any solid guidelines to follow yet. Can I just take a basic hefeweizen recipe and add fruit to the boil and the secondary? Should I use real fruit or...

I'll be bottling a batch of Spiced Winter Ale from NB soon. It's a Scottish-type ale with an ounce of mulling spices (ceylon cloves, cracked cinnamon, allspice, cardamom and mace). Does anyone have a recommendation on what to use as a priming sugar? I'm thinking honey or molasses.

I'm new enough to homebrewing to only be on my second batch. I've done my first two batches from Northern Brewer ingredient kits and I have been fermenting according to the times they list for the kit. For example, 3 weeks fermenting and 3 weeks bottle conditioning for kits listed as 6 weeks...

I have an extra yeast packet in my fridge and I'm about to start my next batch. I want to make sure this batch has enough, so I was thinking about using both. I have a smack pack of irish ale yeast and a White Labs irish ale vial - what would you recommend to get maximum yeast production? Is it...

My other thread here <https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=41629> seems to have died. I had an extremely quick bubbling phase in my airlock and no apparent activity since. I checked the gravity 4 days after it stopped bubbling, which is 5 days since I sealed it into the primary...