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I brew ales, use a variety of yeasts. Safale-05 is my go-to dry yeast but what I am going to desribe happens with other yeasts too: Sometimes after complete fermentation there is a layer of inactive yeast still on the top in the fermenter, sometimes it all drops to the bottom. I know...

My HBS supply store has quit carrying WL yeast. I want to brew my dubbel recipe this weekend but have no WLP500 or 530. Can anybody recommend a dry yeast that will get me close?

I brewed a six gallon batch yesterday. Because it is so warm now my counterflow chiller didn't quite get it done and the wort was at 85+ degrees. I did not have time for it to cool further before I had to leave so I pitched it anyway with Safale 05 dry (which packet was at around 75 degrees) and...

I can't reconcile the amount of slurry I get in my 2L starters (made using the prescribed calculators) with how much is supposed to be there based on the following: Not having a microscope, I have looked through the literature and it seems that there is general agreement (if there ever is such...

I have a Stir-starter plate with 3/4" bars. It creates a nice little vortex in a 1 L E. flask but now I got a 2 L E. flask; the bar spins fine but no sign of vortex. If it is spinning then is it still stirring without the vortex? If I buy a longer bar will that help, and if so, what is the...

So I learned how to employ an STC-1000 controller on this forum for my fermentation chamber and it works like a charm. It is so simple and straightforward (Thanks to the people who wrote those posts!). Now for a non-brewing heating application I want to control a 1500 watt heater, but the...

I was just looking at the thread "Commercial Beer Yeast Harvest List" and someone said that as long as the beer was not filtered or pasteurized it did not need to be bottle conditioned in order to harvest yeast. Is that right? Everything I see about the topic starts with the assumption that...

Is there any real problem with taking a cold-crashed starter out of the fridge and letting it set at room temperature for a couple of days before using it? Mine is in an erlenmeyer flask with tin foil cover. I aborted my brew session but forgot to put the starter back in the fridge. For that...

All-grain mash, what is a good percentage of oats in the grain bill? I haven't used oats in a long time and I seem to recall discussion about should you use rolled oats or quick oats or steel cut oats or what? Is the good old cardboard canister of Quaker oats what I want? Thanks.

I know this must be a dumb question: How does the stirring action of a stirplate keep the wort oxygenated? It seems to me that the oxygen in the air initially within the head space of the beaker would rapidly be exhausted and then for the stirring to do any further good would require the...

Maybe someone can help me with this. I finally popped for a 2L Erlenmeyer flask for yeast starters. I got it at the homebrew shop. I've never had a problem with my 1L flask, but with the 2L the stir bar will fly off to the side of the bottom instead of spinning in the middle. I guess there...

I made a starter that I stepped up to 2 liters (about 1.5 liters actual volume) then cold-crashed it. I don't plan to use it for a week or so. What I would like to do is decant most of the liquid off the slurry, then transfer the slurry to a smaller sanitized vessel (a 1 pint canning jar with...

I've had good luck with bottle carbonation using 3/4 cup of corn sugar in a 5 gallon batch. I just made my first dubbel and used the usual amount of corn sugar but after two weeks in the bottle I tried one and could not seem to raise a head on it even with an aggressive pour. It doesn't really...

I see one of the extract recipes for a pilsner (Saphir Pils) calls for 2# DME for 60 min. then 3# DME for 10 min. Why would you wait so long to add most of the DME? I thought the whole idea of the boiling process was to make good things happen to/in the wort?

So if you use a dip tube in your BK, then when you run out your wort, once the level gets below the ball valve (or maybe before that, I guess) you are basically siphoning. I saw a DIY dip tube out of copper with an elbow designed for soldered connections but it didn't look like they were...

I had bad luck (or operator error) with this stuff. Details below but I couldn't get it to take off in a starter. Has anyone had experience with this stuff and is this characteristic? Is it possible I got a bad package? This was one of the new plastic-sleeve deals that WL has gone to. I...

I need to upsize from my 8 gallon brew pot/boil kettle to at least 10 gallons. I see all the treads about keggles, which I think I could do the keg conversion for, but what can I expect to pay for a used keg as compared to the price tag for a new pot ($150 and north from what I see)? What are...

I have a stainless steel vessel that I use as a fermenter. It started life as a small process vessel for pancake batter but I re-purposed it because it has a shallow conical bottom. The thing is, it could hold about 13 gallons to the brim and I only use it (currently) for 5 gal batches. It...

Can somebody explain this to me? I get the idea of stepping up a starter but here is my dilemma - I used 800 ml of starter wort for a vial of WLP-004. (My plan was to crash it and use the following weekend.) After a day it had a little krausen and was caramel in color. I had expected more...

Is there any reason I can't use my immersion heater, which I use to heat my hot liquor, in my wort to help it get up to boiling faster? Will it scorch the wort or something?