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My worst ever batch was a Mr. Beer brew to which I added way too many extra ingredients. I started with a Vienna Lager kit, added 2 cups of table sugar, an extra pack of Booster, a half a jar of black strap molasses and about 3 cups of brown sugar. On top of that I accidentally let the...

Lots of good advice here but if you are looking for a quick and dirty fix (little effort, not time saving) is to soak the bottles overnight in an ammonia solution. Household ammonia is very cheap and mixed at about 1/2 cup per 5 gallons of water should be enough to dissolve most of the glue...

That looks very cool - I might have to give that a try... As for going overkill I don't mind doing it - especially if the gravity feed can be useful when I move back to all grain full boils :) Plus I love building stuff so I figured why not? I'm probably going to start with the IC and then...

Here is a pic of the PVC pipe chiller Basically it's a bunch of copper coils inside a PVC pipe. Hot wort travels through the copper coils and cold water passes through the coils inside the PVC pipe.

I don't have any filtering devices yet but I don't want to close the door to filtering for in the future. I like the PVC chiller plans that I found in an old book of mine because it works just like a counterflow chiller but is easier to store because the PVC pipe is rigid and doesn't flop...

My plan for maintaining temp in the MLT would be to keep it on low electric heat on the stove top and put the lid on - would this work or would the stove or insulation work better? Would it be a good ideal to drill one stainless for the MLT and the other stainless for the boil kettle -...

Hello everyone - I used to do all-grain brewing but recently have had to move into an apartment with an electric stove. Since I did all-grain with split boils on my stove top I don't have an outdoor burner and even if I did there would be no practical way to get a source of water by my...

You definitely want to shake/mix up your beer after pitching dried yeast. Like DD2000GT mention it aerates the beer which is a good thing. Yeast reproduction is an aerobic process which requires plenty of oxygen. Some of the more experienced brewers use an oxygen pump to inject oxygen...

+1 on the re-hydrating your yeast comment Besides waking the yeast up re-hydrating will tell if you still have viable yeast - if you mix the yeast and warm water together but don't get any activity then you may have dead yeast. Dried yeast is only good for so long and if you pitch dead yeast...

Another tip I would add is that when you mix up your sanitizer for your brew day get an empty spray bottle and pour some in there. Having a spray bottle of sanitizer has come in handy for me quite a few times, especially when I have to stir the beer or take a sample. I just grab my utensil...

+1 on this advice, I did four Mr. Beer batches and two 5 gallon extract batches before making the jump - however I have been studying all grain brewing since I started my first Mr. Beer batch (about 6 months total studying before diving in). But at some point you have to be like Nike and just...

It's reassuring to hear that my sparge procedures sound good to more experienced brewers... that was my biggest worry with this last batch. Since I pitched this batch, the lag time was 14 hours and the airlock bubbled for one day. I am going to take a hydrometer reading on Friday and see...

So for my next batch I would just take the two hydrometer readings using the formula above and tell Pro Mash that I just have a 7.5 gallon boil and use the results of the calculation? I took a reading prior to boiling and another reading after boiling. I used the reading prior to boiling to...

So far a more accurate efficiency I should have taken two hydrometer readings, one from each kettle, and did the efficiency calculation by hand? Not only am I new at AG brewing and trying to understand it but I am also new to using Pro Mash which could be a very bad combination. I know the...

I collected the first two gallons of "mash water" and then 1.5 gallons of the first runnings in one kettle and 2 gallons of the first runnings and 1.5 gallons of the second runnings in the other kettle. The kettle I used to take my hydrometer reading was the kettle containing "mash water" and...

Well I finally did my first all-grain brew last Friday after spending weeks studying about it. I converted a 5 gallon Rubbermaid cooler into a mash/lauter tun and planned my first brew for about 11 pounds of grain. The mash went fine - I pre-heated with 170 degree water and just did a single...

Hello everyone - last time we talked I was fed up with my Mr. Beer kit and ready to throw it out. For an update on that situation, read my blog post at The Frosted Brew: Ready, Set, Brew! - I would just type it here but I'm too lazy Anyway I figured my frustration came with the incredible...

Thanks for all the replies - it's property tax time so I may not be able to get the stuff right away but it definitely sounds like I should get a starter kit and then add a glass carboy if I want I told my wife what SWMBO meant and she started laughing, think I may have made a bit of a...

Hello everyone. I am fed up with the cheap Mr. Beer equipment. As I was bottling my Blue Lightning the tap on the Mr. Beer keg kept getting clogged with chunks of blueberries. This would force me to push harder to the tap handle and now the tap has a perpetual leak. My wife (not sure what...

I keep my logs on my blog - since I am a blogger pretty much everything I do ends up on a blog somewhere. I found that the blog approach allows me to reference my logs from anywhere (especially helpful when discussing a brew online) and allows me to publish my logs so others can try my same...