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Had a few beers last night and they really just didn't taste like anything. A mish-mash of confused flavors with some carbonation in the background. Sometimes my instinct is to keep "practicing" to train my taste buds. Then at other times I just reach for the bottle of bourbon that's on the...

Thanks for all the responses! I do find it easier to drink straight liquor as a lot of beers still don't taste quite right to me. I'm hoping it will ease up, and I've been doing some basic aroma therapy to try to wake the sense up again. Neither taste or smell are back totally but I'm not sure...

I tested positive for COVID three weeks ago and fortunately didn't have any major symptoms, but I still haven't fully recovered taste and smell. Have any other homebrewers found ways to deal with this? I've had plenty of beer since then, and it doesn't taste bad like it did at the start, but...

I've got these weird streaks on my 3 gallon carboy that don't go away no matter what I do. Have run PBW a bunch of times. Saw a reference to acid treatment so I poured some lactic acid (had some lying around) over them. I've rinsed, washed and scrubbed with brushes, and they always come back...

I mostly look at the Homebrewtalk forum, though usually when I need to answer a specific question. I from time to time listen to Drew & Denny's podcast. I've read a few books but not recently.

I'm trying to make a bourbon barrel porter-type brew but I'm often wary of that style being too sweet, especially by the time I've gotten to the bottom of the glass. I like the bourbon and oak flavors but I want something more like a stout in terms of flavor profile. I've done a few things to...

Wow, that's quite an operation! I admit I'm totally ignorant of malting so I don't know how folks get it done in the case of corn. I could consider not soaking it for that long and then just trying to keep it wet until it starts to germinate. If it starts to sprout, isn't that a sign that the...

I definitely see references to people using corn. This is considered the authoritative guide to gluten free malting, and includes maize. I also see a gluten free brewer made a popcorn saison based using home malted popcorn.

I've tried a few times to malt popcorn and they've all gone terribly wrong, always ending with some dank-smelling mold growing on them. The last time I tried it, I hadn't even gotten through the soaking phase and the stuff already had a cheese like smell to it. I had pasteurized the water I used...

I love the flavors of dubbels, both the esters from the fermentation and the overall maltiness of them. But I'm finding them a bit cloying, and was trying to figure out a way to get the same combination of flavors with a final gravity about 10 points lower. I've already been making "low-gravity...

Carbonation is not a bad idea, I might try that with half the batch and see what it does. Any thoughts on where oak would fit in? Would it be overkill to hit it with both acid and oak?

I’ve always loved Abbey ales but am not a huge fan these days of heavy, cloying, alcoholic brews. I wanted something that gives me the flavors of Abbey yeast plus brown malts, but doesn’t finish too sweet or much above 6.5 pct. So I took one that looked like it was going to finish around 8 and...

I’ve been trying to make bone dry mead, but the last few points just don’t ferment out (recipe below). I’ve gotten it down to 1.004, which is decent but still in semi-sweet territory based on most metrics. I’ve tried everything I can think of. It sat for a while at around 1.012, so I made a...

I've always loved abbey ales but can't really handle 8 pct brews these days, so I tend to knock the gravity down a bit to keep my sobriety up. So I've basically taken a recipe that would probably end up in the 8 percent range at least and diluted it down, without changing many of the...

I've always liked this idea, but in my attempts to do something like this I've found that the flavor of American hops just completely drives a truck over the saison/Belgian flavors from the yeast. One just completely washes out the other. Did you manage to get a good balance of both?

Got it! Would you recommend adding crystal to the lower OG version of the recipe? Or does lower attenuation of the MO take care of that by itself?

For a while I've been looking to do an IPA that doesn't include the usual American hops, and came across NB's Spring Heeled Jack IPA Extract recipe. I've got the ingredients for it, but the gravity of 1.078 is much higher than what I'm looking for. They show this one settling at 1.022, which I...

I'm trying to use the hops in freezer plus the extract on my shelf to make a decent, low-gravity, hoppy pale ale. I'm guessing this will attenuate out a little better than Beersmith is expecting, but the idea of using Munich as a base malt is in part to give some malt heft to a low-alcohol beer...

Yes, I always rehydrate, I always aerate for about 10 minutes before pitching, and I make sure the wort is in the mid 60s before pitching. I'm usually boil and cool enough water to fit in a relatively small drinking glass, stir in the yeast, and let it set for ten minutes. Sometimes I see...

I love S-05 as a clean fermenting yeast that gets the job done quickly, but the lag times have always been a bit of a drag. I usually don't see fermentation taking off in much less than 48 hours. This normally wouldn't be a very big deal, but I've got some kind of airborne contaminant in my...