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Another brewing entrepreneur creates a successful brewery and gets bought out by Major Brewing Corporation. Good for them, I hope they made a ton of money for all the work they put into building it - for they risks they took and money invested. And it's time for me to move on to the next...

Here's a nightmare - a new keg going down the drain. 1.002 FG, must have picked up a wild yeast. Tried to drink it, just wasn't good. Time to throw away all the tubing and sanitize the hell out of everything. Izza tragedy, I was looking forward to an end of summer EPA.

I bottled a 5% stout that sat in a secondary for three weeks and it didn't carbonate. Sweet flat stout. Also happened in a cold crashed Pliny clone and a cider than sat in secondary for about six weeks.

I've done both. Went direct to keg on my last batch and I don't think it made much, if any, difference.

Made Northern Brewer's Kolsch extract kit last May and thought it was a great summer beer.

Update - after pulling the hop bags I put the carboy in the kegerator to cold crash it. That cleared it up in a couple of days. We bottled a twelve pack with priming sugar and racked the rest into a corny. I hope there was enough yeast left suspended to carbonate the bottles. I'm not a fan...

Thanks to all for the good advice. I put the corny in the kegerator Thursday night for our St. Pat's party on Saturday. The stout must have been OK since there's only a couple of pints left... :cross: It did mellow out, but the NB stout definitely was a more "American" style brew -...

The S-05 is from reading forums and it was recommended as a dry stout yeast for being clean and high attenuating, plus my basement is about 66 degrees which I think is probably more in S-05's sweet spot. Just tapped the keg for the first time, and aside from being a little warm and under...

The kit supplies 2oz of cluster hops. I don't think that's the sole source of the bitterness, but probably contributes to it. It's unfortunate that it needs to age, I was hoping for some near-instant gratification come next weekend. The Barley & Vine stout was pretty much ready to go in...

We made a Barley & Vine irish stout for St. Pat's day and it was great. It was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to make it to St. Pat's day, so I ran out to NB and picked up their kit to have it ready for next weekend. Just kegged it and it's way more bitter than I'd like. I'm thinking...

I agree, and we gave it a shot of CO2 before we closed it up. Unfortunately, I couldn't see a way to get the hop bags into my 5gal (small neck), so we used the big mouth. Based on the what you guys have said, I think I'll pull the schedule in and pull the bags now, bottle mid week. thanks...

That would be the best case, and maybe that's the best assumption for now. My current thinking is that we will postpone bottling until next weekend, pull the hop bags mid-week, and if the stuff doesn't settle out pretty quick, it might be worth doing something to clear it.

We're brewing a NB Pliny kit. Started 1/31 so it's about four weeks old. OG was 1.068, 2 x Wyeast 1056, racked 11 days later at 1.013, settled out to 1.011. No issues at all, and the beer was clearing and the top was clear when we did the first dry hop on 2/22 in a nylon hop bag. Four days...

My last two S05 batches have started up within 12 hours and formed a thick krausen within 24 hours. Both stout, pitched the dry yeast directly in, left it in the 70 degree kitchen overnight, then down to the 65 degree basement. The first needed the blowoff tube and had FG as spec'd in the kit...

Brewing a batch of NB Pliny right now, it should be out of the primary in a couple of days. Should I use a hop bag for the dry hop pellets? That never occurred to me until I read this thread.

Since deregulation, beer seems to be one of the most perfect free markets in existence. Quality is becoming more important than marketing (the majors haven't seemed to figure that out yet). Startup costs are low enough that it's not impossible to bootstrap another microbrewery, and there's a...

We add both before fermenting. I think you can get a sense of the tannins and tartness by tasting the unfermented juice, but maybe I'm just being overly optimistic about my capabilities. In any case, the results have been good. Tannins definitely do mellow out over time, but we don't add...

Just noticed that the setting on thread subscription was no notification. Sorry. We add about a teaspoon of liquid tannin, and usually 1 tsp of acid blend (which might be too much for some ciders). We do like dry champagne, and this is pretty similar.

Third Shift, and my dislike of it is no secret. Beer flavored kool aid masquerading as craft beer.

This is totally dependent on what you like. We like DRY cider and don't add any sugar to most of ours, drinking it totally dry: SG < 1. We also make cranberry cider and that comes out a bit tart and needs some sugar. (We use standard table sugar) After taste testing a couple of batches...