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So, for the last year I've been making strong IPA's and have been using a blow-off valve to avoid the airlock getting jammed up. This works great, by the way - fixed the problem completely. However, I decided to make some brown ales recently and reflexively just used the blow-off valve instead...

Although I aspire to a huge kettle and propane outdoor setup someday, for now I'm stuck cooking in the kitchen using a 5 gallon kettle. As we all know, can't fill that sucker up all the way due to things getting potentially getting exciting should a boil-over strike. As such, during the...

I'm scared to even go near it. There's probably so much pressure that it wouldn't take much to shatter. I keep it around as my financial canary in the coal mine. If I find myself tapping into it, something is very, very wrong :)

Picture attached of my expensive recipe

The differential in quality came down to flavor essentially. My typical process includes two weeks in primary, 7-10 days dryhop, followed by three-four weeks in the bottle before being deemed ready. When I'm kegging, the same amount of time elapses, it's just that the three weeks are spent...

Over and over again, I've had more success with bottle conditioned beer than I have with any of the beer I've kegged. I've been kegging my IPAs after 2 weeks in primary followed by a 10 day dry-hopping period. Followed by a typical 3 weeks under pressure at 38F and 12 PSI to hit desired...

My quest to create the most face-meltingly bitter and hoppy IPA over the last few years has resulted in much awesome, but has also resulted in my average materials running about $70-80 per batch. Not really a problem, as no sacrifice is too big in the pursuit of IPA. However, I find myself...

The worst part of bottling, of course, is the hour and change spent cleaning and sanitizing all the bottles. Love having bottles on hand in addition to kegs , but it's very time consuming. Someone asked me why I didn't just put the bottles in the dishwasher, since it gets hot enough to kill...

Hey team, I recently bought a glass carboy to upgrade from my plastic fermentation bucket, and I bought a funnel with a built-in filter. I made a strong IPA recently, however even though I was careful when pouring the wort into the funnel, the filter immediately got clogged and it was a...

mOOps I'll move the 5 min to flameout and do the hopstand - that sounds like a really good idea.

I buy my supplies from a local homebrew store, and when I was there I asked for a review of my recipe. He indicated that all of their IPA's include a small amount of German Acid Malt to counteract some of the sweetness and make the "hops shine". And he threw it in for free, counteracting my...

I'm looking to make a nice, bitter IPA and have spent some time reading the forums and also taking notes from the kits I've been using so far. I've been doing extract kits for awhile now and wanted to create something original. Please let me know what you think. 5 Gallon batch - 3 gallon...

I'm on day five of the fermentation of this recipe, and the airlock is still going bananas! I had to add more starsan to the airlock as so much foamed out of the top. I know everyone says it doesn't matter how long the airlock goes, but I can't shake the feeling that more airlock activity...

I'm making this recipe today! However, my store only sells hops in 2-ounce bags - as such I have an extra once of Cascade. Do I throw caution to the wind, and start with two ounces of bittering hops for the full boil or will that trash the project?

Thanks for that link - that helped a lot!

I don't believe I've ever seen this topic addressed - please forgive if I've missed it elsewhere. I'm wondering whether or not you should make sure that the trub on the bottom of the boiling kettle be included/excluded from the fermenting barrel. In other words, is the work of the hops that...

I'm still using recipe kits. Many of the kits include specialty grains and a steeping bag. The directions say to just let the bag sit in the 155F water for a set amount of time. It seems to me that you'd get the most out of the grains if you moved the bag around in the pot (at least it seems...

I've been working with extracts thus far, and am about to venture out into my first non-kit recipe (The Blood Moon IPA that Bowlersp put up on this site in the Recipe Database under IPA's). The recipe calls for dry hopping one week into the fermentation process (after primary fermentation...

Hey guys - I'm just starting to adventure out from straight kit-brewing, and will be trying this recipe. I have a question though! What is the purpose of waiting until fermentation is complete before dry hopping? Why not dry hop right when you seal up the fermenting barrel?

When I'm doing an extract kit, the boil usually occurs with 1-2 gallons, then it gets added to another amount of water in the fermenter in order to reach 5 gallons total. I know that the boil kills any bad stuff in the wort, but are we concerned about the 2-3 gallons of tap water that I'm...