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I use a grainfather and side mangrove steel hop spider for hop additions. For IPA hop flame out or zero minute additions, is it advisable to dump out the hop spider and replace with flame out or zero minute hops? The wort will generally stay over 200F anyway for at least 20 minutes, so I have...

Brewed my 67th beer with my grainfather this weekend. All original equipment (except for the controller upgrade that came out a couple of years ago and two new rubber silicon hoses for the wort chiller). Extremely happy with this. Never used the safety spring and ball in the pump tube, and...

I think I miscalculated my starter and added 397 grams of DME instead of 297. Banked some, but pitched the rest anyway (Flagship A07, aka chico strain yeast) into OG 1.0525 IPA (scintering stone of 1.5 liters 02 per minute addition for 1 minute). 5.9 gal into fermenter (using Grainfather), 10...

In wine making, before fining, the instructions always say to stir out all CO2 before adding finings “degassing”. The instructions say that Failure to degas will result in wine not clearing. So, when transferring beer to a keg (and adding gelatin as a fining) is it better to just purge the O2...

Got an email from Ss Brewtech regarding their upcoming grain mill. Okay, so I was thinking it might be in the $300 range. Clicked the preorder button and found out it's only $799.

I don't use a brewers program and I got tired of relying on GF's water online water calculator that produces different results as compared to the formula equations in GF's written instructions. For example, using 110v, 12 lb grain, for 6 gallons batch, the US online calc has mash and sparge...

For my lagers, I use biofine clear and the gelatin method. With biofine I’ve read you mix it thoroughly in the secondary. The pros do this by inline dosaging. This makes sense - thoroughly blended fining will grab yeast uniformly through the beer. This is also the fining method for wine...

Discovered this error today. I use brewer's friend yeast starter calculator and overbuild my starters by 0.8L to bank that amount for my next starter (I have 0.8L jars). My erroneous approach, say I had 100B cells (brand new pack) and needed 200B to pitch for a new beer (pitch yeast). The...

I use a hop spider with GF. I know you can set the pump hose to the side of the pot to create a gentle whirlpool, but has anyone tried just sticking the hose into the hop spider and just ciculate through the spider directly? I guess this would be down welling, rather than ciculating. Did it work?

I experimented with a bunch of hops I had never used together. Dry hopped only during fermentaion stage (to avoid oxidation issues and allow cold crash to take out yeast and hops). This experiment created the best IPA I’ve made. No single hop flavor dominated and the fruity aspects of the...

Cream ale with 50% 6-row, 50% 2 row. I have typically used the gelatin method to clear my lagers. 1/4 teas gel, 1/2 c. water heated to 155 in 8 sec microwave bursts. I typically do this after I’ve transferred to a secondary and got temp down to 50F. This method works well, but as you know...

Got a nice 800 WLP starter finished. Went to slide out my stirbar with a unsanitized rare earth magnet. Pulled it up the side of the flask and at the top both came together and I dropped both into the starter. Fished them both out within 20 seconds (had a second rare earth magnet standing...

WLP 833, 2.8L stirplate starter, temps 71-73F. I usually get 2 inches of kreusen on all my starters. This one is bubbling, but not a lot of kreusen. I probably had 1/4 inch kreusen 3 hours in, but it went down. 18 hours later it looks like this. Smells decent and slight bubbles but very...

I’ve seen some NEIPA recipes with tons of dry hopping, like 8 oz or more on various days. Is there a minimum and maximum amount of NEIPA dry hopping, in anyone’s opinion? My uneducated guess is you probably need a mixture of 5-6 oz as some sort of minimum (5 gal batch) with probably 1/2 of...

Using a grainfather with a 17-18 lb Pilsner grain bill and double the normal amount of hops, I was going to brew a 7 gallon lager and then counterflow chill half to one fermenter and the other half to another fermenter. Was then going to fill both fermenters to a 5.5 gallon level with filtered...

I’ve made several IPAs with well know hops (mosaic, 4 Cs, amarillo, simco, etc). I wanted to experiment with hops I havent used but am concerned that mixing and matching might create something horrible. On the other hand, it might be good - since they are all hops. So here is the proposed...

Recently branched out to distilling from beer making - started with scotch as it's almost like making beer - use peated malt, sparge, no hops and then boil for just 15 mins (for the hot break), then chill for the cold break. All of the distillation recipes I've seen use massive amounts of...

How low can you go with with OG for lagers before you significantly adversely affect it? Would like to make some lighter side beer, drink more, less headache. Don’t want water though.

I use brewers friend yeast starter calculator that has a default OG for the starter of 1.036. Is it adviseable to go higher, say to the OG of the lager (e.g., 1.049) you will be making? I’ve had no problems with 1.036 starters, but wondering if this would be worthwhile (smaller starter, better...

My dry-hopped IPAs are wonderful for about three weeks. After that, they start getting harsh - less aroma but the bitterness is still coming through. Can you re-dryhopp an IPA 3 weeks in? I make 5 gallon keg batches and cant drink them fash enough. Maybe I'll stick to lagers and just make...