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They all have the same bugs in them, and I've got roughly the same results from the strong ones and the light ones. It's been said that the younger ones (bottling date is taped to the bottle) are better, but I think you'll be fine with any of them.

Without oxygen, sour beers never get "too sour." They seem to stop after a certain sourness. Even then, the best ones are the most sour. Once you've acquired the taste, which is mostly for brett funk, you'll be fine. Jolly pumpkin gives a nice clean lemony sourness. I'm glad I used those...

Also, if you don't bottle often from the keg, don't worry about your lines. In fact, the sour beer will keep the lines sanitized with their acidity and maybe prevent mold. To prevent souring of your clean beers in the kegs, just switch out the O-rings and rubber gaskets. Everything else...

Definitely keg it and drink it if it tastes good. Don't worry about it. The only problem I see with drinking a beer that's in the process of souring is if it has buttery diacetyl. Otherwise it's fine, healthy, etc... drink it! Through most of history, people have drunk beer that is in the...

I suggest pitching the bugs with the yeast into the wort. I think that gets things going faster. It works well either way, but i think it's faster. Also, I think you have it totally right with your grain bill. Something gentle, with not too much of anything. 10%ish crystal malt. You're...

Make a beer with 20-30 Ibu. Gravity 1.060-1.069. 100% pilsner/pale, maybe 10% crystal, and maybe 5% roasted. Pitch any old yeast with some dregs from your favorite live (unpasteurized) sour beer. I like Jolly Pumpkin. Ferment for 2 weeks then rack to a better bottle. Don't worry about head...

From my experience, depending on the yeast and the quality/health of the ferment, a porter can be ready very quickly. Just as an example, I brewed the "Can You Brew It?" black butte porter recipe (OG ~1.058, fair amount of roasted malts), and it was ready fresh out of the fermenter. That one...

What takes me more time is cleaning bottles. I wish there were a faster way. Most of my time spent bottling is rinsing the oxyclean off, making sure no detergents get in the beer.

So I've been thinking a lot about it. I like that American malts are so easy to use, and so inexpensive. Nice protein content too. Their flavor though... seems to be less than European malts. Why is it like that? Is it because the post-prohibition trend towards flavorless BMC flavor...

Calorie-wise, I think beer is not as rich as it's made to be. The carbohydrates in beer include a huge percentage of ethanol, and my impression from reading the science is that the caloric contribution of dietary ethanol after it's metabolized is not very well understood. Dietary...

I find that you can push the bitterness if you use a low cohumulone hop (the ones with smooth bitterness). I've done a Saison with Apollo hops; 1.065 OG and 50 ibus, and it has a really nice balanced bitterness, even though it finished at 1.001 (!!!!!).

Here's my experience from brewing about 15 Saisons: I'll second that about candi sugar. Most candi sugar rocks and light syrup are essentially the same as cheap table sugar. Candi syrup is only important for dark belgian styles like a dubbel or quad, and it's only the dark syrup that is...

Hi all! I've got my US-05. I've got my 10 pounds of domestic pale malt. Now I need to choose a hop: I have a freezer with Crystal hops, Cluster, EKG, and Hallertau Tradition. Kinda want to try Cluster out of curiosity. The others are probably guaranteed to be delicious though...

So, I made a regular blonde ale with this yeast. 100% Belgian pilsner malt, 25 ibu Czech saaz 1.068 O.G., and a big mrmalty stirplate starter. Finished at about 1.012. Impressions: This beer is like a mellow French Saison 3711. It attenuates like crazy, and has a very slight peppery...

My only experience with adding sugar later resulted in a stalled fermentation. It stalled at 1.020, which is gross for a Belgian beer. Adding an active 001 starter fixed it, but in the future I'm just going to add my sugar additions during or before the boil. Note, I added my sugar just as...

My opinion: Overall, what makes a great tripel is dryness. Nothing ruins a tripel for me more for me than a sweet finish. There's a few things in the recipe that will be making your tripel sweeter: 1. only ~10% sugar. I'd go with 20% to be more in line with the Trappist beers of...

One big thing is the quality of the ferment. If the temperature fluctuates too much, even with a high flocculating yeast, you'll get yeast stuck in suspension sometimes.

I don't think it's worth worrying about. Mine's been smelling like spent grain for 2 years. As long as it's not moldy, I'm not worried. Even if it is, it's such a trace residue that it won't affect the the beer in any perceptible way. It's better to focus on the critical parts of...

I brewed this but subbed the hops for some galaxy I had recently got. I also used safale 04, which actually attenuated less than 002 finishing at 1.020. Malt profile was dead on, despite hops being way off (still delicious). I'm going to attempt this again but with some more noble hop subs...

I think EBMUD chlorinates the water sometimes (with chloramine). I use campden tablets (one per 10 gallon batch) in the mash water to remove any question that chlorophenols might be forming. They have a medicine/band-aid/cardboard type flavor if I recall. Extract batches don't seem to be as...