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Leave it in the secondary as long as you can stand it. You'll get better beer.

Ummm, brew a lager?

You would want to reactivate it the night before by adding sterilized wort.

Bulk DAP is something like $300 a ton. Bulk urea about the same. The money they charge for "yeast nutrient" packages is highway robbery. Permit me to be skeptical of the claims for high buck nutrient packs.

Small batches are more problematic because of the loss when racking and testing and the greater potential for contamination. I've made mead cold using campden tablets, honey, yeast, and water. Nothing else. Turned out great, just took four years. I used the Wyeast sweet mead yeast.

Sorry, no pics, and the vines aren't too photogenic this time of year. I have them growing up the side of an outbuilding. The vines reach 10' in height most years, growing up a metal grid. They are dark green, and quite pretty, I think.

I have never had the experience of getting beer of adequate clarity without using a secondary. Others have done better. You should not get enough sediment on the secondary for positioning of the racking cane to be critical. Just a 1/8" layer or so. It is not a big deal to get a little...

High IG beers can take forever. I had some mead that took more than two months once.

Find out whether it's a two wire thermistor or a three wire sensor with a builtin amp. If it's just a thermistor you can put an ohmmeter across it and vary the temperature and see what you get. Then it's a simple matter to apply a series or shunt resistance to fool the uP. You can use either...

You do have to be careful with gas because you can in fact blow yourself up. That said, it isn't that hard to do right, albeit something you want to do early in the day before you have a homebrew.

The cider-specific varieties have higher tannin content and higher acid content. Fedco Trees sells them, as does Cummins Nursery. Cider without sufficient tannin is like beer without hops. Or so I'm told.

Well, you can always brew them.:mug:

There is probably a calibration screw somewhere inside the unit that will allow you to tweak it a little bit. Depending on the type of sensor, there are different ways (involving solder and resistors) to fool the microprocessor into thinking the water is cooler than it really is. There are...

The one I have was originally propane, and came from a homebrew supply store. They sold me a replacement orfice for it for converting it to natural gas. Then we moved to a house that had propane so I've converted it back. Lehman's has one that can be converted: Lehman's - Products for Simple...

I find that a 20,000 BTU burner is sufficient. There are cast-iron burners available in this range that run quietly and that will work off a standard 7" w.c. natural gas line. For comparison, a typical kitchen stove burner is 7,000-11,000 BTU.

The cherries went in whole after a brief rinse and some picking over to remove stems and any rotten fruit. As for terminology, I note that there is lack of agreement on exactly what each term means. A Melomel by any other name is still just as nice. I think the pits are part of the source...

Ah, the perils of fermenting in the living room. I'm so glad I have a basement now. The episode with the hops being stuck in the blowoff tube did not end well. Anyway, yes, get a blowoff tube if there is any doubt and you have the fermenter in finished space. There's a lot to be said for...

I work for a company that writes applications for the Android, so we have a bunch of the phones around. They work, and people who carry them around like them. I don't think you'll be disappointed. Compared to the iPhone, there are minor pros and cons but overall you can do similar things...

Whoa, let's stop right there and go to the source. This is all just basic, elementary water chemistry. Calcium Chloride is CaCl2, and it's that 2 that you have to watch. The necessity of the two chlorine items for each calcium ions can be inferred from the relative positions of the two...

So, for the time being there is a ready supply of used Corney kegs. How long will it last? Will we all have to switch to Sankey kegs at some point? If so, what do we do to clean them? Is there anyone who uses Sankey kegs for homebrew today?