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Greetings! I am getting ready to make a batch of orange blossom mead. I have been reading the "What I Learned at NHC" sticky and find the Meadmaker of the Year handout to be extremely helpful. I do have one question though. The handout says that the water should have 250-500ppm as carbonate. I...

Greetings all! I am an experienced homebrewer (of beer) and I am just now getting into the world of winemaking. I made a Riesling kit from Winexpert and just got to the degassing stage. After reading the instructions that came with the kit, I "whipped up" the wine with a degassing wand, as...

Greetings All! I am aging my first sour ale right now. A month ago I brewed a Flanders Sour Pale recipe from an issue of BYO. I did a Flanders style mash and pitched Ardennes Yeast and Roselaire Blend, both from Wyeast. I transferred the beer after three weeks onto 1 ounce of medium toast...

Greetings! I have collected some Belgian bottles and plan to bottle, cork and cage some brett beer I made a year ago. It is a nearly 10% beer. It was fermented with saison yeast for a few days and then I transferred it and added brettanomyces. After a few months with the brett, I transferred...

Alright. I brewed outside today and it was really windy and snowy. At some point, a Cold-Eeze wrapper must have blown into the boil kettle because it came out of the kettle while I was pouring it through my strainer. It's not in the fermenter. It was still completely intact. Do you guys think it...

Can anyone suggest a good water profile for a berliner weisse? I've heard water profile can be a big deal with this style so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Greetings! I've been searching the forum for awhile now and I cannot find any definitive answer to this question. I currently build my water from distilled water and brewing salts. I would like to start using RO water due to the lower cost. Can I expect RO water to be nearly free of salt...

Greetings fellow homebrewers! I'd like some feedback on my current aeration technique. I built a fish tank aeration system but had no luck with it on my last brewday. I need a stronger pump. So I used my old technique. It goes like this: 1. Cool wort in the kettle with my immersion chiller 2...

I am brewing today. My starter is krausening away upstairs on my new stir plate. I've been reading various posts about decanting the liquid off the yeast cake after chilling. At this point, the yeast are still in suspension. I don't have time to chill and decant. I'm making an American Stout in...

Greetings! I am brewing an American Stout this weekend. It's the one from Brewing Classic Styles. The recipe looks like this: OG: 1.072, FG: 1.017, IBU: 73, Color: 45 SRM 15lbs American 2-row, 1lb Black Roasted Barley, .75lbs Chocolate Malt, .75lbs Crystal 40L. 1.4oz Horizon 13% AA 60...

Greetings all! After reviewing my water report, it has become apparent that it will be a better option for me to build water from distilled rather than modifying my own. I have been playing around with the brewing water calculator at http://www.brewersfriend.com/water-chemistry/ I have...

I've done a few batches now and have been VERY careful not the splash my beer for fear of oxidation. I tried adding gelatin to my beer in secondary last night and had to pour it into a carboy by means of using a funnel. The beer was at about 60 degree when I added the gelatin. There was a small...

I am getting ready to add gelatin to an IPA in secondary. I added dry hops and oak cubes. The oak cubes are floating at the top along with a few bits of hops. Does anyone see any potential issues I may have with trying to use gelatin in a carboy with oak cubes floating on the top of the beer...

I brewed my first AG batch last weekend. I made a 2000ml yeast starter with 1 vial of WLP001. I used 13lbs 2-row, .5lbs crystal 40:, .5lbs white wheat and .5lbs carapils. I brewed outside, cooled the wort to 62 degrees, aerated the wort, and pitched the yeast into the carboy. There was still...

Okay. Here's the deal. I made my first starter last night. I made a 2000ml starter with one vial of WLP001. I shook the vial before I pitched it into the starter. When I opened the vial, some of the yeast overfilled over the top of the vial. I don't think I lost much, maybe 1/2 of the vial. I'm...

Greetings! I'm getting ready to do my first all-grain batch. I ordered a kit from a popular homebrew supply website last month to do a blind pig clone. I have had a lot going on the past month with buying a new house and I have not been able to use the crushed grains yet. They are approx. 6...

I bought a 50qt Rubbermaid cooler to use as a mash tun. http://www.rubbermaid.com/Category/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?Prod_ID=RP091808# The spigot is on the long edge of the cooler rather than the short edge. I've read about only slotting the longitudinal pipes in a manifold to prevent...

Greetings all! I did a clone of Russian River Blind Pig and didn't get as much separation of the hot break as I would liked to have gotten. I've heard about the hot break "stressing" the yeast. Will the hot break cause off-flavors in my beer?

I don't have a full kegging system yet but I do have some 5 gal corny kegs. Does anybody use kegs for dryhopping and oaking and then going from the keg to a bottling bucket? Are there any downsides to doing this? Is a 5 gal carboy a better option? I'm just trying to weight buying a 5 gal corny...

Help! My local homebrew shop is all out of WLP001. I need some for a DIPA I'm doing this weekend. Anybody have some in the mid-michigan area?