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This is generally not a good thing to tell to beginner brewers. Wort laying around uncooled and not fermenting is a perfect atmosphere for bacterial contamination. As a beginner the best procedure after the boil is to chill as soon as possible down to 75 F or so and pitch whatever yeast you are...

That's close enough. Rat City is a state of mind, you don't have to be in White Center to enjoy it... Yeah, with anything plastic I would dedicate a vessel only to brett fermentations. Plastic buckets are cheap and it ain't worth the risk of ruining another beer later (though an unexpected...

I'm with calder on the fresh starter a day before. That's what I do when using fresh yeast. It's likely impossible to pitch too much yeast as a homebrewer (especially when you're talking about Imperial Stout or barleywine, etc). Bigger is better. A good old 1-gallon wine jug is my vessel of...

Funny...looks like we're online at the same time. Those last two posts hit on the same minute!! Cheers! -Kev

"I'm sure Brett can't with stand 20+ minutes in boiling water and if it can it deserves to live lol" I'm down with that!! Made me laugh! Yeah, I do beers with Bret in them and just clean everything with boiling water when done. I've even used the same fermenters after a use with bret...

As someone previously stated: "Ask ten brewers the same question and you'll get fifteen different answers". I primary and secondary ferment in old Sankey kegs. After racking off of the primary yeast cake my secondary fermenter usually has a lot more headspace then the primary. No...you aren't...

"Is it similar to beer making, where warmer temperatures can lead to hot alcohol or other off flavors, while cooler temperatures give a cleaner flavor profile?" No...most red wine yeast makers (say, pasteur red) advise fermenting at 80 degrees or so. I've founf this to make no difference in...

I've had great luck at all temps with reds but slightly warmer is usually better then real cold. Having said that, my friend Jim ferments all of his in the garage which is usally in the fifties somewhere. He makes very fine wine, BTW...

I used to use vodka in the airlock but for some reason whenever I'd go to use more, the bottle was always empty... Just santitizer in mine now.

I once bottled a pilsner directly from the keg (tube in the pouring spout and filled from the bottom of the bottle). I entered three bottles in a homebrew competition one year later and it won a minor award (second place ribbon). So I pulled out a few bottles that were left and all were great...

Still haven't heard what it TASTES like... Remember, there is nothing in a beer fermentation that will kill you, it only makes the stuff taste bad. That does look like some bacterial infection however. Does it taste like s***? Or is it worth saving? You'll know within a few weeks or a month...

It is now sitting at 1.030 (10.7% ABV). Still a little sweet, but that's par for the course with b-wine. I thought about pitching another pack of yeast and seeing how far it will really go but I hate to screw with success...does it really need to be more then 10.7%?????? It really seems like...

Put it away in the fridge, brew something else and taste it later...WAAAYY later! The first thing to disappear in any beer is the hop profile (unless you're dry hopping in the keg or something). I had a blond ale that was so overhopped it was nothing but pasture-grass... After a year in the...

Let's see... where are we?? Less then 48 hours from the time of pitching the yeast and the so4 and Ardennes yeast have attenuated 62 points as of ten minutes ago. Using the corrective calculations for refractometer and a simple equation to calculate alcohol by volume we are sitting at 8.13%...

Ah...lets not confuse this guy about recirculation... yes, it's neccesary to help set the grain bed, and yes, if you stir up the entire thing and disturb it that much you should recirculate but disturbing just the top inch or two of your mash does not require more recirculation. I regularly...

Not uncommon to find scummy things on the top of a primary fermentation (or even a secondary for that matter). Leaving the hops in there could have caused it but tough to say. The bottom line is not what it LOOKS like, it's what it TASTES like. If the sample you tasted didn't have any off...

As a general rule (seat of the pants brewing) you want to use about 1 liter of hot liquor per lb of malted grain in the mash. This is by no means a hard and fast rule (you could just as easily convert that to one quart per lb of grist and the results will still be fine) but it will get you in...

I definitly pushed the capacity of my mash tun to it's limits yestersday. Was only able to fit about 47 lbs of pale malt in there... coupled with the specialty malts, I ended up with a full tun. All went well until the end when my hop strainer inside the kettle came loose and plugged my brew...

Hello all! Got a message from the forum saying I haven't logged in for a while (probably mechanically generated) so here I am. Today the Rat City Brewery is fully engaged in a batch of "Old Rodent" barleywine style ale. Basically it's a clone of Great Divide's "Old Ruffian". Close to 50lbs...

Wow...I guess that is pretty anal, but no one should ever fault a guy for doing too much santizing!! -Kev