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I moved from Austin to San Diego a year ago, and I'm trying to figure out why my brewhouse efficiency greatly decreased. My first batch out here was in my new 10 gallon square igloo cooler mash tun, and I came out about 10 points of gravity (1.04 instead of 1.05) from where I wanted. I thought...

Can anyone recommend a beer style that ferments at a fairly high temperature? It's been three "hot" weekends in a row (77-78F) in San Diego, and I don't have an AC. I've never been too happy with the results achieved with ice water or evaporative cooling so if anyone has had a positive...

Has anyone ever tried mashing & sparging on one day and doing the boil a day later? It seems like it could be a bad idea, but if you could do that you could get stuck at work until 7, come home and make the wort, and the next evening do the boil. If no one has tried it, I'll do a...

I'm pretty new to brewing, but the last 3 kegs I've "gotten to know" (i.e. didn't get floated in under 3 hours) have been noticibly better towards the end. Does anyone else experience this, and is there a reason for it? I thought maybe it was an aging thing, but I let my ESB go 3 months...

I've had a kegerator w/ 6' pony taps that I leave inside the kegerator. I think it would be kind of slick to have a tower or some taps in the door, but I don't want to have anything else to clean ... too much sanitation in brewing as it is! I like being able to throw the picnic/pony taps in...

Is there anything wrong with adding cold water to hit the optimal strike temp you were shooting for? I hit 154 on my 5 gal. AG and quickly added a quart of cold water to bring it to 150. Are the enzymes already destroyed or is a quick addition of cold water okay? Thanks, Doug

I did my first all grain today, and frankly its a little bit of a pain doing AG on an electric range w/o a 7 gallon pot. Its a lot more stuff to clean and time consuming. However, AG brews my friends have made have much better malt characteristics. But when you're making hoppy brews like...

Just out of curiosity, I figured out what it would cost to A) displace 5 gal. of sanitizer with CO2 in a corny keg and B) force carbonate a keg of beer to 5 gm/L CO2. At 70*F, 1 lb of CO2 fills about 8.75 cubic feet of space. 1 cubic foot is equal to about 7.5 gallons. A corny keg is 5...

I'm getting tired of seeing "$1 Domestics" while drunk walking down 6th St. and having to explain to the bartenders that Fat Tire or Redhook IPA or Widmer are domestics when they try to charge you $4. Shame on false advertising! Shame on them for connecting "domestics" with light beer! :tank:

How does alcohol content impact perceived bitternes? I just think its strange that Dogfish Head 90 min IPA is 90 IBUs and I love it, Stone IPA is in the 70s and I love it, and I had a celebration ale last night for the first time and at 60 some IBUs it was curl the sides of your tongue bitter...

Without years of experience that would let me know the contents of a keg by judging the weight, are there any good ways to approximate how much beer is in a keg? I figure I could weigh an empty keg and compare that to a partially full keg and assume the beer is about 8 lbs/gallon or so, but...

I'm brewing a partial mash hefeweizen and i dropped about a tablespoon of grain into the brewpot. Can I do my boil with the grain in there or do I need to do something to get it out? Thanks, Doug (brewing and watching the Horns)

Is there anything "magic" about cooling your wort down to 80 degrees within 15-20 minutes of killing the boil? By that, I mean is the point just to cool the wort down quickly, or is 80 degrees an important threashold for a cold break. I added 2 gallons of ice slush and a half gallon of...

Hey, odd question, but does anyone ever eat the grain after brewing? Its not horrible by the handful right out of the grainbag, its at least as good as many of the high fiber cereals at the store. Anyone have any good recipes or preparation methods ... it seems like a little of a waste...

I want to try a partial mash but I want to minimize the mess, so I am wondering if there is a good reason why sparging cannot be accomplished by simply submerging the mashed grain bag into a new pot of hot clean water and then adding that water to the wort? I'm just thinking that raining...

Does anyone know if pony kegs (1/6th barrel) are easily fillable? I want a 5 gallon keg I can fit in a fridge that isn't a dedicated keggerator, but the 5 gal. cornelius kegs really don't fit at all b/c they are so long/tall. Hook'em, Doug:rockin:

Why can't you just add ice or at least refridgerated water to bring down the temp. of the wort faster? I don't see any drawbacks to at least slowly adding in refridgerated water to accelerate the cooling. Thanks, Doug