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I was planning on brewing a couple of recipes this week with the same yeast, one required a 1L starter and the other required a 2L. I was planning on making the smaller beer 1st, so I made a 2L starter, planning to brew the 1st batch tomorrow, pitch half the yeast, and then add another...

I brewed this Centennial Blonde about 10 days ago, using rehydrated Nottingham. I moved the bucket yesterday, and noticed afterward that the lid of the bucket had popped open a bit. I'm not sure if it happened a few minutes earlier when i moved it, or a week ago. Not long after I smelled...

I brewed a barleywine Tuesday night, and pitched a 2L starter of WLP007 late Tuesday night. By yesterday morning it had started bubbling, and I put on a blowoff tube. Despite that, sometime last night I had a blowout, and this morning found the walls splattered and the lip popped open. I...

After a frustrating brew day yesterday where I failed to end up close to the expected SG for a Barleywine, I went through all my recent numbers in Beersmith, and I'm finding that my results are very inconsistent. One issue I know I have is that my boil off rates vary some, and I am not always...

This is the 1st started I have made by stepping up from a slant. My 1st step was around 200ml, and just had a small cap of foam for a while. I stepped this up Monday night, and it has looked like this for about 24 hours now. I believe I had read that starters on a stir plate usually settle...

I'm going to can some wort for starters in my pressure cooker. If I make a starter and need to use 200 ml wort from one of the jars, do I need to dispose of the rest of the jar once it's been opened, or can I close and refrigerate it for use when I step up. Would I need to boil it at that...

I have a beer fermenting right now, and the airlock activity appeared to stop after a day. I figured that couldn't be right and took a peek in the bucket, and sure enough there was plenty of activity in there. Taking a closer look, the back rubber stopper that holds the airlock in the...

I have a batch of EdWort's Pale Ale that hasn't tasted right from the beginning. I bottled it a little over a month ago, and after a couple of weeks it poured clear, with a very light color, but it had a slight sour taste. I was hoping that it was just green, so in the past couple weeks I've...

I brewed some Centennial Blonde today, and took a sample of the wort before the boil. My SG was 1.22, so adjusting for temperature, my SG was 1.35, which gave me a mash efficiency of 75% according to Beersmith. Then after the boil and cooling, I took a measurement before pitching of 1.048...

I have a stir plate on the way, so I can get into making starters. What I am wondering is, can I stretch out a a vial of yeast I may use often, like an American or London Ale, by making multiple starters from the same vial, or by saving some of the starter by making a little more than I need...

I discovered this morning that my brewing thermometer has been calibrated 4 degrees low, so basically I've been heating my water, mashing, sparging, cooling, basically doing everything but fermenting at 4 degrees higher than I thought I was. What problems should I look for in the beers I have...

For my last few batches, I have started to use some temperature control. I had a few batches over the summer get into the mid to high 70s during the 1st few days, and I don't think they came out as good as they could have. For the last few batches, I have been putting my fermentation bucket in...

My last few batches, I have started to actively keep temperatures down by putting my bucket in a tub of ice water. Bucket temps are staying pretty steady in the low 60s. However, since I started doing this, my fermentations are taking along time to start. I pitched some US-05 about 30 hours...

I picked up this keg a while back, and it was filthy. I cleaned it out, but it looks like some lettering was scraped from the outside, and on the inside of the keg where that was done there may be some rust, at least some off coloring. Is this keg ok? If not, is there anything I can do, or do...

I started a Porter yesterday, and pitched a pack of rehydrated Nottingham. It's been about 30 hours now, and there is no visible airlock activity. I took a peek in the bucket, and there isn't much other than a few small bubbles at the top of the wort, and a patch of what looks like yeast...

I keep my fermenters in a basement bathroom, that stays a pretty steady 69-71 degrees right now. On a few occasions, especially with Nottingham yeast, I've had bucket temperatures get up into the mid 70s, so for my latest batch (Graff) I decided to try a swamp cooler. It worked very well...

We started a wine kit last month, and just completed the final racking step. The instructions say we can bottle it in 2 weeks, but we want to bulk age it for several months. 1. When racking, at the very end, a very small amount of yeast sludge got transferred. Is that ok, or do I need to...

I bottled a batch of Honey Kolsch a few weeks ago. In the past few days we've enjoyed a few of them, and most of the bottles are crystal clear. I've opened two though that are extremely cloudy. They are drinkable but not nearly as good as the others, and I'm not sure what happened. Any idea...

I bought a new mash tun recently, and used it today to brew a batch. I ended up with serious technical difficulties, somehow air is getting into the hose when I drain the mash tun into to the boiling kettle. I think it's a bad O-Ring where the faucet comes out of the cooler. I tried...

I'm going to be brewing a black IPA tomorrow. The recipe is estimated at 60 IBU, but when I enter it into Beersmith with the hops my LHBS has in stock, I'm coming up with 48. The recipe calls for 1 oz. Centennial at 60 mins. If I adjust that to 1.5 oz, I should be at 60 IBU, but is that all...