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Alright...no excuses here, just a request for some counsel... I failed to make my starter, cooked up a seven gallon batch of 1.089 and pitched two tubes of Whitelabs California Ale 001. It's evidently fermenting 8 hours later - should I leave well enough alone or would I be advised to pick up...

As always, thanks for all of your contributions to my learning - I've made some sad beers in the past, but the ratio of good beers is growing since I met you folks. I'm looking for a Port Brewing Mongo IPA kind of result. They're developing 8.5% ABV, I'm aiming for a nominal 9%. Tentative...

I've noted that the buzz obtained from my homebrew is different from that obtained by drinking storebought beer. Both are high alcohol IPAs, with similar hops and alcohol levels. But the homebrew seems to take more to obtain similar effects. And the Head Brewmistress concurs. Is there...

As always, thanks for your input. I'm attempting to get hops flavor and aroma outside of the bittering developed by my initial wort boil sequence. I have tried dry hopping at room temp, and boiled some beer with added hops pre-bottling, and I am wondering about boiling some beer pre...

I'm still new and clueless in many ways, so I wanted to run this by you folks to confirm my thinking. Looking for ways to improve my process of choice, which is making DME-based IPAs with a ton of hops. My current process includes soaking some grains in a bag, then cooking up DME and...

I'm an extract brewer - the hot action takes place on the stove in the kitchen. The spare bathroom / bedroom are where all the wet events take place. The shower doors have been removed and I built a table out of plastic pallets to allow me to work without having to bend over. There's a...

Again, thanks all. I'm a second time beginner, just getting back into it. I've made so many batches that taste like molasses that I've ceased boiling my wort and at best now achieve a timid simmer. As a result I'm not getting much hops utilization. And since my goal is a West Coast IPA...

I may be trying to reinvent the wheel here, so I thought I'd ask your advice. I've got a few cornelius kegs, two 3-gallons and a fiver. I'm not impressed - they do not seal consistently and I don't like the fittings arrangement as much as I do my Sanke keg setup. I was hoping to start...

http://www.zombieranchcomic.com/2012/04/18/118-brewing-and-stewing/ A great zombie comic that just happened to use homebrew as tool...

Hello again, and thank you all once more for all that you do here. My wife's palate is changing, or maybe she's just tasting her beers more. Everything we drink, including her house favorite "Port Brewing Wipeout IPA", tastes too syrupy and sweet to her. I've always been a chaotic...

I'm hunting for five gallon kegs, and struggling with the laws of supply and demand. I have found a couple of full size kegs. If I were to put a small batch one of these, what would be the major malfunction? Would I have to use an exorbitant amount of CO2 to force carbonate? EDIT: I...

I live in a two bedroom / two bath apartment. I either kettle on the stove top or outside on the patio. I've been doing the partial boil extract thing - soak a bag of grains, squeeze and sparge with H20, simmer some hops and malt, add the rest of the malt at the end, cool with a chiller and...

Well, I've gone and done it again. Sunday I was feeing Pliny-like and wanted to use some of every kind of hops I had in the inventory. So, I kept adding hops until I had accomplished that and then transcribed my notes afterwards. Six gallons of water, six pounds of DME, and...20 ounces...

I'm trying to push the capacity of my limited brew zone and equipment. I'm using Whitelabs California Ale yeast (considering playing with some dry yeast) and while I have a small refrigerator with a temperature controller that will hold one carboy, and an area for t-shirted carboys in trays...

Ah, naive youth. Those bygone days of halcyon yore, or something like that. I used to believe that I could go from the fermenter after four weeks to the keg, force CO2 it, and voila! Beer ready to drink. I tried it. What I got was just carbonated, chilled, green beer. So how long do...

Will this evil flavor, ignorantly induced by me by repeatedly shaking under CO2 pressure, ever leave the beer? Do I need to bleed off all pressure and bottle, or can it stay in the corny keg? Will anybody in the know respond to my plea? Thanks for any input, panicked newbie with eleven...

I filled a couple of three gallon cornys and one five gallon, then force carbed. Got the weird force carb flavor (why do I always do my research AFTER I take action?) and also discovered that the cornys are not sealing well / holding CO2 pressure around the main seal and the QDs. It seems...

Hello all - I started brewing back around '88, when there was not much good beer available and limited ingredients and information. Anything I made was great and I loved it. Then there was a stretch where I'd make a batch every few years - some were great and some were funky at best. In...