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Yes, I agree with the last poster. It's very easy to make your own sugar for brewing. I also prefer to use very simple recipes when I brew Belgian beer. Complexity can be achieved by even just one type of grain and sugar. Have a look at Stan Hieronymous' book called "Brew Like A Monk" for...

When you mash, the enzymes get dissolved into the wort pretty readily. When you are step mashing by way of decoction, your decoction will be thick. Most of the enzymes are left behind in the wort in your mash tun, so this is not a problem.

Everyone here has given good advice, but for the sake of thoroughness, I'll also share what I have done to increase my efficiency: 1. Make sure your crush is relatively fine without destroying the grain husks. 2. Use pH 5.2 buffer to treat your water, unless it is pretty soft and you are...

1) Is a 45 to 60 minute lauter long enough for a typical 5-gallon batch, or should this be taking longer? That's exactly what I shoot for. 2) Should I be aiming for a specific lauter flow rate (given a 5-gallon batch scale)? This kind of ties in with your first question. Whatever flow rate...

I never bother to stir the mash except when I'm adding liquid. I can give you the things I've done to help get my efficiency numbers up: Dough in fairly slowly, but not TOO slowly. I use a hose to let water stream into the mash tun from the HLT, and i add grains while I'm adding the water...

Sure you can. I'm pretty sure that it's the same stuff. You can email white labs to verify that, of course. By the way, just order a bunch of the dry packets off of some homebrew website and keep it in your fridge. That stuff is so awesomely vigorous.

If you were going to brew an English Barleywine, what grains would you use? Let's say you were trying to make something akin to J W Lee's harvest ale. What would you do to give it over-the-top maltiness and that great raisin/toffee/caramel flavor?

Have you checked your temperatures after the mash has stabilized? For example, it might be a good idea to check your temperature about twenty minutes after dough-in. 155F and WLP001 would not yield a final gravity of 1.007. It sounds like your mash temperature might be dropping lower than you...

I don't think you'll get the correct character with victory malt. It's quite different than amber malt. And, amber malt is definitely a specific kind of malt. Whoever recommended Thomas Fawcett amber malt was definitely on the right track!

Amber has a much stronger flavor than biscuit. Biscuit really won't impart the flavor that amber malt provides. In my experience, amber malt produces a roasty flavor. Ounce for ounce or pound for pound, it's not going to be quite as intense as black patent, but a little goes a long way...

You could just do the decoction at the end to raise the mash up to mash-out and sparge temperatures. This will still give you that nice "decoction" flavor if you don't want to step mash.

You can mash the biscuit. If he wants to, he can substitute some of the dry malt extract for maris otter pale and mash that, too.

A friend and I brewed an all-grain british barleywine that we love. You can approximate our five gallon batch like this: 8 lbs light dry malt extract 3 lbs biscuit malt 2 lb of 40-60L crystal malt 1 oz Northern Brewer at 60 minutes 1 oz Northern Brewer at 45 minutes 1 oz Kent Goldings at 30...

Is it possible that your temperature (for whatever reason) dipped below 60? That yeast's lowest recommended temperature is 60 degrees. If your temperature drops, the yeast become less active.

Remember that a mashout provides more than just the act of ceasing enzyme activity. It helps dissolve the sugars that you spend so long producing by conversion. Even if you've mashed thin, you can pull off an appropriate amount of wort, boil it, and return it to the mash vessel for ten or...

It's also good to get your grist up to 170 to help dissolve the sugar that you've produced. I favor that aspect over denaturing the enzymes. But decoctions are good for their flavor and efficiency aspect. If you have the time, go for it! I'm going to be doing them (at least for mashout) much...

I'm not saying that this wouldn't be a great book to have in my brewing library, but this book is based on brewing with extracts, rather than with grain, so I'm not sure how applicable it would be. Plus, the reviews are very, very mixed. I'm sure it's worth checking out, though.

Efficiency comes from the percentage of sugars that you pull out of the grains. It doesn't matter if they are fermentable, or if they are dextrins. Yes. The sugars dissolve more readily in warmer water, so you leave less behind. Be sure to adjust your pH in order to keep from pulling out...

Your efficiency will be greater with a longer, slower sparge in the upper 160s. But your mash should be dictated by the style of beer that you want to brew, not efficiency concerns. If you know your usual efficiency, you can plan your recipes with that figure and get the starting gravity that...

Yeah! Maris Otter is my favorite. I was thinking of using that as my base malt with a bit of amber malt for color and flavor and such. I might just use English 2-row as the base.