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As was pointed out already, racking the beer into another vessel isn't going to lighten the color of the beer. The color was decided up front based on the grain bill - or in this case the extract and any other items that were added for the boil. What racking the beer will do is get it off of...

Hop bitterness will decrease with time. This is why IPAs are best served "fresh" (for lack of a better term). Cellar a bottle of a commercial IPA for 3 years and then compare it with the one for the store. You'll notice the difference. In beer, longer boil times w/ the hops may help with...

Honestly - you should expect beer. Odds are the temperature shock is going to play havoc on the yeast and you're not going to get anything like the number of active cells advertised on the packet from the start - might take a little longer to get real active, might have some off flavors...

http://koehlerbeer.com/2008/06/07/rehydrating-dry-yeast-with-dr-clayton-cone/ I've never actually be able to authenticate that this e-mail really was from Dr. Cone, who probably has forgotten more about yeast than I ever learned, but it certainly makes sense and aligns with the instructions you...

It is a distilling product, used to make your initial mash which you then use in your still. Pretty sure if you use it to make beer it'll taste like ****.

I am a lazy brewer: I go straight from primary to kegs. I put the kegs on CO2 and let them sit for a couple of weeks. First glass pretty much takes care of any trub that settled in the keg.

From my experience, I tend to attribute off flavors that intensify over time to some sort of infection. Check your process, cleanliness is next to godliness. :) 2) That's a long time sitting on top of the dead yeast at the bottom of the primary. Unless I'm doing something like dry hopping...

How do you know there is no activity? Are you judging it based on the airlock or taking actual readings?

I've had some batches come out that had some off flavors that I could tolerate. On the other hand, back when I bottled I didn't realize that a blueberry fragment became trapped near the tip of my bottling wand (after brewing a blueberry ale for my wife). The four batches I brewed/bottled the...

Welcome to homebrewing. As you may have noticed by the responses, this has happened to a number of us. :)

LMAO (10 characters)

Sounds like a problem with the carbtabs... I'd follow Yooper's advice... (Which is a sound idea anytime she offers wisdom. :) ) I had a similar problem with my priming sugar with my Honey Wheat last year - mostly because I forgot to add it to the bottling bucket. ;)

Hard to tell... they should have been enough yeast left in suspension to carb the bottles. I guess the questions that come to mind are what kind of bottles are you using ("normal" glass bottles, or PET?), what temp. did you store them at, and any chance there's a problem w/ your bottle capper?

So these commercial breweries like Sierra Nevada where they literally drop their mash runoffs a couple of FEET to the boil kettle (where it splashes at the bottom like a waterfall), or all the brewers using spray balls for sparging - they must have horrible hot side aeration problems, right...

You don't need to make a starter with dry yeast, but you should rehydrate them prior to pitching. Edit: Correction - see SumnerH above... unless you're making really big beers, 1 packet of dry should suffice. There's another viable alternate to making a starter - pitching more yeast. I'll...

Welcome to beer - you're allowed to like what you like and not like what you don't. I love wheat beers but am not a big fan of some of the hop bombs the west coast guys love. There's nothing wrong with having a preference. And kudos to you for trying some new styles and learning about them...

Rinse out the crud. Then use PBW - 1 tablespoon per gallon of water and let sit overnight. Empty and rinse out the next day - you likely won't ever need to scrub. http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_56_36&products_id=514&osCsid=81698a008f51c635fd257ae4d0645852

Exactly. Sick or allergies, don't stand over your open primary with your runny nose, coughing and sneezing, and expelling your bacteria-laden mucus and saliva all over everything and everyone around you. :) Other than that, you're fine! Your beer won't catch the swine flu... As for...

Before you use it again, let it dry out and sit in the sun for a couple of days. Has worked for me in the past on getting rid of odors. Also, don't forget to rinse that bucket between going from the bleach solution to the StarSan. StarSan promotes the release of chlorine gas from...

Ok... so let's look at the MSDS for StarSan: Phosphoric Acid - 50% Dodecylbenzene Sulfonic Acid - 15% Isopropyl Alcohol - 10% The other 25% is a secret, but does not require being listed on the MSDS. You use 1oz per 5 gallons of water... so figure that the foam is a small percentage of that...