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50 AMP Supply to the brew rig. It was purpose built from the ground up over a 4 year period to be a No Sparge a.k.a. (BIAB) system. 3 batches made so far with each batch better than the previous. 75% efficiency without adding any additional base malts (I just follow) the recipe "as is". Currently making all beers using the recipe's found in Jamil's book - Brewing Classic Styles (80 styles). Boiling Equipment: 5500 Watt - 15.5 Gallon Keggle Beer Bottling Gear: Bench Top Capper Fermentation Vessels and Equipment: 7.9 Gallon Speidel Plastic Tank Wort Chillers: SS Plate Chiller - 30 Plates Plumbing, Pumps and Hardware: 100% hard plumb (copper & stainless) CIP system, March high-flow pumps, in-line strainer, in-line strike water heater...

Mead is a fermented beverage made purely from honey. It is not beer or wine. As a result, mead making follows a completely different set of rules from wine or beer making. The purpose of this article is to teach you how to make delicious mead using current techniques. In the past, mead has been characterized as taking a year or more to ferment. After the year was up, the resulting mead tasted something like kerosene due to fusel alcohols. Several years of aging later, you might be able to drink it! Image courtesy of Walshy87 No more. With the current understanding of fermentation requirements, there is no reason why fermentation shouldn't be complete in 7-14 days. Fast, clean, healthy fermentations are the key to mead that is drinkable...

I think it is way more frustrating to not know what ruined your batch of beer, than actually losing the beer itself. It always makes your next batch feels like a gamble. Am I going to waste $40 and 8 hours of work again? How do I avoid making the same mistake when I don’t know what went wrong in the first place? A common problem (especially among newer homebrewers) is having a bucket of wort that never even starts fermenting. Here are some common reasons and solutions for this popular ailment. Pun intended. You’re welcome. Check That it Really Isn't Fermenting Bubbles in your airlock aren't a good way to judge if fermentation is happening. The best way to check if your beer has started fermenting is by taking a gravity reading. If your...

As it pains me to say this, I think I have unintentionally become a water expert. I have been a process engineer for many years and in each process I have supervised, there has been some form of water treatment. However, when I started brewing I did not include water treatment for the first couple of years. Why you ask? Like most home brewers I viewed water treatment as an afterthought. If you read most recipes, they don't include a water profile. I asked about water treatment as a couple of home brew shops in the area. "Just add 50 percent RO to the tap and you'll be good" is the response I would mostly get. This led me to believe that water wasn't that important when you brew. During recipe formulation, we spend most of our time...

I like to use the right tool for the job, in this case, PBW which stands for Powdered Brewery Wash. Being made for the job of cleaning everything in the brewery it qualifies as the right tool for the job and it is designed to clean everything, depending on the amount used per gallon of water. Here's a pic of the 1 lb jar for starters; These are the instructions on the side of the jar. I use it at room temp for any plastics! For cleaning various things, the amounts per gallon are; To clean Brew Kettles & Lauter tuns- 1-2 oz. per gallon of water for single brew cleaning. For multiple brew cleaning use 1.5 oz. per gallon of water. Run solution for 25-35 minutes at temps between 100F & 160F. Rinse with potable water at same temp as wash...

I like to use the right tool for the job, in this case, PBW which stands for Powdered Brewery Wash. Being made for the job of cleaning everything in the brewery it qualifies as the right tool for the job and it is designed to clean everything, depending on the amount used per gallon of water. Here's a pic of the 1 lb jar for starters; These are the instructions on the side of the jar. I use it at room temp for any plastics! For cleaning various things, the amounts per gallon are; To clean Brew Kettles & Lauter tuns- 1-2 oz. per gallon of water for single brew cleaning. For multiple brew cleaning use 1.5 oz. per gallon of water. Run solution for 25-35 minutes at temps between 100F & 160F. Rinse with potable water at same temp as wash...

Bottling day brings you even closer to your brewing goal of having your very own handcrafted beer to enjoy and share. Bottling can either be a pain or painless. Learning through the pain process I have a few ideas to share so your brewing day experience will be something to enjoy. What you will need: Bottles Bottle brush Bottle caps and a capper Sanitizer Towels Sponge 5 gallon bottling bucket with spigot 1 gallon bucket for miscellaneous purposes Hoses Siphon Racking cane with sediment standoff Bottle filler Preparation, Cleaning, & Sanitizing Inspect your bottles to see if there is any debris or mold in the bottle, usually at the bottom. If there is I pour in a little vinegar and scrub it out with my bottle brush. Rinse...

I was reading the article posted by Peter Cotton on his no chill brewing. I had no idea of just how the water restrictions in Australia could affect home brewing. I personally have been doing an ice bath for years, but wanted to move up to an immersion chiller to quicken the cool down to reduce my brew day. Peter’s methods works for him but there is a lot of work, cost and time delay involved. I recalled conversations of friends in South Carolina who had issues with the ground water being too warm to be effective. Plus there is all that water that goes to waste. There had to be a better solution, so I had a home brew and thought about what I could do that was compact, cost effective and efficient. Building the Cooling System for Your...

The world of automated brewing systems has exploded since the launch of the Pico Brew in 2013, automated brewing systems have been popping up like fruit flies in a house made out of bananas. Some big name examples like the BeerDroid / BeerFlo, the MiniBrew, IGulu, the Brewie and all the variations of the Pico line. However, there was one system that really caught my attention for a few reasons. It's called the BrewBro and it brews a single pint of beer at a time. What makes this brewing system unique, unlike the others previously listed, is that it brews a single pint of beer at a time. Founder, Ted Bronson, gave us a first-hand look at the BrewBro. Ted Bronson on the BrewBro Brewing System The BrewBro is a revolutionary brewing...

In my last article about gelatin, I explained how it works (physically and chemically) and proved that a short boil does no harm to it, busting a common brewing myth. After multiple positive responses, I decided to do an experiment to bring more light into another commonly discussed, gelatin related topic: “Do you have to cold crash before gelatin fining?” While with the last topic, opinions were quite polarized, some people saying boiling gelatin is a disaster, others being on my side, with this one, most people agree cold crashing is recommended. Let’s look how much of a difference it really makes! What Exactly is a Chill Haze? Every homebrewer knows that sometimes, after putting a warm bottle of apparently clear beer into a...

Some time ago, I decided to change my bottling away from glass and replace this with the PET plastic soft drink bottles that are readily available. I had a number of reasons for this change but the main one was I had simply become fed up with the work involved in filling forty four green Grolsch bottles at the end of every fermentation. Those bottles, so lovingly collected, had served me well over the years. In the beginning, I had nearly twelve hundred but sadly, time and space constraints had whittled the collection down to a mere three hundred and now even these faithful servants were destined for the scrapheap. (I actually sold them). The new plan centered on the two-liter (4 pint) plastic bottle. I had done as much research as is...

Some time ago, I decided to change my bottling away from glass and replace this with the PET plastic soft drink bottles that are readily available. I had a number of reasons for this change but the main one was I had simply become fed up with the work involved in filling forty four green Grolsch bottles at the end of every fermentation. Those bottles, so lovingly collected, had served me well over the years. In the beginning, I had nearly twelve hundred but sadly, time and space constraints had whittled the collection down to a mere three hundred and now even these faithful servants were destined for the scrapheap. (I actually sold them). The new plan centered on the two-liter (4 pint) plastic bottle. I had done as much research as is...

The following steps are how I made a immersion chiller for cooling my brew fast for pitching yeast. No need to to pay $100 bucks. Things you will need: Standard head screw driver 25' 3/8" copper tubing (some use 50' and you would follow the same steps) 4 hose clamps 3/8" ID clear plastic hose. About 2-4 ft per side. Suit to your needs. Hose adapter or faucet adapter, depending on whether you're brewing in the house or outside. *Recommended* Pipe bender (they have cheap spring-style pipe benders at your local hardware store) How I did it: First thing, wait for a sale on 3/8" copper tubing. Approx. 25'. I got this at Lowe's pretty cheap. If you're patient, either Lowe's or Home Depot will have a sale. I payed around $20 bucks for mine...

The following steps are how I made a immersion chiller for cooling my brew fast for pitching yeast. No need to to pay $100 bucks. Things you will need: Standard head screw driver 25' 3/8" copper tubing (some use 50' and you would follow the same steps) 4 hose clamps 3/8" ID clear plastic hose. About 2-4 ft per side. Suit to your needs. Hose adapter or faucet adapter, depending on whether you're brewing in the house or outside. *Recommended* Pipe bender (they have cheap spring-style pipe benders at your local hardware store) How I did it: First thing, wait for a sale on 3/8" copper tubing. Approx. 25'. I got this at Lowe's pretty cheap. If you're patient, either Lowe's or Home Depot will have a sale. I payed around $20 bucks for mine...

I recently became curious/excited about trying out different English base malts, ever since I tried some fabulous English style beers that I found out were brewed with Optic as the base malt. I very often will experiment with different grains, but I've always had a hard time not tweaking more than one variable so I can never quantify the exact differences I'm getting. Recently I had some time on my hands so I ordered 6 different base malts, enough for a one gallon batch each of each of the different base malts, and decided to do a true single variable SMaSH beer side by side assessment. I decided to compare American 2-Row, Maris Otter, Golden Promise, Halcyon, Optic, and Pearl malts. All except for the American 2-row are English grown...

I recently became curious/excited about trying out different English base malts, ever since I tried some fabulous English style beers that I found out were brewed with Optic as the base malt. I very often will experiment with different grains, but I've always had a hard time not tweaking more than one variable so I can never quantify the exact differences I'm getting. Recently I had some time on my hands so I ordered 6 different base malts, enough for a one gallon batch each of each of the different base malts, and decided to do a true single variable SMaSH beer side by side assessment. I decided to compare American 2-Row, Maris Otter, Golden Promise, Halcyon, Optic, and Pearl malts. All except for the American 2-row are English grown...

In the first segment I described the necessary plumbing and valves to make low pressure gas (either LP or natural gas) burners electrically controllable. To achieve control, we need to be able to apply 24VAC when we want flame, and to remove the voltage source when we don’t want flame. In this segment I will show various means by which such a system can be controlled and the differences between them. The simplest possible scheme is a 24VAC transformer and a switch. This can be used when no temperature control is needed; I control my boil burner just this way. In this application, one advantage is that there is no need to go behind the brew stand to light the burner when it is time to get the boil going. If a boil over is imminent, the...

We have all been there. There is an event coming up that you want, or have been asked, to brew a beer for, and you want to brew up something that sets itself apart from the light lagers that so many are fond of while remaining accessible to those same light lager drinkers. It is a delicate balance, but with some forethought, you can brew an ale that delights the palate of everyone at that next big event, regardless of what they normally drink. What Makes an Ale a Crowd Pleaser? Now, when we say a crowd pleaser, we know what we really mean; a beer that our macro-lager drinking friends and family will enjoy, while packing in character that craft beer drinkers will appreciate, striking a nice balance between the two. Aside from style...

So you’ve been brewing beer for a few years and love sharing your brews with your family, friends, neighbors, and plumber? You figure, why not share my hard work with the rest of the world, and make money while working my dream job? Many others have had the same idea. A lot of the craft breweries that you know and love today, started with a passion for home brewing. You may be familiar with some of the larger success stories (Sam Adams or Dogfish Head) but you never hear about the breweries that failed to succeed. This is my (much shortened) story of failing to launch a brewery in Toledo, OH in 2014. Scratching the Itch to Start a Pro Brewery Marriage is a beautiful thing isn’t it? Not when it takes you 16 hours to reach a small island...

Are you totally obsessed with brewing? Are you ready to expand your homebrew operation past the beginner stages? In that case, you’ll want to seriously consider three areas of your procedure: milling, fermenting and bottling. Expanding Your Home Brewery: Milling A grain mill is one piece of equipment that could last us the rest of our brewing careers, so it’s useful to purchase the best possible product to suit our needs. Let’s start by discussing the fact that we cannot mill grain perfectly without the proper piece of machinery. We can attempt to crush the kernels by blending, smacking them with a wine bottle, crushing with a rolling pin or pounding them in a mortar and pestle, but the result will be disappointing. If the kernels are...

In the simplest of terms, beer fermentation consists of yeast converting simple sugars into alcohol. There are versions of this process happening all over the world, to all sorts of sugars, by innumerable strains of yeast. What this means for you, is that your local homebrew shop isn't the only place you can get yeast for making your beer. In this article, I'm going to go through some simple steps that with a bit of luck will get you a local yeast strain of your own to brew with. This topic can and does fill stacks and stacks of books, but we're going to stick with just the basics today. The equipment you'll need for this project can range from stuff you can find in your kitchen up to a lab that would make the CDC jealous. Just like the...

In the simplest of terms, beer fermentation consists of yeast converting simple sugars into alcohol. There are versions of this process happening all over the world, to all sorts of sugars, by innumerable strains of yeast. What this means for you, is that your local homebrew shop isn't the only place you can get yeast for making your beer. In this article, I'm going to go through some simple steps that with a bit of luck will get you a local yeast strain of your own to brew with. This topic can and does fill stacks and stacks of books, but we're going to stick with just the basics today. The equipment you'll need for this project can range from stuff you can find in your kitchen up to a lab that would make the CDC jealous. Just like the...

Ask almost any intermediate homebrewer what single change you can make to brew better beer and they'll all say the same thing: Fermentation Temperature Control. After employing proper sanitization practices and pitching healthy yeast, stable temperature control of your fermenting beer is the next big step towards award winning brews. There are many options when it comes to leveraging some control over fermentation temps. A water bath with frozen water bottles in the summer and warm blankets in the winter can go a decent way towards stabilizing your temps when the weather is at its extremes. But to really dial in on proper temps, you need to bring your fermentation into the 21st century Enter the Fermentation Chamber A fermentation...

When I first started Home Brewing my first thought was not to brew some sophisticated Belgian Ale using only imported ingredients from some monastery high in the Alps, but rather I centered my aim to something more American. My aim was to brew something that showcased the truly American ideal of bigger is better. I wanted to hit an Original Gravity(OG) of at least 1.100 and still end up with a beer that I could drink, albeit a bit slower. Considerations When Brewing High Gravity Beers Oops. Should have used a blowoff tube. High gravity brewing brings a new set of challenges and opportunities that you may not normally encounter with a lower gravity beer. One thing to consider is that with the large quantities of grain in your recipe...

Some may ask why any self-respecting homebrewer would pay to enter beers in a competition. You make what you like and sure, we all like to share our homebrew with friends and relatives but that’s quite a bit different than PAYING to give away your beer. Each of us brews for a different reason and perhaps you have no interest in entering a competition and that’s fine. But just as we all brew for different reasons, many of us have our own reasons for entering competitions. This is by no means a comprehensive list and the order is only roughly by most popular to least popular reasons to enter a competition for the average homebrewer. Here’s my list: Why Enter Homebrew Competitions To feed your ego. Ribbons = bragging rights. If ribbons...

With half of my family originating from Bavaria, I’ve been exposed to wheat beers from a young age, and would often proudly pour them for members of my family. I remember the unusual glasses, the lively bubbles, and the golden color of the cloudy liquid underneath a thick creamy head. It was a skill to pour a Hefeweizen correctly. Too quick and you end up with 80% foam, too slow and you end up with sad, headless drink. Wheat beers are a staple in many parts of Germany, with a variety of styles to choose from depending on region. Wheat beers also have some unique brewing aspects, which make them a great beer for homebrewers to experiment with, as they respond noticeably to a number of variables. Wheat Beer Profile Wheat beers, or Weizen...

Winemaking has been both a business and a hobby for centuries. Whether you are a commercial winemaker or make your wine at home (or considering getting into the game), there are general terms that you will want to familiarize yourself with. The following terms are ones both commercial and home winemakers use. This is by no means a complete list of the terms used, and definitions have been simplified. However the terms contained in this listing should be quite sufficient for the home winemaker to begin with. List of Winemaker's Terms Acetic Acid – Along with ethyl acetate, creates a volatile acid, and is a sign of spoiling wine. Acetic acid is associated with the taste and odor of vinegar. Found in all wines, it is also known as Ethanoic...

ORIGIN The Black Spanish grape has been called El Paso, Jack, Blue French, Ohio, and Jacquet, and is now legally known as Lenoir or Jacquez (more about the name in a minute). It is a hybrid which appeared in America (probably in South Carolina) sometime in the 1830s. One of its parent grapes comes from the species Vitis vinifera (the species of most wine grapes) and was brought to America from France. Its other parent comes from Vitis aestivalis, a native American species. They crossed to produce Black Spanish, or Vitis bourquiniana. This hybridization may have been purposeful or may have occurred naturally. HISTORY Black Spanish played a significant role in the worldwide phylloxera crisis in the late 1800s. Phylloxera is a vine louse...

Being a fan of hoppy beers, I’ve tasted a lot of different expressions of IPA, IIPA, Session IPA, and in it sboom, the specialty IPA’s like White IPA, Red IPA, Rye IPA and, one of my favorites of that list, Black IPA or Cascadian Dark Ale. This style, according to the BJCP Guidelines, was popularized in the early-mid 2000s. It was a style that boomed (like now the NEIPA) and every brewery was creating some batches of those and selling them like hot bread. Suddenly, the style started to go down in the national numbers, until it was just turned into a seasonal beer with a very well planned volume, so it wouldn’t go to waste. In Mexico City, you cannot find a very good example of the style, because the style never was popularized like in...

Chocolate and beer are two of the best substances in the world, so they can only be better together, right? There are a number of ways to infuse the goodness of cacao, along with all the antioxidant power packed into those little beans, into your homebrew. Armed with sharp taste buds and a hint of imagination, the home brewer can develop a recipe that will delight the masses - even purists who think nothing belongs in beer but barley, hop, yeast, and water. The first step is to consider your personal tastes. What do you currently like to pair with chocolate? Fruit? Nuts? Beers that have a sweeter finish can find a twist with the addition of chocolate. Let’s not forget the savory and bitter components of raw chocolate. The complexity...

All beer traders worry about the safety of their beer mail. Nothing is worse than expecting a box full of delicious beers and instead receiving a wet box full of broken glass. For this reason, when first starting to trade, beer-trading 101 is all about how to properly package and ship your beer. For those who are all too familiar with taping the tops, wrapping individual bottles in plastic bags, etc., and looking for advanced tips to better your trading game, this article is for you. Think of this as the guide to advanced beer trading, where you will learn some tips to hopefully make your trading partners think, Wow, this trader really knows their stuff! If you are new to trading and looking to learn the basics of packaging and...

I was first introduced to Apfelwein in Darmstadt, Germany at a friend's party. It's a local hard cider drink from the Frankfurt area, but is now famous throughout the world and I enjoyed it for 5 years back in the early 90's. I have been homebrewing since 1987, but did not bother during the 5 years of living in beer heaven. When I returned to the United States, I began to gather up the needed equipment to make good beer again and I thought about replicating the dry, tart beverage of Apfelwein. The Internet was forever changing the way homebrewers shared their successes and failures and information was plenty. I started off with Apple Juice and Montrachet wine yeast. I added some corn sugar to boost the alcohol content, and found out by...

I've began to compile the things I know on alternative fermentations in mead making. And by that, I mean meads infected with the likes of brettanomyces, lactobacillus, and pediococcus. I'll continue to add more parts as my findings and experiments continue. Why make lambic meads? As many are aware, the commercial market for sour/ funky brews is at an all time high. Which is great, because they taste excellent! The bad thing is the price-point. These are typically the most expensive per fluid oz to buy. So the next time your on the forums of your choice and someone starts to say "home brewing don't save any money!", You can go right ahead and say "Home brewing don't save save money...Unless you're making sours." . Meads tend to be more...

I really, really like my Monster Mill 3+. It is a little heavy to carry around, though, and it feels unstable when sitting on a bucket with a heavy drill motor hanging off the side. I knew that I wanted to make a permanent mounting with a fixed drive for it. That meant that I had to select a suitable motor and platform. Here is how to go about motorizing your grain mill. The Right Motor For Motorizing Your Grain Mill The motor must have sufficient torque to keep the mill rollers operating smoothly under load. When motorizing your mill, you need to have it either operate at a relatively low rpm (200 rpm is about right) or have a reduction system added to achieve the correct rate. DC motors can be speed controlled but this adds complexity...

When I first started reading about brewing in earnest, I noticed that the words written about malting were rarely favorable, more often veering toward discouragement. Tedious, labor-intensive, and lengthy were the consensus; it requires too much space and immaculate hygiene, said home-brewing manuals, when they touch on it at all. Yet the importance of the malt house stands out in history: Anheuser-Busch and Rainier were breweries which started—as many did, from necessity—as both breweries and malt houses (Similarly, Pacific Brewing & Malting Co. of Tacoma, Wa., holds a historic name without a single grain being sprouted in its current operation). The original role of the community brewer was to take grain, as a raw product of...

I began washing and harvesting my own yeast about a year ago. I got excited and harvested 4 jars from 4 batches in the first month, leaving me with 16 jars of 4 different yeasts. Since I usually brew twice per month, I had a ton of yeast just sitting in my fridge. After using some of this stored (aka old) yeast in beers that came out less than perfect, I began tossing it - hours of work, down the drain. Then I had an idea - why can't I just harvest clean yeast directly from my starter? After trying out a few techniques, here's the process that seems most efficient: Step 1: Make a starter (3 days prior to brewing) that is .5 liter larger than you need for your beer. Since the majority of 5 gallon batches require no more than a 1 liter...

I began washing and harvesting my own yeast about a year ago. I got excited and harvested 4 jars from 4 batches in the first month, leaving me with 16 jars of 4 different yeasts. Since I usually brew twice per month, I had a ton of yeast just sitting in my fridge. After using some of this stored (aka old) yeast in beers that came out less than perfect, I began tossing it - hours of work, down the drain. Then I had an idea - why can't I just harvest clean yeast directly from my starter? After trying out a few techniques, here's the process that seems most efficient: Step 1: Make a starter (3 days prior to brewing) that is .5 liter larger than you need for your beer. Since the majority of 5 gallon batches require no more than a 1 liter...

I quit bottling entire batches long ago. It was tedious, and I do most of my beer drinking at home, so there wasn't much need for portability, and kegging became my standard. For social events, I took to using growlers. However, I still had an occasional need to bottle part of a batch to share with friends and family. Enter the Blichmann Beer Gun. I bought my Beer Gun about 7 or 8 years ago when it was a fairly new product. It was the simplest, off the shelf solution for bottling directly from a keg, albeit a bit expensive, as with most Blichmann products. Over the years, it's likely paid for itself in convenience, although there are some very cost effective alternatives. The included directions are straightforward, and the Beer Gun's...

I quit bottling entire batches long ago. It was tedious, and I do most of my beer drinking at home, so there wasn't much need for portability, and kegging became my standard. For social events, I took to using growlers. However, I still had an occasional need to bottle part of a batch to share with friends and family. Enter the Blichmann Beer Gun. I bought my Beer Gun about 7 or 8 years ago when it was a fairly new product. It was the simplest, off the shelf solution for bottling directly from a keg, albeit a bit expensive, as with most Blichmann products. Over the years, it's likely paid for itself in convenience, although there are some very cost effective alternatives. The included directions are straightforward, and the Beer Gun's...

So you want to grow your own hops, huh? The long and short of it is that the things grow as fast as bamboo and need constant management from April to September. Still want to grow hops? Awesome, here's one way to set up a small backyard hops garden that yielded almost a pound of wet hops, in year one, and proved to properly hop-up a West Coast IPA for me. The first thing you need to take into consideration for growing hops is to do the research first. There are a ton of resources right here on Home Brew Talk, and out on the web in general. Here are a few links that I found helpful to resources from pest and disease management to trellis designs outside of this one. Especially start out with the documents on the last link...

I remember as a kid growing up in the Midwest (Central Hellinois), the adults in my family were avid beer drinkers; so much so that I have an aunt whose nickname to this day is BLUE. Their beer of choice was predominantly PBR along with some Natty Lite. My old man would peel back the pull tab and either throw it on the ground where us kids would pick it up and use as a 2-piece launcher or as he did more often, he'd slip it into the can where it would precariously float around as a choking hazard. He would then grab a salt shaker and generously salt his beer as if it were a dried out piece of meat that was void of flavor. This is what beer and beer drinkin' was to me as a kid. Oh, as most kids whose parents drank, I'd sneak a taste here...

Maple syrup is a fully fermentable sugar, so brewing with maple syrup will contribute to the alcohol content of your beer, but not necessarily the flavor. Whether you add the maple syrup to the mash, boil or bottle, brewing yeast will remove all of that natural taste. Luckily a few little tricks can bring the earthy-sweet taste of maple to your next brew. Tips for Getting More Maple Flavor Firstly, brew a style of beer that’s already quite sweet. Consider a mash profile with some cara-malt to lay a foundation of non-fermenting sugars. You’ll find dark beers work quite well, but you can also experiment with lighter ales if you want more of a session beer. Next, consider adding a tiny touch of cinnamon, a clove or two and/or vanilla to a...

Is your dog a brew dog? You know the one. Constantly following you as you brew, making sure you hit your temps, and reminding you when it's time to add the hops? No? Well they could be. If you're more than a few batches into your beer obsession you've probably moved into all grain or partial grain brewing. After your boil you're left with a mound of spent grain, and that is were Rover comes in. Have you ever taken a look at the back of a bag of dog food? It's all corn and binding agents mixed with meat flavor. Spent Grain Dog Biscuits are a great way of keeping all that delectable spent grain from going into the compost heap. Full of high quality grains, and simple to produce, your dog is going to demand being part of all brew days...

Freezing Starter-Sized Samples of Yeast for Long-Term Storage Written by Brewitt with contributions from HBT members WHAT: The purpose of this article is to summarize what has been learned about freezing yeast by a number of contributors to the thread "Do you know how to make a yeast starter? Then why not farm yeast and freeze it?" (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/do-you-know-how-make-yeast-starter-then-why-not-farm-yeast-freeze-269488/) started by, and with extensive contributions from, BBL_Brewer. Other major contributors include Brewitt (me), Forkhead, katy bug, ScoRas, and IsItBeerYet. Many others have made contributions that can be read in their original form in the thread. Together, through reading and experimentation, we have...

This is the method I have adopted due to several factors. Living in a somewhat dry part of a dry continent results in severe water shortages from time to time, and municipal water supply restrictions range from moderate to severe in accordance with dam levels. When the most severe restrictions are in place, I am not permitted to use tap water for my garden, or even to wash my car. Water for chilling beer? Forget it! Enter no chill brewing. So, after seeing a couple of demonstrations of the no chill method at my local home brew shop (LHBS), I purchased a 10 gallon electric kettle and four 2.5 gallon food safe HDPE cubes. Since then, I have successfully brewed over 90 beers without any problems, well, certainly no problems with no chill...