Recent content by CaptainArgo

Weihenstephaner Vitus. The first time I tried it, I had it tapped from a local German restaurant. Single most delicious beer I've ever had. Explosion of ripe bananas and a little toasty cereal, chased with lemon and warm spices, finishes just dry enough to avoid getting cloying. Not to...

Oh, that's not so drastic after all. How did it come out? I'd like to have a fairly strong tea flavor as opposed to just a subtle background, but I really don't have any idea of how much it will take to achieve it.

Thanks for the great suggestions everyone :) This is a great idea! I guess my one concern in this case is about gravity. I imagine I'd have to make a pretty high gravity wort in anticipation of adding a fair amount of liquid to the finished beer without really knowing exactly how much I'll...

Hey folks, I have a good friend who really loves rooibos tea, and I thought I'd do a half-batch of a rooibos Irish red ale as an experiment / first foray into "flavored" beers. I figured that the loamy, earthy taste of the tea would work well with the roasty flavors of an Irish red, and the...

My very first batch was about 3 gallons in a 6 gallon bucket, and it was just fine :) Primary fermentation will easily produce more than enough CO2 to fill the empty space.

Thanks guys, I'll give it another couple days and check again, then bottle if it hasn't changed. It has been fermenting for about 1.5 weeks, and the yeast I used (WLP007) is generally supposed to ferment very quickly -- even within a few days for a lot of people. I've been taking the minor...

Hey folks, So, I've got a dry stout that should be close to bottling time. The thing is, it is a few gravity points higher than BeerSmith predicted, and I can still see small bubbles surfacing in it when I open the lid. However, the gravity reading has been stable for a few days. Are those...

A couple lbs of Maris Otter, really? Is that much necessary to convert the flaked barley? If so I guess I won't need much DME :) I'm sure the chocolate malt would be tasty, too, but from what I've read that would probably bring me further away from the Guinness flavor I'm looking for. I'm...

Hey folks! I'm about to attempt a Guinness clone for my good friend who loves the stuff. I'd like to try the "Ode To Arthur" recipe that seems well-loved around here, but I don't have the equipment or experience to do an all-grain batch. I know I can substitute some pale malt extract for the...

I've only got 1 brew under my belt and I used bottled water for it, but I've been wondering how well my tap water would work. Bottled water is not an insignificant expense compared to the total cost of the brew, after all. I did choose to use it for my first batch, though, because the water...

I would imagine that, unless you added malt, wheat, or something else with significant amounts of protein, or unless you hopped it and kept the hop debris in the fermenter, that pretty much everything on the bottom is just yeast.

Has anyone ever tried a hybrid between this and Graff? I have always wanted to brew a cider, as I like them in general but often find them a bit dry and thin. To that end, I've always wanted to try a malted cider. The skinny on the Graff seems to be that, while it certainly seems delicious...

I used an overnight soak in water + baking soda (maybe 1/4 cup per gal) to get labels off. Half of the labels fell off, the other half peeled off easily. The leftover glue was easy to simply rub off by hand for the most part, or with a nylon scrubber for the tougher stuff, using pretty much...

I just bottled my first beer about a week ago, and I thought it looked quite cloudy and a paler color than I had expected, which was a bit disappointing. I had one that went into a clear bottle and I have been checking on it, and after just sitting and carbonating for a little while it has...

As a new brewer I've been having some fun thinking up recipes tailored to my friends likes. It's nearly as fun coming up with names for them :) One of my friends is a big fan of rooibos tea, so I came up with a recipe for an Irish red ale flavored with rooibos. This is the label I cooked up...