Search results

So I brewed a batch of beer with some ingredients that were probably several months old. I am assuming the hops lost their ability to impart flavor and bittnerness to my beer. I was afraid all was lost but now I am wondering if I can use hop extract or steep some hops and add it to my keg to...

Best idea ever for homebrewers I think are the creation of these establishments that have large number of taps to sample a variety of beers. I have been sampling a lot of fruit infused IPAs lately and am really liking some of them. How are they getting their fruit into these beers? Do they...

So here is a silly question that I think I know the answer to, but would like someone to chime in. I recently got a 2.5 gallon keg and was wondering if there is anyway of filling it with existing kegged and carbonated beer without makine a huge mess or losing a lot of beer. I don't generally...

I bulk aged my wine for over a year, then bottled and it sat for 2 months to eliminate the bottle shock. I popped a bottle and tasted it, it really did not taste like much of anything at all. I expected there to be some decent wine flavor since it bulkaged for so long. About all it produced...

For no other reason other than laziness, I did not bottle my Carmenare for nearly a year. I had started to bottle, but then noticed it was still very gassy after about 6 months. I whipped it really good, and decided to let it sit, for another 6 months. I just bottled this up and sampled it as...

I have read some articles and posts about back sweetening beer, but have not really found what I need. I attempted to make an Orange/Citrus Cream ale (not like an orangcicle just for clarification) just a sweeter, orange flavor cream ale. It turned out dry, I got busy and forgot to suspend...

Sorry for reposting this but I got no response and I am wondering what to do? This is only my third batch of wine, but neither of the other two looked like this at this stage. I am supposed to get ready to rack to a carboy after clearing the wine. I added the chitosan, and phosphates per the...

This is only my third batch of wine, but neither of the other two looked like this at this stage. I am supposed to get ready to rack to a carboy after clearing the wine. I added the chitosan, and phosphates per the directions after degassing the wine with a wine whip. Placed it in a temp...

So last night I tried to degas my wine before adding the chitosan and sulfites and whipped the crap out of the wine with a wine whip. It never seemed to fully degas. I am going to bulk age for several months to help it degas more naturally but if whipping the wine how do you know you got all...

This is my second wine kit and I cant really seem to tell the difference between the first kit and the second. The first kit was a cheap Vino Italiano Shiraz. The second kit was a Cellar Kraft Lodi Zinfandel that was considerably more expensive. The problem is, I cannot seem to tell much of a...

I am new to brewing kinda, some of you probably have seen some of my posts. I don't consider myself a novice as I have close to 50 brews under my belt but I have consistently had problems hitting my FG points. My latest was a vanilla bourbon stout. It finished after being in the primary at...

I am getting ready to bottle my Zinfandel kit wine that came with some fine oak shavings (not entirely sure why they didn't use cubes) and there seems to be a lot of sediment in my wine after racking from primary to secondary. I was wondering if I can cold crash to get the sediment to settle...

How much head space is too much head space. After racking from primary to secondary on my Old Vine Zinfandel, I added almost a 750 ml bottle of wine to lessen the head space, I racked again for clearing and lost some of that, but not sure if there is too much head space for this process. The...

I am going to do my second wine and went with a higher quality kit with grape skins this time and read that it would be a good idea to use a 7.9 gallon bucket so I ordered one, not realizing that it did not come with a lid. I have read on other posts about fermenting in buckets and just draping...

I just received a new counter pressure bottle filler and discovered that i love it! I was wondering if i can use to force carbonate a growler that has gone flat that i never hot around to drink. I know what a sin that is but don't want to double the sin by purring it out if i can recarbonate it.

I am in the process of brewing my first real hefeweizen staying true to the yeast and all. It was an all DME recipe as I am not set up for all grain yet. The first stages of fermentation looked good. It was very active and what I thought looked like a real hefe color. After a week of...

Hey guys, This is my third attempt at a hard cider. I believe I over fermented the primary as I got a final gravity of .998 after have an OG of 1.068. I was kind of excited because the ABV of this cider was 9.3%. I figured that after back sweetening the cider with apple juice and a...

I made a honey lemon wheat beer from extract a few weeks ago. After checking the OG (1.062) I tasted the wort before pitching the yeast and thought that this was going to be a really good beer. It went through the primary fermentation and settled at about 1.014 FG. I tasted the beer at that...

Ok, I am sure I will take some razzing for this but its ok. I am new to wine and have a silly question. I know I am supposed to hit a certain gravity level before I rack to secondary and start the second step of the process but I ran into a problem. I brewed a batch of beer last week and...

I have a few questions. I have been reading some threads and thinking about making some wine. I have been brewing a while and have most the equipment, my questions are: 1) Do i need new hoses for my auto-siphon, i will use a new fermentor and dedicate it to wine, but not sure about hoses...