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I'm making some agua de jamaica with some dried hibiscus I bought for my wife years ago that found in the pantry. I've never made it before; I'm using 1 cup of hibiscus in about 5 cups of water and will add lime juice and sugar to taste. I have another big bag of the stuff that I bought a...

My tapwater tastes good but has extremely high bicarbonates. 1 ml of concentrated H3PO4 per gallon of strike water seems to work well. I used to buy RO water, but settled on just adding acid and a pinch of K-Meta to my local water. I started with 5.5 gallons of water, and I rounded-up 5.5ml to 6.

It's somewhat between a cream ale and an American blonde ale, and the color is probably a little darker than either of those should be. Not bitter enough to call it pale ale. In any case, it's not anywhere close to being a stout. ;) BTW, if the amounts seem a little off, it's for 4 gallons...

I was just about to say exactly the same thing. 😂 Lately I have been using their stemmed iced tea glasses (looks like a huge wine glass but slimmer), but I've got some heavy stemmed goblets there and also some nice pilsner glasses. For actual iced tea, I use mason jars or Dollar Tree stemless...

Yes, a spoonful of table sugar in each bottle. The size of the spoon depends on the size of the bottle. I've got a little stainless steel funnel made for filling liquor flasks; it's perfect for priming bottles and it goes a lot faster than you'd expect.

Yes, I am using a Tilt. :) I'll dig it out and clean it today; thanks. Also I'll move the fermenter to a warmer spot.

I mashed at 150°F for an hour. No lactose or anything like that, but this was my first time using cornstarch as an adjunct. I pitched the yeast at 70° and immediately moved it to my cool basement, which apparently is in the low 60s. I think I'm just used to faster-fermenting yeasts, or at...

It's dropped another gravity point. Apparently it's still chugging, just slowly, and I'm being impatient. I will warm it up to about 68 and give it another week to finish.

I move it from the bucket to a carboy to leave most of the trub behind. Then I bottle straight from that carboy instead of transferring to a bottling bucket. I did just one carboy start to finish for a while, and it's evolved into this; I'd rather unavoidably add oxygen while the yeast is...

I've never used this yeast before, even tho' it's a standard. It has been fermenting for 6 days; 5 if you don't count the first day lag. The temperature is currently 64°F, and it's fermenting in a plastic bucket. It's probably time to rack it to a carboy, but should I also warm it a little to...

Cornstarch. I was conflicted about whether it needs a cereal mash or not; I didn't do one because I was on a tight schedule. Based on the gravity, it seems to have converted okay, but we'll see if the beer has starch haze when it's finished.

I changed it at the last minute. 😂 Instead of a pound of dark invert sugar at the end of the boil, I added a pound of cornstarch to the mash. I'm going to use Columbus hops for bittering and Hallertau Tradition for flavor/aroma (5 minutes.) US-05 yeast. It should end up between an American...

I haven't brewed in a long time. I keep waiting for my wife to go out of town to visit her mom (like she says she's gonna do) but she never does. She's going out for a few hours tonight so I'm going to try to sneak in a quick brew. I need to prep everything early and start the water heating...

Decent American vodka (Member's Mark) with lots of ice and a splash of green Creme de Menthe. Not sure if it has a name or not (Stinger?), but it's tasty.

I'm wondering if it even has to gel because the particles are so small; perhaps all they have to do is be wet for the enzymes to attack them.

Since it works for wheat flour, do y'all think cornstarch is ground fine enough to skip cooking and just mix it dry in with the grist? I want to try it in a cream ale. I was planning to boil it in a gallon or two of the strike water but mixing it with the grain would be easier.

I made a pot of red beans yesterday and a pan of cornbread. The beans were pretty juicy so I think that qualifies as soup. ;) It was an experiment to see if the flavor packet from a package of pork ramen noodles would work to flavor the beans instead of making a broth from a hambone or smoked...

I've found that if I use a fast drying oil or one with a low smoke point, the "seasoning" flakes off because the oil hardens (polymerizes) before it soaks into the pores of the cast iron. But of course maybe I just didn't do it right; that's a real possibility :) I get the best results using a...

Shortening (like Crisco) works too.

I just lightly sand it to get it kinda smooth and remove any loose rust. Wash it and dry it well, then use it just for frying stuff in lots of oil (chicken, potatoes, etc) for the first couple of uses to get it soaked with oil. The "seasoning" will build back up very quickly with normal use...