Recent content by chefzilla

Thanks for the responses. As long as they're good to drink without getting sick I'm ok. I'll just have to drink them quick I guess.

Ok, this is what happened. After a couple of days of no bubbles in the airlock I thought I had killed my yeast so I was going to repitch it. When I opened the fermenter it was clearly fermenting so I took a hydro reading to make sure, and it was. I then noticed the grommet was torn on the...

If I add apples to my wort while it's boiling will they act like a fermentable and make the ABV% higher? Also, if I use mollasses or honey as a fermentable, when do I add them? In the boiling wort, or in the fermentation bucket before I pitch the yeast?

I ended up using the extra 1/2#. I got an OG of 1.050. Thanks guys you all were a big help. It's fermenting very nicely.

It's a 5 gallon batch. I'm using the same recipe as the brewers best American amber except I'm replacing the hops and the yeast. I'm using Fuggle instead of Willamette and safale US 05 instead of whatever yeast came with the kit. 3.3 # amber LME and caramel grains. I liked the way it came out...

Last month I used a kit for my first time brewing. The recipe in the kit called for 2.5# of DME. This month, my second time brewing, I'm using the kit recipe as a base and changing a few things Replacing Willamette with US Fuggle etc). I could only find 3# bags of DME. If I use the full 3#...

I had to look for the papers. It was a brewers best American amber kit (came out a little darker than expected). Using the OG from that and my reading, my beer should be between 5.25 and 5.75. They said it should be 4.75-5.25. Thanks guys!

So there's really no way of knowing without an OG reading then... If I paid attention to the %alcohol scale my beer would only be 1.2% or something like that.

I'm totally new at this and I've made my first batch. The problem is I forgot to take my initial gravity reading. Before I bottled it the reading was 1.010 It's been 3 weeks, I opened a bottle, carbonated beautifully, tastes wonderful. but I took a gravity reading and it goes up to 1.036...