Recent content by freeballer

Brewed a batch of Irish Red Ale from a kit a few weeks ago. Everything seemed to be going fine with the fermentation, but after ten days the Krausen still hadn't fallen back. After 15 days it was still not budging even though the airlock had quit bubbling a long while back. I tried poking the...

Has anyone had any success turning an old chest freezer, or even a new chest freezer into a Kegorator. It doesn't appear that there is a way to adjust the temp on mine. Just curious if anyone had any tricks.

Has anybody on here tried making wine with regular old welches grape juice? If so what did you do and how did it turn out?

I am going to try the apfelwein recipe from EdWort, but my girfriend couldn't find the right apple juice at Sams Club today so we are going to try using non filtered apple cider, not from concentrate. I thought it wouldn't make a difference until I noticed it had some preservatives added...

My wine kit suggests that I use a sulfite solution to sanitize all my equiptment and fermentors. Is this really necesary? Or, could I use a bleach/one-step solution for the fermentors and just use a sulfite rinse on the wine bottle. Is it possible to make wine without sulfites at all?

thanks for the replies folks, I feel better already!

Do you have to soak your corks before bottling, if so how long, and in what?

Just made my fist batch with a new, 8 gallon stainless steel stock pot that came with a turkey deep frier kit( I had been using a 4 gallon enameled pot from target). After the wert cooled I tasted the sample from the hydrometer. For some reason the wert had a burnt taste to it. Is it...

I'm stirring it by hand.

Quick question. I'm making my first wine kit, and step three calls for stirring the wine into a froth while still in the carboy. The directions say you must stir the wine until all carbonation has dissapated and it no longer foams on top after stirring. I have been stirring for an hour...

A) Would dry hopping help mellow-out a really bitter beer? 2. When doing full boil extract brewing and decreasing the amount of bittering hopps added at the beginning. Can you add your left over bittering hopps at the end to add to the aroma, or would that throw off the balance? As...

If quaility and taste are your priorities, and efficiency aside, is it better to brew with the lid on or off the brewpot? Or does it make a difference at all. Thanks

I am fairly new to the brewing scene, and so far I have had great success brewing extract kits using an old 4 gallon enameled stock pot that I stole from my mother's kitchen. Recently I purchased a turkey deep frier setup with an 8 gallon stainless steele stockpot and a propane burner and...

Thanks for all the good info guys, I'll stick it out and see how it tastes after a month of conditioning in the bottle. If its still too bitter I'll just have to make a lightly hopped counterpart next time and mix them.

Thanks for the replies. I guess I'll stop being a cheap-a$$ and just follow the instructions on the kit.