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Hey all, Buddy asked me to brew him a witbier. Haven't done this one before, so I'm researching for the recipe and I'm torn between two yeast strains - Wyeast Belgian Witbier (3944) or Wyeast Forbidden Fruit (3463). Both are listed as great for wits, both seem to express good flavor, so...

My process for fermenting a batch is simple - two weeks in the carboy, temperature controlled in a keezer for whatever yeast I'm using, and then cold crash for 24 hours and into the bottle, never a secondary unless I want to rack it onto some vanilla beans or whatever. So my questions are...

Hey, good people! I have a four ounce bag of dark toasted French oak chips and I've been thinking about pulling a gallon from my next batch and putting it on the oak to see how it turns out. Any advice on best spirits to use to sanitize the wood (vodka? light/dark rum? bourbon? and why is it...

Anybody ever tried adding vanilla beans to the kettle at the end of the boil? My guess would be that since it's such a delicate flavor it would all be driven off by time the beer is ready to drink, but I thought I'd check and see if anyone out there had ever tried it and what kind of results...

Okay... before you roast me, understand that I started grad school a couple months ago, so my time has been pretty well dedicated to reading articles and writing papers. Long story short, I threw about five gallons of hot water with PBW IN solution into my bottling bucket and tossed in some...

Hey all, I cold crashed a batch Friday morning with the intention of bottling this weekend, but one thing led to another and now it's likely I won't be bottling until this Wednesday. Is that going to cause any issues? Could being that cold (37*F) that long stress the yeast and cause off...

Hey everyone, I made my first batch of cider recently. Tossed a couple campden tabs in as recommended by the staff at my LHBS, waited about thirty hours, then pitched the yeast. It's fermenting strongly, day seven. Obviously I'm in new water here, so I don't know what to expect during...

Hey all, My neighbor has asked me to make a cider. This is my first try, so I have a few questions. I'll be using store bought pasteurized cider. I watched the How to Make Hard Cider episode of Brewing TV, and they recommend a one week primary fermentation followed by roughly two month...

:mad: So I'm currently in the process of dumping every batch I've bottled since January because, it would seem, I have an infection somewhere in my equipment. I've adopted a scorched earth policy, blasting everything I own with all the PBW I can afford, and I've hit the LHBS for resupplies...

Hey all, What's your recommendation for getting rid of beer stone in the brew kettle? Thanks!

Hey all, I'm using a temp controlled freezer for the first time, and the fermentation seems different than what I've seen in the past using the old swamp cooler method. I pitched on 8/31 with a liter sized starter. My experience has been that the fermentation pretty much finishes up and...

Hey everybody, I'm slowly accumulating kegging gear, but in the meantime I'm still bottle conditioning my brews. I finally got a chest freezer for a ferm chamber, which is working like gangbusters, and I'm curious about cold crashing. When is the best time to start the cold crash? Is...

Hey all, My birthday's coming up and my wife wants me to get her a list of brewing toys that I want so she can make a gift wish list for me. I really want to start kegging my brews, so I was hoping you all could help me out by suggesting a list of the bare bones necessities for a single 5...

Hey all, I'll try to be brief. Bear with me... I've been brewing for almost two years. All grain, bottle conditioned as I don't have kegging equipment. We moved in May, and I made the mistake of leaving several cases of my brews in the hot, humid garage. Can't say I'm surprised they...

I use a ten gallon cylindrical cooler for my mash tun. My standard MO is heat my strike water, pump it in, give it a good stir to make sure there's no dough balls, then pop the lid on, checking on it once at twenty minutes to pull a sample for pH. Other than that, I let it ride for the...

Hey all, Is there a way to convert all measurements to metric in the BeerSmith 2 software? It's driving me crazy that it says mash with X liters and sparge with Y gallons. It would make my brewing life a lot easier if I could just flip a switch as opposed to doing the (arguably simple)...

Brewed a batch of beer Friday. Had trouble cooling it, so transferred it in to my sanitized carboy and stashed it to let it cool. Life got in the way, and now here I am late Sunday night with my yeast starter all primed and ready to go, but there are several very obvious white colonies forming...

Tinkering around on BeerSmith, noticed the percent of viable yeast and subsequently the starter size I need for brew day changes drastically based on the production date of the yeast. I tried doing a google search for the yeast strain, manufacturer, and lot number, and came up with absolutely...

Last brew was about a month ago. Set up to brew a batch today and I discovered white mold growing in the storage solution with my pH meter! This isn't gonna mess with my pH readings, is it?