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I accidentally forgot to clean my boil kettle after a batch and left it out for 3 months. When I went to brew my next batch I saw mold at the bottom (see picture). I scrubbed it all off, boiled the entire pot in hot water and let it soak in PBW for 2 hours. At this point is it a health...

I am a new AG brewer and am planning to brew my first batch this weekend. I have decided to go with fly sparging and have built a sparge arm out of CPVC pipe that sits on top of my 10 gallon cooler mash tun. I am wondering if I should be concerned with the water temperature that is lost...

Hey everyone, I recently scaled down a version of one of Pipeworks Brewing (Chicago, IL) beers. http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/pipeworks-blood-of-the-unicorn/175270/ I received the receipe straight from the brewmaster and was hoping to convert it to extract. Unfortunately, I am not...

I recently reached out to Pipeworks Brewing out of Chicago asking about their recipe for Blood of The Unicorn (Imperial Red Ale). They responded with the following: 60% 2 Row 17% Munich 7% C80 6% Special Roast/Special B 4% Rye 2% Flaked Oats .5% Midnight Wheat 3.5 % Dextrose Hopped...

I am new to kegging and have only kegged one batch so far. I have used the set it and forget it method and put the keg in the fridge immediately after racking. I'm finding that it is taking a longer then normal for my beer to age and mellow out. I am thinking I may carbonate my next beer in the...

I just brewed a honey wheat and am aiming to keep my fermentation temperature as close to 68 as possible. This is the first time I have tried using a swamp cooler, and it seems to drop my temperature by 5 degrees. I have been swapping out ice packs each day. My question is if I need to use...

I have brewed a few batches and noticed the infamous "homebrew twang." I am hoping that adding half the extract at the beginning of the boil and half at the 15 minute mark will help with this. I have always heard to never add extract with the burner on. Should I just interrupt my hop schedule...

So I have a few brews under my belt and have just discovered Fermlock-S. It looks like a life saver! Anyways, I typically brew AHS kits and follow the directions: steep grains in 2 gallons, then add 1 more gallon (total of 3) and add the extract and proceed with the boil. Now I am hoping to...

In the past I have just thrown in the hop pellets when dry hopping, but with the double ipa I am doing right now I have decided to use a hop bag with marbles. Is it alright to let it just sink to the bottom and sit in the dead yeast or should I attach a string of floss and suspend the bag in the...

I transferred my IPA to secondary 3 days ago and everything looked normal. I went down there to look at it today and see white spots scattered on the top. Am I overreacting or is this a sign of infection?

I am looking to build a stir plate that can handle my 5L flask for bigger beers. I have found tons of DIY walkthroughs, but have not been able to talk with anyone firsthand about it handling a 5L flask. Has anyone built one and used it with this large of a flask? Any feedback/links are greatly...

I am about to dry hop my first beer and was planning on storing opened hops in a plastic bag for 2-3 weeks in the freezer until I'm ready to throw them in. Is this storage technique alright or should I invest in a food vacuum sealer?

I recently bought an IIPA kit from AHS. The instructions say to dry hop for 7-10 days. I was going to let it sit a week in primary and then at least 1 1/2 months in secondary since its a bigger beer. My question is should I dry hop for this entire time in secondary? Will it hurt anything or give...

I reached out to the brewmaster at my favorite local pub asking about their Honey Wheat recipe. He responded with their 265 gallon recipe (seen below). I'm having trouble scaling this down to a 5 gallon batch size since beersmith doesn't have an equipment option for this size. Any help would be...

I received my first keg set up and a blichmann beer gun for christmas and was planning on force carbonating my next brew using the set it and forget it technique. I've read that when the force carbonation chart is used properly, the beer should be perfectly carbonated after a week. I was...

I've found some infected bottles in my most recent batch so I'm revamping my cleaning and sanitation procedures. I was planning on letting my bottles soak in One Step for 2-3 hours and then rinsing them out with my faucet bottle washer. I have only used One Step to rinse out carboys, and am not...

I brewed a Stone IPA clone kit from AHS and let it sit in the bottles for the suggested 5 weeks. After putting the first few bottles in the fridge for a few days, I tried it and it was amazing! Now a few weeks later the beer has started to taste bad and has developed way too much head when...

I try to use a yeast starter for every beer no matter what the OG. Mr. Malty's calculator will only go down to suggesting a 1 L starter. A lot of my low OG beers get automatically calculated as a 1 L starter when I use my stir plate. I was wondering if I should just always make a 1 L starter...

I entered all my brewing information into malty, and it told me to make a 2 L starter. Does this mean I want to end with 2 L of wort after the boil or to add DME to water until I get 2 L in my flask and then boil? I typically lose 400 mL to evaporation when boiling 2 L.

I made my first yeast starter tonight. According to Mr Malty it was to be 2 L. So I measured out 2 L of water in my flask and poured it into a pot. Brought the water to a boil and added 200 grams of DME (1g/10mL). I brought it back to a boil and boiled the wort for 15 minutes. After cooling down...