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Reading up on it a little more, BIAB seems perfect for us. What size boil kettle is recommended for BIAB 2.5 gal batches? For recipes, is it as simple as taking a 5 gal kit and dividing in half for a 2.5 gal batch? How about yeast? As far as fermenters, I’m not necessarily against plastic...

My wife and I have been homebrewing for a few years, doing 5 gallon extract batches and bottling. We've come to a couple conclusions: 5 gallons is too much for us. We drink plenty of beer, but we've never even come close to making all the way through a batch. And we hate bottling. I've settled...

Sampled my first bottle of my first batch last night. I'm very happy with it. I'm not normally much of a cider fan, but this is great. I followed the recipe pretty closely. I used locally sourced fresh-pressed cider and Wyeast 1056. Kept it in primary for about 3 weeks, then transferred to...

I have a batch of "Brandon O's" cider/graff in primary, and a bastardized oktoberfest/sweet potato/wheat/belgian in secondary.

Its a brand new 5 gallon barrel. I'll follow the directions on the Deep South website, fill it up with some beer, and see what happens.

Can I use Starsan in it?

I've been tossing around the idea of how cool it would be to have a barrel for aging at home, and now my wife got me one for my birthday. Not really sure of what to do with it. Assuming I just treat it like a secondary? How do I clean the thing? I'm planning on doing either a Russian...

Pretty much exactly what I do, except I turn it to low and monitor the temp, and adjust as needed. I try to stay close to 155-160. I also wait until the water is near boiling before I add the extract. The lasts couple batches I've done I've sparged the grains after steeping. Not sure it really...

I always have a beer or two or three while I'm brewing, preferably a commercial example of something similar to what I'm brewing.

I agree 100%. Except my wife has 20/20 vision, so she can't sympathize. I've worn glasses since I was 9, and couldn't come close to seeing the big "E" on top of the eye chart. Now I'm 20/15. Best money I've spent in my life (my Harley is a close second...) and I'd recommend it to anybody who is...

Its a great feeling to drink a beer you brewed yourself. Even better is when you share it with people and they like it. I brewed my first batch 2 years ago, and just brewed batch #24 last weekend.

Brewed 5 gallons on Sunday, using locally sourced fresh pressed cider and Wyeast 1056 Up to 3162 gallons

I generally just try to find a recipe for a style close to what I'm looking for, then modify it to get to where I think I want to go. What style of beer are you planning to make?

That makes sense.

Most of the first several batches I brewed were either from Northern Brewer or Midwest Brewing kits. Now that I've started venturing out, either recipes on here or other sources, I've noticed several different methods for steeping the specialty grains. I generally bring about 3 gallons of...

If you're in the upper midwest (not sure how far they actually distribute) Schell's beer labels come off really easy after a soaking. Plus they make great beer.

I've never used anything but spring or distilled water. The water out of my tap doesn't taste that great on its own, I figure its worth a couple bucks to buy a few jugs of water so I know what I'm getting.

I had a problem with overcarbonation on several batches. Too much priming sugar seemed to be the culprit for me. Use this: http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

Schells Goosetown Gose. My new go-to summer beer.

Basically, I was adding enough sugar for 5 gallons but only bottling 4.5 gal or less. I was just adding sugar based on a Northern Brewer recipe for 5 gal, someone here pointed me to a formula to figure out the correct amount based on actual amount bottled.