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So there a fruit fly has landed in my cider. I have named him Geoff. I have retrieved Geoff from my carboy, but I'm worried about Geoff's aceto friends. Anyone know what to do in this situation? Is it possible to kill everything with campden once I hit FG? The cider is 5 gallons of...

So I'm making a fruit wine for the first time, and I made a bit of a splashy mess getting the strawberries out. Then, when transferring from the bucket to a 5 gallon carboy my autosiphon glugged half wine half air for 30 seconds or so. Most of the recipes for fruit wine that I see recommend...

I have a minor toothache in one of my incisors that hurts when I drink hot liquids. Because of this, I drink coffee through a straw. This bypasses the tooth and thus it won't hurt. Perhaps this young lady has a similar problem, except she is sensitive to cold.

A dubbel I made recently was recently (FG: 1.008) called "sweet" and "heavy" by someone at my office. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt as I think he was thinking that the esters produced by the 1214 were "sweet" and interpreted that as "heavy". I did raise my eyebrows a bit when he...

Sugar does not give cider aromas or flavors...that is an old chestnut that refuses to die, much like "use a secondary to get your beer off the yeast" and "squeezing your grain bag releases tannins". Running your numbers, it looks like your sugar was around 15% of fermentables, which is right...

A few tips I've learned: 1. The absorption is horrendous. But I compensate by doing a "sparge". I rest a colander over my pot and pour hot water through the grains. I make a "hole" in the middle of the grains and aim for that while I pour, I find that seems to help the water distribute in a...

Looks like it depends on your efficiency. Comparing Austin Homebrew's cheapest bulk 2-row vs bulk extra light DME, you can buy 2.9lbs of 2-row per pound of DME. 1lb of DME in a 5 gallon batch will yield an OG of 1.009. Assuming a brewhouse efficiency of 45%, you will get 1.009 out of 2.9lbs...

Or...you could spend 2 bucks on some US-05 and have some yeast that attenuates, flocculates, and doesn't make beer that tastes like bread? In another thread I used bread yeast coupled with carb tabs to test the efficacy of plastic champagne corks when paired with belgian-style bottles. The...

If you are making a Belgian-style beer I think the lower FG would be a positive, as low FG is a desirable characteristic to the Belgians. Personally, if I was shooting for a sweeter taste and higher FG in a Belgian I'd get that through caramel malts like Aromatic or Special B than through...

Gosh boss I just can't make it into work today...yeah, terrible sore throat and a cough and...yeah sore throat and a cough. Yeah, totally. I'll be out all week I think.

Wyeast 1968?

I'd really like to see a double blind triangle test between a regular beer and a gustunlingunlinglingtunlingified beer to see if anyone can taste the difference. And also to see if it makes the beer better.

I pitched a 2 liter starter into a Tripel that I had forgotten to add 3 pounds of sugar into. I knew I forgot to pitch the sugar but it was too late. When I woke up in the morning about 8 hours after I had pitched I saw the most violent fermentation I've ever seen, IRL or online. My "orange...

I'm always a bit leery of "store-aged" beers as those beers have been sitting under fluorescent lights for god knows how long. Maybe it won't matter for your average darker Imperial Stout or Barleywine, but I think I'll pass on the 2007 vintage Chimay White.

Might want to start there...how did you "proof" the yeast? In general this isn't something you do with brewing yeast.

I'd recommend picking up "Brew Like A Monk" if you don't have it yet, it gives a good primer on what various breweries do to stress the yeast and get the desired esters/phenols. Most of them seem to underpitch, but some don't. Some ferment quite hot, some don't. To be honest I was a bit more...

Mr Malty's calculator is based upon the correct pitch rate for most beers, and you should use it for most beers. Belgians are sort of a different beast. Most Belgian brewers pitch at a lower rate than other brewers specifically because they want to stress the yeast. I don't think the beer...

I'm about 10 batches into AG, and I don't have a mash tun. I just use 5 gallon paint strainer bags that I buy from Home Depot. The only real disadvantage that I have run into is the amount of grain I can use...13lbs is really my limit. I've gotten steady 84% efficiency, so that means for any...

The spigot is set to such a height that you aren't paying attention at all when it gets to that level. You'll always be off sanatizing or something when you hear the "oh ****" noise.

I always have some bottling-spigot related issue or other. Like the one time I didn't quite tighten it well enough and didn't discover it until after I had filled the bottling bucket with beer. Oops. I'm not sure if you can sanitize your arm, but that's what I attempted to do before I reached...