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This kit comes with 12 lbs LME, about 1 lb of hops, US-05, and 2 lbs corn sugar to be thrown in the boil. First question is, why add corn sugar to the boil? Second question is whether the following would make any sense as a replacement for the corn sugar. I have 1 lb of Light Munich malt and 1...

1. Say I use half a pack of dry yeast. How would I store the remainder of it? Is just bundling it back up with a rubber band and sticking in the freezer good? Is it important to keep the outside (and inside) of the packet sterilized throughout the process? I don't have much of a sense of how...

Bottled a Christmas ale on Nov 30. I opened one after a week (flat) to taste, another at week 2 (after chilling for just a few hours) and it was well carbonated and tasted pretty much exactly how I wanted it to. So I put about 15 bottles in the fridge, because I believe they benefit from...

I filled a 3.17L "presentation bottle" for my latest batch of sour cherry ale. Somehow I assumed the rim had the same diameter rim as my other bottles. After priming and bottling, I put a bottle stopper on it (one with a handle that you pull to the side to form a seal). Does anyone know how...

I'm not clear on how I need to prepare the spices/hops/other that I want to rack my beer onto in secondary. Hop pellets I understand can be dropped right in, but what about when you throw in a bag of whole flowers? For spices, do you want to boil them in a cup of water first, or can you just...

Ever since I took an interest in sampling lots of craft beers and beer styles, something I've wondered about is how various breweries seem to have recognizable profiles that occur in most of their beers, if not all of them. Any ideas what aspects of the process would stamp the beers with these...

Last weekend I brewed this Christmas Ale recipe and went through the standard routine for 5-gal extract brews, which is what all my brews have been so far. I noticed I keep running into the same uncertainties. The first one is right when I'm getting started. I find my brew kettle, sometimes...

This is the extract recipe I brewed last Saturday. It's based on this recipe. Currently cranking away in the carboy. 6 lbs Plain amber DME 8 oz Wildflower honey (5 min) 5 oz Molasses (20 min) 8 oz Crystal 80 (steep) 2 oz Special B (steep) 0.5 oz Magnum 13.5% (60 min) 1 oz Styrian goldings 3.8%...

I'm going to be following a 1 gallon beetroot wine recipe. This is my first try at wine-making, and my expectations aren't through the roof but I'm hoping it will come out drinkable. The recipe I found calls for a 1.5 hour boil of the beets (3-4 lbs), followed by pouring out the liquid into a...

Cleaning out the garage at the house the other day and I found this: It's stainless steel and drains out at the bottom (with plenty of insulation room below). I'm not sure how much volume it holds. I'm a newish brewer with experience with extract and steeping grains only. If I move up to...

Edit: skip here for the recipes A little background first. My brew experience consists of several 5 gallon extract w/steeping grains. The last two came out pretty well since I found HBT and started paying more attention to the process. My interest in GF brewing: I have a mid-level sensitivity...