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I brewed this last month -- a really nice beer! A few notes: I bought dark Belgian candi sugar, 80L, instead of making my own. Fermented at 65 for two weeks, then cold crashed at 37 for one week Everything else was pretty much as the recipe described and I hit the mash temp, OG and FG. My...

37 day fermentation, wow! For low OG ales I do two weeks, carb for 2 days and drink. How important is the long fermentation period?

It's US-05 so it should be forgiving.

I brewed a blonde ale two days ago and everything went perfectly until I fumbled on the one yard line! I have a fermentation fridge with a two-stage digital controller. Heat comes from a hairdrier that hangs inside. When I put the carboy into the fridge I forgot to turn the hairdrier on and...

I use mainly one kind of yeast for most of my beers and am wondering why not just have an endless starter? Ideally it would be a conical-type container where you could draw some yeast off for brew days, and another opening at the top to drop in extract from time to time & keep it happy and...

I'm an all grain brewer, but I want to brew a high gravity 10% beer, and am hitting the capacity limits of my mash tun. I can do a 1.060 or maybe a 1.070 beer, but after that things start getting difficult. I was thinking of just adding 5-6 lbs of extract to give me that little boost over...

I was very excited to get a dedicated refrigerator just for fermenting beer, but now that it's getting cold outside I need to think about heating, not just cooling. I have a Ranco two stage digital controller, so I can just plug in a heating device, but I'd rather not buy a couple of fermwraps...

I'm wondering if anyone has experience reusing yeast at the bottom of a corny keg by pouring new wort directly on top of it? Because I ferment right in my kegs, I'd like to take a recently kicked kicked keg and refill it with fresh new wort (of the same or similar style beer). I always rack...

No fruit or anything. My beers just seem to benefit from separating out the trub. They're definitely clearer and less of a yeasty taste. I don't know why no one has come up with an airlock that screws into the release valve. Seems like it would be a great product.

I'm a big fan of fermenting right in a corny keg, both primary and secondary. Hooking up a CO2 tank and doing a keg-to-keg transfer makes racking so much easier that with a carboy and siphon. For primary fermentation I just remove the pressure release valve, stick in some plastic tubing...

Batch sparge...right, I knew that. Thanks for all the info. I guess I'll stick to my humble methods until I upgrade to the computer controlled system :)

I just add the water for the first mash in a couple of big pours and stir it to ensure there are no dough balls. Usually the ratio is 1.5 qt/lb and I let it sit for one hour before lautering. After collecting the first runnings I check how many gallons I got to determine how much water I'll...

I have a nawing feeling that my stouts would be fuller and maltier if I did a different kind of mash, but considering one of them just won an award I shouldn't complain. I did a decoction mash once. Once. Funny thing, my efficiency was always around 83% and then I moved, started going to a...

I've always used the "no sparge" method (basically two mashes) and just poured the water right onto my grain. My beer is great but I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Do you think fly sparging and/or doing step mashes are better? More efficient? Better suited for some styles?

I just removed the dry hops from my latest IPA and also checked the gravity. It's at my target 1.010 even though it's only been two weeks since brew day and I'm wondering if it's OK to begin carbonating it? Usually I do one week in primary, and then two in secondary before hooking up CO2 to...

I just brewed a Pliny clone yesterday and it's bubbling away nicely right now. Paying $85 for the ingredients made for a white-knuckle brew session where every little deviation from plan seemed like an invitation to disaster :-) The hops are what make it so expensive. In fact, the guys at...

Here's how my experiment with red oak turned out: I toasted the chips at 400F for 10 minutes and then sterilized them by putting them in a mason jar and pressure cooking them for 15 minutes. I added one ounce for just three days (just floating in the beer). The first taste (after 3 weeks...

I'm amazed that raising the sparge temp increased the efficiency that much.

I don't use software to brew, but I calculated my efficiency as 83%, which seems a bit high. All my hydrometer readings were temperature corrected.

I've brewed many recipes from Jamil Zainasheff's excellent book "Brewing Classic Styles" and I usually hit his OG (pre & post boil) and FG numbers right on the nose. But last weekend I brewed his Blonde Ale recipe and my pre-boil and post-boil OG's were 11 and 12 points higher respectively...