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I use two electric heat sticks to boil. Since I switched from propane, I've been having trouble hitting gravities and getting weird efficiencies. I tested my system tonight and found out I'm boiling off 2gal/hour. The boil strenght seems similar to propane but apparently I'm boiling harder. What...

Every year during my Thanksgiving holiday, I like to brew up a big beer to drink through the following holiday season. This year I made a RIS. 64 A Styx Reduction Size: 5.5 gal Efficiency: 62.17% Attenuation: 70.0% Calories: 346.52 kcal per 12.0 fl oz Original Gravity: 1.102 (1.026 - 1.120)...

Lately, I've been looking around the web for information on commercial beers that are bottle conditioned so that I can try to culture the yeast from them for homebrewing. There are a lot of individual conversations on different beers people have collected yeast from, but there isn't a...

I made a dubbel about a month ago. What a PITA. I used WLP500 with a healthy vial of yeast. I made a 1.5L starter and pitched it on a 1.068 beer. It fermented poorly; only went down about 40%. So I racked it off the yeast and added a new starter that was actively fermenting. This seemed to...

A couple times I've read that it is a good idea to rack a flanders red after primary fermentation (even if the 1º includes the bugs), but a lambic shouldn't be racked. Anyone have a good idea of why that may be? Is there any harm to leaving a red on the 1º for the duration of the aging?

I love English pale ales. The thing I love the most is that sweet caramel and subtle raisin flavor that many of them have. I have tried over and over to make a beer with that flavor and have never gotten it. I've read that these beers normally have very simple grain bills, so I try to keep my...

I don't drink a lot of sour beer, but I enjoy them occasionally. 12 months ago I made a Flanders Red following JZ's recipe to the T. I've left it for 12 months and took a sample this weekend. It has only a very slight sourness to it. I used WLP001 for the primary fermentation, then racked it...

I made a berliner weisse yesterday, using only a short boil and kind of an extended cool down (my IC was leaking so I tried to fix it). I'm worried about DMS. I opened up the fermentor today to take a look, and it wreaks of cooked broccoli or some other vegetable. Is it possible that this...

We collected about 1/2 gallon of maple syrup this year. So we were thinking that we could make and "estate beer" using that syrup and our own hops. We've been discussing whether we should make it a big and complex beer or a moderate gravity beer that is more of a SMaSH with maple syrup. I'd...

I've been allgrain brewing for about 10 batches. I consistently have dark beers that taste thin and hollow. They lack the richness of good commercial beers. I don't think it's my recipes because I pretty much pull them straight out of Brewing Classic Styles. It only seems to be darker beers, say...

I normally do batch sparges where I vorlauf and drain off the first runnings, then add sparge water, wait about 10 min and then vorlauf and drain again. I had a discussion with another brewer the other day where he said that you can just add some boiling water to the mash to raise the temp...

Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher, is probably the best book on brewing I've ever seen. It has great info on the history of beer styles, great recipes, and is a hilarious read. I highly recommend this book to anyone that loves making beer and making stuff for making beer. On that note, I'm...

I purchased 2lb of hops from Hops Direct. 1lb Willamette and 1lb Northern Brewer. Here are some pics:

I decided to post this in the beginners forum, because I just made a beginner's mistake. I've been brewing for about two years now, with something like 40 brews under my belt. However, last Sunday (11 days ago), I brewed a dry irish stout, and didn't oxygenate it. I realized I didn't...

I've been all-grain brewing for about 6 months now, and I seem to have a recurring problem when it comes to pale-ish ales. I've been trying to formulate a good american pale ale and everytime they come out with a really obvious grainy flavor. I'm not sure what the problem is. I use beertools...

My friend loves Honker's Ale. One night (while completely loaded) we decided to try and clone the recipe from scratch. I've read other recipes, and tried a few of them, and frankly, they are not good at replicating Honker's. We started with a recipe that included insufficient Victory malt and...

It is hard to find recipes that people have made and then comment on. Frequently, when I'm researching a beer style, I find that people put their recipes online, but then they never come back and say how they taste. Well, I'm going that in reverse. Here is the recipe for an IPA I made on Sept...

I've been playing around with small 1gal batches for a few weeks. I'm trying out new styles, and ingredients that I've never had before, and don't think that I want to purchase all of the ingredients necessary for a beer that I may not like. But that's not my question. I use BeerTools Pro to...

I just got an 8gal kettle and used it today for my first full volume boil. I made and APA. I put about 6 gallons into it and put it on the burner. I have a big burner on my stove. I has two concentric rings of flames. I could easily boil 4 gallons in my old kettle, but my new one never reached a...

I was wondering if anyone uses an enamel pot to boil in, and if they get a lot more caramelization of the extract than in another type of pot (Al or SS).