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Wyeast 1007 is one of my favorites - very reliable, and highlights malty notes very well. My basement is gets down to 52F in the winter, and it ferments just fine at least down to that temperature.

Agree - the value of brown bottles is highly over-rated for beer that is not sitting under fluorescent lights in a display case. For homebrew stored in your dark basement, it makes no difference. I've played around a bit with homebrew in clear bottles. It takes some time in full mid-day sun to...

Short of doing a mini-mash, you're doing about all that can be done. No harm in steeping longer, but ultimately if you're not happy with the result, you'll need to bump up the amount of specialty grains.

Any wine yeast might leave you drier than you'd like, but I find Lalvin 71B-1122 not as bone dry as Champagne yeast or K1-V-1116.

Agreed - scientific methods are a must in my work, but who wants to do that with a hobby? OK, I haven't done a FWH brew in a long time - I guess that's next, unless my LHBS is out of Centennial...

Clearly an area worthy of research ... I would think that your high alpha hops with flavor/aroma (e.g. Centennial) would be good candidates for FWH, Palmer's advice notwithstanding. I'd think that moving these to FWH would do less to bump up overall IBU than moving late-addition hops, because...

First step is to make a good hefewiezen. Fortunately, this is a pretty easy style, and one you can do very nicely with extracts. You should base it on what wheat-malt extract you can find (should be in the range of 40 - 60% wheat). Adjust amount to get you in the 1.050 range (+/-, as you like)...

Hmmm, I've heard of narcotic effects of other herbs, but not mint. OTOH, catnip is a mint, and look what it does to cats... I guess I never liked mint enough to use that much...

Looks to me like the dry hops may just be assisting in forcing CO2 out of solution. You'll know for sure when you measure the FG. Either way, don't worry. It looks normal, and your IPA should be awesome...

Yes, owning a malt mill is key - I'd hate to rely on my LHBS for that, and besides, it allows you to buy grains in bulk. Mine is a MaltMill I bought in 1992, and it is no longer pretty, but it still gets the job done. Since I bought mine, several other good mills became available, but I've never...

Sure, go for the Carapils. 1/2 to 1 lb. each of that and the light crystal would not be overkill. There is nothing really wrong with the dryhopping method you propose; if that's what works for you, do it!

7 weeks seems like a long time in the fermenters for a beer like this. No harm in it, just that it's probably not necessary. How about: 2 weeks primary. Put your dry hops in the carboy, and rack APA onto them. Then, 2 weeks secondary. When you rack to your bottling bucket, just use some fine...

running 2oz of 4.1 %AA hops, and assuming the malt extract gets your OG to 1.054, recipator says 2 oz @ 30 min would give 21 IBU. So that's not such a bad bit of advice. If you did 1oz @60 min & 1oz @10 min, you'd get 19 IBU. This would be my preference, too, but if you're shooting for...

Never used True Brew Kits, but the instructions are suspicious. The malt extract is unhopped, so you don't need to worry about changing the hop profile by boiling longer than instructed. You are right that the IBU should be 18-25, not 6. Even Budweiser has a higher IBU than that. I suggest that...

I wouldn't worry too much about whether it's unsafe, but if it's spoiled and tastes bad, you don't want to use it to backsweeten. Best thing is to smell/taste it if you really want to use it. Otherwise, toss it and get new cider to backsweeten. For future plannning, I think freezing the...

Well, as long as you boil the mush before pitching you avoid the infection problem, and if you use hops in the "mush boil", you avoid the flavor inbalance problem. I think it's worth a shot. Astringency from boiling the grains shouldn't be much of an issue - otherwise decoction would never work...

To carbonate by the bottle, there are dextrose tablets made for the purpose. If you don't mind winging it, 1 level tsp for 12 oz will get you close (2 for the bomber or champagne bottle, I guess - you are, after all, winging it).

If I remember correctly (always a risk) BWW is a Wit - look through your favorite archive for a good Wit recipe, unless someone has a clone. I'd offer a recipe, but I'm not fond of Wit (a point of some disagreement with my brewpartner).

Batch priming by boiling the dextrose in water is the wat to go - much easier to get even bottle-to-bottle carbonation. And yes, rack without splashing.

This is somewhat a function of how much crud is in the primary, what the temperature is (which you noted), and how full-flavored your beer is. Unless you have an unforgivingly light-flavored brew, I would'nt worry about 20 days. My brewpartner has gone 2 months with relatively minor effects, and...