Recent content by worlddivides

Beer has been around for more than 13,000 years, while hops have only been used in beers for less than a millennia, and only predominantly in beers for the past 500 or 600 years. So arguably, you could say sours taste more like "beer" than... insert your more recent style (before the advent of...

So you lived only a few miles east of where I do, then (I live not that far west of Shinjuku, while Aoyama is not that far east of Shinjuku). I do remember that I occasionally found the really simple beer kits sometimes sold at places like Tokyu Hands, but I haven't seen them in forever. But...

My favorite to drink? Lambics. Especially gueuzes. Flanders red ales are way up there too, though. If we limited it to brewing, though, APAs, NEIPAs, brown ales, and stouts. If I had to just pick one for sessionability, maybe APAs or NEIPAs? As much as I love West Coast IPAs, I think I have to...

I'm in the western part of the 23 Wards (been living in Nakano for the past 5+ years and moving to Koenji next month). The chlorine here seems slightly less than where I lived in the US, but it does seem like it's enough that I'll want to use Campden tablets or the "meta" IslandLizard mentioned...

I'd say that across all the beers I've brewed so far, I've used pilsner malt in maybe 5% of the recipes? So I use it sometimes but nowhere near as often as, say, two-row or Maris Otter. For example, in the 4 recipes I recently made for beers to try, 1 of them uses 1.7kg of Bohemian Pilsner Malt...

I won't know that until I move to the new place. If it smells and tastes like my current apartment (which is about 2.5 miles from where I live now), it should make pretty good beer. I've never had water that smelled or tasted horribly in a big city, but I have in the countryside. One place I...

Thanks. Improvement is definitely a very important thing to have. I also agree. Out of all the scents I've created in brewing, I honestly think that butyric acid is THE WORST I have ever smelled (or tasted for that matter). What blew my mind a couple years later was when I tried a kettle-soured...

Appreciate the detailed info. I still have a very old version of Bru'n Water. I downloaded it maybe in 2016 (and only used the free version). I only used it on maybe 4 or 5 batches, so water treatment and profiles is arguably the part of homebrewing I have the least experience in. When I did...

Brewing outside isn't an option. Other than the legality issues, I don't have a backyard or a frontyard in my new house (also don't have a garage or a driveway). Behind my new house, there's an apartment building maybe 5 feet from the back of my house. And to the left of my new house, the next...

Although I had been planning on just using RO water or maybe even mineral water instead of tap water, I've always been aware that Japanese water is pretty soft compared to almost anywhere I've lived in the US, but I wasn't sure about chlorine. I looked online and the average chlorine levels in...

I'm probably just overthinking things. I've had multiple friends here who homebrew and there are quite a few Japanese craft breweries started by people who homebrewed (one I met said that she was a member of her university's brewing club and that's where she started). So I could kind of compare...

Tokyo. I just updated it, but like I mentioned earlier in the thread, homebrewing is technically illegal here (though there are homebrewing websites that sell grains, yeast, hops, and brewing equipment, but they always do a wink wink "don't brew anything over 1% ABV because that's illegal). I'm...

Floor mats are a great idea too. I'll definitely keep that in mind. Thanks.

With my first few brews I always had boilovers, so I ended up getting really conscious of avoiding them. At first, I tried stuff like the water spray or just turning off the heat temporarily (since boilovers usually were somewhat temporary). But I eventually tried Fermcap and I 100% agree that...

In a way, it's a shame that I gave away all of the gear I had amassed over quite a few years. I really liked my Speidel fermenter and would like another one. I'm not actually in LA anymore (or in the US for that matter), which is one of the issues with why it's so difficult for me to get ahold...