Well, one smells good and the other is amber colored! Does that help? :p

When I use oak (medium toast American oak cubes) I soak them in a medium/good quality bourbon for a week. Then I dump all into the fermenter. If I'm bulk aging for a few months sometimes I'll just add the liquid. If you don't want the flavor of the spirit in your beer you could just sanitize...

I bottled for many years and started the way you do @Brewer #442461; 4 weeks in the fermenter and then bottle. After a while I dropped it to 2.75 weeks, then cold crash, then bottle. For every batch I would take a hydrometer reading before bottling and as long as the gravity was close (±1...

I'm sure your mom's recipe is way better than any mix.

I love Shepherd's Pie. My wife makes a good Shepherd's Pie using Colman's Shepherd's Pie mix.

Since dark and roasted malts are used in smaller amounts, I think they would have to be noticeably off (smell or taste bad) before they would negatively affect your beer. Even if they are a bit stale they would still impart the color or roastiness without imparting a stale flavor to the beer...

I did think about stocking up but, I didn't want to make Josh feel jealous.

I built this today. I used the website that @jschein referenced and modified it into a 4-legged model and used threaded connections for the legs. I made it four legs so the kegs and fermenters would have a stable platform to sit on. Plus the weight wouldn't be sitting right on the pump. I...

It will be a while before I run out! Actually I only bought a couple. Need to leave some for other fans.

If you are fermenting and serving in the same vessel then I do the high psi CO2 & roll method, as soon as fermentation is done. Then start the cold crash.

I tried the holding up the dry hop bag above the kreuzen but, the bag dropped into the wort on the first day. I think what happened was that the kreuzen rose just enough to touch the hop bag. The bag and hops wicked up enough wort to make the bag too heavy for the magnet to hold. I had about...

It's darn near impossible to get an accurate measure of how much healthy yeast is in the trub after fermentation. Fortunately the yeast don't care too much. You can be significantly off and the yeast will still do what they are supposed to do. So, just take a wild guess and as @Bigbre04 says...

It was a toss up between Yooper's Mild and Josh's "Smiddicks". But after having a Smithwick's last night, I think the next one has to be Smithwicks. And like @Over The Cliff Brewing , that decision could change in a heartbeat.

I think we should have Tim's sound off. Otherwise, depending on how Bama is playing, he may teach us some new words :oops:! :p

I brewed a cream ale (Spotted Cow clone) this past weekend. I used a packet of Safale K-97 yeast that expired in July 2023. It had been stored in a dry, cool environment. I knew that it's ok to use dry yeast that is past expiration but, I still thought there might be some fall off in...

I bet you'll be ready for a beer or three after that is all over!

Well it's their loss Josh. If I weren't 7 hours away, I would have been there!

I'm not sure what acceptable temperature fluctuation is but I would think a 20°C (36°F) fluctuation is too much. If your are going to use it with a few weeks, I wouldn't bother washing it at all. But if you want to wash the yeast I would try to keep the wash water roughly within 5°C (10°F) of...