Hi everyone, Thank you for your advice on various matters. Here's another one. After the big winter storm, it's been frozen here in Illinois, and it looks like things will stay beneath freezing for the foreseeable future. This raises some challenges / opportunities. Challenge: so I use a coil...

Hi folks, Happy Thanksgiving! Sadly, I live in a homebrew desert since our store closed, so I always have to plan in advance and mail order things in. But sometimes my planning fails, as in this weekend. I need to bottle, and am a little low on priming sugar. Thankfully, I think I have just...

So it happened again: I had some friends over, was working on brewing while also explaining (what little I know of) brewing and I made a mental error because I wasn't paying enough attention to what I was doing. (Too much 'beer mastering,' not enough brewing!) I mashed with too much water...

So I'm getting into mashing and I notice that my efficiency is not good. I'm guesstimating I'm getting like 55%, where I'd like to get somewhere in the 65%-70% range. Or am I dreaming? Mashing in a nice pot surrounded by a custom made cozy for warmth. I go in at the right temperature. I'm...

So this may seem obvious, and I thought it was obvious, but I'm starting to be a little confused. What are the kettle thermometers that get mounted into brew kettles (the ones you screw in through a port and have a probe that goes into the kettle) for? Here's why I'm confused. Obviously, you...

So I'm setting out tonight to brew a lovely small batch, and as I'm setting up outside I see there are a ton of gnats flying around. I've got a fan to blow them off a bit and will keep an eye on it, but I'm pretty sure there's going to be a gnat or two in the beer (or ten), at the boil phase...

Hi — So a friend of mine went to Japan and, as a present, bought me some hops. They’re pellet type. He ended up buying me a lot — a kilogram! It’s been great playing around with them, but the bag wasn’t labeled and what label there was wasn’t very informative. In Japanese, it says...

Hi all. Rank beginner here again. So I just gave in and bought myself a stainless steel fermenter (7 gallon). Meanwhile, on a separate track, I'm thinking about brewing some Kvas. It's basically a very lightly fermented drink made out of bread. So here's the question: if I brew Kvas in my...

Hi! I think I may have seen this answered before but I’d love any thoughts on this. I just bought a 7 gallon stainless steel brew bucket. I’m planning on doing 5 gallon batches, but from time to time may find myself doing 3 gallon batches. I’m wondering, is it okay to do a 3 gallon batch in a...

So I'm still at the point where I get distracted at crucial moments and slip up on some detail. So yesterday I went to rehydrate my SAF Ale yeast, and I grabbed a great jar to do it in ... forgetting to sanitize it. It was clean--perhaps even dishwasher clean, though it's been a few months...

Hi! So I'm wondering if anyone has any experience alternating between brewing beer and kombucha in a stainless steel conical fermenter. I've heard you shouldn't try to brew e.g. sour beers in the same equipment as regular beer, because of potential cross contamination. Assuming a good cleaning...

So I've been trying to mash in my boil kettle (I made a little jacket for it out of foil lined bubble wrap) and a couple of things happened on the trial run. First, the temperature fell more over an hour (off the flame) that I would have liked. But I think I can control for that okay. More...

Hi: relatively new brewer here. I imagine many of you master brewers out there have New Years’ traditions: beers you brew to begin each year. What do you make? What’s your go-to get the New Year off right batch?

Beginner brewer again here. So I've been having a little problem with my beer coming out bitter. I'm pretty sure I haven't been using too much hops -- I'm really down to an oz of relatively mild hops, low Alpha acids, for a short period of time. My latest batch I was using my kettle as a...

Hi! So I don't have a fridge to lager in. My basement, right now, hovers in the low 60s Fahrenheit (about 62-64). I also have a storage shed that gets quite cold, like the upper 30s. I've been looking at Fermentis lager yeasts, and to my surprise their recommended range seems quite warm, like...

Hi everyone, Beginner here again. So I have brewed a fair number of batches at this point. And when things have gone well, generally, I have a thick krausen by day 2. I just brewed a batch on Saturday (two days ago), using Saf Ale 05. I tried to do everything right, and hydrated the yeast in...

Hi! So I'm a brewer from the early 1990s who fell asleep for thirty years and awoke to an amazing world of information, supplies, and gadgets! Back in the day, I was pretty much exclusively extract brewing. Now I'm starting to do partial mash & building toward all grain. I've been reading...