Probably stupid questions, but I haven't found definitive answers yet and figured you all might have some answers based on experience for me. :) 1) Is a "mini" decoction worth trying? I generally have a 25-27ish liter mash (20-21 liter H2O + 5-6kg malt), but only a 20l pot + camp stove to give a...

I grew up in northern NY, not particularly far from the Canadian border and at times visited and/or drove through Quebec and Ontario, but up until becoming an expat 20-something years ago, I had never heard of poutine. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised a few years back as I started to hear...

I am probably waaaay late to the party here, but I just watched this vid and noticed BF very noticably in use at 15:30+ :) ...also realized that although they may be using the same fermentation chamber setup that I am (small fridge with additional thermometer taped to the side), I am way too...

...are hungry this time of year, but still very stupid. This is probably actually a brewing thread, but only indirectly. I just boiled a wasp for the umpteenth time and wanted to vent. :D One would think that even insects would be smart enough to not fly into a boiling pot of liquid, but not the...

I could probably do a lot of fancy calculations to figure this one out. ...or just wait a day or two and see what happens, but am impatient and lazy, so here is the scenario and question for your speculation / experienced consideration. Scenario: I bottled my last batch waaayyyy too early. My...

I know I am supposed to rdwhahb and I have the hahb part down, but I am really having trouble with the rdw part. Short version is, fermentation hasn't started... Long version is, my (electric) thermometer decided to go crazy while prepping my strike h2o and mashing in. The temp. kept jumping...

So..........after many years of just chucking 2 packets of US-05 into the primary and having activity within ~24hrs, I think I may have just been schooled in the use of bottom fermenting yeast... I have only fermented 3 brews w/ W-34/70 so far and they have all been with a starter. Figuring...

Reeeeeaaaaaallllllyyyy stupid question here, but even though I am not too bad at grasping mechanical engineering, things like pressure have always been a bit "out there" for me... As I understand it, if the pressure within a vessel remains constant as it is cooled the amount of CO2 contained...

My lunch today :D

Even though I am far from joining the world of "keggers", I have just filled my first (2) party kegs, instead of bottles! Afraid I may have overfilled them a bit, but with the 2.5 bar release plugs I am hoping the worst that will happen is a bit of beer sprayed around the cellar during...

I have brewed a Vienna Lager/Märzen quite successfully a couple of times using Mandarina Bavaria as both bittering and aroma hops. It takes some getting used to, but it really isn't a bad hop for for a bit of a twist on the style. Now for the challenge.... Most of my friends who have been...

I have a "problem"... VS Same recipe, same malt bill, same equipment, same water, same fermentation temp, same brewhouse efficiency, same lagering temp, same lagering time, same, same same....except!!! The malt is from different suppliers! Beer #1 is made with pre-milled malt from supplier #1...

I am just curious if what I am experiencing is what I think it is...and if it is normal... Up until recently, I have been using a small fridge with a heating pad in my apartment (room temp ~20°C) as a fermentation chamber to control my ale (US-5) fermentation temps. Anything from 15°C for...

I have a bunch of ingredients, which I would normally use for a Pale Ale (American-ish / IPA-ish style), but after years of only brewing ales, I really want to try a lager of some sort. So, I have ordered some Fermantis W-34/70 and threw out all of my dry hop additions (and significantly reduced...

After recently reading a few posts in another thread here, in which the posters claimed to add dry hops un-bagged, I thought to myself, "That could save a bit of cleaning in the hop-bag department....let's give it a try!" So, I dumped in the pellets (Side note: accidentally added 300g of...

Visited Spalt yesterday! Pretty cool to see the history of where all the Spalt hops used to come from (isn't really any production any more to speak of). Especially the tall houses where they used to dry the hops and the big one (last pic) where they were weighed and packed.

Normally I do a single batch sparge (traditional, not biab) for 30 min at ~72°C and have a brewhouse efficiency of 70-80% Today, I let the sparge sit for 90 min and ended up with a very high OG and a brewhouse efficiency of 97%! Is that normal? fwiw, it was only 6kg of grain and 15l of sparge H2O...

Background... I have been brewing all grain for about 6 years, on average once a month, always in the same city, using the same municipal water and most of the time brewing the same recipe with minor variations. A simple version of my standard recipe (24-25L fermenter vol.) is 6kg base malt...

I brewed yesterday for the last time in 2017. Now it is time to fill out the tax form, transfer my couple of Euros tax and write an email to announce that I will be brewing again in 2018 (welcome to German bureaucracy!). Very curious to taste and smell in January / February how my Callista IPA...

Just a bit of a heads-up... Some otherwise in the past seemingly innocent posters have just started adding spam links to posts... e.g. https://www.brewersfriend.com/forum/threads/name-that-skyline-picture-game.6800/...