That's good to know because I never hit the target OG

In the year that I've been perusing this forum I haven't contributed much but I have absorbed a lot. Thanks to what I've learned in the past year I have been able to improve each batch. I entered my latest brew in the International Lager category of the Tulsa State Fair Homebrew competition and...

This was a gift from my daughter.

This is just my 4th batch of beer so I'm gaining knowledge and experience each time and the help I receive from this forum is a big help. I was going by the instructions in John Palmers book and mixing the sugar and water first, putting it into the bottling kettle, and then siphoning the beer...

It seems that you should get at least 53 twelve ounce bottles from a 5 gallon batch. The most I've managed is 38 because of the bottom trub. Out of 4 batches I've had one bomb and two gushers. I think the priming solution calculated for a full five gallons was too rich. So it seems to me that...

Ok. Thanks. I'll give a couple of more days.

I have a Kentucky Common brew in the fermenter and the final gravity target in the recipe was 1.009. On day 14 the gravity was 1.014, and three days later it hasn't moved. My question is can I bottle it with the gravity 5 points above target? This is my fourth batch of beer. The first three...

No picture of the broken bottle but the way it broke was interesting. I had a case of empties sitting on top of the case of full bottles. The empty bottle directly above the exploded bottle was propelled out of the case but it didn't break. When I lifted the broken bottle it was intact except...

I finished my second batch of beer recently. It turned out nice and friends and family have given me positive feedback. This last Monday, 16 days after bottling I had one bottle to explode. None since. I took a couple of random bottles from the case and opened them over the sink (wrapped in a...

I'm working on designing a label. Here is my latest attempt.

I've been thinking and I thought I should add a few words to my introduction. Although I was quite pleased with the taste of my first beer things did not go exactly as planned. When I racked the beer from the fermenter into the bottling bucket the racking cane I used was too small. It came...

I recently received some basic homebrew equipment, John Palmer's book How to Brew, and all the ingredients for a five gallon batch as a birthday present from my grandkids. I've never been much of a beer drinker but the brewing process appealed to the geek in me. When I tasted the first batch I...