I'm getting back into brewing after a decades long hiatus. How things have changed from my glass carboys, plastic fermenters, hand made copper cooling coils, etc. I'm going to go 1st class this time around so looking at conical fermenters and especially unitanks that can pressure ferment. Of these 3 (listed below), is one preferred above the others in general? They all seem so similar to me. I have watched every video I can find, read posts here and elsewhere and am solidly in project paralysis now so looking for the nudge to get the credit card moving along. I will be buying a glycol chiller and may need to heat a bit depending on where I set the gear up (either in my shop or our basement). Going with an electric brewing vessel (Anvil Foundry 10.5 GI think as a local has one used once for $100). It's unlikely I'll make batches larger than 5 gallons.

Anyway. Help push me over the edge.

Brewtools F40 light

Brewbuilt X3

SS Brewtech Unitank 2.0

I've never tried alcohol much besides sips here and there and it always tastes kinda like moldy miss.

Anyways I think that it's just a me issue, and also making stuff myself sounds fun (got into breadmaking)

Specifically I saw apple cider in the tagine so I think something made of apples would taste less like piss than other drinks.

What would be the minimum to make something?

Looks like I've messed up a munich dunkel that I was intending to submit to a BJCP homebrew comp in the coming weeks - The fermentation stalled for some reason, so I've ended up with a bit of a cloying mess. I'm adding a second dose of yeast to attempt a rescue, but it definitely won't be ready in time for the comp.

The only other decent beer (aside from a flanders red ale earmarked for a second entry) I have in storage is a white stout - pastry stout vibes (hefty oats, coffee, cocoa nibs, vanilla, lactose, touch of oak) but perfectly golden/clear. Would this fall under the 34B mixed-style beer or 34C experimental beer?

How long should I let my honey brown American ale rest before kegging? It appears to have hit terminal gravity according to my RAPT pill.

I transferred my 1-gallon IPA into swing-top bottles this morning. I didn't look at my previous instructions, which said to dissolve 2 Tbps of white table sugar with 1.5 cups of water. Instead, I did 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water. After bottling, I took a sip of the last dregs, and it was way too sweet.

Do I toss the batch, knowing it probably won't be drinkable anyway? I'm more concerned about creating sugary bottle bombs.

Thanks.

So I got some random hops laying around and I am trying to come up with some recipes/beer types to use with them. Any suggestions would be great and what combinations would go well together. Also more than willing to pick more up just looking to use these up as they have been in the freezer for a little bit.

Columbus Polaris - really stuck on this one! Challenger Hallertau blanc Hallertau mittelfruh El dorado Chinook Citra

I've moved to the west coast and my dad/brewing partner doesn't want this gear anymore. Can't post pictures but happy to send to anyone who's curious. Here's the inventory:

• 11 used Corney kegs, mostly rebuilt but possibly missing lids
• Around 100 16-22oz swingtop bottles
• 3 30ish gallon kettles, 2 induction-capable and one Blichmann; no valves or thermometers but Blichmann has sightglass

Just to be super clear: this is free, if you want it you need to pick it up and be nice about it. Please let me know if you're interested or have questions!

I'm getting back into homebrewing after a 5 year hiatus. Previously, I was single and in a decent size apartment, so had no issues using the gas stove there to boil and then just setting up fermenter wherever. I'm now married, have a toddler running around, and would like to confine homebrewing to the basement.

Currently have a 5 gallon batch of sweet mead that's almost ready (sweet mead with cranberry, vanilla, yarrow, hibiscus and juniper - very very good). But after lugging equipment and hot water and must up and down the relatively steep basement stairs we have.... not a huge fan. I'd like the consolidate all this to the basement.

Without running wiring to set the basement up for an electric stove and without tapping off gas lines for a natural gas stove/burner, I'm curious what recommendations are for a "portable" source of heat to boil 5-8 gallons?

I know that the REAL propane burner for something like a turkey fryer are frowned upon indoors for potential of carbon monoxide. I've stumbled across those special indoor propane stoves but looking at how small they are, I'm not sure I trust them to to be able to boil that much liquid at once. The other option I've found are heatsticks, with some being 2000w with the claim that they'll bring 10-15 gallons to a rolling boil in 15 minutes or less.

Curious to get some first hand experience with these as well as other options to brew in the basement where a full stove isn't the greatest option.

I'm brewing up a batch of mead for a mini-comp. I have most of the ingredients nailed down, but can't decide on which syrup I want to use. I have to use candi sugar as part of the brew, which is why I'm using a syrup (yes, not the exact same thing, but close enough). My main ingredients are a blend of buckwheat (vitter, chocolate, coffee, funky) and palmetto (citrus, woody, earthy, smoky) honeys and blackcurrants, which is I was thinking of using a dark syrup like D-180 for some more depth. I just wanted some thoughts from people who have used the syrups on my idea of D-180 vs using D-240 or D-90 here. Would be 1lb of the syrup in a 5gal batch.

Anyone else concerned about the price of barley going up. All my barley comes from Canada. Luckily I have a lot stored, but I suspect Rahr’s will go up considerably

This is my second time brewing a Coors Banquet clone lager. My process: ferment at 50°F for two weeks, raise to 68°F for a three-day diacetyl rest, cold crash at 35°F for two weeks, then keg and carbonate for 10 days at 2.6 vol CO₂.

My last batch was cloudy, under-carbonated, slightly sweet, and had a faint sulfur smell (which faded after a few weeks). I had bottled that batch and suspect oxygen got into the fermenter mid-fermentation.

This time, I’m kegging to fix carbonation issues and using a cold crash guardian to prevent oxygen suck-back. I also added Irish moss and plan to use gelatin for clarity. I’ll be taking gravity readings and doing a forced diacetyl test.

My main concern: the sweetness. Should I lager longer? Isn’t an extended cold crash essentially lagering? I see some people lagering for months—worth it or overkill?

Right now, it’s fermenting at 50°F in my kegerator. First gravity reading in a few days. Any advice?recipe link

I recently purchased a two roller grain mill and I am having a bit of a newbie issue with it.

I have read that the gap between the rollers should be the width of a credit card. I have read the number .625 a few times.

The issue I am having is that the three numbers on the side are .25 .50 and 100.

When I have tried to move the rollers to the width of a credit card, it crushes the grain far too much.

When I open it up slightly the grains almost come out too whole.

Anyone have any tips?

Has anyone upgraded the pump on the 35l model from 6w to 25w? If so, how did it go?

So I’ve done side by side tests with my two different processes given my equipment.

1. Pressure capable fermenter -> starsan purged keg

2. Dumb plastic carboy -> open lid keg, with hose gently filling keg from the bottom, no splashing (keg literally wide open with hose going into it - not usinf liquid peg) Cap on and purge a couple times.

I drink each of these a week later. I 100% can’t taste a difference. I would expect the open lid transfer to have ruined the batch but that’s never the case. It still tastes great. I’ve done this many times now, as I only have one spike flex plus and I brew for two fermenters.

From your experience, would you guys say that…

1. There is 100% a discernible difference and I somehow can’t taste it.
2. There is prob a difference but too little to even be picked up by the average taster.
3. A week in keg isn’t enough time for the batch to be ruined - meaning for now it tastes good but is totally cooked going forward a few weeks +

And I’m hoping for people’s personal experience. I am certain a ton of people will chime in that an ounce of oxygen ruins the batch instantly but they themselves wouldn’t be able to even tell lol.

I have recently sampled this beer and was very impressed by it. After googling and searching homebrewtalk I couldn't find any ready made clone recipe. So I now turn to the hivemind to ask, is there any decent clone recipes of this excellent beer out there?

EDIT: I do find a good selection of clone recipes for Gouden Carolus Classic. Any pointers on how to turn this into a imperial dark version?

I had trouble bottling a batch of beer that I made. I used an auto-siphon with a bottling wand and I managed to fill 1/8th of a 2.5L bottle before it just started pumping foam.

Does anyone have any tips for this? Using a keg really isn’t an option for me.

My municipal water is of very good quality (approx. 30 ppm of each mineral except calcium which is 12 ppm) I only use a carbon filter.

But lately I'm using three times as much phosphoric acid as I used before.

People say that phosphoric acid has a neutral taste but I drank the treated water and the taste reminds me of tonic water.

Perhaps in beer it is not noticeable due to the bitterness of the hops.

The citric acid alone tends to leave a slight taste in beer

Has anyone used a blend of phosphoric acid and citric acid?

My idea is to use half phosphoric and half citric to ensure that neither of them passes the detection threshold

Has anyone ever used a mix of phosphoric and citric to achieve the ideal pH of the mash and sparge?

Does it have any drawbacks?

Picked up this hard seltzer kit for $10, would rather try and make mead than seltzer. Any reason I can't use the yeast and nutrients it comes with. They're already mixed together which seems kinda odd. Never brewed before. Is there a chance that the yeast is poor quality and might ruin my batch? Other than the yeast, I'm just gonna use the glass vessel, bubbler, and santizer that comes with the kit. I don't have the necessary stuff for bubbling, and figure flat mead is probably a lot more appetizing than flat seltzer

Welcome to the Daily Q&A!

Are you a new Brewer? Please check out one of the following articles before posting your question:

• How do I check my gravity?
• I don't see any bubbles in the airlock OR the bubbling in the airlock has slowed. What does that mean?
• Does this look normal / is my batch infected?

Or if any of those answers don't help you please consider visiting the /r/Homebrewing Wiki for answers to a lot of your questions! Another option is searching the subreddit, someone may have asked the same question before!

However no question is too "noob" for this thread. No picture is too tomato to be evaluated for infection! Even though the Wiki exists, you can still post any question you want an answer to.

Also, be sure to vote on answers in this thread. Upvote a reply that you know works from experience and don't feel the need to throw out "thanks for answering!" upvotes. That will help distinguish community trusted advice from hearsay... at least somewhat!

If you are pipeline brewing, you might consider krausening. I have a carboy of actively fermenting beer churning happily away, and I have a carboy of fresh wort ready to pitch. You can use the active yeast from the fermenting batch to innoculate the new batch, then repeat without ever buying a sachet of yeast. For those of us looking to safely re-use and recyle yeast and pinch a few pennies per batch, it works great.

Yes, there are sanitation / infection concerns but I have done it lots of times on a homebrew scale with simple clean practices and have never had any problems.

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/exploring-the-german-technique-of-krausening/

Bought a Morgan's ginger beer ( not a can but a plastic sealed bag) the other week, I've gone to make a brew and I noticed that about a teaspoon of it has leaked out from the top. It's been pretty warm here around 35° to 40° so I'm putting it down to that. Also, would the yeast that's attached to it be any good now?

This is a hypothetical question - I am not currently planning on brewing anythng but I was just curious

I'm thinking of brewing a red ale for st Patrick's day and maybe a vienna lager.

Whats on your brewing agenda?

I am thinking about getting into home-brewing and want to create a gluten free facto-beer. Also has to be organic. Does such a thing exist? What would I need to get started? Unfortunately not a lot of info online.

Started off planning to do an IPA, and had a bit of mission drift. What do you think this is now?

I wanted to try out using a light Vienna malt and some flaked corn in the base. LHBS gave me a much darker Vienna malt than I thought. Then I added 2 ounces chocolate malt lying around for color correction and dropped the corn. Tried out repitching over my last yeast cake of WLP-009 Australian Ale. Cut down original hop additions to 40 IBUs from El Dorado and Cascade additions.

11LB Durst Vienna Malt 1Lb Carafoam 3oz Chocolate Malt

152F Mash

10g El Dorado @60 10g El Dorado, 10g Cascade @30 10g El Dorado, 10g Cascade @5

WLP009 Australian Ale 60F

OG: 1.053; Target FG: 1.012 SRM 13.5 IBU: 40.9 Est. ABV 5.4

Is this an IPA, a pale ale? is it an Amber, or some kind of janky Altbier?

Has anyone out there had luck brewing with a MIAB and using an all grain recipe? ik the efficiency goes way down and you need to mill the grains finer too. Im planning to make a german pils but want to try the MIAB method

I've brewed 8 batches of beer always reusing the yeast from a previous batch. I started with 1/2 a packet of US-05 in a 1 gallon batch and after the first batch I'm doing 2.125 gallon batches. I leave about 1/2" of beer on the lees in the fermenter, swirl it around, let it sit for 40 minutes, then pour off into a quart jar. A couple of times I split it into two pint jars because I wanted yeast for ginger ale. I just pour the whole jar into the wort for the next batch.

May calculated apparent attenuations have gone from 80% to 86% on my last two batches. For ales that are supposed to finish at around 1.010 I'm getting closer to 1.006.

Is it because I'm overpitching the yeast? If, so should I scale down to a pint jar instead of a quart jar?

Has anyone else seen attenuations over 85% with US-05?

Looking to brew a chocolate porter for my SO. We input the ingredients we have on hand into chatGPT and asked for a chocolate porter recipe. Any feedback on the specifics would be appreciated!

Chocolate Porter

5.5% / 13.8 °P

All Grain

Batch Volume: 5.5 gal

Mash

Temperature — 152 °F — 60 min

Malts (11 lb 13.1 oz)

8 lb 12.7 oz (74.4%) — Briess Brewers Malt — Grain — 1.8 °L

1 lb 1.6 oz (9.3%) — Briess Caramel Malt 120L — Grain — 120 °L

13.1 oz (6.9%) — Briess Chocolate — Grain — 350 °L

8.8 oz (4.7%) — Briess Carapils — Grain — 1.5 °L

8.8 oz (4.7%) — Briess Roasted Barley — Grain — 300 °L

Hops (1.1 oz)

0.83 oz (34 IBU) — Chinook 12.1% — Boil — 60 min

0.28 oz (2 IBU) — Strisslespalt 4% — Boil — 15 min

Miscs

4.4 oz — Cacao Nibs — Boil — 10 min

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 SafAle English Ale 75%

Fermentation — 68 °F — 14 days

Water Profile

Ca2+

 63Mg2+

 6Na+

 50Cl-

 82SO42-

 100HCO3-

Looking for some critique and insight on how much chocolate malt and roasted barley to use in my stout. Aiming for an Oatmeal stout profile. 4.09 gallon batch size (ferment in kegs)

Fermentables (9 lb 6.4 oz)

• 4 lb - Vienna 3.7 °L (42.6%)
• 3 lb - Pale Ale 2-Row 2.8 °L (31.9%)
• 14.4 oz - Oats, Flaked 1.3 °L (9.6%)
• 12 oz - Chocolate Malt 369.7 °L (8%)
• 12 oz - Roasted Barley 475 °L (8%)

Hops:

• 30 min - 0.5 oz - Hallertau Magnum - 14%
• 10 min - 0.5 oz - East Kent Goldings (EKG) - 5%

Lallemand (LalBrew) Nottingham Yeast

Mash at 149 F 60min