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You dont' HAVE to go with beer gas for a stout, unless you wnat the stout to pour like a guinness with a widget. plenty of stouts are not nitro-injected. I too say filtering beer isn't worth it, especially when kegging. Kegging lets you crash cool the yeast outta suspension and pour it off in...

Or if you just want to ensure really clear beer. :D Seriously though...who here hasn't bumped their racking cane and sucked up a wad of yeast cake. I don't always secondary, but if the yeast cake is thick and I want to bottle vs. keg, I'll give it a short secondary. 3 week primary (to...

I've only made 24 gallons of wine so far, and tons of mead. I've NEVER left my bucket unsealed. Two schools of thought: don't aerate, and run an open primary VS. aerate with pure O2 and seal it with an airlock. All of my WineXpert kits were aerated, sealed, and fermented with no problems...

Those are horribly inaccurate too. I had one, and a refractometer, and a bulb hydrometer. Guess which $6 piece of plastic junk was WAY off?

"then filter" that's the key. If you use a fine enough filter, you strip the yeast out of the liquid, which will definitely halt fermentation. A lot of wine guys have filters. Just as many do not :) its a bad assumption on the kit instruction's part. let it ferment fully. backsweeten...

off topic-ish: degassing the first week of primary, staggered nutrient additions, and narbonne 71-B yeast is starting to get a strong reputation for producing very good meads that are quite drinkable at just 2 months. its not a guarantee, but so far on my first 2 batches done this way, they...

I missed that the first read. Its not guaranteed you'll get tannin extraction by leaving the grains in above 170F, because pH plays a big role in this happening too. Just consider it 'info for next time'.

DO NOT boil the water with the grain bag still in it! Exceeding 170F could lead to tannin extraction, and that could ruin the beer with astringent flavors that will not age out. I suggest you bring the water to about 150-160 degrees F, hold it there for 20-30 minutes, then remove the grain...

Immersion blenders are amazing at whipping air into things. You can turn oil and an egg into thick mayonaise. Cream becomes whipped cream in no time. If you used it right you could degass, but for the price of a drill mounted stir-wand that isn't engineered to whip air into things...I'll...

We don't have 'fruit beer' in the USA that doesn't have alcohol. As a kid we had 'apple beer' which was just a carbonated, tart, apple soda pop. not 'beer'. most fruit beers aside from the fruit lambics are based off a light wheat beer or blonde ale recipe that's often very very lightly...

Wine has nutrients in it due to the grapes. Mead is pretty much nutrient void, particularly nitrogen. First thing I ever made was mead, 16 years ago (I'm 33 now). The concepts of staggered nutrient addition really helps. Also, degassing the first week of primary to drive the CO2 away produces...

I was figuring 3.5 cans a gallon. I pretty much wiped out their inventory with what I got, which is why I was thinking about just a small batch (I own a 3gal carboy and two 2.5 gal carboys) or a batch of mead. Thanks for the tips and info.

Make sure there's no preservatives, like sorbate. The frozen juices don't need em cuz they are frozen, but room temperature stuff seems far more likely to have something in it that'll prevent fermentation.

you definitely have to avoid anything with 'sorbates'. There's another chemical to watch out for too. 'Acids' should be fine. Malic, citric and ascorbic acid are commonly added to frozen concentrates and are not a problem (although it may mean you need NO acid blend added to the recipe)

So I found this TreeTop brand blueberry/pomegranite juice in the freezer section at the store. No additives beyond ascorbic acid. its blended with apple juice as well. Trying to decide between a wine, or more of a mead with this stuff. I bought like 7 cans of it. If I go with a...

Not to confuse terms, but you get 'hot break' material which is coagulating proteins and hop bits when doing a full boil, not really with extract kits but when using partial mashes or all grain recipes. +1 tho for getting it off the heat, so your extract doesn't burn on the bottom over the heat.

StAllie, there's no 'Save' button, you just uncheck the Enable box, your cursor should 'think' for a minute (at least mine did in Windows 7), and then its set as disabled. I did it in Firefox, should work fine in IE too I'd think.

A lot of extract beer kits don't need a full boil...but you will need a 3 gallon kettle still. Brewer's Best kits definitely take into account the hop utitlization loss on smaller boil volumes. Even then, the thing will boil over if you're not watching it, especially at hop additions.

Also, despite their claims, its NOT enough yeast to just pitch. You still need a starter even with the Activator packs for optimal pitching. It'll ferment without a starter, but its kind of like buying a Porsche and not using premium gas...it just won't be the best beer it could be. making a...

Its not facebook crashing it Wade, but all the craptastic apps that facebook allows through its site. Back on topic, the Instant Personalization is new...it was just added this week and it is 'Enabled' by default. For now its just Bing, and a few other sites, but it will only expand. I'm also...