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    Cleaning the Spoon

    StarSan in a spraybottle is easy and effective. If you use distilled water as the base the starsan will not be affected by minerals and will stay clear and acidic longer.
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    EC-1118

    This might be a good excuse to build a poor man's stirplate out of an old PC fan and harddrive magnet. Makes a huge difference in my ability to build up cell counts in a (relative) hurry. Recently I used about 4 days of stirplate magic to revive a White Labs tube that had been expired...
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    Using a turkey fryer

    It is fairly common for brewers in cold climes to brew inside the garage near the door (with the garage door open). This keeps the wind off the brewer (and kettle) while allowing ventilation. Exercise common sense, but it can be done. I've never done it because my back patio has a...
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    Question about which beer kit to choose?

    +1 on the wheat beers. They are able to be consumed relatively young (after a couple of weeks in the primary and a couple of weeks in the bottle), are minimally hopped, and are forgiving. They will require blowoff, as has already been stated. I find the 3068 yeast does a fantastic job bring...
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    Question about which beer kit to choose?

    An American-style light lager is a difficult style to make correctly; it is definitely not one I would recommend for a beginner. The big red flag is that "lager" means "to store a long time at low temperature". The light flavor shows every little flaw and it will require you to have...
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    Anyone brewed lately?

    It's one I found on a webpage somewhere, and wedged into beersmith. Just brewed it up today and it's sitting behind me just now starting to put some positive pressure on the airlock. Also made 2 plates and 7 slants from the yeast pack while making the starter from the smackpack. BeerSmith...
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    Anyone brewed lately?

    My batch this weekend will be an Irish ale. Trying to clone Smithwick's.
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    Fermentation Question

    I'd let it sit in primary until you are ready to bottle. Many HBers are starting to forgo secondary altogether and just let the beer sit in primary. My normal time in primary is 2wks. Shorter for some low-grav styles, and longer at lower temps (and about 2mos for ApfelWein).
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    Beer Sanitizing Question...

    As Dean notes, Iodophor at 12.5ppm is no-rinse. Higher concentrations should be rinsed. If you want more info on it google for the Basic Brewing podcast with one of the people who makes iodophor.
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    Anyone brewed lately?

    Screw-tops can be capped nicely with a bench capper (and sometimes with a wing capper if the shape of the bottom flange on the bottle is right).
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    clumping dme issues

    Are the clumps before, during, or after addition to the wort? If before, I'd say a cheap mortar/pestle should break that up. I have used that on some (literally) rockhard yeast nutrient. Sounds like the bag isn't a moisture barrier. Maybe use a freezer ziplock to store the entire DME bag until...
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    Crown capper

    I think I read elsewhere the red is spring-loaded and the black is not. If so the the red would be somewhat easier to use, but no big deal. I am running a bench capper now (super agata) and use the wing capper as a backup.
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    Prechilling the IC

    It was a little over 100F outside in the shade (my digital thermo was nearby) so I chickened out and bought a coupla bags of ice. about 2/3rds of it was left by time I finished. I will do the icemaker route next time as the ice consumption was not as bad as I thought. This was largely an...
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    Prechilling the IC

    I don't think it was 20mins but maybe it was. I didn't have a timer put on that part. I was timing the whole AG batch because of a thread on news:alt.beer.homebrewing (?) so I was watching that rather than the prechill component. I think it took the same amount of time to go IC + prechill to...
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    Prechilling the IC

    Reporting back after the first run. I dropped the temps to 95F with the groundwater then started the icewater recirc. Wort temp dropped to 68F before I stopped the process as I was using a yeast that likes heat (a belgian farmhouse strain). Looks like the prechill is a winner.
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