Recent content by SteveL

Pumpkin beers are great. I make one every fall, this years was excellent! As for other brewing resources you can check out HomeBrewTalk, which is a sister site of this here forum. Also you need to get John Palmer's "How to Brew", this is my brewing bible, just about everything that I have...

You should be fine, I have bottles of this that are 4 years old, when I made that batch I didn't even know what stabilizing and k-meta were. They are still quite good.

This one was not one of the carbed ones. The SWMBO likes it better carbed so those bottles never stay around very long. However I do agree, the sparkling version always has more apple flavor.

Wade, yes you should. I have not done the Skeeter Pee, but we love the Apfelwine. I just opened a 3 year old bottle of the stuff, it was excelent. It had really smoothed out and there was quite a bit more apple flavor.

Thanks Allie! The supplier that use also told me this morning that the other people that have bought that kit from him have liked it as well. Looks like that will be the next one I pick up. -SL

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but, Allie I was wondering how your Orange Muscat turned out. I have been looking at this kit and thinking about trying it out. Thanks!

The other thing that I use in case like this is an allen hex wrench. Just sanitize the thing stick the "L" shape through the hole, pull. Works like a charm!

Glad to hear that you got it out. I did it once with one of my first batches of beer. I was told to just get a new one and leave it in there. Thats what I did, beer turned out great with no off flavors. One of the reason why use Universal Silicone Bungs now, they are not nearly as slippery.

I cant really speak for brerwers best kits as I have never made one. When I first started brewing I made one of these "boxed" kits and was not happy with the quality at all. Some of that was it was my first batch, but a big part of it had to do with the freshness of the ingredients. I don't...

Sam Calagione, that man is a brewing genius.

I don't ever brew with saving money in mind. While it may be true that the price per bottle is less I will still need to brew for a few more years before I ever break even on the cost of all the equipmemt that I have purchased. This of course means that I have to stop buying equipment. Ok now...

I have been pretty lucky in that I have not broken a hydrometer either. I still have three of them though. My test jars however, I have been through 5 of them. I finally got over my fixation on glass test jars and bought a plastic one. Another thing, I saw this today on the site of one of...

That was an excellent write up. I had no idea that making a sparkling wine was so involved. Guess I was applying beer brewing principals, add sugar, bottle, leave alone. So not the case! Thanks!!!

Hey! I'm on a Mac and it works fine! Thanks for the spreadsheet, I like that a lot!

One other quick note. If you are using a wing capper be careful. The glass at the top of a screw off bottle is thiner and can break. If you have a table top capper it will be a lot easier. Other than that, you should be good to go!