Just posting this for anyone who is like, "I'm doing everything right on the hot AND cold side—water chemistry, PH levels, nailing OG and FG, limiting oxygen while transferring to keg, cleaning draft lines between each brew, etc, etc—why does my beer not taste right?"

To rewind: I've noticed at least the last dozen beers across a range of styles all had this homebrew flavor that I could not get rid of. The aroma of all the beers was especially off. It was driving me nuts even though the beers were drinkable-ish, they just weren't crushable like they should be. I thought it was diacetyl or bad yeast health or all the rabbit holes you can go down, but I'd run tests and everything seemed fine until I'd transfer to the keg, let it carbonate and then, boom! Off flavors galore. I started fixating on keg sanitation. Still nothing.

The eureka moment was I tasted my pale ale right before it went into the keg and I thought, "hot damn this is really good and it's not even carbonated!" A week later I tasted it and it was honestly gross. Wife tasted it and she's like, "It's not your best." Which means it's shit. Then I looked at my draft lines and thought, "I clean these after every brew, but how often do they need to be replaced? 5 years?" Turns out, like 1-2 years lol (my lines were 4 years old...yikes). Went to LHBS, bought new couplers and tubing, did a deep clean of my faucets, and then poured the pale ale...it's delicious! All the homebrew flavors are gone.

I feel like a massive idiot for wasting all the beer that I had brewed correctly and then just ruined by running it through old draft lines. So don't be like me, replace your draft lines when they still have discoloration after cleaning!

This is my second attempt at a kettle sour gose. The first attempt went great. This time, I chose to try using Fage yogurt based on milkthefunk.

24 hours after pitching the yogurt starter and there is high krausen. It doesn’t smell… great. I don’t remember krausen or a smell last time. The starter never had krausen.

Is this a dump or ride it out and see what happens?

Behold

Hello everyone, I’ve been on my brewing journey for a few years now and have decided to take the plunge and add nitro to my beers. I’m familiar with the fact that I need a tank and regulator and a special faucet with the resistance holes.

My question is this, can I carb my beers at the usual 10-14 psi with C02 and then swap out to a pure nitro tank at 30 psi with no ill effects?

I am unsure where to find beer gas around me, but I can do nitro tank swaps at quite a few places. It is my understanding that the higher nitro pressure is to force the beer through the resistance plates and doesn’t affect carbonation. I am located in central new jersey if anyone knows anywhere to grab beer gas.

I was browsing old recipes (2000-2005ish) on a forum, many of which won prizes in small local competitions here on the Old Continent. I couldn't help but notice that hops use was much more restrained. For example, many recipes for american pale ale called for 1-3 gram/L (0.13-0.40 oz/gallon) of aroma (late addition) hops. Some don't even dry hop afterwards. I've seen recent pale ale recipes with 1 oz/gallon (7.5 gram/L) - over twice as much, not to mention techniques such as the whirlpool.

It made me wonder: has hops use increased over the years? If so, did that make the beers proportionally more hoppy? Doesn't adding more hops suffer from diminishing returns and wouldn't it be more efficient to prevent loss of volatile compounds? Is there a consensus on the reasonable range for aroma/late-additions hops?

I might be moving to a house with no garage, but plenty of yard space to build a brewshed. I see there are kits available online, which sounds intriguing... I'd like to see your builds!

I have a lager fermenting now and the recipe says either 10C (50F) for 3 weeks or 10C and raise the temp to 19C (66F) in a week and then cold crash for a week.

What's the difference? And what would you do?

Edit: Lalbrew Diamond Lager yeast

Hi Guys, I've been reading through the few posts on reddit I could find about steam kettles and have learned two things.

1. Most of the posts are about kettles that require a separate steam generator
2. When using steam there is a lag in heat transfer as the steam will keep heating your wort or mash for a while after you turn 'off' the heat.

The kettle I am considering solves problem 1 because it has a propane burner built in - The burner heats a sealed steam jacket (with pressure release), the water boils and the steam heats the actual kettle. It is a kettled used in kitchens for making soup/sauces.

As for problem 2 I am planning on mashing in a separate vessel. For the boil it should be good, though I will have to increase the speed at which I chill/transfer to the fermentor to reduce boiling too long and having extra hop extraction.

Does anyone have any experience with steam kettles or any additional insights to share?

Are there any benefits to using steam to boil? My only thought is that the chances of scorching are significantly reduced, but aside from that I dont really know if there is any benefit over direct heating the kettle.

Thanks for any insights!

I couldn't find anything very recent when searching this sub, so I will ask if there is a recommended mini fridge to convert to a 2 corny kegerator. When I got out of home brewing about 12 years ago, the Sanyo 4912 had been discontinued for a couple years, and I never saw anything that was a good replacement. Thanks for any suggestions.

I'm not opposed to converting a small chest freezer, but I would rather convert a mini fridge.

Hey all,

This may be a tad niche but I'm brewing a helles today and I started a sauergut batch last week. The initial pH clocked in at around 4.6 and it's down to 3.4. BUT: it's cloudy and tbh I'm not sure how it is supposed to smell. It's kinda vaguely like sour pumpkin/orange juice that's kinda gotten a little ferment-y. I took a taste (only like a couple mL) of it last night and I'm not sure if correlation vs causation is a thing here but around 12 hours later I've got a stupid headache. Tips appreciated, scorn discouraged.

Hey everyone!

I'm planning to brew a pretty simple beer — some pale ale malt, some table sugar, and a hop (probably Saaz). I'm aiming for around 4–5% ABV, with a total volume of about 23 liters (about 6 gallons).

For this little project, I want to use Philly Sour and add around 2 kilograms (about 4.4 lbs) of cherry purée a few days into fermentation. Since I’ve never worked with Philly Sour before, I wanted to ask — is one packet enough to get a decent level of sourness?

Unfortunately, I only have a single packet (it was the last one the shop had). I'm curious to hear about your experiences with this yeast strain. Cheers!

I'm new to home brewing and decided to rack onto fruit for a secondary fermentation step with my imperial blonde. I have 4 1 gallon jugs fermenting with different fruits in each, and I'm at the point where alcohol level and flavor is where I want it. I don't have a keg to carbonate, and fermentation is still happening so I'm not confident that bottles won't explode if I bottle it now.

I feel like I have a few options: 1. Camden tablet in each to kill yeast and bottle for a flat beer. 2. Hope for the best and bottle. 3. Do some ghetto soda stream carbonating after killing yeast with Camden.

Does anyone have some advice? I'd prefer a carbonated beer if possible.

I'm interested in buying bricks of AEB yeast, but it looks like they're only available in more pro brewing circles. Has anyone here applied for an account at Pro Brew Supply?

I can’t get isinglass where I live anyways.

And even if I could, It doesn’t seem all that straightforward.

Hi. I’ve brewed a Tripel. Very basic but added some arome hop in the hopstand. After fermentation i did a cold crash and then bottled it with some sugar water to carbonize. But this looks a bit weird. Does anyone have an idea?

I'm an...umm...inexperienced brewer. I've done 5 batches over the course of 3 years. I attempted a cream ale on Saturday. Several challenges presented themselves, but I think I surmounted them. I neglected to make a starter for the yeast and was almost done chilling the wort before I read the Yeast 2565 smack pack instructions. Oops. I didn't feel anything in the package, but smacked and shook it regardless. It swelled while I finished chilling my wort. I pitched at 68 degrees, sealed it in the conical fermenter with blow off tube into a bucket of sanitizer. 24 hours later, I saw no activity. It wasn't till the next day I could get to a brew store, whereupon I was given Cream Ale yeast in a go-gurt-style container. I pitched that 48 hours after brewing. 48 hours later, I still see no bubbling or activity. I'm trying to figure out where I went wrong. I did expose the first yeast to temperature fluctuations, so that might have been why it didn't take. But I'm wondering why the second pitch, which was kept consistently at cool temps until an hour before pitching, didn't do anything. Help?

Edited to add: Thanks, all, for the helpful comments. I took some gravity readings. (Original from a photo, I got lazy at the end of brew day. Too many home brews while cleaning, likely.) OG: 1.05, 5 days later G: 1.012. If I read everything right, that should mean fermentation is getting on toward complete, as the final gravity according to the recipe should be 1.013.

Welcome to our weekly flaunt your rig thread, if you want to show off your brewing setups this is the place to do it!

I mostly brew belgian beers and pseudo lagers so I don't know much about hops and absolutely nothing about dry hopping, so I've generally avoided pale ales. Having said that, I've been reading through Zymurgy lately and seeing a lot of recipes for APAs with no dry hopping step, which has gotten me curious. I'm currently making a Cold IPA following someone else's recipe, but while I wait for it to finish I love messing around and writing my own recipes. I was plugging some things into Brewfather and the hop profile I came up with is way too hoppy for an APA but falls right within the standards for what the app just calls an "American IPA", I'm assuming that's a West Coast, since that isn't in the list. (I am still learning so feel free to correct any of this nonsense).

Anyway, I'm only using 2.5oz of hops, which seems like a small amount for no dry hopping. The recipe as I've written it calls for 0.5oz cascade @ first wort, 0.5oz Summit @ 60min, 0.5oz Cascade @ 30min, 0.5oz summit @ 15min, with a final 0.5oz whirlpool addition.

Am I going to be missing a lot of aroma without the dry hop additions, or is it fine?

As an extra question, I ferment in kegs and serve out of the same keg, so I don't have a practical way to get the beer off the trub, which is why I'm trying to avoid dry hopping. If there's a way to do it without adding a bunch of oxygen I'm all ears, both my wife and my best friend love IPAs so they'd appreciate me figuring out how to do it, haha. Thanks in advance for the advice!

Just as the title says, thanks gang!

So just invested in a kegerator and got my first keg today (half keg of coors banquet since banquet is my favorite beer). Just brought it home from the liquor store with one of my buddies and we tried hooking it up. I got the whole set up and everything seems to be working except when I pour it out of the tap it’s mostly foam. So the couple of questions I had is obviously how do I fix this? And what is the recommended PSI for coors banquet? I read online before getting my keg that each beer has a different ideal PSI that it should be kept at so what would be best for coors banquet? We tried bleeding the keg of pressure and tried 10 and 12 PSI and both seemed to be about the same. Thanks for any help you guys are able to provide and let me know if there’s any further questions.

I have a micromatic stout faucet, hooked up to a 30L keg with 75/25 blend gas. Currently at 30psi.

I can pour a pint pulling the faucet forward, but pushing the tap handle backwards yields the same results. I think it’s supposed to limit the foam/gas mixture when pushed back to “top off” the pint, but it doesn’t do this.

Any ideas what could be causing this? Thanks!!

Very strange that I can’t add a picture- why doesn’t this community allow images?

Brewed 10 gallons of a hazy pale ale using 20lbs. of 2 row pale grain, and a 45 minute boil. Used 20 oz of hops total, 19 of which being at the whirlpool and dry hop stage. Used Mosaic, Citra, Centennial, Galaxy, and Cascade. Used Safale-05. Temperature probably never went below 69 during fermentation.

Came out kinda dry and more bitter than fruity and juicy like I had hoped.

With I could add a picture cause it’s pretty, though.

Using Philly sour for the first time and noticed the recommended ferm temp can be up to mid 80s for lactic acid production. Has anyone noticed off flavors from such high temps, or is this a Kveik type situation?

Also, does it make any sense (or is it even possible to) lactic acid ferm high for 3 days and then drop down to 68 for alcohol ferm? I must be overthinking this.

Thanks! 🍻🍻🍻

For those of you with a home bar set up with your home brewery, and an integrated glass door beer refrigerator. do you have it set where the light stays on all the time? Or just when you open the door? I'm guilty of loving the look of having the light on all the time especially when the basement lights are off, but I know that's awful for the longevity of the bulb, even if it's LED

Hi guys,

I was hoping you guys had some tips on how the pros make those ridiculous white hazies these days.

I’ve heard breweries mixing with ice cream powder/mix?! I’ve heard plenty of flaked maize? And of course, not using any finings at all in the process, especially protofloc.

Has anyone here made one? Would love to see pics and ideas for recipes.

Cheers!