I clean em right after bottling too. But I let mine them with cleaning solution for 15 minutes before I clean them with a brush. Then a couple rinses and they are clean. They just get a little slippery and I go up and down steps with them. I've had a couple close calls with them slipping out of the handle too. Seems like buckets clean up way faster, and none of the hazards.

Holy shit yeah, glass is slick as hell. Mine 1) don't go up and down stairs when full, and 2) don't weigh shit empty so then it's fine if they did slip. Knock on wood, but so far the plastic carboys were a good choice.

Now I just need a second (nicer) kettle, so I can heat sparge water and still run off the mash tun into the boil kettle. But where the fuck will I store THAT...

get one that's big or small enough so that the kettles are like the russian dolls. endless kettles. that's another reason for buckets instead of carboys for me. storage isn't a problem where i'm at but i don't have an abundance either.

Hmm... the current kettle has no tap, so the newbie would have to go on the outside and the oldie would have to fit inside. Good point. I need a fucking garage / shop.

I use buckets for primary fermentation and usually rack to a glass carboy for secondary fermentation.
I like being able to quicky dump my chilled wort into a sanitized food grade bucket and placing it in the swamp cooler ASAP.
I'd have to rack into a carboy or carefully use a funnel after chilling the wort, and that to me adds more sanitation issues, since I don't have a brewing kettle with a spigot.
However, I personally think a glass carboy is far easier to clean than a food grade bucket. The sediment and hops don't stick to the glass as much as they do the sides of the bucket.

I broke a bottle with my capper tonight when I was bottling my Red Rye IPA that I made at the AHA Big Brew day that our club hosted at Blue Bloods Brewing Co.
I damn near sheared the entire lip of the bottle off with relative ease. It scared the hell out of me, but also made me feel like Hercules for a bit. I'm hoping the hops mellow out a bit during the bottle aging phase, since they are providing a massive hop punch that overpowers the base malt right now. The rye stands out along side them, but I didn't really intend to make a rye hop bomb. I wanted it to be intense, but not extreme, and right now I think it is approaching a palate wrecker level.

Back when I worked the bottling line at Bitburger, I handled a few thousand bottles every day, loading them into plastic crates. The bottles would get cleaned and dried, then go through an inspection box with bright lights and 11 hi-res cameras trained on specific parts of each bottle, and anything with fractures or lines would get kicked out. Then they'd get filled and labeled and wind up in front of my for loading. Every single day at least 3 would smash to pieces under very light pressure - dropping them onto the plastic crate bottom from 4 inches up, usually, and it was a bouncey landing. So even after all that scanning, sometimes there are flaws in the glass and all it takes is a light shot from just the right angle and the thing seems to frag apart on its own. I used to REEK of beer for that reason. I would sink wash my overalls and they'd run snot-color.

Hello homebrewers! Buddy and I picked up the equipment for this cheap on craigslist and thought we would try our hand at is this weekend. Tips not on the directions? Easy but delicious first-timer beers? Note I don't want to be punched in the face with hops the way some folks do, though I'm certainly happy to have real hop flavor in the mix.

Did you get an extract-style kit or can you mash from grain?

I can indeed mash from grain. I was given several fabric bags that I gather are for this purpose?

I'd go with a ESB, and Irish Ale or a Brown Ale. You could also try a clone recipe for a beer you really enjoy.

Yeah those can be for mashing (usually a "mini mash" in a pot on the stove) or for hops in a boil to keep them from clouding up the wort. So let's assume you're not set up for a full grain mash (10 to 20 pounds of grain in a 10 gallon insulated cooler), and thus you'll want to do a "partial mash" at best the first time. Hell maybe no mash at all the first time - I don't want it to feel like work, because then you might get spooked and quit. Here's a no-mash option first:

5 GALLON NO MASH BATCH OF PALE ALE... go get this stuff:

1) 6 pounds of Maris Otter extract. I used the dried stuff, but to find Maris you might need to go liquid. Either is fine. Maris is like regular 2-row pale but more bready, nutty, and exciting. Shines on its own, and keeps things uber-simple.
2) 3 ounces of Cascade hops. You'll need to have 1 ounce separate and the other two can be together, so don't don't weigh out 3 ounces into one bag.
3) 1 packet of dried "Chico" or California Ale yeast. It's the most popular kind there is, so it will be easy to find. Don't bother with the liquid stuff, it's great but it's expensive overkill.
4) Bottling sugar (5 oz) & caps for a few weeks later when it's ready to bottle. Oh and bottles if you don't have 'em. Or you could just buy 2 cases of something in brown glass withOUT twist-off tops and drink it all in 2 weeks. This is what I'd do, fuck buying empty beer bottles. You need about 50 12oz bottles.
5) Make or buy shitloads of ice.

Ok, that's all the stuff. Now you do this:

1) Get a clean coffee mug / bowl / etc. Pour warm (NOT HOT) water in it, a few inches' worth. Pour the yeast packet in, cover it to keep it dark and so nothing can drop into it, leave it on the counter where nothing will knock it over. Forget about it til the end.
2) Bring 3 gallons of clean water to a boil. I hope you have a propane burner, because if not it'll take awhile. Drink beer while you wait.
3) When it boils, stir in all of your Maris extract and make sure there are NO CLUMPS. This unfermented beer is called "wort."
4) All stirred in? Now add 1 oz of Cascade hops and set a timer for 60 mins.
5) While your wort boils for an hour, get your fermentor carboy / bucket / whatever you bought with an airlock and sanitize it. Ditto any tubing you're gonna need. Everything that will touch the beer gets sanitized. Also don't lean your face over things, because you rain microbes.
6) Beep Beep Beep... timer goes off. Kill the flames, and add the other 2 ounces of cascade hops. Stir and get a good current going. Put the lid on, let it swirl for 5 minutes with all the hops.
7) Put the kettle in the tub, the sink, whatever, and get it in a cold bath with all that ice outside the kettle. The goal is now to get that temp WAY down, to around 70F. So keep it covered (sanitization issues) and go fast.
8) Mix in cold, clean water up to a little over 5 gallons - like 5.1 or 5.2. Eyeball it, but the point is you wanna wind up with 5 gallons and you will lose a little to the hops floating around in there. So mix in cold water and begin checking the temp frequently. Cold bath, ice outside it, swirl the outside water one way and the hot wort inside the kettle the other way. If you also bought a wort chiller (copper coil of tubing) that will make this step last 10 minutes instead of an hour.
9) Once the wort in the kettle is down to less than 80F, pour it into the sanitized fermentor, all but about half a gallon.
10) Pour the yeast mug into the funnel, get it all out as best you can, and rinse down the parts that clung to the funnel with that last 1/2 gallon of wort.
11) Take a gravity reading of your beer, and record it AND the exact temperature of the sample. This will eventually tell you the booze content, so it matters.
12) Label the fermentor with the date and a name for the beer, and put it somewhere dark with steady temps between 60F and 72F. You should see bubbling in the airlock within 12 hours, sometimes 4 hours sometimes 24 hours. I usually see activity within 6 hours, but if it gets to be 24 don't panic quite yet.


After a few weeks that will be flat, warm beer. When / if you get past that point, report back if you want more bad advice.

This all sounds very feasible! Will report back. Alas Craigslist guy gave me the fifty bottles so no excuse for a booze up here.

I just ordered about $100 (including shipping costs) in ingredients to make my next beer. It is going to be a Tangerine White IPA, and I am brewing it for the annual Brew at the Zoo event at the Lincoln Children's Zoo. I shared some of my beers there last year, when I helped pour beer for our club, but this year I wanted to make a full batch for the event since my mother will be celebrating her 69th Birthday at the event.
I'm using eight pounds of malt extract (six of it liquid and two of it dry) at a 50/50 split of Wheat and extra light, an ounce of Columbus hops, an ounce of Cascade hops, an ounce of German Smaragd hops and an ounce of Centennial Hops, sweet orange peel, Wyeast Belgian Wit yeast and adding four ounces of Olive Nation Pure Tangerine extract to the bottling bucket after I rack it out of the secondary fermenter.

Assuming that's 5 gallons? What jacked it up to $100?! Must be the orange extract etc? That is crazy. The DIPA I made had 14 ounces of hops and was still something like $60.

Kickass. It's easier than it looks in writing, and I tried to hit that balance of helping you avoid some common issues but also not over-sharing. Also if you do this one and then decide you want to mini-mash the next time, you can use the same recipe and add on some honey and crystal malts for the mini mash, but do everything else the same.

The shipping fee from Northern Brewer added about $13, the tangerine extract is around $8 and was purchased through another company, so there's another shipping fee, and the liquid yeast and extract are a big chunk of it as well.
I'd save a little dough if I could get most of this stuff at the local homebrew store when it was convenient for me, but their hours kind of suck, and ordering it online through Northern Brewer has always been a lot easier for me.

Edit: The shipping fee from Northern Brewer was closer to $17 and my total bill from them with that added into the mix was $83. The rest of that $100 price tag comes from the tangerine extract and shipping fee from Olive Nation.

Jesus effing christ. Not for a Witt... damn.

I got my supplies for by beer yesterday and noticed that Northern Brewer screwed me out of an ounce of Centennial Hops. When I checked my email receipt, I noticed that I was still charged for them, despite the fact that they never marked that they sent them on the order pull sheet. I contacted them last night, and they are sending me an ounce of Centennial free of charge due to their mistake.
It won't arrive in time for my scheduled brewing date, but a fellow homebrew club member dropped two ounces of Centennial whole leaf hops by my apartment a bit ago to make up for the lost ounce of pellet hops.
I have to commend Northern Brewer for remedying the situation as quickly as they did, and I must say that it is nice to know a bunch of people who will give you some spare hops or malt when you are in a pinch.

I was at a homebrew festival and some chucklefuck made a rhubarb based beer that was 90 proof

INo one remembers anything but me, I vaguely remember screaming at some folk punk band and this girl from my grade school before walking 10 miles home

I know I fell asleep on the way back because i woke up on a fucking bridge at dusk the following day.

So fuck rhubarb, folk-punk and bridges.

Ok, so all that happened. I was promised more tips for the next stage! Share that wisdoms, wise brewing dude. Trying to avoid exploding six packs if possible...

bumpity bump bump. No more bubbles! When do I dump it into the next bucket? Do I bottle it straight away at that point? I see conflicting instructions all over - including ones that say 'for the love of god don't follow the directions from the bucket kit!'

I assume since folks have figured this out since dawn of the cave bear or whatever there's some flex, but thought I would go to the recipe source for the Final True Answer.

I am on a train on vacation, tapping on a blackberry. So apologies up front... Will be brief.

Ideally you got a spec gravity meter? Take a reading and see what it has gotten down to. If it is below 1.020 then you are close or done. Then wait another 2 days, take another reading. Is it the same? Wht you want to establish here is that the grav has gotten down to an acceptably low level (even as low as 1.005 is possible), that it has been in the fermenting bucket for at LEAST a week, usually more like 2 weeks. The exciting bubbles happen quickly, but afterwards the yeast are still busy cleaning up even though there isn't much to see.

If you have been in for a week AND you got a secondary fermentor bucket, then sanitize it / siphon slowly into it and leave all the sludge in the original bucket. This will improve the beer but aint neccessary.

If you only have one fermentor bucket, leave it be for abt 2 weeks and then bottle. Steady temps and patience are your friends.

Spec grav clarification: you want readings a day apart for mutliple days to establish when the yeast are done bubbling. Never go to a secondary (or god forbid bottle) until they are Way done.

I'm a firm believer in never racking to the secondary until at least the ten day mark, and if you can wait two weeks, you should do it.
I don't like to open up a fermenter for a gravity reading, and only take readings before I pitch the yeast and after I finish bottling.
Patience is a virtue, and the more you meddle with an unfinished beer, the greater chance you have of doing something that will mess it up.