Leaderboard

Hello again Mr Sweat, Your second (tested) replacement, along with the 2 free refills that I promised, are set to be delivered tomorrow. Please message me here for tracking information. I'm sorry that this was insufficient in making up the inconvenience of the wait to you. I apologize also that my communication was insufficient. Tyson was trying to offer a faster solution, not weasel out of sending a replacement, and I'm sorry we created the impression otherwise. Other than having your second replacement tested (which I did) and including $50 of free stuff (which I did), I failed to consider any other ways I could have made it right. I would offer you a refund for the initial kit, had you purchased it from us directly. You are quite correct that our service was poor in this case, and I apologize for however my personal failures negatively impacted your view of this company. I wish you the best of luck in your brewing endeavor, regardless of where you get your supplies.

After seven weeks, my first taste. I love the color it turned out. The taste is ‘ok’ not as carbonated as I expected/hoped. Although this first bottle was a partial bottle since the batch didn’t come out exactly even. I noticed there was some undissolved goop in the bottom that was the same color as the carbonation drops. So the other bottles may turn out even better. All in all, I figure a pretty decent outcome for my first try. Cheers!

Very graceful fall on the sword, @MRB Tim. 😁 You did forgot to say "mea culpa" though... I'd echo that Mr. Beer Customer Service is superb. I'd vouch that you'd find few companies not only trying to help, but then apologizing that their efforts didn't meet your expectations.

Tonight was the big night. Bottled my first attempt. Gonna be a long 4 weeks! Fingers and eyes crossed!

it's at the bottom of almost every MRB recipe online description. I would suggest that you do some reading.

A nonic pint is nice for porters and stouts but more often than not I'll go for my favorite glass:

How many batches have you brewed so far? Seems like you may be doing some advanced things but not really understanding why Is it normal to have a quick start to fermentation? If you give the yeast a good environment to do their job, then no. You want a quick start. The shorter the lag phase of yeast, the better off you are. Bacteria have a hard time living in an alcoholic environment than a non alcoholic one. Ill get more into this on your last question Will there be off flavors from a faster fermentation? No. Unless you had a rapid ferment due to a higher temperature which will cause fusel alcohol flavors. It tastes like your beer is up in the 9% area. Very much an alcohol warming taste. Thats the unknown here, what was your ferment temp? What was the gravity of your beer? Nottingham is notorious for being a fast fermenter. As long as you controlled your temps during the high krausen phase and before, youll be just fine. Is it overkill to make a yeast starter for a dry yeast? Yes. You see, to make yeast happy, you need to have enough of them to do the job. That packet is designed for x amount of wort at y gravity. Dry yeast also has nutrients in it to help your yeast be the best workers they can be. The nutrients were all eaten up in the starter wort, however, you just increased your yeast army 10 times. So really, you likely over pitched the amount of yeast cells to ferment your wort. Not necessarily the worst thing, just kind of unnecessary. The amount of risk of contamination to make a starter and not to mention the effort, wasnt worth it for your batch. Most would also say that at the price of dry yeast vs liquid yeast, you would be better off pitching two packs instead of trying to create more cells in a starter. Im also a firm believer in using yeast nutrient, that stuff is like gold! Like I said, youre doing some very advanced things. I applaud you for that but make sure you know the reasons why things need to be done. I rarely even make starters for my liquid yeasts because they claim they have enough cells to do the job I ask them to. However, if im brewing a beer for a competition, best believe Im gonna make a starter. Nothing, nothing, I repeat, Nothing can replace the quality of the end product you get from a healthy batch of freshly propagated yeast. But of course, sanitation, technique, and controlling the ferment are all very important also.

My dad drank blatz forever until i switched him to keystone. Now im trying to find a craft lager he can keep in his fridge. But i got this tattoo about 10 yrs ago to pay homage to him.

Hows it going everyone, Found my way to this forum yesterday and figured I should join. I got the LBK brew kit as a wedding gift last summer, and have been having a pretty good time with it so far. To date I have done the Mr. Churchill's nut brown ale, Oktoberfest, Whispering wheat Hefeweizen, and am now working on the Tangerously Hoppy IPA. I'm enjoying getting into brewing, and the guys at work have had fun being my test subjects since I started. Outside of switching away from the plastic bottles to glass, I haven't really amassed any extra equipment yet. If there's anything neat you guys use to brew and would recommend that would be cool to see.

Very fortunate, with my beers the bottle would have erupted all over the place if I did that

i'm not very technical. when i want a beer, i open my cabinet, find the nearest glass i'm in the mood for and say that'll do!

Since basement is cold, a very large cooler, ink bird, & seedling mat are used to carb/condition. The recipe you gave me Zombie clone is in the cooler.

Here is my upcoming schedule. I had some ingredients collecting dust, took a few years off from brewing (I was busy and stuff ok!). 2019 Back to Beer Schedule 12/26/18 Autumn ESB 1 - Brew 01/12/19 All American Gold - Brew 01/20/19 Autumn ESB - Cold Crash 01/26/19 Autumn ESB 1 - Bottle Santa Catalina - Brew 02/06/19 All American Gold - Cold Crash 02/09/19 All American Gold - Bottle Party time Pilsner - Brew 02/20/19 Santa Catalina - Cold Crash 02/23/19 Autumn ESB 1 - Taste Santa Catalina - Bottle Autumn ESB 2 - Brew 03/06/19 Party Time Pilz - Cold Crash 03/09/19 All American Gold - Taste Party time Pilsner - Bottle Ragin' Rincon Pale Ale - Brew 03/20/19 Autumn ESB 2 - Cold Crash 03/23/19 Santa Catalina - Taste Autumn ESB 2 - Bottle Horses Ass Ale - Brew 04/03/19 Ragin' Rincon Pale Ale - Cold Crash 04/06/19 Party time Pilsner - Taste Ragin' Rincon Pale Ale - Bottle 04/17/19 Horses Ass Ale - Cold Crash 04/20/19 Autumn ESB 2 - Taste Horses Ass Ale - Bottle 05/04/19 Ragin' Rincon Pale Ale - Taste 05/18/19 Horses Ass Ale - Taste

Another split you can do is to get a Cooper's 6 gal HME kit and split to 3 LBKLs. I have done that for several and it works well. With the splitting, you can also modify the base to make different beers in each split if you want by adding different malt or hop treatments. Of what Cooper's HMEs I made, I like the Dark Ale and the Pilsner best. There is good info on AU forums too on those. The Pilsner benefits from additional Saaz to my taste. The Dark Ale is like UK Mild unless you beef it up some. All the Coopers you need to add some fermentable besides the HME which will only give you 2.5% ABV. Their recipes do that though.

I was 40 minutes into my boil on an Extra Special Bitter recipe when I started thinking. Tomorrow night is an eclipse of a Super Full Blood Wolf Moon and I would usually take advantage of such an event and brew a Howling Red Ale. Had I planned my brewing schedule better, I would have done that. As it is, I've got a batch of 1.058 OG/40 IBU wort chilling out on the deck. I used all UK-sourced grains and hops but did FWH using Warrior. Now I have a decision to make... Here is my recipe so far: Crisp Finest Maris Otter, 3.5 lb. Crisp Amber malt, 0.2 lb. Crisp Torrified wheat, 0.2 lb. Crisp Light Crystal, 0.2 lb. Warrior, 16.8% AA, 0.25 oz. FWH Styrian Golding, 2.6% AA, 0.5 oz., 20 min. Fuggle, 5.6% AA, 0.25 oz., 5 min. OG 1.058 IBU 40 SRM about 8 https://www.livescience.com/64550-super-blood-wolf-moon-eclipse.html

Overpitching of yeast can make the yeast lazy, and they go to sleep because there are too many of them to do the amount of work. There is zero reason to do a starter with dry yeast, and zero reason to use yeast nutrient. There are 4 phases of yeast growth - Lag, Exponential growth, Stationary, and Decline. If you overpitch, then during the lag phase yeast growth can be inhibited by the high pitch rates, which can result in more esters (yeast growth reduces the production of esters). You should go 3 weeks fermentation and 4 weeks in bottles, not 3. Then at least 3 days in the frig.

Research all posts by @HoppySmile!, hes very advanced

You can add it now, the sugar in the juice will kickstart things again. Go at least 1 more week past when you add it, I'd go 10 days. Make sure you follow your sanitation process carefully, including the hop sack.

Welcome to the craft, Don. feel free to ask questions. For general things to follow, Rick is solid and has many pages to look at. Pros't!

Taste tested my first batch. Pretty good. My wife tried it as well and also thought it was really good. The LBK is resting comfortably in the fridge and will be bottled Sunday. Gonna be a long 4 weeks waiting for carbonation.

OMG! I did a spit take when I read that. I just hope you have somebody opening your mail and starting your car for the next couple of years.

Works like a charm for grain steeping and 60 min hop schedule boil. "Keep warm" button allows it to stay around 155 for steeping. "Saute" button set at the "more" level, allows a slow continuous boil. Found 3 slight variations of Zombie Dust clone, trying all three.

That's extremely atypical, IME. MRB has always had top-notch customer service. Even Wayne Gretzky missed the net on occasion. Doesn't mean he wasn't a great shooter.

Think of it this way: after bottling, the yeast are busy eating the priming sugar and producing CO2 to carbonate your beer. At 70*, this takes about three weeks. When that's over the conditioning period listed on the chart starts. Flavors meld and improve and the yeast, having no more sugars to eat, start eating other compounds and "cleaning up" your beer. In some beers this period can be quite short, such as IPAs and weizens. Others, especially high ABV brews, need more time. Now in reality, as Rick said conditioning is occurring simultaneously with carbonation. But to put this simply, MRB's chart has three weeks fermenting + three weeks carbonating + two weeks bottle conditioning = eight weeks, or two months as in the chart.