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Actually, blending yeast strains is quite common and shouldn't have any negative effect on your beer. White Labs has a good guide to blending strains if you want more in-depth info on the subject. You can find that HERE (opens as a .pdf file). Let's say you want some esters from one yeast, but the attenuation of another yeast. Blending them will give you both features. Sometimes I bottle certain beers with a wine yeast to give a brighter, and more aggressive carbonation level similar to sparkling wines. I do this for some saisons, sours, etc. And I use a blend of 2 different yeasts for some of my hazy IPAs and pale ales. I also have a yeast/bacteria blend that has 2 Saccharomyces yeast strains, 2 Pediococcus P. strains (bacteria), a Pediococcus D. strain, 2 Lactobacillus P. strains, 6 Brettanomyces bruxellensis strains (wild yeast), 1 Brettanomyces anomalus strain, and a sour dough culture made up of some saccharomyces and an unidentified Lactobacillus strain. So we're talking almost 20 strains of yeast and bacteria in 1 blend. This will be going into a barrel-aged sour golden ale. So, yeah, blend away!

Hopadopoulos Pale Sour Ale won 2nd place in its category in the Belgian Brew Brawl (Austin, TX). 🍻

The reason I say "only what you'll drink in 3 days" is often people say their beer needs more conditioning time, and that's best done at 70 or higher. If you refrigerate all your beer (besides having a full fridge and a mad wife), the beer stops conditioning. Once it's "perfect", then yes, you'd want to keep it as cool as possible.

Then I found this on another forum and confirmed what I suspected about 'Golden:' "The garden center variety is a sport that was selected for its yellow leaf color. It was intended to be an ornamental that looks pretty on your fence.If you're serious about brewing don't waste your malt on it. Look for varieties that have been selected for their aromas or bittering qualities." Given my somewhat eclectic preferences for landscape plants with interesting foliage, bark, flowers, etc., this hop will fit right in with my Sunburst Locusts, Ogon Spirea, and Aurea moneywort. Contrasted against a backdrop of Scots pine blue-green needles, this could really create a nice effect. I love this stuff.

- Momentarily hitting 170 shouldn't cause too much trouble. If you'd stayed there for a while, that would be a different story. I've done the same thing twice before and never noticed any astringent flavors. - Sanitizing your fingers before grabbing the ice cube was a good idea. Putting your fingers in hot wort, on the other hand...well, just be glad it wasn't too hot. - I'm not an expert on yeast behavior, but those temp swings probably stressed out the yeast a bit. That can cause off flavors. The good thing is that BBP has some pretty complex, robust flavors. So any off flavors might be very subdued.

Yesterday i walked out and marked my twine with a marker indicating where my hops where. Today approx 24 hours later i looked again and this is how much they grew. I s**t you not, 2 hours after marking the twine i looked and they had grown at least an inch. Maybe they grow the most at dusk

How are everyones hops doing this year??? Post a pic

Made American Ale as directed, with the following modifications. 1. Boiled 1/2 cup Honey & 33 young spruce tips (in hop sack) for 10 minutes. 2. Discarded hop sack, continued with American Ale directions 3. Double pitched yeast

My first attempt at the Churchill's challenge did not go without some stress, but in the end I made beer. 1 can Hme- Churchills 1 brewmax LME-robust 4oz. 2 row 4 oz. Crystal 60 4oz. Vienna .5oz. Roasted Barley 1/2 cup honey last 5 min. of boil .5 oz. Willamette boiled 15 min. .5oz. Willamette last 5 min. of boil 1.oz. Heather tips last 5 min of boil Danstar Nottingham yeast All grains mashed for 30 min at 160F Overcooked my first mash because my temp probe wasn't deep enough in the mash water and was reading far less than actual. If it hadn't been for the roasted barley, I might have considered going with it, but there went my only Victory grains. Crap, my bad, but time to shift gears. So I had back up grains for all but the Victory, so subbed Vienna, changed to my digital probe and back to the races. I've got a new kettle and it did it's part just fine. I really like having a larger size, as hot break is no biggie compared to worrying about boil over. Also, draining the wort through a hose is super convenient. So, with this now hybrid batch I was shooting for OG of 1.074, what I got was 1.067. Lol, might not be a Wee Heavy Winston, and not a Northern style English ale, but I'm holding out that it'll be tasty nonetheless.

There are also some commercial yeast that you can purchase that is already a blend. I use a couple from White Labs myself. WLP080 is their Cream Ale yeast which is suppose to be a blend of Lager and Ale yeast. Also, WLP060 is their American Ale blend which is a blend of several American Ale yeast. Both of these yeast perform well and I really like the WLP060, it seems to perform a little better than WYeast 1056 which was my go to American Ale yeast in the past. I still use it for some recipes that I have had good results with but I use the WLP060 on any new American Ale recipes that I try.

Passed it a couple of weeks ago. Judging this weekend at the Ohio State Fair.

At room temperature, Co2 is a gas, but at cold temps, it is a liquid. By allowing it to liquefy and lock into the beer, this guarantees a good carbonation from first to last drink. If you just refrigerate it overnight instead of a few days, you may have good carbonation when the beer is opened, but this will dissipate as you drink it, leaving the beer flat halfway through or so. This isn't always the case. Sometimes, it will stay carbonated just fine. But it's still always a good idea to let that Co2 lock into solution, just in case.

I say the magic number for ipas is 21 days.

I do it to allow the ales to continue conditioning. With the exception of really hoppy beers and weizens, every ale I've made has improved over time.

@Cato @Creeps McLane I have a can of nw ipa and I think I’m gonna try the Santa Rita Pale Ale recipe that @Shrike said was good. It has been tough temp controlling now that it’s hot. Think I’m gonna try that hothead yeast on a batch and see how it turns out. I have a lager in a cooler in my 90-100 degree garage right now. 4 frozen bottles every 24 hrs. It’s an RTIC cooler so it holds good temp but still....wanna try an omega batch and just keep it in a closet somewhere, no cooler, and not worry about temps.

Proper way to create a Helles Bier! Works best in the cool early days of Spring!

I have an electric range. When it's off, the burners are still hot and continue heating the pot. I knew that but figured I'd have time to set up a space on the counter with a couple old dish towels. My temps were over 180. No noticeable astringency. I agree with Shrike. In a complex beer like that, it's more forgiving of mistakes. Next time you make it you might think the 2nd batch just isn't as good as the first. LOL.

No, it comes into play for any carbonated beverage. CO2 likes cold. In cold, it combines with liquids. As it warms, it comes out of suspension in the liquid. That's why a warm beer tap line foams. A commercial beer cooler (i.e. at a brewpub) had foam in the first glass of each pour each day. Answer was that the 6 inches of hose between the cooler and the tap (i.e. the indent in the wall) was too warm. A small fan mounted on the wall blew cold air into the indent and solved the problem.

I'm on my third batch of beer (Diablo IPA) and I am using the cooler/water bottle method for the first time. My house temperature is set to 74 and I am able to keep the temperature at about 68F during high krausen. This seems to be working great for me and is cheap.

Chartwell Special Christmas Ale Mr. Beer Churchills Nut Brown Ale, 2.86 lb. Crisp Finest Maris Otter, 1.25 lb. BrewMax Smooth DME Flaked barley, 0.12 lb. Weyermann CaraMunich Type 2, 0.18 lb. Crisp Amber malt, 0.18 lb. Chateau Special B, 0.12 lb. Lyle's Black Treacle, 0.25 lb. Bramling Cross, 7.8% AA, 0.5 oz., 30 min. Whitbread Golding Variety, 6.4% AA, 0.37 oz., 10 min. Sun-dried figs in Amaretto, added after primary fermentation Safale S-04 Mash grains for 45 min. @ 152 F. Sprinkle sparge with hot tap water. Add DME, heat to hot break, then begin 30 min. boil, hopping as scheduled. Add black treacle with 10 min. left of boil. Add HME @ flame-out. Chill wort. Transfer to LBK and make to volume. Ferment with S-04 @ 65 F for the first few days, then allow primary fermentation to finish warmer. OG. 1.082 SRM 30 ABV 8.4% IBU TBA (probably close to 40)

Ordered a 5.5 gal kettle today from SS Brewtech. It's bigger than the kitchen pots I've been using but I think will give me more flexibility in partial mashes or even BIAB batches to fit in my LBKs. Once I get it setup and brew a few PMs I hope you and @Creeps McLane can give me a few tips or answer some questions on small BIAB batches. I liked this size because it'll fit on my gas stove top very comfortably and I got the screw in barb and 3 feet of food grade tubing for draining.

I've planted Nugget, "Golden," and a couple unnamed cultivars this spring. All appear to be off to a good start.

Monday, Memorial Day, I'll cold crash my Tangerously Hoppy IPA and Tuesday will be brew day for "Wee Heavy Winston" so dubbed by @Bonsai & Brew! My supplies arrived today and I've got some other names I can give it, but that one stuck like fly paper, so it's named like that in my Excel sheet for now. I kinda wish they made a 5 gallon brew kettle /mash tun for us little guys but found I've got a 12qt. ALLCLAD pot with a full steamer basket that sits about an inch off the bottom. Yeah, that baskets going to hold some grains next Tuesday and relieve me of trying to use my oversize strainer to drain grain sacks. Queue is shaping up for an Irish Red using a Muntons Maris Otter can of LME with grain additions, and then a Strong Dark Belgian Ale, using a jar of Briess LME and grains.

My god yes! I would say this hot head yeast can handle that. I find it hard to believe any yeast can go over 80 without crazy esters but apparently this one can. Let me know what you ferment at and how it tastes!

Boy, I've been back and forth a lot but think I'm starting to close in on what I'm going to brew. Lol, I know I am going to have to drink this once its done and bottled. Definitely going to be interesting because I've only tasted the hydrometer sample from Calavera Stout. So I'm going a lot by description and have likely created a Frankenbrew, working with some new grains and HME. RDWHAB, its all good.