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Since it's been too chilly recently to work in my woodshop in the garage, and forecast to still be too cold to do so, I think Garagewerks Brewery is going ramp up to brew my clone of Hopulation by Titletown Brewery. Have to order some hops today as I don't have quite enough for a 5 gal batch.

I never looked into this, beyond looking at the hops and saying "wow". I dump my spent grain in the woods instead of the trash, and since I started using a hop spider I have been dumping the hops in the same bucket. My wife has been salvaging spent grain and making cookies for her and I, so when I brewed this week I emptied the hop spider into a cereal bowl. For fun, I then weighed it. Question - how much does 1.5 oz of hops grow to after brewing?

Wow, I never would have guessed it was that much!

Chromos is probably my favorite MRB lager recipe. My fourth batch of it is brewing right now. It's very smooth and balanced. As a side note: I live in the Deep South so only brew lagers during the winter when the temps drop. I ferment lagers usually at 54-55F. Once bottled, I store them in an old wine fridge I picked up a few years back; I set the temp set at 54F. I let them lager in there for three or four months before starting to drink them. If I had a basement I'd just put them down there. There have been times when I was overstocked on lagers and had to let a batch condition at room temperature, which reached as high as 73F. Although not ideal, I didn't notice any deterioration in the quality of the beer.

Black lager sounds like the best of both worlds in your case!

Booster never expires.

Thanks again for sharing your experience Shrike! Really appreciate it!!

Thank you for sharing your experience Shrike!

Let it go without the booster. Booster adds ABV but doesn't affect the taste or mouthfeel. Yep, you can use it on another brew. I usually have about 10 packets of booster sitting around that I get with refill orders. I use them up by tossing one into a brew here and there. Each one adds approx. 0.65% ABV, so you can figure out how many you want to add by determining how strong you want your beer. For example I like my stouts around 4-5% and my IPAs around 6-7%, so I use up excess booster to try and hit those ranges.

The Chromos will be fine. It'll have slightly less ABV and a touch less body, but that's all. Yes, you can use the 2-row in other recipes. Seeing that you'll be doing the Sticky Wicket, that's where I'd use it, adding it to the other grains.

Doesn't really matter.