I've been making beer for many years and have made many batches and styles. I generally use Brewer's Best recipe kits that come with everything you need, including, dry malt, liquid malt extract, grains, bittering hops, finishing hops, yeast....etc. These kits make it simple, as all you have to do is boil all the ingredients together for 1 hr and then pitch your yeast on top (be sure to follow the detialed directions). My latest recipe that I'm working on is a batch of Traditional European Boch. The kit comes with the standard dry packet of yeast, but this time I've put that to the side and I am using White Labs German Boch Liquid Yeast. I've heard from a friend that your yeast selection is the true key to a GREAT beer. Esseentially, he said it is the difference maker for homebrew that is submitted for local, regional, and national compititions. So I'm trying it out. After boiling all my ingredients for 1 hr per the instructions, I placed my brew kettle in a bath of ice watter to cool it down then further cooled it down by topping with water to the 5 gallon mark. When the wert (as they call it - unfermented beer) cooled down to 80F, I pitched my liquid yeast on top of the froth. I expected to see bubbling action within 24 hrs, but nothing. :-( After some researc, I'm so glad that this batch of beer is back on track. It turns out that I needed to ferment this type of beer at a much lower tempereature than I'm used to. Typically, I have always fermented my beer at just below room temp (65 F). This beer needs to ferment at around 45F - so I took it down to the unheated part of my basement and now it is bubbling away - the tell tale sign that everything is going well and beer will be ready in 5 wks! If you have an interest in making beer goto http://www.makingbeerisfun.com/ CHEERS!
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