Jim's Beer Kit

Of course you are correct, generally speaking if you wait long enough you end up getting really clear beer (depending a lot on which strain of yeast you are using). If however you want to speed things up I go to the gelatin. Most British strains are pretty good at dropping clear pretty quickly but s...

First the disclaimer; I tend to be cheap (read that thrifty) and lazy (efficient). Anyhow, what I have been doing is racking my beer out of primary into a glass carboy to get the major gunk out of it. I then at some point (whenever I get around to it) drop the temperature to lagering and drop about ...

First of all, I think you will like what happens when you use both Amarillo and Mosaic in a beer and yeah, I would absolutely dry hop. In my humble opinion, when you start using a bunch of different hop varieties things can get a little muddied so I would simplify the recipe a bit and just use Amari...

If you lived in the states you could just ask your local water authority for a water analysis; then you would know more or less what you where dealing with. I have moderately hard water here in Dallas (both temporary and well as permanent hardness). It works just fine for many styles and does especi...

Oh I hang with a pretty rough crowd, they are a bunch of snobs and I think they would know the difference. I would mash a Helles wort differently than I would a Kolsch wort because I would want the latter to be pretty fermentable while a Helles wort should have more body and hopefully end up a bit m...

Well, that is a good question. My initial thought was to just use the dry Chico strain because it's easy, I have had good results and it is fairly neutral. Never one to leave well enough alone however I did some reading and saw some good things about the American Wheat beer strain as well as some in...

Just a couple thoughts: first of all, I like the sugar to keep the beer drinkable and not too heavy, it will accentuate the hop presentation as well. If you are using wheat to enhance head retention, I don't think that will be a problem as in my experience heavily hopped beers tend to do really well...

I was in my local home brew store getting ingredients for my next project which will be a Munich Helles. While there, the owner was telling me that he had obtained a bunch of Lemmon Drop hops which I have never used. Being essentially weak and highly impressionable, I, on a whim, purchased some just...

I don't know that I would call 312 a Wit, likely more of an American Wheat ale. Also, the notion that you can't get a stuck mash with malted wheat is in my opinion incorrect; been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Of course, I was doing a Bavarian heffeweizen with 70% malted wheat but yeah, it stuc...

Think of melonodin malt as purchasing a decoction. Actually, if I were making either a helles or a bohemian pils I would do a decoction (likely a single for the helles and maybe a double for the Bohemian pils plus I would probably boil down some of the first runnings as well). Especially for the pil...

Well just a quick comment about Corona; you know the Mexicans laugh at us when we drink that stuff, right? Oh and there is a reason people put limes in that stuff. Have you ever had a nice German Helles (you know, of biergarden fame)? Lightly hopped, relatively low ABV and malty (one of my favs). Th...

Want to have a little fun with that Dubbel recipe? I like to take about 6 ounces of raisins (for a 5 gallon batch), run them through a blender with some first runnings then boil the whole thing down on the stove while the rest of the mash is sparging. It's pretty easy to do and help create that nice...

Brewing heffe is big fun and you can also learn a ton about yeast handling. I look at those heffe strains much like Belgian yeasts, they can throw off some wild flavors depending on how they are handled and my go to for beers like this is WLP300. In a nutshell, if you want a banana bomb ferment abou...

Well first the disclaimers: I am not British (Texan actually) so I can't claim to know what is authentic but I really like English beer and in my opinion Fuller's products are what is served in heaven. Given that, I have learned a few things over the three decades I have been messing with the hobby;...

I have been doing this hobby over 30 years and I would have quit long ago if I had to bottle all my beer. I have a three tap keezer in the house, a freezer and a frig both with temperature control in the garage. I use the freezer for lagering and the frig for fermentation. I always have three differ...