Doing a homebrew for the first time, bought a kit to do it with; figured it be a good student method of saving money :). Anyway, its currently in the fermenting bin, and when it comes to transferring I plan to transfer into a barrel rather than bottles. One of the instructions is to add about 3oz of sugar per 5 gallons, but what kind of sugar would this be? Is it more brewing sugar, or can regular sugar or …

I have 200 litres of cider which was racked yesterday into 2 x 100 litre oak barrels. Before racking, the cider was still fermenting at a rate of about one bubble (through the airlock) per two minutes. This was due to cool weather here since October and the recent addition of a heater to the brewing room about a week ago. Both barrels have been stoppered with a cork bung with no airlock. Can anyone tell me if this is …

The story is; We have 5-6 home brewer's who will be doing 6 batches of 5 gallon beer. We will be bringing the fermentators/carboys over to my house and re-racking all 30 gallons into a Buffalo Trace whiskey barrel. We plan on aging it for only 3 months then force carbing 15g in Korny kegs for a going away party. Then bottle conditioning the rest of the 15g for all the brewers to take home with them. My question is …

Last month I bottled my 09 Chardonnay. I had a small (15 gallon) french oak barrel on the side that I aged some of my topping wine in, blended into the final blend. It was used for Brandy once, then reconditioned (shaved) and re-toasted before I used it to age a Chardonnay for 10 months. I just threw an IPA into it, sat it for 10 days w/ dry hops. Booya. Question: with wine you can use a barrel 3 …