The only other topic I found on this was here: Using pine in beer - it was asked nearly 10 years ago and didn't have the answers. Does anyone have experience with using pine in their brewing and if so, What was your method and how much (even roughly) would you say is an ideal ratio of beer/pine? Anything else you can say based on your experience with using pine with brewing? I'm keen to experiment but want to make …

When I buy homemade ginger beer (in South Africa), there are often small black raisins floating in it, about 1cm in diameter. Why did the makers decide to put them in?

In many kits I've used, the instructions recommend using brewing sugar. Of course it's okay to use other sources of sugar, but I was wondering whether there are any benefits of using brewing sugar over these other types?

This term pops up from time to time and it often cited as a reason to go to all grain. But maybe its because I don't really know what it tastes like. Do you believe in extract twang? How do you get rid of it, aside from all-grain brewing? Can you get rid of it?

Can theatre buttered and salted popcorn be used for brewing brewing at home? A friend of mine has access to leftover popcorn from a movie theatre and I was wondering if it could be used for brewing at home? I do not know enough about home brewing to know if this is even possible, given the particular circumstances. The popcorn is already buttered and salted, so I do not know if these would interfere with the brewing process. If it …

There's been a lot of discussion around Clarity Ferm, and it's ability to break down gluten in beer. The manufacturers just say it makes "gluten reduced beer", but Omission and others uses it to make what I believe is labelled a "gluten free". Some home-brewers have made an all-grain with barley and wheat, and had it tested, and the lab could detect no gluten (they were only able to say there were <10 ppm). Charlie Papazian did the same, with …

I want to make raisin wine that is usable for certain Jewish religious ceremonies. For this the raisins have to yield some amount of moisture on squeezing them. Which raisins yield some amount of moisture on squeezing. This question is posted in a slightly different form on “Mi Yodeya” (Judaism Stackexchange)

For the homebrewer that grows and harvests his/her own hops; how best can one approximate the alpha acids in the hops they have? Is it worth it or should brewers stick to using home grown hops for aroma and flavor?

Background Based on my searching here and elsewhere, brewing with birch sap is quite uncommon with brewers (although I did find one brewer that mentioned brewing with maple sap). So I'd like to get a list of things to think about as I develop a beer recipe based on birch sap. Brewing with sap is different than using syrup because knowing the flavor of the sap once concentrated is unknown in the case of using sap. Specific Gravity / Flavor …

I picked some garden grown red currants a good while ago and threw them straight in the freezer without washing them. I'm planning on making wine with them soon. Most recipes I've read recommend rinsing them before crushing, but how should I go about doing this? Should I let the berries thaw first or just rinse them while frozen? Is rinsing even necessary if I'm scalding them with hot water?

I am new to home-brewing. I want to brew some liqueurs but since I am a diabetic, I can not use normal sugar in brewing. My option is using sugar substitutes (like artificial sweeteners) like Splenda (I use Splenda since it is a well-known brand). Some of those sweeteners are fructose, that means they are produced using fruits or have some fruit or some other (strange) artificial taste. Also some brands have Sucralose and can be boiled up to a …

So I made a grapefruit wine recently, using Ocean Spray 100% grapefruit juice, mostly because I am lazy and it was a test batch of about a gallon and a half. The results were interesting. It is clear that ocean spray uses zest in their concentrate, and in taking the zest some pith clearly came with it. So my grapefruit wine is bitter, pithy bitter. However, when one eats grapefruit, or at least if they eat slices of grapefruit, the …

I have made several honey wheat batches from honey wheat kits that turned out too dark, too heavy, too bitter. I would love to make a lighter honey wheat beer. Does it make sense to buy a lighter wheat beer kit and simply add a sweet honey like clover honey to the recipe? Thx, Wheatless in GA

I am planning to add bananas to a beer some time soon. There is a lot of good info in "Homebrew All-Stars" (Drew Beechum and Denny Conn) from Joe Formanek about how he uses bananas in the mash. One thing that surprised me was the large quantity required. He says that you need about 10 pounds (weight with skin on) of fruit to get a noticeable banana character in the finished beer. By my rough calculation, that seems to be …

What component increases the alcohol content in beer? I would like to know this for future brewing.

I am looking for a good, in-depth source on biotransformations (think food science). For example, fermenting black tea and sugar with wild yeast and bacteria (kombucha): Wild yeast ferment sucrose into ethanol Bacteria (in the presence of oxygen) convert that ethanol to acetic acid (sours the solution and lowers pH) This is a transformation of sucrose into acetic acid through the use of yeast and bacteria (but which ones?). Or: Malting grain causes production of enzymes that later break down …

What are the effects of underpitching your beer? We have an answer for over pitching, I think we need the complete set.

They are not always one in the same. I believe the process for making them are slightly different as well. I just don't know what that difference is. How do they differ? Where are they made?

So here's my predicament: I've realized that my city water has low Chloride levels compared to the sulfates (i.e. the sulfate/chloride ratio is higher than ideal). Reading that this might be the case, I measured out the approx. amount of CaCl2 to be added to one of my already bottled beers. I poured the beer into a glass and added the salt. Waited for the salt to dissolve, and tasted the beer. This resulted in a much smoother, fuller body …

I have seen this particular beverage and I want to brew this at home. How much fluid yeast do I need to collect to make 1 gallon of this particular high end brew? How do test for yeast content? http://orderyoni.com/