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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
General
Brewing How-To
Brewing FAQs
General
Return Policy
If you are not completely satisfied with your purchase, any item, excluding malt extract and bulk grain, in new, unused condition can be returned for a full refund or exchange within 30 days of purchase (shipping charges not included if purchased online). If you need to return an item purchased online please contact us for shipping arrangements.
Brewing How-To
How do I make a starter?
If you have an Erlenmeyer flask, you can boil, chill and pitch yeast into one vessel. Otherwise, you'll need a 2qt saucepan and a half-gallon growler with either a stopper and airlock or a sanitized piece of foil.
- Boil a bit more than 1 qt water
- Remove from heat and add 5 oz DME (pilsner, extra-light, any will do, but mind the color rating if you're pitching into a light-colored beer.)
- Stir well, then carefully bring back to boil, watching for boilover.
- Boil for 15 minutes
- Let stand for ten minutes before carefully putting into the growler.
- Using an ice-bath chill the starter wort down below 70°
- Aerate by placing a sanitized screw-on cap on the growler, and shake for 60 seconds.
- Pitch your yeast.
- As often as you can think of it over the next 24 hours, give the growler a gentle swirl to keep the yeast in suspension and help with aeration.
It will be ready to pitch into your beer from anywhere between 20 and 36 hours. If you aren't planning to brew for a few days, be sure to let the yeast completely ferment out before putting in the refrigerator for up to a week.
Happy Brewing!
H&B Staff
Can I make lagers without a fridge?
Some 25% of the accepted homebrew styles are lagers. Another dozen or more could really benefit from strict temperature control in primary. You want to get in on that, but don't the cash or space for a dedicated fridge with temp controller. No fear. In the words of some not-so-famous German brew-villain: "Ve haff vayss."
The main issue is ester production. Ale yeasts do a good job with it, and we love them dearly for it. To effectively suppress it, you need to drop the temperature in your primary, which usually results in the yeast flocculating (dropping out) and going dormant. Lager strains have the curious ability of fermenting happily at ~48-55°, giving the characteristic "clean" yeast profile.
For those unable to do a proper lager fermentation with a dedicated fridge, can still make very good examples of the lager style. The two main angles are hardware and yeast selection. On the hardware side, the first order of business is chilling down to an acceptable level. Regardless of your ambient temperature, if you can't chill to a cold starting point it is very difficult to move the temperature of 5 gallons of wort. If you ice-bath, go twice as long, use twice as much ice. If you have an immersion chiller, consider rigging a pre-chill with an ice-bath for the last 40 degrees of chilling. Whatever you do, don't pitch lager yeast in 60° wort and think you will get down to 50 later. In fact, yeast metabolism can add another 2-3° on its own, so better to err on the cold side if at all.
Assuming you can get into the low 50's, it's a simple matter to set your carboy in a large rubbermaid tub full of water, and rotate blue ice packs in and out to maintain the cold environment. (I said "simple," not "easy!") With this setup in the coolest part of your house, you will likely manage a good five-day fermentation without coming up into the high 50's. The truth is that the first five or seven days of fermentation are the most critical for staving off esters. After that, do your best to keep it under 60° and you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Coming from another angle, there are a few beasties out there that though technically "ale" strains are able to ferment down into the low 60's and produce a minimum of esters. If the above seems a bit too much hassle, you can easily take your favorite lager recipe and sub' out the yeast with a nice Kölsch, Alt, Steam or even Scottish strain that when fermented at the lower range can give a surprisingly pleasant "pseudo-lager" effect.
Having said all of that, the actual "lager" part comes after the fermentation. The word means "keep" in German, from the practice of storing beer in ice caves, often for months. Nowadays commercial lager brewers rarely go more than 4 weeks before serving a normal-strength beer, but homebrewers usually take that as a minimum. Generally, the stronger the beer, the more it will benefit from a lengthy lager. There's no magic number, but keep it between 34 and 40° and remember to RDWHAH.
So don't be shy. Grab a recipe and try your hand at the other 25% of craft beer.
Brewing FAQs
Where can I find the latest Fort Collins water report?
At your favorite homebrew shop, of course! Download the pdf here.
Happy Brewing!
H&B Staff
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