Mr. Wizard
Keg Hopping
What differences can be expected from dry hopping at fermentation temperature vs. in a refrigerated keg?
Lagering with Airlocks
Protecting against airlock suck back, bottling highly carbonated beer and homegrown hop quality.
Cleaning Chillers
The Wizard suggests the best solution to clean a copper immersion chiller and more.
Diacetyl Rests
Perform a diacetyl rest, build a simple aeration device, and convert recipes to larger batch sizes.
Q&A Recap with Mr Wizard Ashton Lewis
Ashton Lewis (author of the Mr. Wizard column) took over the BYO Facebook page for a couple hours on April 28 to answer reader questions. Here are the highlights.
Predicting yeast flavors with temperature fluctuation
The batch size for most homebrewers has been around 5 gallons (19 L) for a very long time, and keeping this volume of fermenting beer cool is not difficult. Recently, however, many
Brewing 100+ IBU Beers
The limit of beer bitterness is really a function of the solubility of iso-alpha-acids in wort and their survival into finished beer. Most of the literature on this topic is of the
Eliminating chill haze
Chill haze is the product of protein and polyphenol (tannin) interactions in beer and occur when beer is chilled, hence the name chill haze. There are various methods aimed at chill haze
Quick Fermentations
To answer this question I will assume that you do not have a chilly root cellar where you are fermenting lagers, and that most, if not all, of your homebrews are ales.
Lagering Length
I think this question probably will generate two very different answers depending upon who you ask. In this case you asked me and will get my take on it. Let’s back up
Keg Shaking to Carbonate
Controversy bubbles over quick carbonation, but the Wiz knows which way the gas goes.
What are yeast nutrients and how are they used?
Most yeast nutrient blends contain amino acids, inorganic nitrogen (ammonia), B-vitamins, sterols, unsaturated fatty acids and oftentimes autolyzed yeast which gives a mixture of all of these components. These blends are typically
