Phaeon: Is Grangestone 18 year good? I bought some for a friend going through a divorce, but only so I could make a barely legal joke.

Grangestone is simply a surprisingly good highland, single malt scotch for the cost, with the 18  slightly better. Grangestone, Balvenie, and Glenmorangie all suffer from rather drastic diminishing returns (though the Balvenie Caribbean Cask is impressive) despite having a quality offering as standard. Still, the Grangestone 18 and 21 are about equal in cost to offerings such as the standard Oban or Lagavulin, thus if someone enjoys the flavor of Grangestone primarily then those are excellent choices. Me, I prefer variety, which is why my shelf has the Grangestone 12, Balvenie Caribbean, Glenmorangie Original, Macallan Cask, etc., because were I in the mood for Grangestone 21 I would probably rather a Lagavulin, but more scotch drinkers have a type.

Tyrone Slothrop: Irish moss has arsenic?

I prefer whirlfloc. Irish moss does not seem to be as clarifying and requires extra effort. Allows me to avoid using a prechiller.

Sultan Of Herf: Meh, beer is what the cretins drink. Beer is to booze what cigarettes are to aged hand rolled cigars.

/The Glenlivet & a Drew Estate Naturals please...

I'm betting your aged hand rolled cigars say "Swisher Sweets" on them somewhere

nocturnal001: I'm a rookie to homebrewing, but doesn't a nice cold break provide much of the clarifying needed? Maybe I've just been focusing on my lagers which I've been lagering for 2 plus months anyway, could be different for ales.

For lagers, the lower amount of malt and duration of fermentation will often produce far clearer beers without need for a kettle fining. And getting a fast cold break, under 10 minutes, is the vast majority of what is needed to remove haziness, but this is not likely without a few techniques and some equipment such as prechillers, whirlpool arms, or iced bottles. With only the wort chiller in and nothing further, I take just north 16 minutes, and with a half tab of whirlfloc I have never been dissatisfied with clarity.

This has simply become customary for me, so use of fining isn't necessary except in one instance. When you wash and save a highly vigorous yeast (have had American Ale strains which devour through ~1.045 to ~1.001 in a few days), you want this as remaining proteins do not have enough time to settle into the trub.

Vangor: nocturnal001: I'm a rookie to homebrewing, but doesn't a nice cold break provide much of the clarifying needed? Maybe I've just been focusing on my lagers which I've been lagering for 2 plus months anyway, could be different for ales.

For lagers, the lower amount of malt and duration of fermentation will often produce far clearer beers without need for a kettle fining. And getting a fast cold break, under 10 minutes, is the vast majority of what is needed to remove haziness, but this is not likely without a few techniques and some equipment such as prechillers, whirlpool arms, or iced bottles. With only the wort chiller in and nothing further, I take just north 16 minutes, and with a half tab of whirlfloc I have never been dissatisfied with clarity.

This has simply become customary for me, so use of fining isn't necessary except in one instance. When you wash and save a highly vigorous yeast (have had American Ale strains which devour through ~1.045 to ~1.001 in a few days), you want this as remaining proteins do not have enough time to settle into the trub.

how much of a lock do you have on temp control? You want to keep that yeast locked at 70 and under during Krausen. Otherwise, a runaway ferment will jack the primary temp upwards of 90f making all types of trouble and funny flavors.

We use a strain of American Ale as out primary house yeast and draw out primary for a week or so even if the strain will do the job in 24 hours if you let it.. and we are talking a 30bbl batch.

Cerebral Knievel: Otherwise, a runaway ferment will jack the primary temp upwards of 90f making all types of trouble and funny flavors.

This was honestly with one particular batch of a Wyeast American Ale; new packs are nowhere near as vigorous. Fortunately, mead is more my thing, and mead yeasts do not operate well over 70 at all, so I have temperature control down when need be.

I use to have a fermentation fridge. Boy did I love the Kolsch yeast fermenting at about 60 degrees.

Anyway, one time I tried to get a caramel taste by pulling off about a half gallon of wort and boiling it hard down to about a half gallon, and adding it to the boil. It didn't do much for taste, that I could detect, but it was one of the clearest beers I've ever made. The suspect it might be something to do with the massive hot break in the half gallon, but it might have been luck. Feel free to try it sometime.