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So me and my buddies are gonna pitch in and get a homebrew starter kit, and trying to decide which one of these to go for. http://morebeer.com/view_product/15911/102142/Bottling_Deluxe_Starter_System or http://www.homebrewery.com/beer/beer-gs-deluxe-kit.shtml The homebrewery.com is around 3 hours away so we might run down there when we get the chance to avoid paying for shipping, and since its in MO we'd have to pay tax online anyways.
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Oct 20, 2008 05:50
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nickutz posted:So me and my buddies are gonna pitch in and get a homebrew starter kit, and trying to decide which one of these to go for. FWIW, the morebeer kit should ship free, and, since they are in CA and you're in MO, they probably won't charge you tax. I've done business with morebeer in the past and had good service from them. I'm sure the homebrewery will be fine, too. It's worth finding a local shop for ingredients, if there is one. Yeast in particular doesn't ship well, as it's sensitive to heat. No idea how good these people are: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=category:+%22Beer+Brewing+Equip+%26+Supplies%22+loc:+%22Columbia,+MO%22&jsv=133d&sll=37.782412,-122.476085&sspn=0.09809,0.137844&ie=UTF8&latlng=38951533,-92328501,13196011974229258197&ei=FBP8SPXDDpnSjQPcirwS&cd=1 Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Oct 20, 2008 |
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Oct 20, 2008 06:10
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My boyfriend and I just decided to start home brewing. We got a starter kit for $110 (http://www.brewersconnection.com/catalog/firstbrew.htm) from a supply shop that's really close to where we live. I pitched the recipe the kit came with, called the First Born Pale Ale, this morning and it's already bubbling! I was super careful with sanitizing, and I have it in my closet with a wet towel, since my house is usually around 80 degrees. I'm really excited to see how it turns out! I smelled and tasted everything while I was making the wort- I was surprised by how appealing the unfermented wort was- I think malted barley tea would be a wonderful drink for the winter. Anyways, it's supposed to turn out like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I haven't actually had that one yet, but I generally like pale ales. I'm going to grab a copy of the scientific brewing guide when I have a chance. Up until last week I was a biochem major (yay for senior year major changes!), and I always loved making stuff in lab. So excited!
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Oct 20, 2008 06:29
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dopaMEAN posted:My boyfriend and I just decided to start home brewing. We got a starter kit for $110 (http://www.brewersconnection.com/catalog/firstbrew.htm) from a supply shop that's really close to where we live. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (SNPA) is very good stuff, and I'm sure your first batch is going to turn out well. A couple things - you will want to monitor the fermenter to be sure it doesn't spew foam all over whatever else is in your closet; and 80 degrees is pretty warm. I'm glad you're keeping a wet towel on it for some evaporative cooling, which should work pretty well in Tucson, but you may find that the towel goes dry pretty quickly. You might try putting the fermenter in a pan of water and trailing the edge of the towel in it. Pointing a fan at it will help it even more. In other news, I purchased ingredients today for next Saturday's batch today. It's going to be an AIPA after Stone's IPA, with loads of late and dry hops - Summit and Ahtanum - to give a powerful hop aroma. Last time, I made only five gallons, and it went far too quickly, so I am making ten this time. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Oct 20, 2008 |
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Oct 20, 2008 07:03
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Jo3sh posted:Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (SNPA) is very good stuff, and I'm sure your first batch is going to turn out well. A couple things - you will want to monitor the fermenter to be sure it doesn't spew foam all over whatever else is in your closet; and 80 degrees is pretty warm. I'm actually in Tempe- I go to the less awesome Arizona school. The brewers' supply place I went to had a nice guide for brewing, and they talked about temperature concerns in Arizona. They broke it down like this: If you put the fermenter in a tub of water, it lowers the temp by 4 degrees. If it's in a tub with a wet t-shirt, it can be lowered by 6 degrees. With a fan, the tee shirt, and the tub, you can lower it by 8 degrees. And if you use a fountain to keep the shirt wet with everything else, you can lower it by 16 degrees. This all varies by humidity though. My room is the coldest in the house, and I imagine it's closer to 75-78 degrees- I'll check it though. I have a fan blowing right next to my closet, and it's dark and shady. I was planning on wetting the towel daily. I can't rely on my air conditioning, since my godforsaken roommate keeps shutting the drat thing off. Apparently, if it's 95 degrees out, we don't need an air conditioner  If you think I need to, I can go get a tub for water. My animals might mess with it at that point, but if it'll help keep things more consistent...
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Oct 20, 2008 07:13
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Since we have a dedicated booze forum, might it be time to break apart from the megathread? It'd be a lot easier to follow specific recipes people are discussing.
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Oct 20, 2008 07:28
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dopaMEAN posted:I can't rely on my air conditioning, since my godforsaken roommate keeps shutting the drat thing off. Apparently, if it's 95 degrees out, we don't need an air conditioner Don't they understand there's BEER at stake!?!?! Sounds like you've got it handled as well as you can under the circumstances and with limited budget. There is an insulated fermentation chamber you could build from rigid foam insulation if you wanted - I can post a link to plans if you are interested. Or you might think about floating some ice-filled 2L bottles in the water, too. It also sounds like you've got a good shop to work with, so you're ahead of the game. Let us know how it all comes out.
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Oct 20, 2008 07:30
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jailbait#3 posted:Since we have a dedicated booze forum, might it be time to break apart from the megathread? It'd be a lot easier to follow specific recipes people are discussing. I understand your concern, but I would actually vote against that, myself. The thing about having one topic with all kinds of posts in it is that we all get to read everyone's questions, discoveries, and so on. The beginning brewers get the advantage of the more experienced brewers' insight, which is particularly valuable. If we split things up, it's likely that people would tend to stay in their preferred thread and not read all the other stuff, and the whole community would suffer. I've participated in a lot of homebrew forums, and I've even helped run one, and for some reason, this is the best format I've seen. I think there is enough general-interest traffic of the SA Forums to keep fresh readers poking in to see if homebrewing would be interesting for them; but I don't think there's enough homebrew-specific traffic to drive multiple threads. Not to mention that the mods have said it's likely that GWB is a temporary forum anyway, and we could get rolled back into GWS or even GBS at any time. But really, I won't argue if you or anyone else starts separate threads. I'll do my best to read and participate in them all. We've had similar situations before - for a while, we had parallel threads in GBS and GWS - but it seems to come back to a megathread after a while anyway.
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Oct 20, 2008 07:41
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If anything, it belongs in a sister thread in Ask/Tell, because not many folks make it out this way. Hell, if they can have repeated threads on how to talk to women, we can have one thread on a cool loving hobby. dopaMEAN posted:I'm going to grab a copy of the scientific brewing guide when I have a chance. Up until last week I was a biochem major (yay for senior year major changes!), and I always loved making stuff in lab. It requires a certain amount of prerequisite knowledge of brewing and chemistry, so I'd get some brews under yalls belts before you jumped in headlong. But kudos on jumping in headlong. Now just be like il serpente and jump into all-grain brewing before his first batch is even bottled  Also, welcome to the best hobby ever! Jo3sh, I would stick the plans for the fermentation chiller in the OP. This goes out to everyone: the faster and more precise you get temperature control issues down, the better your beer will be. Temperature is really what separates homebrew from commercial quality beer made at home. Getting it under control is your absolute priority. One of the best ways to do it on the cheap, if you have space in a garage or somewhere, is to get a small chest freezer on craigslist and a temperature controller. You'll need something like that for lagers anyway. If you're tight on space, a fermentation chiller is definitely the way to go. Ajaarg fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Oct 20, 2008 |
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Oct 20, 2008 08:25
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Ajaarg posted:It requires a certain amount of prerequisite knowledge of brewing and chemistry, so I'd get some brews under yalls belts before you jumped in headlong. But kudos on jumping in headlong. Now just be like il serpente and jump into all-grain brewing before his first batch is even bottled I can't afford a freezer right now- maybe once I've proven that I'll stick with this hobby. I will try to keep a close eye on the temp though. I have a disturbing habit to drop a hobby when it ceases to inspire me. But at least I know I'll always have a receptive audience, and new ideas to try if I stick with brewing! I've taken the classes for a biochemistry degree through to the second semester of biochem. I've got a pretty good handle on the chemistry of brewing (and I've taken Ochem lab enough times to make scatals in my dreams). I just need to learn more about the flavor aspects, and how to play with recipes. My boyfriend and I were looking at used fridges at Goodwill- we can get one for $30 if we go there on half-off day. Could you put a temperature control unit in something like that?
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Oct 20, 2008 08:57
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dopaMEAN posted:My boyfriend and I were looking at used fridges at Goodwill- we can get one for $30 if we go there on half-off day. Could you put a temperature control unit in something like that? Oh that'll work fine.
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Oct 20, 2008 10:00
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Ajaarg posted:One of the best ways to do it on the cheap, if you have space in a garage or somewhere, is to get a small chest freezer on craigslist and a temperature controller. You'll need something like that for lagers anyway. If you're tight on space, a fermentation chiller is definitely the way to go.
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Oct 20, 2008 15:17
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Ajaarg posted:Jo3sh, I would stick the plans for the fermentation chiller in the OP. Good call - I edited it in. dopaMEAN posted:My boyfriend and I were looking at used fridges at Goodwill- we can get one for $30 if we go there on half-off day. Could you put a temperature control unit in something like that? A fridge or freezer with an external thermostat is definitely the way to go if you can afford it. Also look at Craigslist, garage sales and people who are upgrading their fridges - you might find something even less expensive than Goodwill. My second beer fridge, for instance, was free, and my neighbor seems to have the knack of finding garage-sale bargains and flipping them for a few bucks' profit. Don't forget to account for the cost of the thermostat, too. I use this one for my fermenting fridge. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Oct 20, 2008 |
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Oct 20, 2008 15:48
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Jo3sh posted:Don't forget to account for the cost of the thermostat, too. I use this one for my fermenting fridge. How does that work? I mean how do you attach it to the fridge/freezer?
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Oct 20, 2008 17:44
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mykuhl posted:How does that work? I mean how do you attach it to the fridge/freezer? You plug the thermostat into the wall, and the fridge into the thermostat. There's a probe that you run into the fridge compartment to sense the temperature, and you set the taget temp with a dial on the front of the box. The box cuts power to the fridge when it gets cold enough inside. The electronic ones are nicer, but more expensive. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Oct 20, 2008 |
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Oct 20, 2008 17:47
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So just how much does bottle-conditioned beer improve over time? I hear it peaks right around 3-5 months, but there's no way I can hold out that long. I'm thinking I'll give it a try after a week, and then "debut" it on election day or so, and then save a few 22s for a few months to see how they change.
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Oct 20, 2008 18:17
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Jo3sh posted:You plug the thermostat into the wall, and the fridge into the thermostat. There's a probe that you run into the fridge compartment to sense the temperature, and you set the taget temp with a dial on the front of the box. The box cuts power to the fridge when it gets cold enough inside. Oh wow, that's really nifty. I will have to pick one of those up when I start homebrewing. Only 10.5 months left.
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Oct 20, 2008 18:29
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il serpente cosmico posted:So just how much does bottle-conditioned beer improve over time? I hear it peaks right around 3-5 months, but there's no way I can hold out that long. I'm thinking I'll give it a try after a week, and then "debut" it on election day or so, and then save a few 22s for a few months to see how they change. It depends tremendously on the beer. Milder beers (both in terms of alcoholic strength and intensity of flavor) will peak and fade much more quickly than big beers. "Normal" beers are probably right in the 3 to 5 month range you mention. Big stouts and barleywines might be a year or more. The Imperial stout I have on draught now is more than a year old and still amazing, although the hops have softened a lot. EDIT: The best plan is to brew enough that you have "session beer" and "keeping beer" around at all times. It's really nice to have something comparatively low-test around so you can have a pint or two without getting wrecked, but it's also good to have something rich and fulfilling for a quiet evening. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Oct 20, 2008 |
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Oct 20, 2008 18:34
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il serpente cosmico posted:... but there's no way I can hold out that long... And I would recommend you not try to wait. The real way to answer your question is to open up one a week. When I brew and bottle something new I love Fridays because when I go to work Friday morning I put one in the fridge so it will be ready when I get home. Once a week is enough space for most things other than the really big beers so that the brewer/taster will get a good idea of how a beer matures and ages. I have found that doing this teaches me more about the flavors and how things balance than any other procedure. I personally think this is a rather fascinating self-study idea when it comes to homebrew. If you do this you'll learn over time how to answer the question you have posed to us on your own. This advice was given to me by the guy who first got me into homebrewing and I maintain it's the single best piece of advise I've ever gotten (and probably posted most about).
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Oct 20, 2008 18:48
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I drink about 1 a week till it gets good too. Not because I choose to but because I'm an idiot. I just tried my christmas beer yesterday after a week in the bottle and 1) not carbed correctly, 2) hops made it taste "green" and not that great. Which is basically the way I've felt about each beer I've brewed (not the wheats, though) but I keep drinking one after only a week because I can't help myself.
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Oct 20, 2008 19:00
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Jo3sh posted:FWIW, the morebeer kit should ship free, and, since they are in CA and you're in MO, they probably won't charge you tax. I've done business with morebeer in the past and had good service from them. I'm sure the homebrewery will be fine, too. These guys just sell ingredient kits that have been sitting on the shelves for God knows how long.
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Oct 20, 2008 19:22
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Jo3sh posted:The electronic ones are nicer, but more expensive. http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/product_view.asp?sku=9352000
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Oct 20, 2008 22:14
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tonedef131 posted:I got one for $41. If you put in TAKE15 promotional code at checkout Cole Parmer will take 15% off of the total order. Nice find! How hard was it to wire up to your fridge?
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Oct 20, 2008 22:20
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Jo3sh posted:Nice find! How hard was it to wire up to your fridge?
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Oct 20, 2008 22:39
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tonedef131 posted:I don't know, I am going to get the freezer in like 30 min. If it gets too complicated I will have to call up my buddy who is an electrician to bail me out. If you can, take pictures, make diagrams, etc. I could probably figure out how to wire one up, either alone or with some assistance, but it would be cool to see how it's done. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Oct 20, 2008 |
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Oct 20, 2008 22:51
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il serpente cosmico posted:So just how much does bottle-conditioned beer improve over time? I hear it peaks right around 3-5 months, but there's no way I can hold out that long. I'm thinking I'll give it a try after a week, and then "debut" it on election day or so, and then save a few 22s for a few months to see how they change. It is a general misconception about alcohol that age automatically is better. The graph for both beer and wine looks something like a squished up bell curve: after the initial conditioning phase (which happens fast, from a week or two for beer or a year or two for strong beers/mead/wine), it begins a slow ascent towards the plateau of taste. Once it hits that peak, it tumbles down to shite faster than the economy. How long that slow ascent is, hard to tell. What factors contribute to the length of that ascent, also hard to tell. What's pretty universal, though, is that you do not want to pass the peak. Basically, wine collectors are gamblers: they look at soil conditions, rainfall, all sorts of random crap and make an educated guess that a certain vintage is gonna last the long haul. Sometimes they're right, and sometimes a bottle ages for 5 years and tastes like vinegar. That's why aged wines are so expensive: because not every batch can make it that long. Beer and wine are, 95% of the time, best if relatively fresh. That's why a 2005 vintage can taste pretty goshdarn good, and brewpubs can keep a pretty much non-stop selection. Watch the brewpubs, though: you can tell when a batch is a little green, and when it's hitting its stride (if there's any left by then). The problem is, beer's timeline is so much more compressed than wine, it's easy to miss the peak. Evidence: try Paulaner fresh in Germany, and then try the bottled version you can get in the states. The imported version has a crackery stale taste to it, and the fresh version tastes like liquid heaven. Heineken, essentially made just to be exported, tastes like skunky catpiss. More delicate flavors, like those found in lagers, seem to go kaput fast; ales tend to last longer. Strong ales tend to last longer still (largely the reason Belgians travel so easy). Exactly why this is will make sciencey types scratch their heads a lot. There's a phenomenon called "bottle shock" that modern wineries have to deal with; that is, they bulk age wine in big stainless steel tanks (sorry if any of you have romantic notions of wine still being conditioned in barrels) and then stick them in bottles. When they go in the bottles, for whatever reason, the wine freaks the gently caress out and will taste wrong for quite a while before settling out (which is why wineries will cellar their wine in the bottles even after bulk conditioning). I don't know if any of yall are mead or wine makers too, but a lot of folks will bulk age in the carboy for a long, long time and then throw it in the bottle expecting the aging to be done. BAM bottle shock! At the same time, the presence of the yeast in the conditioning phase does something unquantifiable to the mead/wine. That was a long digression on random alcohol-related trivia but it has bearing on this discussion for the following reason: drink your drat beer. Even if you make a strong beer, give it some good secondary time, toss it in bottles/a keg, give it time to carbonate and go to town. If it tastes like catpiss, give it some time and try again. If it tastes wonderful, devour your beer and treasure the memories. Each batch is a unique creation that will never come again.
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Oct 20, 2008 23:14
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Thanks for the info (again). It's going to be a long wait until saturday.
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Oct 20, 2008 23:43
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tonedef131 posted:I would say fermentation temperature control is probably the most important thing you can do for your beer after maybe proper pitching rates. I'd say the other way around, but they go hand-in-hand. My suggested upgrade path, ranked in decreasing order of importance: 1) Control the temperature: Brewers make wort; yeast makes beer. All you are doing is laying the foundation for the yeast to build upon, and no matter how good the foundation, if your yeast sucks your beer will suck. You take the best brewer, with the latest and greatest all-grain equipment, the best recipe, and you stick it in a closet in a 75 degree apartment it's probably going to taste like homebrew (remember: that closet is maybe 5 degrees hotter than the apartment, due to lack of airflow, and the fermentation maybe 5 degrees hotter still due to heat created from fermentation). "Taste like homebrew" the way people often say to me, "yeah, my friend makes homebrew, but it tastes kind of like poo poo. He really likes it though." Don't be that guy. Make your yeast happy, and they will make you happy. 2) Pitch enough healthy yeast: make or buy a stirplate, and make yourself some wicked sick starters. Homebrews are chronically underpitched. Yeast will crap out different flavors during their different life cycles, and if you underpitch and the yeast struggles to reproduce, you're going to have a bunch of catpiss off-flavors, as my disaster helles and Josh Wow's disaster scottish ale prove. This matters more when yeasties are cold, because unlike frequently thought, even cold-resistant yeasts like warmer temperatures more: it's just that they can handle the cooler temperatures and not go dormant. You can make a lager at room temperature, but everything that's lagery about the yeast will not be there. It is important to note that I considered this to be one of the LAST things to upgrade. I chose... poorly. Do not repeat my mistake. If you are getting your fermentation chiller to do lagers, get a stirplate or be prepared to do a shitload of starters/buy a lot of yeast. If you are doing big beers, get a stirplate or the yeast will struggle to reproduce, use up all the oxygen, and poop out at a high gravity. To make matters worse, all the alcohol that's being produced is going to hamper the yeast. Hey, you don't want to eat where you poo poo, either. So you want to have a whole buttload of yeast munching up maltose from the moment they hit the wort so that minimal time is spent reproducing in the fermenter. My current avenue of research, as I mentioned here earlier, is oxygenation, which I believe homebrewers are doing badly. Even dedicated homebrewers who make starters all the time, like me. Every single one of my beers seems to get a little more gumption when I rack it, and I'm pretty careful to avoid oxygenation. So just that LITTLE amount is enough to kick it back into fermenting mode, which suggests to me that they're oxygen starved to begin with. No one really talks about it, except maybe if you're making belgian quadruples or (god forbid) strong lagers, which have to be the pinnacle of yeast babysitting. Ignore this digression, folks. I just provided it because my mind wandered to it. 3) Large outdoor burner and big pot to do full boils: The difference in minimizing the "extract twang" is night and day from a partial boil to a full boil. I'm not kidding. While I'm on it, make sure your extract is fresh or your beer will taste like a ball-point pen. Again, I'm not kidding. A big online site like Northern Brewer goes through a metric buttload of liquid extract, so they are almost always safe bets. If your LHBS doesn't seem to move a lot of it, buy online or buy dry, which lasts longer. A fun anecdote from working at a LHBS (fight club answer to which: "A major one," though you internet detectives can probably figure it out easily enough): Extract comes in big 55 gallon drums that are poured out into easily shippable containers. One time, the extract started fermenting. Turns out that people had been taking the air release valve totally off because it would pour out faster, and some wild yeast got in there. This is only one of many reasons why you should buy fresh extract. Oh and take your brewing outside. It will get you off your fat goony asses, but more importantly lets you get a good roiling boil, which helps everything from clarity to reducing off flavors. Plus you get to meet the neighbors. I am "that guy who brews all the time." 4) All-grain: I am an all-grain fanatic, and I regularly tease my brewing friends still doing extract with grains, but I put this last on my list of importance. Why? Because all it will affect is the malt flavor. Malt flavor (as you can see from my and rocko's discussions) is a tricky, subtle beast, and while changing out an English bitter from generic Brewer's 2-row extract to 100% Maris Otter will make a huge difference, it's huge in relative terms. The flavor change is still pretty subtle, and if it's a highly hopped beer, it's largely covered up by hop flavor. If you're largely making American style ales, the switch to all-grain offers minimal improvement at best. It will taste richer and maltier, of course, if you're looking for it (and you do your mash right). If you're all about mimicking European styles to the letter, you gotta go all-grain. It's just about impossible to get the right OOMPH of malt flavor from an English bitter or (god forbid) anything German/Czech from extract. Though I should note, if you are enticed by German/Czech brewing perfection, you are looking for trouble. Big trouble. I know this from experience. I personally just made a beeline to all-grain. For a while (and you can see this if you read the beginning of the last thread, when I was a wee brewing newbie), I was doing all-grain batches totally indoors on a small gas stove. I had the pot on multiple burners going full blast and I still got a weak boil. Then I would just stick my carboys in a near 80-degree closet. Oy vey. Pay attention il serpente! Don't make the same mistakes I did! Boy I have I written a book today.
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Oct 21, 2008 00:23
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The closest brew shop to me is Beer Beer and More Beer in Riverside. Anyone know anything about it?
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Oct 21, 2008 00:39
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Politicalrancor posted:The closest brew shop to me is Beer Beer and More Beer in Riverside. Anyone know anything about it? BB&MB is one of the biggest homebrew stores, you're in good hands. In particular they pump their extract into little vacuum sealed baggies, instead of just pouring it in a bucket and sending it on its merry way.
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Oct 21, 2008 00:59
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Politicalrancor posted:The closest brew shop to me is Beer Beer and More Beer in Riverside. Anyone know anything about it? I've been to the physical shop once, and ordered a few things from them, and they've always been good to me, even when I screwed up my order and had to call and beg for it to be changed.
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Oct 21, 2008 01:23
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I made a peach wheat beer which turned out pretty peachy, despite Radical Brewing saying apricots make better peach beers. I used five pounds of palisade peaches. It was a touch sour. It didn't carbonate fully, even after three weeks, but that's another story. I'm about done with american hefeweizen yeast. German hef is my favorite and if I'm doing something neutral for a fruit beer, I'm just going to use a neutral ale yeast, which is what I hear american hef yeast is anyways. When I make german hef it's carbonated in under a week. BerkerkLurk fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Oct 21, 2008 |
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Oct 21, 2008 02:54
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Ajaarg posted:It is important to note that I considered this to be one of the LAST things to upgrade. I chose... poorly. Do not repeat my mistake. If you are getting your fermentation chiller to do lagers, get a stirplate or be prepared to do a shitload of starters/buy a lot of yeast. So by this you mean you have a constant culture going on that plate? I thought a stir plate was just an easy way to oxygenate starters. I've only done a starter once and grew it in a old V8 bottle with aluminum foil covering the top. I got a pretty dense culture going by just swishing it around 2 or 3 times daily for a few days.
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Oct 21, 2008 03:11
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I was wondering why my kegerator can't hit freezing, and I realized it probably has a lot to do with the big hole in the top of it for the tap. I don't use the tap, so I was wondering how I might plug that up while simultaneously running my thermometer probe through the hole. Currently, I run it through the door, and that's risky since pinching the probe will ruin it. My plan is to be able to crash chill my lagers, since I've seen that make a huge difference in the bottle.
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Oct 21, 2008 05:23
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I don't use the tap, so I was wondering how I might plug that up while simultaneously running my thermometer probe through the hole. Maybe grab some foam insulation to plug up the hole and then just cut a big enough hold in it to run your probe through? Maybe use that expanding spray foam insulation to hold it in place, and you could even shoot it around where your probe goes in as long as you won't be needing to move it.
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Oct 21, 2008 08:51
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Jo3sh posted:If you can, take pictures, make diagrams, etc. I could probably figure out how to wire one up, either alone or with some assistance, but it would be cool to see how it's done. Ajaarg posted:I'd say the other way around, but they go hand-in-hand. Since I didn't have a stir plate until recently I was always using dry yeast in order to get my pitching rates up. This made some great beer but gave me much less control, a lot of the strains would go too dry or would just be one dimensional in comparison to their liquid counterparts. I know that the drying process has improved, but I still think it takes a lot out of the yeast. I will always keep some dry around for emergencies, but the quality and selection of liquid yeasts really makes it worth the cost and trouble of using them. I recently did a California Common using my stir plate and liquid lager yeast for the first time. I kept it at 62-63 the entire ferment and it stopped exactly where I wanted it too and tastes far better than any commercial examples I have had. I really can't wait to get into temp experimentation and lager brewing. If I can always have that kind of control in my beers I will probably start competing this season.
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Oct 21, 2008 13:35
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Hey all. Just a heads up, I am starting a home brewing blog at my website. http://www.bloodybits.com. Its nothing fancy right now, just a couple entries and tracking my latest batch. If you are ever bored, check it out. I am a fairly experienced brewer also if anyone needs any tips. Happy brewing
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Oct 21, 2008 20:19
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If any of you have an iPhone I found a pretty neat app that has the entire BJCP guidlines that is super easy to use. I was using the PDF through safari during my BJCP class instead of bringing a binder, but it was slow and hard to navigate. http://unusuallycool.com/josh/iPhoneApps/index.php?page=bjcp-styles
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Oct 21, 2008 20:37
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What is the correct way to get/handle slurry? I have heard a couple tidbits from Jamil, but never any systematic process, so this is the one I used to get the yeast from my list Ord. Bitter to my second batch. He contends that if you repitch the slurry (he is against pitching right on top of the yeast cake for various obvious reasons), that the 2nd and even 3rd repitches are even better brews if done in a good way. However, he only expands this idea by saying sanitizing the carboy bung, then pouring the slurry into a vessel. I did this, and my 2nd batch just started fermenting, so it obviously worked, but what is a better way of doing this?
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Oct 22, 2008 01:51
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 08:50 |
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ScaerCroe posted:(he is against pitching right on top of the yeast cake for various obvious reasons)
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Oct 22, 2008 02:42
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