In March my home's heating system died. I'm in an older 'quaint' house with steam heat. The truth is that the heat never really worked all that well. Lately, only 4 of the 10 radiators in the house could be counted on to warm up. Over the past 6 years the heating in the house had declined to the point that some areas simply had no heat. But that was ok because we had sweaters and slippers and the kids are young and full of heat-producing energy. In retrospect (in late April after spending the big...

nutty_gnome

So, I spent last night brewing up a Kolsch. [I'm not going to waste my time finding out how to add the doo-hickeys over the 'o' in Kolsch.]

I'd brewed the BB Kolsch kit in February and that turned out to be a fantastic blonde ale that is an incredible thirst quencher. They really, really go down easy. I don't know how 'kolsch-like' it was because I've never tried an actual Kolsch.

What makes this a blond ale vs. a true Kolsch? Well... it used Nottingham dry yeast and...

nutty_gnome

This is now wildly out of date and stupidly work-intensive. I've simplified my entire routine to one that actually works. I'll post more about that later. As a cutionaly tale, DO NOT FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS BELOW UNLESS YOU ARE A BONEHEAD!- N_G



So I've developed a routine for getting used bottles to the bottling bucket on brew-day.

It all starts with the old bottles. I've managed to acquire nearly 150; enough to easily store 15 gallons of beer at a...

nutty_gnome

On the subject of home brewing equipment:

Last December I treated myself to a nice Christmas present. The 'deluxe' brewing kit from Brewer's Best. This is the one that comes with the glass carboy, a bottling bucket, and a primary bucket. It also has the autosiphon, and a bunch of other things that I really don't use. This kit is a major step up from the basic Brewer's Best kit I had back in the late 1990s.

To augment the kit, I went ahead and bought a giant white plastic...

nutty_gnome

Hello there, I'm Nutty_gnome. Well, not really; in reality I have a normal name and life. But online I'm Nutty_gnome (or N_G for short).

I started a blog of my homebrewing experiences on the morebeer.com social site (the buzz). But I found that I was not using that site often enough. I was always browsing around Homebrewtalk.com. So, I ponied up the dough today and became a HBT member.

I'm going to take my blog posts from the buzz site and repost them here for...

nutty_gnome