Recent content by 944play

Even though you have a place where the air temp may be constant, fermentation creates heat and, despite its relatively high specific heat, air is not dense enough to scavenge away that heat effectively. Put your fermenter in a water bath to provide a large thermal mass for your beer to stay at...

Kegs are ideal lagering vessels. They have built-in handles. They are lighter than carboys. They are unbreakable. They are pressurizable. They are light-tight. They can be heat-sanitized. They have built-in diptubes. They double as serving vessels. The opening is bigger than that of a carboy...

You prime the batch with a sugar solution. Use a priming calculator to find out how much sugar to use given the desired carbonation and the residual CO2 already in the beer.

I don't like that distributor. Its website shows beer being consumed straight from bottles. Yes, like Ray Daniels, I'm a snob about beer in a glass.

GB brews the JosephsBrau line at Trader Joe's. The "Plznr" is a screaming deal and tastes just like Urquell. The other styles are not as exciting. I went to the former Embarcadero location in SF once after a Giants game. Not really my kind of place, but it was okay. I think BJ's is actually...

I suggest serializing your brewing; rather than trying to get two batches' worth of cells from a single pack of yeast (brewing in parallel), just harvest from the first batch to pitch the next. You could even top-crop if you don't want to wait for the first batch to flocc out.

Old Ale, possibly. I don't know if 1450 can do the right ester profile.

Draft New Albion.

I'd save the Biscuit and Special B for a Dubbel or BDSA.

Lagunitas Sucks on cask.

Interesting mix of units in that recipe. What is the chalk meant to accomplish?

Unless you need to harvest the yeast, I wouldn't bother with the bag or the secondary. Pellet hop bits will settle out in a week or so. I'd bottle immediately after everything has fully crashed.

Probably off-topic, but yes, Sapphire is terrible. Sweet, fruity, metallic, and corny like any given malt liquor. Regular Beck's, OTOH, is crisp, subtle, and toasty.

Meh, it's more of a very beery sherry (that I think is a minor masterpiece, so don't get me wrong). I finally kicked my keg of CMC/Spalt Select pilsner and moved onto the Gambrinus/Spalt Select maibock/pils-and-a-half. The hopping is a little too front-loaded (48 IBU @60), but it's a...

Trumer ftw.