Recent content by bgraham

i've thought about this a lot as well. keep in mind with a herms you just have to strike with a certain temp water to hit your mash temp and then maintain it... so your mashtun can be plastic. only the heat exchanger needs to be fired or have an element in it. as for fermenters...

no, i haven't. though, i have heard good things as well. i do visit some friends fairly often in kent and theres a nice little lhbs right near the corner of 76 and 43 called something like ambruzzo's that i pick stuff up at every now and then if i'm in kent and in a hurry as well. the guy that...

yeah, if you're ever south in the youngstown area stop at the pump house in struthers.

i was thinking about this some more last night looking at some fresh wort i just pitched yeast into. everything always completely settles out in an hour or so, so why not just wait an hour and then siphon into the fermenter. fermentation always takes a couple hours for me to kick off anyways...

Mine never went crazy, it was fine. I hope you're using a california lager yeast or just a california ale yeast and not a regular lager yeast. You can never be too careful though, I almost always use a blowoff tube anymore. Here's some great discussion with Jamil about steam beer...

I used to obsess over exactly what you're talking about. You could look up whirlpooling and do that, it is quite popular. I've tried it and all I ever do anymore is once I hit about 70F I just let it sit in the kettle covered for about 15 or 20 minutes. Then I siphon by starting at the top and...

everytime i've heard of or seen damage to a heating elements it pops like you said or it flakes off. some are safe to fire dry for a short period of time, yours may be. i would guess that if you didn't hear any strange noises and it looks fine, it is.

My LHBS has an English mild on draft with cocoa puffs incorporated. When I saw the tag with "cocoa puffs mild" written on it I was skeptical to say the least. However, it was one of my favorite beers I've had in a long time. So I should disclose that the idea of this recipe belongs to the owner...

hahaha let me check my schedule.... maybe hofbrauhaus pittsburgh friday?

That is a really interesting recipe. I'm intrigued by the MO you added that is now the majority of your grainbill. How do you like that? Also, do you use that whitbread ale yeast with a lot of IPA's? It seems to me like its attributes are what I like and want to taste in IPA's. I'm sure...

ha, i think it is a really interesting beer. i almost have to be in more of a mood to drink bourbon than beer to drink it.

I've recently switched to a larger boil kettle and haven't quite tuned in hitting a perfect final volume of 5.5 gallons. My questions is how do you all do this? I see there being two choices. A) I could do a test boil for an hour with 6 gallons and then measure exactly how much boiled...

I did. I didn't get KappaJoe's comment about that grainbill and your recipe til after I had bought my grains. My LHBS owner suggested he had used roughly a pound of honey malt in grainbills of similar sizes and in IPA's and had been quite pleased with the results so I figured I'd just stick with...

Just an update, this beer came out excellent. The honey malt was maybe a little more noticable in this than in flower power. However, I don't think that was a bad thing, that extra malty sweetness went well with the bitterness of this beer. The aroma is absolutely outstanding and it just has a...