Recent content by bol

I spent some time talking to the brewmaster at my favorite local microbrewery. They can go from grain to glass in 10 days. Their beer is some of the best I have ever had, ales are meant to be enjoyed fresh. He says they don't believe you can over pitch your yeast. While they have read...

I brewed the 'Good Life Pale Ale' out of Papazian's book back in January. The brew went great, hit gravity and volume dead on and I was really excited about this beer. The recipe calls for 1.7 oz of Fuggles(60min) and 1 oz of Goldings(30min) as boiling hops with 1 oz of Goldings(3min) as...

My fermenters are kept inside my home (a condo) and ambient temperature is never less than ~72F inside the closet the carboys are kept in. This is already at the high end and with increased temperature from fermentation I'm sure the carboys are at 80F+. This obviously is going to cause some...

I use a gravity fed plate chiller

10 gal and I whirlpool. I really don't see how a 10 could clog the boil screen with any hop load, MAYBE on a 20gal with a large hop load and maybe an issue on larger pots.

I haven't been able to clog mine yet, with reasonable pellet hop loads (the picture below is 4oz)

I have a Blichmann burner. I can't comment if they are the same as the banjo but they certainly look similar. I'm very pleased with mine, I bought it for the stainless and because it was about the same price as any of the other banjo burners I could find.

I'm using a 9" false bottom on mine, because I had originally planned on going with a 5-gal cooler but changed my mind. I still get 80%+ efficiency.

The orifice that plugs into A directs gas down the venturi tube (B) creating a vacuum which enriches the mixture. The plate adjusts the oxygen mixture that can be achieved by that vacuum. It is the same principal as a carburetor. It is possible however for the flame to travel into the venturi...

I'm really happy with my barley crusher and I've only used it once. The corona mill's work just as well but I really like the hopper on the barley crusher and how quickly it mills grain when its motorized. I wouldn't want to crank through 10lbs of grain again my hand.

Racked the beer to secondary last night, gravity had settled at 1.013 from the 1.062 so looks like I got 78% apparent attenuation which is the limit of the yeast. Currently at 6.5% ABV due to the higher gravity. it didn't taste half bad out of the primary either! Definitely needs to condition a...

I used less than a gallon of hot water that I heated up in a small cooking pot. Was more than enough to warm up the tun so that the heat loss from my strike water was minimal.

I worried about the potential blow off issue as well but couldn't find a larger blow off tube. In this particular case I will be just fine, there is plenty of space and the krausen is no where near the top of the ferementer and there is no reason why I couldn't just use a airlock.

Is a stir plate still useful if you're using the liquid yeasts like the Wyeast Activator which should be pitchable without making a starter at these volumes? I'm definitely interested in zymurgy and want to re-use my yeast where possible so I can see how that would be useful. I'll try and keep...

For the new year I decided to get into all grain brewing. I had done a kit beer awhile back and I found the kit process to be less than entertaining, the equivalent of dumping a bag of concentrated wort into a bucket. A good friend of mine does all grain brewing and after sitting in on a brew...