Recent content by Crayfish

Barhop is great. Again, almost always jammed. LCBO sometimes has some interesting stuff to bring home. I have scored sours and wood aged bottles at the one on Dundas by Dundas Square. There are some great restaurants too. Try Bar Isabel or House on Parliament. Have fun it's a great city...

Bellwoods is the best I have had there. It's tiny and usually pretty crowded. Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Thanks or the heads up. I am going to try this out Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Have you joined the Chicago Homebrewers Group on Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChicagoHomeBrewersGroup/?fref=nf Everyone on HBT is very helpful of course, but all of these guys are local and helpful as well. Also, the monthly meet ups give you a chance to meet everyone who shows...

Were you at Brew and Grow today? If so, I was the guy buying grain while you were. What's up? If not, Nevermind. Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

I am assuming you have already used the barrel for other brews, right? On the chance it is a fresh barrel, I would throw something dark and heavy in there. If it a cashed barrel that you are keeping alive with the rum/water, then I would totally go for it. I would probably dump some boiling...

Thanks for the replies. Yes, a keg of top off beer is a good idea.

I have another question regarding this project. There has been some expected evaporation and I would like to top this off. Does anyone see a problem with making a simple 1-2 gallon 100% extract batch with about 10 IBU, letting it cool, and adding it directly to the barrel? At this point, my...

Thanks for the feedback Coff. I pitched 2 ECY20 bottles and some older Roselare (just over six months). Yes, it was boozy from the apple brandy and not by recipe design. I tasted it again while removing some and it tasted less harsh than I originally thought. It was actually really good.

I am by no means an expert but have used a 5 gallon rum barrel and 30 gallon brandy barrel before and can relate what I did. For the 5 gallon barrel, I added about half a gallon of boiling water swished it around, and then dumped into a pot and then reserved this liquid in a jar (it was...

We filled the barrel and let it sit for a few months. I checked in it yesterday and have a couple if concerns. It is very boozy and there is a slight white film on top. No wild yeast or bugs have been pitched yet so this came from the barrel or from the beer. No off tastes have developed...

I brewed this with a few mods including aging in a rum barrel. I racked onto 5 lbs fozen/thawed bananas. Since my rum character was to come from the barrel, I added about a quarter cup of vodka/1.5 vanilla beans to the bananas. The bananas were not pureed very well so fermentation did not...

Be careful not to but the 4.5" ones on Amazon. They are great for secondaries in buckets. However, they are too wide to fit into Cornys.

Thanks for the reply. I thought it would probably be A-OK but it's good to hear that someone else has done it

Very cool. I love guava. Was it at all astringent from the seeds?