Recent content by cyclefiend1123

Great, thanks! I made the mistake of only buying one bottle of New Belgium's Imperial Chocolate Coffee Stout when it came out, so I'm going to try my hand at cloning it. I'm still a partial extract brewer so I'm curious if I can even come close. Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi mcaustin: would you be able to post an updated version of your extract recipe for the mocha stout? If I understand correctly you would now: _ use cacao nibs instead of the cacao powder, if so, how much? Also, do I assume they would be steeped along with the grains, or are they part of...

The expanded poly is doing fine so far. I try to leave it sitting in one place so it won't get banged around. I've given it a few dents but they're just cosmetic. When I built the thing I was careful to peel off the Mylar coating in the places that were going to be glued. I sealed all the...

This and the previous photo demonstrate the split top so that I can load frozen water bottles without disturbing the "bucket side" of the chiller

The wood riser tilts the fermentation bucket so that the trub settles away from the spigot

This and the next photo demonstrate the split top so that I can load frozen water bottles without disturbing the "bucket side" of the chiller

Fan bracket, the fan can be slipped out from between the guides

The thermostat is screwed into wood dowels that glued into the side wall of the chiller

An overall view of the inside

My interpretation of Ken Schwartz's SOFC

A shout out to Ken Schwartz and his SOFC. My interpretation uses the cheap expanded polystyrene (the pebbly white stuff). Yeah I know its delicate stuff but I'm not moving it around much. The attractive thing is that the foam I used has a aluminum Mylar surface that acts as a radiant barrier...

Oh boy, I cracked my first bottle of the Munton Nut Brown Ale that I brewed from extract and I'm reasonably impressed. From my previous posts, it spent three weeks in primary fermentation, then three weeks, so far, in bottles. It smelled like other brown ales I've had, no nastiness there. It...

The subject line is the same I used in the Introduction forum, but since brewing is underway I figured I'd move to the beginners forum for the continuation of my adventure! My Munton Nut Brown Ale extract batch seems to be going well. I'm 4.5 days into primary fermentation and have gone from...

Great, that's good news about being able to rack through the spigot. I'm a little over two days into primary fermentation and the initial bubbling has slowed. I also read that if the fermenter is tilted a bit so that the spigot is high, the trub will collect more on the side away from the...

Yeah, I think I'll get a bottling bucket and prime into it. Also, my primary fermenter is equipped with a spigot. Can I use that to rack to the bottling bucket or should I use a cane? Thanks for your response, and continued advise. Andy Tucson