Recent content by dcbrewmeister

Most lagers are very mild to flat out bland on the bittering issue, like Beck's for one. Pretty bland on the hops point, but a smooth, easy drinking brew on a hot day.

Along the same lines of the Baron's thought - if you ferment a lager at warmer temps (in an attempt not to need to do a D-rest) you are no longer making a lager, but are making a steam beer. A lager is not so much just the yeast you use, but a process. Ferment at the lower temp ~45-55 degree...

"and purposeful with aeration" - yup Unless it's not a food grade bucket or the "lining" has degraded and it has become porous and harboring bacteria, I doubt it's the bucket, but maybe it's time for a glass carboy.

How are you determining they have not been completing? I avoid the activator packs simply because I don't like the way they seem to work for me. IMO they are extremely slow to start fermenting for something called an "activator" pack... Try another type/brand of yeast if this is the only type...

You making beer - or corn squeezin's? Wouldn't you end up with way too much headspace? Sure it should fill up with c02...but I wouldn't worry about the mason jar and preasure - after all, during the canning process they are boiled, then cooled, probably one of the most abused pieces of glass...

When you remove the trub (from the bottom), you are not removing any c02 that is in the headspace, so the c02 layer is still present. I wouldn't give it another thought.

Has any one tried one of these as a MLT? It's a marine grade cooler. I would imagine it's built not to react to the salt environment, but they have incredible cold retention. I'm getting a used one (I hope) this weekend as my friends father is getting a different boat. The boats have a rack...

As Vermicous pointed out, the equipment you would need to fill it is more than what the average home brewer is going to pay to fill a keg. Not to mention, most home brewers don't brew enough to even fill one keg at once let alone mutiple kegs to justify owning the filling equipment to do it...

Boil kettle and HLT for me. The other 2 I plan on using as fermenters because I'm going to do 12.5 gallon batches - 2 5gal cornies and 2.5gals to bottle condition.

I just got 4 from the local big boy brewery that I don't drink anyway. Got them before they took them out of service. No idea why they took them out of service as the valves all work and they are barely even dented. They just look like typical "banging" around dents is all. Don't know, don't...

Your water will change depending on which well they are pulling from. Those numbers are probably from the well they just happen to currently be pulling from... or it's an average. Chances are all the other wells are close to those numbers because the water is comoing from the same area.

There is no hard set rule that says you can't leave it in the primary until you have time to do it right. When it's done fermenting, transfer it to the secondary - not at X number of days.

Yeah but the thought of spermicide...:off:

You beat me too it. I was thinking the steam might expand the braid and cause other issues.

Take a 2 liter bottle of soda, dump some out, shake it up - it gets hard - it's building preasure, not creating more carbonation.