Recent content by Eric

Mismost, I have an older style home refrigerator one with the freezer on top. Do you know if i can simply buy a two way temp controller to which i would directly plug the standard refrigerator into? Would this allow the fridge to keep the air temp inside at 68 degrees for standard ales? thanks

Yes you can. I've sweetened with xylotol and bottle conditioned with dextrose. Worked like a charm. Let it age after bottling in order to smooth out the flavours. Turned out really nice after 4-6 months aging in the bottle.

$50 now

Small time here...just five plants. Honestly, that's enough picking for me, though I wouldn't mind trying Nugget also. I'm curious about cutting back at this point. I never thought about it, just harvest what comes off the side bines. Makes sense you'd get a bigger yield and I'm guessing...

I picked today in NC- Magnum, Centennial, and Cascade. The biggest cones were starting to brown a bit, so from past experience figured I better not let them go any longer in this heat. Same here with 2 pickings, though I'm usually done by mid August.

I was brewing with a friend years ago splitting a Belgian Dubbel. It was a recipe from Zymurgy and had alot of specialty malts in it. Somehow there was confusion during grinding and instead of a very small amount of roasted barley, we ended up with a whole pound going in. I tried to call it a...

If batch sparging, do yourself a favor and check out this site Denny Conn put together. http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/ Very informative and has step by step instructions. Good luck!

Another consideration for the future is efficiency with big beers. 75% is my normal efficiency, but I've noticed once I get above 1.070 efficiency begins to dip slightly. The couple times I've done barleywines my efficiency was closer to 60%. Oh yeah, and....get a bigger cooler.;)

I use 1/4 teaspoon fermcap (less than called for) for a 10 gallon batch. Stuff works great. You won't have a boil over again unless you forget to turn down the flame like I did last batch.:o

Crush 'till you're scared!

thanks, I'm in

Agreed on using whole hops for dry hopping. Pellets are too much of a hassle. Never had any issues racking with whole cones.

I think you'll be ok. I keep mine in the brewshed in the winter and never noticed it freezing.