Recent content by j2brew

Great. Thanks. That should be pretty easy then. Hope this turns out!

Hi, I'm looking for a good chocolate stout recipe. I've seen several, including McAustin's, and several of them have a variation on "Special Dark Cocoa" in the ingredients list. Does this mean use the Hershey's candy bars, or some sort of dry cocoa powder, or some wild brewing product that I...

Hey, thanks all. Brewsmith moved from 4th or 5th on my list to #2, right behind Designing Great Beers. I was thinking of going through How to Brew and doing each of Palmer's sample beers once, just to try some things I might not otherwise. Then I can add up the ingredients for all those...

I have now brewed 4 Mr. Beers and 4 5-gallon batches. I think I have my process down so I don't feel like a total klutz while brewing. And, the beers have all turned out pretty good. My big batches have all been extract kits assembled by my LHBS. I think I am ready to start experimenting with...

I recently went on vacation for a week shortly after brewing a batch (yeah, bad timing). I had been doing the water bucket + ice packs routine, but since I was going to be away, I just filled the bucket up real high, put a t-shirt over it, and then pointed a box fan at it (swamp cooler). When I...

Hey, you all are great! Thanks for the welcome. I would love to get together at some point. Not sure if there are existing brewing groups in the area?

Thanks everybody, took another reading, it looks good. Managed to free up some time so I'll bottle it up tonight. I can't believe how much sediment has settled out in just a few days!

I've been fermenting an oatmeal stout for 3 weeks in my only primary. I got the brewing itch on Friday, so I racked it to a 5 gal. better bottle to free up my primary, figuring it could sit in the secondary for a few days until I had time to bottle it. I noticed an awful lot of sediment as I...

Hello, new brewer here, lots of great info on this site. However, I have not been able to find a nice summary on converting a refrigerator to a fermenter. If one exists, I apologize for the extraneous post-- could you point me to it? If not, here are some questions I have: How big should the...

Thanks everybody. I do hope to meet up wit some NC brewers eventually, but I'd like to learn a little more before "going public". @Sean -- American Brewmaster has already been great to me, I picked up a good bit of equipment there, a couple kits, and will be back next week to get ingredients...

Got a Mr. Beer for my birthday 3 months ago, got a starter 5 gallon kit 2 months ago, added an immersion chiller and other fun stuff 1 month ago, have run 3 or 4 batches through each setup, and am currently building a shed in my backyard to house a refrigerator for use as a fermenter (no garage...