Recent content by jajabee

Wow, hard to believe so much time has gone by! This project was abruptly interrupted by us buying a house and moving, which put a stop to a lot of my little garage projects. By the time I was ready to get back into testing it, I'd experienced my first two infected batches of beer, which I...

Haha, a huge CFC would be cool, but I don't know where I'd drain the hot water in the basement. :) And yeah, I'd need a second person downstairs monitoring the fermenter, to make sure the wort didn't end up all over the place accidentally. The pumpkin ale was a victim of bad bottling...

The middle would work great, that'd let me extend the tubing easily if needed. And yeah, I have a hopstopper, so it shouldn't be super gunky in there. Which is the plate chiller that you can disassemble and clean?

Thanks guys. I really can't carry it down the stairs, I'm pregnant and weak-armed. ;) Otherwise, the basement is the perfect spot for fermenting. I'll try a hose with water, see what happens. I'm also thinking about adding a plate chiller to the setup, wonder if that would kill the flow...

So as the title says, I'm interested in doing my brewing on the back deck (level with the main floor), and fermenting in the basement. I don't want to have to carry the wort downstairs. There's a small basement window about 10 feet south of the brew kettle (kettle has drain valve), and the...

They haven't posted the full results, but here's the email they sent out yesterday: Best of Show - Bill Schneller - Sour Ale - Gueuze 2nd Place - Mark Easton - American Ale - American Pale Ale 3rd Place - Greg Passmore - India Pale Ale H.M. - Megan Hattfield - Stout - Foreign Extra Stout I'll...

Just saw this on Craigslist, seems like a great deal. Note that this is Vancouver, WA, not Canada. http://portland.craigslist.org/clk/for/1448788566.html

Mine's been in the bottle for a week now, and wow, I think I went a little overboard on the spices!! I added 1 tsp of Pumpkin Pie Spice at flameout and 1tsp at bottling, and dang, it tastes like a Cinnamon Ale. Heh. The head's pretty weak, too, even though I added head retention powder...

I just entered, only one entry, but it's also my first competition! Good luck Pico, unless you entered in 21A.... ;)

Okay, so now I have the rack working the way I want it. It's braced so it doesn't wobble all over the place, there's a counterweight to make it lighter, and I used some super strong magnets to hold it at the top while I switch out the bottles. Here's a video, featuring my husband's lovely arm...

I actually don't have to fill to the rim, since the fill tubes are open... they leave behind most of the liquid they displace, unlike the usual bottling wands. So the siphon level might actually work, hehe. Or I can just get the ball valve adjustments right. So right now my top priorities...

Heh, can you tell I've never used a pump? :) Back pressure, does that just mean putting the bucket above the pump, so there's a gravity feed going in?

Okay, the pump and arrived today. Put the manifold up on a rack using drawer tracks (thanks Brewmoor!), but it doesn't have a counterweight yet to make raising and lowering the fill heads easier. I'm also planning on adding some strong magnets I've got laying around to the top, to hold the...

Oh man, I wish I could buy you a beer and pick your brain sometime. :) I can't seem to visualize what sort of system would do this. The bottles would sit on a platform that raises and lowers, right? And it would be strong enough to lower smoothly under the weight of the full bottles. So...

Hmm, how is raising/lowering the bottles easier than raise/lowering the manifold? Wouldn't the full bottles be a lot heavier to support?