Recent content by John Spiegel

Hello, Recently picked up a nitrogen tank for free from a local homebrewer. He warned me that the screw on the regulator was slightly bent (it was free, so I can't complain). It's the screw which increases or decreases the pressure. I have tried unscrewing it to either replace it or put it in...

Barb from my gas manifold, flare on the quick disconnect.

It is. Mostly because I already replaced a gasket or two that were causing problems and thought I fixed everything.

But would that o-ring wouldn't have been the cause of the leak while the gas line was disconnected, right?

That's the problem, is I unhooked the line and close my fridge door, and went inside, so I wouldn't have heard it anyway.

Took off my liquid and gas posts in order to clean out a finished keg. When hooking the keg back up, I noticed that the gas post was stuck in the "open" position, meaning the piece you pull in order to hook it up to the gas post was locked in the pulled back position. I also notice that my CO2...

Good call on cutting the flaked corn. I like to simplify the grain bill when I can, and that seems like a smart cut.

As an update, I added some fruit to this beer in secondary, and it had some fruit flavor, but not as much as I was hoping. So I added a bit more after carbonating it in a keg. Now it's got the fruit flavor that I was hoping for, but has become a bit too sweet and lost of its tartness. Current...

I guess I'll use this as a test batch then and see how it goes. Hopefully I'll remember to post my results back here for anyone interested.

Did it sour alright still? I don't want anything super sour, more tart. I'm going to be adding some corn sugar to the end of boil as well as fruit puree during primary. Hoping that will help sour it up too. Thoughts?

Was planning on doing my first batch with Philly Sour soon. Reading through some of the other threads, I've seen people say 2 packs for a 5 gal batch is ideal, and that it doesn't do well repitched. I was wondering if anybody had success with a yeast starter. Buying two packs plus shipping is...

That was my problem. I used to using a hydrometer; first time using a refractometer. Didn't account for alcohol distorting the gravity reading of a refractometer. Converting everything using brix and looks like the numbers are right where (if not a bit under) where I expected. My recipe...

I am using a refractometer. I've used a calculator online, but like I said, the gravity has remained consistent for several days, so there's nothing to calculate for.

Brewed a milk stout, OG 1.070, with half a pound of lactose. Fermentation looked great the first few days. Dropped from 1.070 to 1.039 in three days when airlock activity stopped entirely. I tried placing the fermenter in a warm bath tub and swirling the wort gently to restart fermentation, I...

I don't have a basement and my kegerator is a stand up fridge that has limited capacity. I was planning on storing in a keg in my garage. It's cool right now (springtime), so I'd imagine it will be fine for another month or two, but what are your thoughts on storage in the garage during the...