I've added fresh (pitted) cherries (the dark-red, not sour) at the end of the boil (0 min) for an extract brew and racked on to cherries in the secondary in an all grain brew. Both batches got about 2.5 pounds of the cherry flesh and both had a nice cherry flavor that wan't over powering -- more...
I went the opposite way and got tubing to ram up the faucet. I have the 525ss (I'd imagine it's the same size as the 425, or close enough) and 7/16" OD tubing works great.
I've done straight Cascade beers before and the best ones were those with a very high ratio of late-to-early hop additions. I don't know if Palmer is _the_ authority on hops, but there's probably a reason why How to Brew has Cascade listed as an aroma hop and not a bittering one.
I had my first bottle explode around my 20th batch a couple months ago. I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange feeling something was wrong (no joke) and went back to bed. The next day was in the living room next to the beer hutch. There was a faint smell of beer in the air (I...
My problem with seeds is that they clog up the bottle filler. So now I put a flip top gasket on the racking cane and push it pretty close up against the cane tip thing.
Maybe it adds some turbulence that's not desirable???