Recent content by Mandan

Definitely. I had dinner at Hopmonk last Saturday in Sebastopol where 5 Anchor brews were paired with 5 dishes. Met the brewmaster and owner. Would be a great experience to take the tour.

Right in downtown San Rafael is Pizzeria Orgasmica. They have one of my favorite IPAs. And some pretty good food. Up the road in Fairfax is Iron Springs Brewpub.

Predicted 1.014. AG. The previous reply pretty much sums it up. I'm thinking it is a combination of several brew day mistakes. I'm getting ready to make my second lager this weekend and am making my starters at least twice as big. Plus I need to mind the mash temp.

Hey Hex, thanks. Good info here. To answer some of your questions, first it was all grain 10 gallon batch split with a brewing pal. I made two starters, one for each carboy. After the fact, I read that pilsners needed large cell counts. Too late now. The fermentation was roiling away though...

I brewed my 1st lager - a Marzen. OG 1.062. 50F 21 days in primary and a 2 day D- Rest. 1.5 L starter using Wyeast 2308. Everything looked great until I took a gravity - 1.020. Now what? Is there any way to fix this? Or shall I go ahead and lager?

I'm trying to figure this out myself. You are correct, I believe. After listening to the podcasts twice, Palmer says you can sparge with distilled water and add salts to the bk. For flavor. What I don't get is the mash pH. Estimated mash pH isn't even in the spreadsheet. Seems like the Ca, RA...

It's lagering now. But it didn't attenuate well- 1.019. I should have taken a gravity before racking off primary. Usually 3 weeks gets my beer down to 1.012. Perhaps at 65 deg I should have given it more time?

JLem, Kaewan- good info. It is Wyeast 2565, fermented at 65 deg for two weeks. I pulled the plug and it's now 55-57 deg. I have nothing but time. Shall I leave it at that for a couple more weeks or would it be better at 38 deg?

Okay. I'll let it go another week. It sits at basement temp- 54 degF. If it doesn't settle out much, I may move it to the keezer for a few more days.

I've not used this yeast before and heard it isn't a flocculant strain. So, I've made a 1.050 batch that appears to be fermented out but there is still about half and inch of kraeusen sitting on top. I'm thinking of racking off to a keg and crashing in the keezer, then pushing to another keg...

Sump pump recirculates through a chiller. I save rinse water- it is colder than tap water most often. When down to about 80 deg, I'll dump ice in the tub.

Figure .08 gallons of space per lb. of grain plus infusion water. An 8 gal mlt & bk should work. You could get away with a 5 gal hlt.

Thanks to HBT, I discovered Brewsteel and had Kurt build me a Bad Ass Single Tier. Picked it up a couple days ago and brewed a 5 gallon batch yesterday to test things out. As you can see, I still need to plug one of the March pumps into the stand. But for now, things worked out great. Hope to...

Organic Summer Garden Ale- a wet hop using 3 C's from 2nd year crop. The jury is still out on this one.

I was in the pub last week and they were telling customers that they were out of Pliny. The Blind Pig did not disappoint. They can't or don't want to keep up with demand.