Recent content by MarkSheffield

It happened to me once. Just before the divorce.

Thanks for the replies. I had read somewhere that the leaves might need to be stripped back but I'm worried about hurting the plant. I'm about a month away from harvest so I was thinking that it was just a race to see if I could get the cones matured before the mildew made it up the plant but...

I just started 3 plants this year and one of them has taken off and has a dozen or so cones near the top starting about a month ago. Over the past week, there has been a second outbreak of flowers/cones about halfway up the plant. Is this normal? Should these be harvested along with the...

Did I??? Huh??? Did I???

OK, I decided to go cheap & easy I just ordered a 70 quart cooler from Walmart online - $20 plus $.97 shipping. How can I go wrong? Thank God for China. I'll get a 15 or 20 gallon pot somewhere and that will do me for the time being.

WoweeZowee - How long to you fire-up under the kettle when you do that? Better yet, can you explain your process - you see the temp drop a little, fire it up, hold it for so long, etc?

Thanks for the replies, guys. The problem with shoving all that grain into my current MLT is that there is no space left for mashout (which becomes the first sparge). With all that grain and water in there, I imagine (haven't calculated, though) that the mashout would be somewhere around 2...

I've been doing AG brews for a while using a 30-quart cooler with a SS braid setup for my MLT and doing boils in a 7-1/2 gallon SS pot on a propane burner. I'd like to graduate to some hardier brews that start off with somewhere between 15 and 20 lbs of grain and higher gravity and still get a...

I started having cholesterol problems a few years ago - not real high, borderline. I am 5' 10", 185, run 10-15 miles weekly and eat pretty well. I wasn't able to get the cholesterol down, though, so the Dr. wanted to put me on statins. I avoided this for a couple years and tried to handle it...

I do grain-first as well. It just seems easier to pour in the strike water than to pour the grain into the water. If you do a good job mixing it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.

I did the taste test and it was fine, so I racked into the keg and pressurized. Thanks to all who helped get me through this knothole

This one has gone on for a long time. When I racked to secondary 2-1/2 weeks ago, it put a layer of foam covering the top of the beer and it's been there since (although now it has subsided quite a bit). Time to taste it

OK, I'll do the taste test. I wanted to wait until I got the pix up. What do you mean by "yeast flocculation"?

OK, for those so inclined to look at this sort of ugliness, I've got a picture today of the slick: https://cdn.homebrewtalk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=34059&ppuser=38286 Looks more white than what I thought was green & blue, but I'm pretty colorblind. It's also quieted down a lot...