Recent content by santacruzbob

I haven't tried it yet but I like the idea from Kennedy. Unfortunately it seems his link is no longer working but I was able to find it here:

Sounds like you've probably already got the load switching portion of the problem handled. I would stick with a software approach as it'll be much easier to tune than a black box solution. -Bob (also in Auburn, CA)

you shouldn't need to water that often. if you're just lightly watering every day you might not be doing any harm but you're wasting time. good deep soaks are ideal so the roots begin reaching for water as the top of the soil dries out. the plants really can't use a lot of water until there is...

quit watering them so much. give them a really good soak every 3-5 days depending on weather

my mt hood, hallertau, and one of my cascades just broke ground in the last two days in northern california. centennial has been up for a couple weeks. still waiting on a columbus, chinook, cascade and centennial.

I've tried it twice.. maybe I got old bottles but all I could taste was a mess of hop extracts dumped into some beer.. none of the layering or complexity that a good bottle of pliny or ruination (to a lesser extent) have.

not at all good either :)

I recently did a small sour mash using two row. I checked the gravity after about 4 hours and it was 1.120. over the next 4 days I boiled some water and topped it off to keep the temps up a bit. I pulled about 1.5 gallons from the mash tun at 1.077 which I transferred to a primary bucket for 4...

that's a lot of work to get 9 or 10 beers

I'm also in! After trying to capture some wild yeast for the last month (maybe it's too cold or I'm doing something wrong) I could really use something verified.

30 days? my pales never last that long. I'm addicted to hops though.. as soon as they're carbonated they're ready to drink :) not all beer improves with age.. read the label on a pliny or blind pig sometime. btw, if you like the magnum flavor you should give columbus a shot. we made a couple...

we had a ton of **** floating around in our pumpkin beer; especially after bottling. these big white masses started to develop and it looked a lot like a lava lamp for a while. we were a little concerned but after a week all of that junk fell to the bottom and we were left with by far the...

Same here in California.. really good dude.

thanks guys. everything got pretty stirred up last night while I was trying to remove the larger pieces of glass from the beer so I'm hoping the yeast cake will reform on top of the glass and help hold it behind. I'm thinking that I'll rack this to carboy in a couple weeks with some nylon hose...

hey guys I really need advice. I was taking a hydrometer reading of our "999" beer in the primary and when I went to remove the hydrometer the ****ing thing shattered in my fingers. lots of glass got into the beer but the lead balls and stopper were intact and didn't get wet.. is the inside of a...