Recent content by sareinhart

Folks - I got a counter pressure bottling wand. Two valves at the top. One for beer. The other for CO2. I have a 2 stage regulator. I have the CO2 from one side going into the keg. The other to the CO2 leg of my bottling wand. Beer is pretty well carbonated. Almost over...

Congratulations. Keep at it. Expect a ruined batch or two... and keep coming back to Homebrewtalk.com Lots of experienced brewers on here that are willing to help newbies like you and me. Most important of all ... HAVE FUN!!

After posting this thread, I went and brewed a batch with Chinook hops for flavor and aroma. It's wonderful. I decided to call it "Christmas Ale" because it smells like a christmas tree and has enough alcohol to get you through the holiday with your insane in-laws. :cross:

Thanks, Queequeg. I'm surprised to see you on Home Brew Talk. I thought the white whale took down your ship with Ishmael being the only survivor. You're telling me that pitching different numbers of yeast cells can yield a different tasting beer - even with the same strain of yeast?

I'm looking into yeast calculations on this page. http://www.yeastcalculator.com It's pretty cool. Anyway... I found that a while labs vial can contain between 75-150 billion yeast cells. That's a pretty wide margin. Depending on what number you pick, it can really change your results in...

Good point. I'd need a sparge arm and a way to keep the water at about 170F, right?

Thanks.

I am a relatively new brewer. I build a mash tun from a 10 gallon igloo cooler with a SS washer hose braid for a filter. Typically mash at 1.25 qts/lb then batch sparge to make up my boil volume. Shooting for 5 gallon batches and 7 gallon boils. My question is TIME. Based on my...

Thanks guys.

possibly stupid question. I developed a leak in my CO2 system and my bottle went empty. Possibly 48 hrs without supply pressure. Now, I noticed that my beer is not as carbonated as it was. Question - if you loose CO2 pressure, can the CO2 dissolved in your beer come out of solution...

The great thing about this forum is that there are so many experienced brewers that are so helpful to newbies like me. Thanks so much to all of you.

Sweet. I'm guessing it was the pre-boil gravity. That reading always seemed little dicey to me. A commenter further up suggested letting the sample come closer to the calibration temp. I think that's a really good idea. I'm going to do that.

I agree about the sparge temp being too low. Amateur mistake. (hence my brewery's name - Bumbling Amateur Brewing :) ) As far as deviating from Northern Brewer instructions - yeah. You're right. I didn't follow. I didn't mashout. LHBS advised it wasn't too important. Also boiled 90...

That's a good idea about saving the pre-boil wort to get a better reading. I think I'll do that from now on. No reason I couldn't just throw that small sample back into the boil. RAW means the reading I took off the hydrometer which I then used a web based calculator to adjust to the 60...

The first. I put enough sparge water at 148 F in to make up to a 6.9 gallon boil.