Recent content by shaggy727

Get it off the yeast cake or leave it on are both correct. Personally I use a 5.5 gal secondary to free up my primary and to clarify my beer a little bit. Getting it off the yeast cake is kind of an old philosophy that should definitely be used if you are doing a long ferment but it doesn't...

Nice work, that looks a lot better than the first one I made. Mine worked great but didn't looks terribly pro. Clean it after every use obviously. Your can actually put it in for the last 10 minutes or so of your boil to help sanitize it.

For your hops, think of this like a sliding scale: Bittering-Flavoring-Aroma (longer boil time - shorter boil time). You first hop addition at 60 minutes will extract more of the bittering qualities from the hop. 40-15 is more of your flavoring hops. Under 15 starts to go more on the aroma side...

Bell's 2 hearted ale and Dogfish Head 60 minute and 90 minute IPA are good ones that are not quite as mean tasting as some IPAs. Bell's is pretty easy to find across the US I think but dogfish head can be a bit tougher to find and a bit pricey.

absolutely.

Probably just foam from fermenting. If it concerns you that much, put a little more sanitizer in the air lock. I usually keep a couple of gallons of premixed star san around for emergencies. You don't want to contaminate things but having something not be sanitized.

I bought a bayou jet cooker that is 185,000 BTUs for under $40 on amazon.

Surprisingly enough, most of those bottles are not actually food grade plastic. #1 is the only true food grade as some #2's are not actually food grade and below #2 is not in general. You want food grade for a multitude of reasons. Don't use non food grade for anything that will touch your...

And also, glad you decided to chat. In my experience, the homebrew community is a very laid back and helpful group of individuals. Almost everyone here understands that we are all here to learn about our craft. Not to mention, ask 5 people how to do something and your going to get 7 different...

There is some great brew design software and apps out there that can help with this. One design method I have used in the past is to figure out 3 or 4 beers in the same style that I am a big fan of. Clone recipes exist for most of these beers. I look at the grain bill for similarities. I then...

As everyone already stated, you wont get any heat exchange. You can make a copper wort chiller for under $30 if you have the guts to do it. I am in process of making a counter flow chiller which I think I can make for under $40 easily. Chillzilla costs 4-5 times that.

I would like to your idea on straining wort. Should you or should you not strain your wort before it goes into your fermenter to get the hops and other material out. Some people have stated there is no need, definitely need to, or should leave it in for flavors. Please list your pros and cons...

I used a mr beer kit once with the same result. Most of the time I think the ingredients are old to start with. The barrel fermenter they sell you has grooves notched in the inner cap to allow air to escape but also lets air in which can easily lead to wild yeast getting in and throwing off...

My reasons to rack include conditioning the beer, getting it off the trub and yeast cake, allowing more sediment to fall out for a clearer beer, and finishing the flavor while not getting flavors from dead yeast. My fermentation has slowed to a crawl as of now. I will be dry hopping in another...

I am currently brewing an IPA. I am two weeks in and I will be transferring to a secondary on monday. First part of the question is I have hops still floating on top but the foam has subsided. Is that still considered the krausen? Secondly, when I tranfer should I suck that into the secondary...