Recent content by SteveSD

I racked to the keg after 14 days; OG was 1.056 and FG was 1.015 for about 73% attenuation. This is a very sessionable hefe right around 5%ABV. Next time I brew this I'll try to keep fermentation in the 62-64 F range (just got a mini-fridge so I can build a ferm chamber), I started it out at 68...

My third 5-gallon batch is in primary right now : +15 = 1433.5 gallons total

I have never brewed a BW but it's on my list so I have been reading a lot about brewing techniques. My understanding was that adding grain to the wort was for the purpose of introducing the lacto that naturally lives on the surface of the grain, not so much to give the lacto "extra food to munch...

The only negative I can foresee is if you set it up in an area with fluorescent lighting and you ferment in carboys. The light exposure can result in skunking your beer.

I've used WLP380 about 5 times and each time fermentation activity was apparent within 24-36 hours. Though I now use starters with this yeast, my very first batch of homebrew was an extract wheat using WLP380, and even then I had vigorous activity within 36 hours. In fact, if I were you I'd...

Thanks. I did end up pitching the entire starter; this morning the fermentation has blown about a pint of wort through the blowoff tube into my pitcher of Starsan.

I brewed this on Sat 1/29 but used WLP380 Hefeweisen IV yeast instead of the WLP300; I've gotten less "banana bomb" when I used 380 in the past. This is about my 8th all-grain batch, and I've been getting lower OG than expected when grinding my grains at the LHBS, so this time I sent the grains...

If you've got a restasurant supply store close by, you can find one there as well. I got it for $8 I think. Exactly the same, I use it for vorlauf also, as well as getting water from my HLT into my mash tun.

Hey gang - I'm brewing an all-grain hefe this weekend (5 to 5.5 gallon batch into the carboy), so a couple of days ago I made a starter with a vial of WLP380: -120 grams of DME into 1.2 liters of boiling water - boiled for 15 minutes then cooled to 70 degrees - poured into a...

My username is SteveSD. Thanks for the contest and have a great New Year. GO EAGLES!

I originally bought a cheap IC made with 25 feet of 1/4" copper refrigeration tubing. This took too long even when my tap water was cool, so I built a larger IC using 50 feet of 3/8" copper tubing. Now I use the smaller IC as a pre-chiller with an ice bath (tap water -> small IC prechiller in...

There is a neoprene keg insulator on sale for about $30 on kegconnection.com which says it can keep a keg cold for up to 24 hours. I haven't ordered one yet but would be interested to hear from anyone who has one. It seems like 24 hours would be a stretch, but 8-12 hours should be reasonable...

You can remove the widget with a needle nosed pliers; the labels are plastic and can be cut off.

Thanks to Revvy's awesome instructions linked above I just bottled my first batch last night. I sanitized all my bottles by filling the bottling bucket with about 2 gallons of sanitizer, then used the bottling wand attached to the spigot with a 2 inch piece of tubing to fill each bottle with...