Recent content by swankyswede

I actually never got to drink this one. It picked up something in the fermenter, and by the time I cracked open the bucket to bottle, there was a nice furry mold floating on top. Sigh. It smelled delicious going down the drain, like a wit with real nice citrus and some killer grapefruit aroma...

That's fantastic! A more controlled process gives more predictable results. I live in the wildly swinging temperatures of the Northeast, where it can be 65 and dry one day and 95 and sticky the next, and because I brew outside, it's hard to adjust for such drastic temperature changes. My system...

I'm fortunate that I live a 10-minute walk from my LHBS, so I usually buy all my ingredients there. Prices are slightly higher, but the service is great. I was in there trying to build a 2-keg manifold for my CO2 tank from a wye and some shutoff valves, and the guy saved me 30 bucks in parts...

Mehhhh not so great. It has barely any chocolate flavor, a hint of sweetness from the honey, and kind of a strange taste that I'm attributing to the peppers. The Theobroma is very tasty, but this one didn't work as expected. I guess that means more research is needed.... :tank:

The syrup is added at serving.

I have the good fortune to live les than a few miles from Cambridge Brewing Company. They always have a pale ale, amber, a porter, and a golden ale on tap, all of which are solid, drinkable beers. The really shine in their seasonals and one-offs. The porter jgourd was talking about is amazing...

Palo Santo ++. I also really like the Theobroma, and have tried a few times to brew something similar, but never got close.

I did a DFH Theobroma-inspired brew with honey, ancho chile, and cacao nibs earlier this year. The chilies I soaked in vodka for a few weeks, then added the liquor at bottling to taste. The cacao nibs I added in the last 15 minutes of the boil, straining out the nibs at the end. The honey was...

I use BA the same way I use Yelp: someone tells me about a beer, I check out a bunch of reviews - both good and bad - and then I try the beer for myself. If anything, BA has served its purpose just by getting people to talk about beer. Yes, beer snobs abound over there, but that's because it's...

Ooooo yeah, well in that case, I'm giving Tactical Nuclear Penguin an A++! :rockin:

I'm sure we all went through a phase after we discovered that beer came in something other than 3.5% Bud Light cans where we drank as much crazy, high ABV stuff as we could. I'm betting that as more people graduate from the XXXTREME BEER phase, BA will calm down and become a more balanced site.

Rollin'

I use a large measuring cup to dissolve the DME, which has a handy spout for pouring into the flask. As for boilovers, you can either use the boiling beads mentioned above, or somehow put some scratches in the bottom of the flask to create initiation sites.

Right, because light, pale lagers were already becoming popular. If you look at the long view of history, the current trend of very pale, fizzy, cold lagers with little discernible taste is exactly that - a trend. The trend before that was more localized. Due to the industrialization of...

I'm a chemist, and I can vouch for the fact that the good ol' glass thermometer with the red stuff inside is the most accurate. We tried digital in my company and found that they drift so bad it's not worth the hassle since we had to calibrate pretty much every time we turned the suckers on...