Recent content by tbrink

i just discovered this wonderful brew yesterday, and immediately after trying it i wanted to make a batch. the dude that was sampling these beers works for boulevard, and he said that the bittering hops are whatever high alpha hop they have on hand, usually zeus or bravo. summit brings more...

+1 on haymarket. They have a great selection of beers, and its a couple of blocks north of greektown. If you fancy a great Greek meal, I recommend the Greek islands which is just down the street. Jake melnicks tap house is great too...they don't make their own, but you'll find something you've...

I have had it both on tap and in the bottle. It's a very interesting beer, and not what I was expecting from reading the label and ingredients (I'm looking at you, chiles from new mexico). I bought another bottle to age for a bit. Very sweet, almost on the verge of being cloying. If you made a...

I just did an IPA that was left in primary for 6 weeks and bottled without secondary and it is delicious. So yes, by all means do so...many folks around here would agree.

I bet it would be more fermented.

I steep a quarter to half ounce of hops in 2 cups of boiling water and bottling sugar (usually use honey) for about an hour in a French press, or the amount of time it takes for me to make sure I've got everything I need clean and in place. Pour that into the bottling bucket, then rack the...

The last time I was there, I went to the Elgin public house in the downtown area. It has a great selection of beers and some pretty good food too. I guess there's also a German themed gasthaus around there too, but I never got a chance to check it out.

I too have an upstairs/downstairs situation, so I use one of those flexible heavy duty plastic garden baskets you can find at most home & garden stores (lowes, home depot, even walmart). It's lightweight, easy, and cheap. http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?sku=13604 A big advantage...

copper coil wort chiller: good god, why did i wait so long to get that?!? there is a reason this is on the top of the list. a bigger pot, which also correlates to a propane burner: i could have saved sooo much grief from SWMBO, but the joke's on her: the kitchen will never again be as clean...

The combination of refractometer and racking cane works for me. It has the added bonus of requiring just one drop, resulting in more final product to enjoy! Yeah it costs more than a thief, but it pays for itself with the very first time you use it and you say, "whoa, that's all I needed to...

I don't want to beat on a dead horse or anything, but I feel like I should explain. The pot is aluminum, with a cheap spigot on the bottom, and the internal texture of the pot is rough, almost like cast iron. I scrubbed it with a copper scrubbie thing, and all I get is dark gross stuff that I...

I got a Saf-t-cooker http://bbq.about.com/od/turkeyfryerreviews/gr/aapr101508a.htm from my mother in law. At first I was excited, then I actually looked at it and now I almost feel like I would have preferred getting a reindeer sweater. The pot is big, but doesn't exactly instill much...

Watching that krausen slither along oh so slowly made me realize a bigger tube is indeed in order. Incidentally, things have settled down considerably. I estimate I lost about a half gallon of beer, but that's the pessimistic viewpoint...I prefer to think that i saved about 4 and a half...

Really, really wish I saw this thread two days ago. I washed a cake from an Amber ale and pitched it onto a 5 gallon batch of oatmeal stout in a 7.5 gallon bucket. When I poured in an estimated quart of yeast slurry, I wondered if it might have been too much, so I put in a blowoff tube just in...

Odell's bourbon barrel stout. Those of you that don't have access to this, you are seriously missing out.