Recent content by utopeya

To be honest I don't have much experience with dry hopping, but that seems like as good a place as any to start. Let us know how it comes out.

OK, I couldn't do a side by side, but I did drink the Sweet Action and my version within about an hour of each other. And... there are significant differences. The main one is that Sweet Action tastes like it's pretty aggressively dry hopped. I didn't remember this aspect of it (or they messed...

I think the point is that, even if the temperature of the vessel is maintained, there's a big cone of yeast sitting at the bottom of the vessel. The yeast in the middle of the cone are going to be generating their own heat and so are going to be significantly warmer than anything else in the vessel.

UPDATE: Well, I don't know whether my version is Sweet Action, but it's delicious. I think it's going to be my house ale. I'm going down to NYC in a couple of days--I'll try to do a comparison. Here's my recipe, for reference: Batch Size: 6.0 gal Boil Size: 7.5 gal Boil Time: 60 min Brewhouse...

Looks pretty good, although for some reason I'm still committed to the idea that there's honey malt in this thing. I think FO is a good place for the Simcoe--I split mine into a 5 min addition and a FO addition (though I have no idea whether that was wise). Also, I've been operating under the...

It was a little darker than I expected, but then when I went back to Brooklyn, Sweet Action was a little darker than I remembered. Still, I've gone down to 1/4 lb of each.

It was pretty good, but not Sweet Action. I talked to the brewers a little bit at one point, and they gave me some hints. First of all, there's a big Simcoe addition at the end of the boil. (I'm guessing the Glacier goes in at 10 or 15 minutes.) The malt bill's also more complex than this...

That's with hysteresis control and the DS18B20 One-Wire sensor.

Since this thread has reappeared, I can update with my experience. On the couple of batches I've brewed with my system (my band is set at +-0.2F), I get oscillations of about +-.5F, and when I'm initially heating, I overshoot by maybe a degree or so, but everything settles into place fairly...

I suspected I was sparging too fast... I'm still working out how to set my valves up so things go at the proper speed. Maybe I also had some channeling, but I'm not sure. I guess as I get my process down, this issue will work itself out. Anyway, the beer in the fermenter smells really good...

Senor Wanderer, I did not. I probably should have. kal, It's a 12-inch stainless steel false bottom. I bought it from Brewmaster's Warehouse. Edit: Yeah, I'd be happy with 80% efficiency. But I'm at somewhere just over 65% right now, and that seems pretty low.

My mash tun has a false bottom. My guess is the sparge took about 30 minutes total. I was fly sparging, and I only had the water going to to the tun for the first 12-15 minutes. The rest of the time, I was just letting it drain. There was still a bunch of water in the tun when I stopped...

For three reasons: 1. I didn't remember that from Palmer's book. 2. I didn't know about Weyermann Pilsner specifically, and I had read that German Pilsner malts were less modified than their US counterparts. 3. That's what the recipe I found said to do. (I've only brewed three batches so...

My malt was Weyermann Pilsner. I don't have the analysis sheet (I order my grains from Brewmaster's Warehouse, and they come pre-crushed and pre-mixed.), but the Weyermann site says it's "well-modified."

Disclaimer: I'm no electrician, and I'm no Arduino expert. That said, my system's Arduino is directly connected to the SSRs, and it seems to be working fine. The control voltage of my SSRs (cheap Ebay ones that get shipped to you directly from Asia) is 3-32VDC, and the Arduino pins output at...