Recent content by XPLSV

Cream Ale last Wednesday.

3848 entries according to the website today. That is down from roughly 9189 entries in 2019. The steep entry fee in killing this competition. The decision a couple years ago to charge for "both rounds" might make fiscal sense if each entry was actually judged twice, but the percentage of beers...

I rarely bottle, but my Trappist style ales all get bottled and corked. Recently did a side-by-side 10 gallon batch, kegging 5 gallons for my neighbor and bottle conditioning my 5 gallons. I prefer the bottle conditioned batch from the early samples.

The Works has fell victim to government regulation: the previous 20% formula has now been downgraded to 9.5%; perhaps it will work as well if you soak longer? I haven't tried it, but came across the notation about the downgrade. Kind of like the Groundclear or Roundup: it has some potentially...

Purge an empty keg with CO2. Rack the desired amount of beer (1/2 gallon) from the beer-gas keg into the empty keg. Bleed the pressure out over the course of 24 hours. You won't have any O2 in the keg to oxidize the beer and the nitrogen gas will be coming out of solution first, along with some...

Yes, the Blichmann has that raised disc geometry. After some thoughts and some review of past brewing notes from several years ago, I'm going to skip the decoction and just do a normal mash on this one.

All good points. I have made some adjustments on subsequent batches with regard to flow rate, not turning off the pump, etc. The first two batches I did on the 10 gallon system were 5 gallon batches...which can be done, but there is less depth on the mash bed when doing the 5 gallon batches...

I bought a Blichmann ProPilot 10 gallon electric HERMS system last summer and have been working my way through many of my favorite recipes since then. Big adjustments on the efficiency calculations, but had that down after two brews. I'm about to brew a Trappist Single recipe on it for the first...

Very simple design to quickly disassemble, which I do after each use for cleaning. Not saying it is a must to completely disassemble, but doesn't take much time.

PBW is safe for stainless steel...acid based solutions are not. They will eat into the stainless steel grain structure. You could run some through...but don't store any such solutions in it for periods of time. There is a photo of someone who cut his therminator open somewhere on the net (maybe...

This thread helped, plus another thread, to get my motor and switch wired up. Mr. Walleye had some good info that melded with the diagram in this thread and I wanted to post a photo and those comments such that they may help others. Dayton drum switch and the 1/2 hp All-American Aleworks motor...

Enough yeast packed itself up into the fermentation lock that it created a jet nozzle effect that blew off the top cover of the fermentation lock and when the pressure would build enough, it would squirt out that jet nozzle effect to hit the ceiling. As I began to clean up, it was about to do...

Well, all cleaned up. Blowoff tube in place. The laundry room got its first really good cleaning in years!!!

After eight years of brewing, I finally got some Vesuvius action overnight. Guess I shouldn't have rousted it before going to bed. This was the second night for this Trappist Quad, which calls for a temperature ramp during the first week of fermentation. Most of what I brew these days is done at...

They serve one official style (the Festbier), but it is brewed by the various Munich breweries, so it varies a bit from tent to tent.