Search results

Any suggestions for those of us in warm climates? I have perpetual issues with off tastes and they almost certainly come from high fermentation temps. Where I live it is routinely in the high 80's and 90's for 9 months of the year and the coolest room in the house at best 76 degrees. I've...

I'm in.

Brilliant! :mug:

In the link I provided in the first post I described the reason for fermenting outdoors: After too many incidents in the house my wife decided enough was enough and banned me from fermenting indoors. Going forward I will build a fermenting chamber but right now I'm just trying to salvage what...

Thanks, Sixbillionethans. I need to develop my vocabulary for describing funk. I did go through Palmer's trying to find a good description but couldn't find one that truly fit it. I am, however, confident that the off taste is due to poor temperature control. It's a long story but formerly...

As discussed in this thread, I recently botched several batches of beer due to poor temperature control during fermentation. One is not yet bottled and is still in the fermenter. It is a Patersbier kit from Northern Brewer and I hate to waste it. It's not gross, it just has a funk to it that...

The brewing escapades I mentioned are just a subset of the slapstick that is my life. :) For example, the one and only time I brewed for other people was last Christmas when a few friends begged me to make them a dubbel. I made it and all was going well until I moved to the bottling bucket. I...

I am feeling quite a bit better now, thanks! I just have to be careful that I don't mistake feeling good for "I can do anything I want to again!" That was the trap I fell into after the last surgery and if I have even an ounce of sense left in me I will enjoy the lack of pain and never abuse...

I admit the title was intended to be a teaser. :) My brewing adventures have been comical for quite a while. I'm always careful but disaster seems naturally attracted to me. And it always seems to target my wife to make matters even worse. Some of my escapades: Early in my career I had a...

Excellent suggestions! I do have power in the garage so electronic control can be a down the road goal but the water bath isn't something I thought of.

A few months ago I finally pushed my wife past her beer tolerance when I got a pinhole leak in a Party Pig seal and it sprayed her half of the closet where I kept my beer stuff. This wasn't the first time I'd had a mishap so I can't really get too upset that I've been banished outdoors. I've...

Thanks for the collective food for thought! It's too soon for me to even think about brewing (well, I think about it all the time but it's too soon to do anything about it) but this will help me down the road. As to why I excluded a gravity fed solution, my assumption was that I would have...

Take of that back, GilaMinumBeer! I'm always amazed at the simple things that elude me. I never even thought of using a shop vac for cleanup! Good advice. Anyone have a rig that can show pictures of plumbing and pumps?

I had back surgery a year ago and it was so successful I rapidly fell back (no pun intended) into my old bad habits. These include lifting and moving around full brew pots and mash tuns. As you may have guessed I ended up in the ER this past weekend and had emergency surgery! I'm OK, but I...

I tried the forced carbonation experiment yesterday with no success. I used a 16 ounce PET bottle for the beer and large soda bottle for the vinegar and baking soda. I did not have any leaks but the CO2 couldn't begin to displace the liquid in the beer bottle. I suppose I could have left it...

Thanks, I am leery of the vinegar taste as well. Wasn't aware I would touch a nerve on the use of soda bottles. :D If I've made something special I make sure it's in an appropriate container. But if it's a session beer that I'm sharing with friends I really don't care what container it is in...

Got my ThinkGeek newsletter today and they have this item for sale: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/c908/ I use bottle conditioning and I'm not really interested in the keg method but occasionally it would be nice to have immediate gratification for parties, tailgating, etc...

What a difference a year makes! When I first sampled Belgian beers my initial reaction to the yeast-induced funkiness was "Yuck!". Now I can't get enough of it! The complexities of Belgian beer, especially those with some Brett in the bottle, are beguiling. I still enjoy the occasional hop...

Forgot to post the results of my Hop Shot test. But first, a quiz! What happens when you mix oil and water? That's right, they don't mix! A Hop Shot is hop oil so what do you think happens when you squirt a refrigerated syringe of hop oil into a cold beer? It sits on the surface in a wormy...

The bad beer example was just one scenario. For example, I currently only have a clone of Old Speckled Hen on hand while I wait for an Imperial IPA to come of age. Since I'm jonesing for some hops I've been buying a bomber of Ruination a week just to tide me over. If I had fresh hops I would...