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My son is recently out of the army where he was a bomb squad guy disarming bombs at home and away. He and a couple of bomb squad friends are starting a nano brewery in Hayden Idaho. He's got an interesting story and has gotten a lot of good local press. If you're interested in learning more...

We started brewing nearly three years ago and HBT was the source of much of my research and learning. Thanks to all of you for the advice, the recipes, and encouragement. Tonight we brew our 100th batch which will be a slight variation of the Bell's Two Hearted Clone found on this site. We'll...

My son is in the army and has spent the last year in Afghanistan with his EOD unit, looking for and disposing of IED's. Their deployment is over and they are in transit heading back to Washington State. The thing is that they have been sitting at Dover Air Base in Delaware for nearly 4 days...

I've seen a lot of threads where people ask how long crushed grain will keep and thought I would share our experience. We had a little SNAFU with a 100 pound grain purchase a while ago. We were thinking uncrushed. The place we bought it from was thinking crushed. We were more than a little...

I've brewed Dude's Lake Walk Pale Ale four times now. The first two kegs are long gone, the third is on tap, and the fourth is being dry hopped as you read this. The batch that is on tap right now has decidedly more hop flavor (dare I say almost too much) than the first two, even though the...

I'm looking for a single gauge primary regulator for use with a portable dispensing system using a paintball co2 tank. Every place I've looked so far, the price ends up being $50 by the time I pay for shipping. Does anyone know where I can find a better deal?

Has anyone toasted Maris Otter pale malt at home? We've been toasting standard 2-row for Dude's very delicious Lake Walk APA and it's worked well. I'm working on a grain bill for an IPA based on Dude's recipe and am looking for a little "fuller" flavor. I'm planning on the toasted Maris Otter...

I have a side by fridge in use for a kegerator. It's relatively new and has always worked great. When I cam home from work tonight there was a "hot smell" in the house. When I went downstairs I noticed that smell was coming from the reefer. Things in the kegerator seem to be staying cold but the...

We use an old refrigerator with a temp controller for our fermentation chamber. Saturday we brewed two 5 gallon batches of different beers with the same desired fermentation temperatures. With a single batch, I'll tape the temp probe to the fermentor and insulate it. With the two fermentors, I...

We just got a couple of 6 gallon better bottles and put them to work Saturday as fermenters. I rigged blowoff tubes using #10 drilled stoppers with tubing inserted in the holes. One of the batches had some crazy thick blowoff that wouldn't go through the small diameter tubing and pushed the...

I'm wondering how many HBT'ers crash cool before kegging or bottling. We have been doing this since day one and it seems to clear the beer nicely before kegging. When we dry hop, we just throw the whole hops into the fermenter after about 10 days of fermentation. After crash cooling, nearly all...

I had been confused by Beersmith showing greater than 100% efficiency into the boiler on several of our brews. Being skeptical of getting more sugars out than were present I thought it through and determined it must be a problem with our gravity readings. We brewed last night and took our...

I found a local brewery that's willing to provide me with as much of their house yeast as I can use. I don't know the exact strain but it's at least similar to WLP002. I'll be able to get sufficient quantities so that I won't need to make a starter. Is there anything that I should do before I...

I got the extract malt bill below for a clone recipe that I would like to brew and need some help converting it to an all grain recipe. I tried doing it in Beersmith but couldn't find the extracts that he has in his recipe. I would really appreciate some help in making the conversion. Thanks...

We moved our fermenter full of Yooper's House Ale to the refrigerator the other night to crash cool in preperation for kegging. When we moved it we left the blowoff tube in it complete with the quart jar of Star San. When we went to keg the beer last night about a pint of Star San had been...

I have a Simcoe IPA I'd like to brew and can't find a good price on Simcoe hops. Anyone have a good source for a pound or at least a good price by the ounce?

We were brewing the other night and found a broken black rubber band type thing in our crushed grain. I'm wondering if this came from the barley crusher. I looked at it last night and couldn't see any obvious place where it would have come from. When I crank the mill only one of the rollers...

I made a Wyeast Ringwood Ale starter, refrigerated and decanted it. After pitching the slurry into my Dogfish Head India Brown Ale I checked the gravity of my fermented starter wort and got a 1.045. Since I was trying for a 1.040 OG for my starter wort I am concerned that my yeast (mail ordered...

I'm interested in brewing some APA's and IPA's with a nice flavorful malt profile but am really not sure how to go about determining a grain bill. I'm thinking that Crystal malts are only a part of the answer but I'm not familiar yet with the flavors of the different grains. What grains can be...

We're putting together a hops order from Hops Direct. We're buying several pounds of hops to to try to get most of what we'll need to brew primarily APA's and IPA's with an occasional amber or brown thrown in. My thought is to buy a pound or two of Cascade and Centennial for flavor and aroma...