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I think I'll stay out of your eyes then.... Not that there's anything wrong with that!

I used orange zest in a white ale that I did. SWMBO has this cool tool called, what else, a zester! I used the zest from one medium sized orange and it was just about right. I'm not a big fan of the Blue Moon type brews that have too much orange in them.

Excellent. I'll be looking for it at my local distributor soon, right?

If you can afford the extra $$, get the ported bottles with all the funky little attachments (racking adapter, the one way valve airlock thingy, the straight elbow {for letting CO2 or air back into the bottle when you rack through the adapter}, the stopper that most of the bits plugs into and a...

The BB question seems to come up a lot. Concerns about it sucking in airlock fluid can be alleviated by using the one-way airlock valves from BB. Once I remove the blowoff tube and install that valve, I feed the CO2 into the racking port on my secondary BB which also has a one way valve. That...

I've been doiing loads of reading on HERMS and advantages/dis-advantages because I have some extra copper that I was trying to find a project for. There's quite a lot of theories on temp control, loss, gain, etc. The basic gist of what I take from it is that there is an associated heat loss...

With normal batches and a small grain bill I have about 1/2 - 1/3 of the cooler with dead air space. Each time I remove the lid I have to believe that I am losing heat. With the balls in place, it would be like having an insulated blanket sitting on top of the mash which should help. I guess...

The UPS Gods just delivered these from McMaster: Material Polypropylene Polypropylene Material Polypropylene Backing Plain Back Shape Balls Ball Type Hollow Diameter .787" Translucent Translucent with White Tint Highest Temperature +100° to +200° F Operating...

If you do pre-chilling using an IC, you could cut the top off and use this to hold the ice water and a submersible pump? Otherwise, the price of stainless is going up and you could sell it for scrap to buy something else. Or... you could use it to make a killer starter that would ferment out...

This doesn't really belong in the DIY section since I don't consider it very elegant, but... I was sitting at my local watering hole on one of the rare occasions that I can go out lately and I was watching the bartender wash the glasses on those cool glassware washing things with the brush...

I use a homebuilt CFC which is 50' of 3/8 copper in a 5/8 hose jacket. In the fall & winter, I go from boiling to 70 in 5 minutes with the water turned on about 1/2 way. My most recent brew (my first summer brewing session with the CFC) it went from boiling to 85 in 5 minutes. Before the CFC...

Damn, you beat me to it. LMAO

Thanks for all the feedback. Yes, it is just for bittering, I have no late hops additions for this one. I was tinkering with theh idea of using Perle since it has a slight mint background to it, but I'll just go with Saaz for this go-round.

I have a chocolate stout recipe that I want to brew this week. It calls for Hallertauer hops. Don't have any and LHBS is also out. I do have Saaz, Cascade, Perle & Sorachi. I've not brewed this type of recipe before so not sure what to expect in a substitute. I'm assuming that Sorachi is...

That's probably why I don't get much swelling (in the pack) because I only let it sit for 8 hours. I pitched a London Ale III yeast to a 2 liter starter and saw zero activity on the stir plate but I got a bit of CO2 to inflate a balloon on the beaker. I pitched it to Cheese's CCA and got...

I rarely get the smack packs to swell when I use them. What criteria are you using to determine if your starter "worked"? Are you doing it in a beaker? On a stir plate? I have had starters that I did not think were any good (the most recent batch is an example). If I'm not sure, I take a...

A bit darker than last time because of the heavier crystal malt, but yummy looking just the same. This is after 4 hours in the primary using a 2 liter starter.

Think it would help to mount the pump sideways with the input & output in a vertical position to assist the air bubbles out of the head?

Yeah, but then again, you don't have to scramble mid-sparge to rig up an alternate way to do things, and your way sounds way too easy, and...ah, screw it.

So, I was updating my brew log and found a slight finger problem when entering my numbers. So I really got 81% efficiency. Still very happy with that. Not too happy about the pump tho.