Your best "secret" techniques?

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Baron von BeeGee said:
Except for nosy neighbors who don't know anything about brewing, aren't interested in learning, and are mostly just trying to escape their wives for a few hours.

Because that totally ruins the process. :mad:
I've said it before - just tell Walker to go home!;)
 
Baron von BeeGee said:
You've obviously never tried to get rid of him!!



:p
NC was nice - The Mileage and the Atlantic shuck him off for a bit until he found me on this damn forum! :)
 
one tip I found out about the hard way yesterday was, when making a chili beer, wear rubber gloves when removing the chilis from the carboy after bottling. I had a hob bag full of chopped jalapenos and chipotles left in my carboy after racking to the bottling jug. The chili's had absorbed some beer and the bag was wider than the carboy neck. so I held the carboy upside down and pulled the bag out as the carboy neck squeezed about a half pint of chili juiceall over my hand. I washed my hands right after that. but then about 20 minutes later an excruciating burning kicked in all over my right hand. And didn't stop until I drove to walgreens and boughts some lanacane to slather my hand in. not a pleasant experience (but the beer tasted good!)
 
What did I do to deserve this bad mouthing!?

Caplan, I'm going to get in my car, drive over to england, and whoop your butt. WHat to you think about THAT? I'll show YOU!

-walker

;)
 
Imperial Walker said:
What did I do to deserve this bad mouthing!?

Caplan, I'm going to get in my car, drive over to england, and whoop your butt. WHat to you think about THAT? I'll show YOU!

-walker

;)

Walker needs the Darth Vadar theme song in the background when he shows up at the door. That would be so cool!

I find a 3' length of garden hose is really handy in the brewery. It screws onto the same adaptor for the bottle washer. You can fill carboys and tubs easier, wash bigger items with ease, and it doubles as a siphon to empty big tubs.
 
The Happy Mug said:
I find a 3' length of garden hose is really handy in the brewery. It screws onto the same adaptor for the bottle washer. You can fill carboys and tubs easier, wash bigger items with ease, and it doubles as a siphon to empty big tubs.

And it also works well for flogging those who neighbors who won't leave;)
 
Shambolic said:
Don't they leach dye into your wort?? That's what happened when I gave them a test run in plain water.

Maybe whe he said... OLD pantyhose, he meant one's that had been washed first. :)

Couldn't resist. <snicker, snicker>
 
Imperial Walker said:
What did I do to deserve this bad mouthing!?

Caplan, I'm going to get in my car, drive over to england, and whoop your butt. WHat to you think about THAT? I'll show YOU!

-walker

;)
I'll be buying a white fluffy cat and swivel chair and saying "Ahh...Mister Imperial Walker - I've been expecting you... Lets go to a few Pubs and introduce you to 'England' " :D
 
For all you lager brewers wondering if your ferment is slow or done:

Keep a little bit of your starter or yeast sediment in the starter bottle and add about 1qt of wort. Aerate well with shaking and keep on a warm place. Soon the fermentation will start and will be over within less than a week. Now you can measure the FG of your batch.

No more guessing if fermentation is just slow or almost done :)

It only takes a bit you your wort. Theoretically you need only enough to fill the test tube for your hydromenter.

It doesn't work so well with ales though. Since the primary fermentation is already pretty fast.

Kai
 
If you have someone new to brewing with you and you ask him to go see if the wort in the ice bath is still hot make sure you tell him to touch the pot not stick thier finger in the wort.
 
I found the plans for this while surfing the net one day, not sure if any of you have seen it but it makes washing and rinsing carboys a breeze. It is made of 1/2 pvc with small holes drilled in the cap.
1332-P1010009.JPG

1332-P1010008.JPG
 
Ask your housemate to keep her cat in her room for a little while during brewing, racking, and bottling. Otherwise, the cat will have to explore every piece of equipment you have and start tasting the wort and you might find yourself sealing the damn thing a fermentation bucket and, you know, rolling it down stairs and whatnot...
 
cweston said:
About keg systems: is there an easy way to keep the tap(s) under lock and key, for households with teenagers?

I trust my kids and all, and we're pretty "European" in our attitudes about moderate alcohol consumption, but I'm not stupid: I really don't want my teenagers and their friends hanging out in close proximity to an open bar.



This is the kind we use at our office pub. :drunk:

We got them from Kegworks.com

The only problem is that it uses one universal key, so if the kids are smart enough, they'll buy a spare key for $3 from the same site.
 
gruntingfrog said:
The only problem is that it uses one universal key, so if the kids are smart enough, they'll buy a spare key for $3 from the same site.

If the kid's that smart, he/she is probably already brewing their own. :)

-walker
 
For brewers with spouses.....

Insist on buying stuff for the house and or the in-laws and "sneak" in a few homebrew items. This works especially well if you have a joint savings account and/or on-line banking.
 
Hell, they can just take a screw driver and undo the beer line and their off to the races. Not rocket science. I guess I would rather them take some beer and think they are being sly then have them try to be real sly and screw up my draft lines!
 
if they figure out that they can do that, and not make a mess of it, by all means let them drink some :)

I keep my freshly bottled beer in cardboard boxes in a room without carpeting. If you happen to have an exploding bottle, its not gonna kill your carpet. One of my coffee stouts would devastate a carpet!!! It already ruined one pair of shorts!! HAHAHAH!

Hell, put the cases of fresh bottled beer in a big black garbage bag. Zero light contamination, and easy clean up for that unfortunate mess.
 
sirsloop said:
if they figure out that they can do that, and not make a mess of it, by all means let them drink some :)

Be nice if that were the case, but you do have a boatload of potential liability issues to work with. Your kid and their friends get into the homebrew and get into an accident - who do YOU think's going to be sued?
 
Brewpastor said:
Hell, they can just take a screw driver and undo the beer line and their off to the races. Not rocket science. I guess I would rather them take some beer and think they are being sly then have them try to be real sly and screw up my draft lines!

I guess the best/cheapest method is having an inline ball valve, and then putting a padlock on the sides of the kegerator that secures the lid. Probably cheaper than paying $30/ tap for one of those taplocks.
 
For cheap burners, small brew kettles(like turkey fry pots), water coolers, etc... check with your local pawn shop. They are always negotiable with their price.

BrewHerc
 
just got my I.C. and then went to Lowe's and got a 6' hose attachment for a hose reel. Just the right length to get up to the deck and plug into the I.C.

I use a 1 1/2 gal plastic Juice pitcher for my no rinse sanitizer. Holds my racking cain and hose vertical with the ends underwater so that once I load it with sanitizer and pinch the tube it holds the fluid. So when I rack to Primary... I lift the cane to the kettle and then remove the tube releasing the pinch to start the flow until I see wort, repinch and then fill primary.
I find cleaning everything as I go with sanitizer from a beer bucket (old one with scratches) with sanitizer makes final clean up easier as everything isn't caked on.

All in all my first brew was 4.5 hrs from start to finnished clean up. Today was over an hour faster as I was doing a Heff and no grain to steep. But I think I can get it down to 4 hrs easy.

Cheers and happy brewing
 
Most brewstores that deal with kegging sell a special padlock that goes on the tap - they're not cheap ($25.00 or more).

Maybe a lock on the refrigerator and an in-line ball valve between the keg and the tap??? Just a thought....


Hopsnort

How about quick disconnects on the line? Or you can keep the keg sitting on a postal scale and monitor the weight of it. You'd know when they took some, but it won't stop em. Or if you go with the cobra tap setup - you just take that connection with you when you're done drinking. :cross:

-OCD
 
I used to get bottles by buying strange beers that weren't twist-off and hassling my friends, but now what I've been doing is going to bars and asking for them. I know a lot of places don't use returnable bottles, but our local brewery does and every bar has a couple cases lying around. If you go in when the bar owner/manager's around, they don't really have a reason to care if you take them as long as you pay them the bottle deposit. Not rocket science, but my "secret" is definitely to go to A) The same bar every time and B) The most attended bar. The reason for part A is because the first time, it seems like every bar has a really, really old and moldy case of beer waiting for you (which is still usable, but still sucks). Once you get that moldy guy out of the way, it's smooth sailing. The reason for B is that you can get more in one run. I pay the $1.20/24case deposit and get the bottles. I get a ton at a time... I just got six cases. If you end up having a surplus of bottles that way, you can just return them to the brewery for the same price!
 
I've got a tip to expand on the Craig's List post a few pages back. It's a great place to pick up all sorts of equipment.

So go to the Craig's List for your area and enter the search terms you want. When the results show up, bookmark that page. When you go back to it, it will always show most recent results and you don't have to comb through everything. For example:

classifieds - craigslist

This will always show me all the posts including beer and bottle in the listing in the Boulder area.
 
I use a paint-stirring attachment for my cordless drill to aerate the wort. It's also real handy for stirring in DME without all the clumps.
 
Racking cane fits perfectly in the mouth of a picnic tap.

This little secret can be used in a lot of ways, from the Biermincher Bottle Filler to using sections of racking cane as jumpers between picnic taps (which works GREAT for sanitizing tap lines while sanitizing kegs), to using a picnic tap, racking cane, and carboy cap to fill kegs from a carboy without having to start a siphon.
 
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