Hello and welcome aboard CrawGator. First things first... you a Gator fan... I'm a Bama fan! Gonna be fun in the SECCG!!!
I saw your post on MsBrew blog, didn't get a chance to say hey then, so hey! I'm in Clinton and no there isn't a LHBS. The closest ones are in Memphis, Monroe La, Biloxi, Mobile, and Bham. We do in fact have Mississippi's first homebrew club. We meet every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month (though this month we have a Christmas party at a members home). All are welcome homebrewers or not and we'd love for you to attend and join if you decide it's for you. We conduct club business then have a tasting session, mmmmm! Our google group is;
http://groups.google.com/group/hbamm (we are working on a website, but it's under construction. We only officially formed in Aug/Sep. of this year but have accomplished alot to organize etc. we have an AHA registration, bylaws, etc.)
Though I have enough grolsh style bottles to bottle a whole batch, I find it better to bottle in standard 12 oz. bottles. If returning to brewing my one most important advice I can give you is there are 2 things that good beer can not be made without;
1)Good sanitation.
2)Fermentation temperature control. To achieve this it's easily accomplished by simply placing your fermenter into a lg. Rubbermaid tub (14-16 Gallon capacity) filled 2/3rds of the way with water. This stabilizes the thermal mass and allows for heat transfer between the fermenter and surrounding water. In summer and even winter you can add frozen 2-liter bottles to help cool the fermentation during it's height.
The worst off flavors come from an infected batch, haven't experienced it, and out of control ferm. temps, have experienced it!
Schlante,
Phillip
Ps Send me a private message/join the google group if you're interested in joining our local homebrew club and growing community of homebrewers. FWIW we're developing competitions, have presentations from BJCP judges, etc. Sorry to be so long!
