Syracuse, NY area - Group Grain Buy

FL Brewer - forgot to mention - they also sell food grade steel bins with open heads and resealable lids. They have a coating on them that is food safe/liquid safe. I bought one to use for a giant fermenter or bulk ager in a big cider year (haven't used it yet . For some reason I think those are cheaper than the poly, but I do know that you can't always get them. I was lucky and a company was ordering them, so they tacked on one for me to the order.

cidah one word of advice for that hefe~ use a blow off! haha, i put mine on yesterday, 5 hours later i had blow off coming out of a 6 gallon carboy. and had to dumb the blow off twice, woke up and there was blow off running across the kitchen because it overflowed. this stuff is aggressive!

on another note, i bought these on amazon, with prime it had free shipping for grain (well i have one right now) it holds just under 55 lbs of grain (like 2 lbs wont fit)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009YYQ4S/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Ha - I always use blow offs now. My AB double batch spewed like a volcano in my 15 gallon fermenter a few weeks ago. It blew the blow off stopper off the top. So now I need to get a bigger blow off tube tube, maybe 1/2 ID for future AB runs haha.

Thanks for the heads up though, I bet the wheat has a wicked thick krausen

My ceiling is still not happy with me after a imperial vanilla porter. My gf laughed her ass off. I was covered chest down when I just so happen to walk by and it blew off. Couldn't believe my luck. Oxyclean helped but thankfully its and apt not my house

Your local wal-mart, if you have one, has icing buckets in 2 sizes that they recycle. If you talk with the people at the bakery you can get them for free. I am putting my specialty grains in the smaller size ones.

CidahMastah said:

I bet the wheat has a wicked thick krausen

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you would not believe, its like thick pond scum... (but much better) ill post a photo of it later.. sadly.. iv lost a good 1/4 - 1/2 gallon from krausen blowoff

I lost about the same on my arrogant. it was depressing!

If I only had the bulk conical arranged!

cidah, thanks for the tips on the containers. I'm going to take a serious look at all of them for sure.

I wouldn't use the large rubbernaid storage bins from walmart. They are pretty soft plastic, I was really thinking of getting some to store my grain since they cost like 5 bucks for such a large container, but I was looking around online and read in a few places that the rodents can chew through fairly easy

There are no rodents in my keezer

Haha - Yeah, here is a suggestion. Buy a 4 pack of mouse traps at HD, put peanut butter on them, lay them out in the room with your grain. Buy the wally mart ones you like haha.

The poly bins I have are 6mm I think - would take a diligent mouse with a heck of a nose to smell through that!

Or you could buy a cat?

Maybe I can help get this thing kick started again. Please add a bag of CM-2ROW to my order.

Good stuff!! You can always use some 2 row.

9 bags to go!!

Remember - we can add a quick three bags with our splits (need one buyer for each share posted below):
.5 bag of Wheat Malt
.5 bag Torrified Wheat
.33 bag of C40 - Crystal 40

FL_Brewer said:

-I'm not in any hurry, whenever the order gets complete is fine for me. My money was transferred to PayPal this past week, so whenever we get the good word I'll be ready. Just stoked to be saving money on grain.

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Forgot to mention since you weren't on the last order. The pricing is pretty close to being accurate, but grain is a commodity. Hence, there will be a fluctuation in the prices on the bags based on the current price of grain. This won't be significant, but the grain may cost a little more, or less than the prices noted in the NCM catalog. (i.e. I don't think we had fluxes in prices of over a dollar for any given bag ordered on the last run).

I only mention this because if you pulled money over into paypal for an exact amount, you may have a little bit less than you need for the order. Let's say you pulled over $200 and you end up needing to pay $200.01. That pesky 1 cent will take 3-5 days to clear.

I will take the wheat malt partial, the crystal 40 partial and:

one cm-2row
one tf-mopa
one 5298 (briess 2 row)

Awesome!!! We are almost there


4 bags to go!!

.5 bag Torrified Wheat is the only partial left.

Not a problem, I transfered a surplus in anticipation of something like that, but thanks for the heads up.

.5 bag Torrified Wheat - needs one person

4 Sacks needed to CLOSE ORDER!!

As a heads up here is a rough estimate of what each person will owe (pending we get 4 more bags to close the order). Remember this isn't exact. Assume this will be a few dollars low:

CidahMastah $246.24
Billie $110.76
Clef051 $31.31
DannSchuler $108.56
Chrisp522 $86.13
FL Brewer $207.75
FarmerJoe $55.24
Bierhaus15 $28.99
kzhusker $105.75
jhenderson27 $157.67
rustbucket $58.16
stunsm $115.36
BrewsCambell $142.41

Anyone SERIOUSLY interested in a hop buy. If so ill hold off and help put together one. Id like to get a few pounds of different hops. If we can get a good deal id consider around 10lbs for myself. I get annoyed paying almost 4$ per ounce.

Ik im off topic sorry.

I probably will hold off right now (would have been interested but jsut did a major hop buy).

I might consider 1lb of amarillo and 1 lb of chinook at the most. Unfortunately spending ~500 on grain (though I am splitting some of it between friends); plus my electric build in progress = low cash reserves.

Who did you do your big hop buy from.

amarillo is going to be very tough to get a hold of... its going fast anywhere you see it in stock.

yah, i agree with you cidah, altho i did not spend that much on grain, my cash is dwindling to fast... until i find a career job, so as of right now, i think this might be the last buy i participate in for a little while.

jhenderson27 said:

Who did you do your big hop buy from.

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I went through http://farmhousebrewingsupply.com/Scripts/default.asp

When I say big I meant big for me. (68 ounces of hops). The price was less than $1 per ounce.

+1 on the amarillo - which is why i bought over a pound of the suckers!

jhenderson27 said:

Who did you do your big hop buy from.

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Hopsdirect.com has good prices. It is usually around $10 for 1 pound. You have to buy a full pound of whatever variety you want though.

I will be making a purchase from your recommondation cidah. Ill wait till next week or so. I plan to get a bunch so I have it. I use alot of pearle and cascade so time to stock up. Im stoked about this grain buy. Im back and forth on what mill to buy. Im looking hard at the 7# barley crushed and a nice immersion.

Use the hop packs (4 packs slightly more discounted) from the farm website when you can.

What is so great about the fram place is, lots of 4 oz bags so variety.

I actually got my amarillo and chinook from hops direct. Farm gives you the chance at variety though.

I will tell you - I have a knockoff corona. I put a SS 5/16 hex bolt in it - it rocks Not as fast as a sweet barely crusher though!!

How diffacult is it to tune the corona and get the right crush.

Honestly, I bought my corona knockoff right after the first round of grain buy. It was my first time doing my own crush. With all the threads on this site about it, it really wasn't hard at all. I think I did a pretty good job on my crush the first time, might be able to do better. I think I lucked out and got a pretty decent mill because I didn't have to do any modifications to it as suggested in some threads. Plus it was only 28-30 bucks after shipping. Google search discount Tommy for their eBay page, then look for their Victoria corn mill, that's what I got. It's a nice option if you're tight on funds for a barley crusher. Just takes some messing around with to get a crush you'll like, but worth it in my opinion.

I don't mind downing the extra cash on the barley crushed but if the corona works well for 10-15 pound a time. I got a power drill for it already so if I can save there I can buy other stuff.

it takes more time than a barley crusher, but mine was good out of the box. I tightened it and I am getting well over 81 percent efficiency.

Better than the efficiency I got from the barley crusher at susnset.

So it is about convenience, not crush - IMHO

Hey Cidah! I see we are almost there, I'm getting excited! I haven't brewed in about seven years and am going to start with partial mashes and then maybe AG, will see how that goes first. As far as paypal goes, no problem here, I have an account. Just give me the word and and how to do it. I'm not on as much, just started a re-fuel outage at Nine Mile, but I'm on at least once a day. I'm going to need a grain crusher, any suggestions?

cidah, by any chance do you have the numbers you were getting with the BC at Sunset? i was seeing between 69-72 on average, then mine shot right up to 83 with my BC that i made

I would ahve to check but i was right around 70% at sunset, just like you are saying. With the corona mill i am doing much better, at least 10 points.


I should say that I think if you tweak your barley crusher you would get great efficiency.

Don't knock the barley crusher! I'm getting ~83% with mine on the default crush size.

So just throwing this idea out. Would everyone be interested in splitting the last 4 bags. Its 200 pounds if 10 of us do it we get 20 pounds each and it costs around 12 bucks and we.complete the order. Being we do 2 row.

jhenderson27 said:

So just throwing this idea out. Would everyone be interested in splitting the last 4 bags. Its 200 pounds if 10 of us do it we get 20 pounds each and it costs around 12 bucks and we.complete the order. Being we do 2 row.

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I wouldn't be against the idea in a week or so, but I just sent an mass email (dozen + brewers) out to some fellow brewers this past thursday/friday. I know there is some strong interest, and I'm pretty sure the 4 bags will be snagged up pretty quick.

Also, I wonder if sunset adjusts their crusher to a lesser efficiency setting to get customers to buy more grain, cause I'm getting a solid 75% (sometimes higher) with my crusher. Just a thought

FL_Brewer said:

Also, I wonder if sunset adjusts their crusher to a lesser efficiency setting to get customers to buy more grain, cause I'm getting a solid 75% (sometimes higher) with my crusher. Just a thought

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Could be that, or they could be tired of customers coming back and complaining about stuck sparges.

FL_Brewer said:

Also, I wonder if sunset adjusts their crusher to a lesser efficiency setting to get customers to buy more grain, cause I'm getting a solid 75% (sometimes higher) with my crusher. Just a thought

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Are you saying the Hydroponics Shop run by teenagers might not be completly honest?

I am shocked.

Great selection of hot sauces though and their prices on hardware is pretty fair.

I always find Home Brew shops to have a wider setting, probably to reduce the chance a customer will complain about stuck sparges, i doubt it is to sell that extra $1 worth of grain.

hahaha yea just a theory, btw my crusher is on the factory settings too.

mine is a home made crusher "well i made in machine shop" but i saw my efficiency go from about 70 consistent from Sun to 80+ this last brew. i would assume that their gap is mid .045ish, so that people dont have stuck sparges. but who knows.... i think my crusher is at .038