Recent content by alohanole

I’m glad you had good results substituting the caraaroma. My LHBS doesn’t carry it either. I had to order it online. I always thought it was the star of the show for this recipe but I’m glad you are seeing positive results with a substitute. Rock on!

I've got this in the fermenter now. I brewed it last year and loved it. It's a staple in my rotation for sure. This time I used 1056 and it was a monster. More krausen than usual ( I made a healthy starter).

I have a dedicated nitro regulator that uses the special valve. I swap my tanks instead of having them filled, which makes the CGA 580 valve a necessity. Makes sense in your case to keep things simple with the standard valve. Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Just remember nitro/beer gas requires a different valve than CO2. CGA 580. Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Did you use dry or liquid yeast? How old was your yeast?

Too high a pitching temp would be a good reason. A little more info would be handy (extract, all grain, etc.) Does the beer have a sweet finish? If the original gravity is low, your alcohol content will suffer accordingly. Do you have a hygrometer or refractometer to measure your gravity? There...

I've been waiting for a group buy. I'm in for the next one!

I just went out and picked up one of these wrenches this morning. I had been using deep sockets previously, but I really like this approach better. My local sears hardware had 2 on the shelf. Now they're down to 1.

Call me crazy, but I got a good deal on eBay for a Fluke 51-2 digital thermometer. It's pretty slick, although not as convenient as a 1-piece unit: Fluke 51-2

This happened to me once when I accidentally included oats with the rest of the whole grains when I crushed them. I was making an oatmeal stout. Since the oats don't need crushing and they are rather thin, they just slipped through the rollers. This resulted in the rollers slipping. It was a...

Deepfat, I am so glad you found the leak. May your next tank last till the end of summer!

Your current regulator, if the same as pictured, is a Cornelius PL-60. It has left-hand threads on the high pressure ports. You can verify this as it's stamped on the back of the regulator body, near the ports themselves. Silly question, but do they make left-hand threaded nipples? :p

I like the idea of using a spent white labs yeast tube, maybe heat-shrink the probe and submerging it in some gel from a freezer pack. Currently, mine is just free in the kegerator, hanging out near one of the kegs! Seems to work fine. The compressor doesn't cycle excessively, but then again I...

I recommend using a cleaner of some sort before the sanitizer. I use oxi clean for a good soak and then use the star san. I also replace all the o-rings from the start. They are cheap and often the old ones need replacing anyway.

The usual online homebrew stores carry them at decent prices, and carolina biological actually has decent prices too. I just ordered some 2L and 1L flasks. You can never have too many!