Recent content by beretta

has anyone heard of crown-cappable 40oz bottles OK for homebrewing? I see the are some 32 oz varieties, but I'm not finding much else. Any suggestings? Beretta

That's what I was thinking... maybe the grain wasn't cracked. He reported to me that he steeped his grains for 20 minutes... as much as I do when all-graining. I've never done a partial extract brew, so I'm not sure what went wrong. the only problems I can think of is: (1) using uncracked...

I'm not sure about his gravity, but mine's usually in the 1.040's. I imagine his would have to be similar with 6 lbs of extract. This is a 5 gal batch lengh, btw. I'm thinking the problem must be his "dark roasted barley" isn't as dark as mine. Mine's usually very black (like patent) on the...

Howdy, Extract Brewers! I passed along a Irish Stout recipe to my brother, and extract/partial grain brewer who reports that this recipe failed: 6 lb. Amber DME 1 lb dark roasted barley 1/2 lb flaked barley Yeast + Hops (kent golding) In his words: "My stout from the recipe you gave...

For every pounds of grain there is a certain maxium amount of sugar you can extract from it. Base-Pale malts have the highest, and darkest grains have the least. To calculate effiency, brew up a batch. When done lauddering (or after chilling post-boil) measure the gravity and volume of beer...

I tried quick bread (soda bread, beer bread, etc...) once with spent grains and it's flavor was great. However, I was turned off by the dagger sharp husks. They scratch my throat and got stuck in my teeth. Did I do something wrong?

Congrats. If you plan not to buy beer at stores, you will find you have more motivation to bottle. Bottling's charms will wear off fast. I haven't bought a appreciable amount of "store" beer in 3 years. Of course, going to the doctor's office is always fun when they ask: "How much do you...

Congratulations! Welcome to the obsession. Your first homebrew was a All-Grain?!?! Wow! That's ballsy.

Here's today's results using my new sparge method: 7 lb 2row pale malt .5 lb caramel malt .5 lb roasted malt .3 lb roasted barley 8.3 lbs total Post-boil, I ended up with 5.1 gals of 1.050 point wort... so... 255 pt*gals. 255 / 8.3 gives 30.7 pts/gals*lbs. I'm figuring my theoretical max...

Agreed. I'm saying that the downward force isn't due the the pressure, its the cause by *water flowing* in a downward direction and dragging the grains down with it. I've never worried about temperature during sparging. Should I? I mash-out at what ever rest temp I ended up with (152F)...

Ok... I could see that being a disadvantage to my proposed mashing method. I remember from my days while taking care of a small pond: silt is amazingly floculant and will be a water proof barrier if you let it.

Maybe. I'm thinking that the density of the grain bed and the depth would counteract the pressure of the extra water... sorta of an ohm's law type relationship. If you bed depth or density get too much, your flow will crawl to a stop. So rather than I=V/R, you would have Flow Rate = PSI /...

That sounds about right... if I remember at 15 psi (weight of air at sea level) will push a column of water 32'.. so 15/32 = .45-ish psi per foot of water. I don't think PSI has any effect on the dynamics of lauddering, if you keep flow rate constant. I guess, my thoery is: if you have the...

Well, I'll be trying this again tomorrow. As far as dilution goes... I guess there is a couple of ideas why I'm not worried: 1. wort is denser: its lower temperature (158F) than sparge water (170F), and it's apparent SG is more. I last week's laudder of a stout, I could see the wort - water...

from my understanding of hydrodynamcis, 28" as compared to 20" of depth would give you around 28/20 times the pressure at the bottom of the tun, or 1.4 x. I also thought that the more weight of water would compact the bed more, but I'm not sure of the physics behind that... I think worse...