Recent content by BrewerBrennan

Ever thinking of drilling all the way through the taster board? Makes for easier carrying and cleaning.

Too cool. Love seeing the progress!

Yea I'm not really worried about it. I'm actually kinda glad it finished at 1.026, any thinner and it would have been a little too dry. I still plan to add more chocolate, tone down the patent quite a bit, and bring the roasted barley down a little. I also want to add a little more oats. I'm...

Hmmm, alright. Good to know! I've been doing AG for a while and I have a knowledge of how to brew, but I'm pretty new to recipe formulation. I guess its just trial and error for now. After seeing that comment and thinking about it, I ended up mashing at 150-151ish. That being said, I still was...

Soooo, tasting notes. I ended up not hitting my final gravity. It stopped around 1.026. Besides that, its actually probably a good thing that it didn't get much lower, its pretty astringent. I think I went a little heavy on the roasted barley, considering it tastes mostly like coffee...

Yuuuuup, thats what I do. It kind of makes sense to me. If you cold crash in the primary and then rack off into a secondary/keg, you'll leave all the stuff that dropped out behind.

I have tried out the technique in a few of my brews and I've been getting amazing results. I love the smoother hop flavor it gives. Maybe its just in my head, but I don't know, it seems like first wort hopping adds a much more in depth flavor. Who else has been messing with first wort hopping...

Awesome! Glad to hear you were over a few points rather than under. My first 10 or so batches, I couldn't figure out all my volumes and was getting only about 60% brewhouse efficiency. Turns out, I measured my boil kettle wrong -___- Oh well though, live and learn. Lesson learned: make sure you...

+1 on the realizing how easy it is. Sanitation is key though, I can't stress that enough. After I brewed my first batch I was astonished at how easy it was. Then I was hooked. I hope the same happens to you :D Good luck on the brewing!

Oops, that was a typo. I copied that from a previous recipe and forgot to change the name. I plan to use 007. As for the peat malt, I love this stuff! I've used it in a porter before and I love the smokey flavor it gives.

So, I've been thinking of brewing up a big imp stout soon. I've pieced the recipe together from so-called clones of some of my favorite stouts. I really enjoy heavy roasty notes, coffee, and chocolate. With that being said, I'm thinking of doing this recipe. Any suggestions are appreciated...

I agree with Homercidal. I've also heard that those proteins are actually helpful for yeast health and that vorlaufing the runnings clear might be denying your yeast some of the healthy proteins. Unless your beer tastes bad, or is overly cloudy because of it, I don't really see the need...

LHBS crush, 10 gal rubbermaid cooler with a false bottom, and fly-sparging. I usually get about 75-80% efficiency.

If anything, I find my homebrew never matches up to the beers I really enjoy. Maybe its just me being extremely hard on myself, but I don't really know. I find myself focusing on the fact that it doesn't taste the same, rather than enjoying the flavors that are actually there. I guess we're all...