Recent content by cjb

Missing a few of the best in Portland: Bailey's Tap Room http://www.baileystaproom.com/(mentioned above) Apex http://apexbar.com/ - 50 taps, big outdoor patio Belmont Station http://belmont-station.com/ - nice new patio area, some unusual stuff on tap, attached to the best bottle shop in town...

Home Depot does have 3/16" vinyl tubing, and I've used it before in a pinch. The stuff I got was much thinner-walled than the beer line you'll get from your LHBS.

Is it full of sediment/minerals that came from the water supply? You realize that means the tank is actually filtering those things out, right?

My plumbing is PEX between the hot water heater and my kitchen faucet, so I'm not concerned about leaching lead or other metals from the pipes. In order to leach anything from the hot water heater itself, there would have to be a failure of the glass lining in the tank - in which case I suspect...

Here's how I do it: (one of these days I'll do a writeup on my system...)

$10-14 is pretty standard around here; I know of one place that does $8 on Sundays. The best deal in town might be Hair of the Dog, which fills a growler for 15 bucks - these are 10-12% beers like Adam or Fred, which cost at least 4 bucks for 12oz at the store or in the pub.

Depending on the recipe, what you're making may actually be closer to a Baltic Porter. If you want to post your ingredients we could help figure it out.:mug: 12C. Baltic Porter Aroma: Rich malty sweetness often containing caramel, toffee, nutty to deep toast, and/or licorice notes. Complex...

This is how I do it. Squeeze the bag to get out all the liquid you can from the hops. Helps with aeration as well...

Sounds good, wish I could check it out. I sometimes travel to the Netherlands for work, but won't be there for Dutch Beer Week. It does look like I'll be there around the time of the Borefts beer fest at De Molen - looking forward to that!

If you're in Bend, I'd highly recommend Crux. Boneyard and Deschutes are great stops as well. In Portland...close your eyes and throw a rock :) But I'd second the suggestion of Hair of the Dog - a unique brewery, and you'll find stuff on tap there that you can't get anywhere else.

If you didn't replace all the o-rings when you got it, do it (don't even bother inspecting them). They'll hold onto nasty soda smells/tastes and other funk that's impossible to get out. A full set of 5 gaskets is a couple bucks.

I have the Bayou SQ14 and it's been great - zero complaints. I guess it could be quieter, but it heats wort fast and is a third of the price of a Blichmann.

Just swap it out for 3/16" hose and I'm guessing it will be about right. You can fit 3/16" hose on a 1/4" tailpiece without a problem (just warm it up with a bit of hot water first). FWIW, I use close to 10' of 3/16" hose at around 10psi and 35deg.

Just something that caught my eye - are you using a hose for your brewing water as well, or just for cleaning?

If I'm making a big starter and don't want to add the whole 2L+ volume to the beer, I'll do the starter a few days early and then cold crash it. On the morning of brew day, I'll pull it out of the fridge and decant, and then boil/cool maybe a liter of sparged wort and add that to the starter...