Recent content by dingusmingus

My recollection from Brew Like a Monk (great book) is that Chimay uses the same yeast at bottling as they use for fermenting. (I think this was true of all the Trappist ales). Don't worry about a chimay being "too ambitious"--just pick a recipe that looks good to you and give it a try...

All praise the fingerjoint--pretty, strong, and relatively easy. (Unless you do them all by hand, like a lunatic!) Looks great.

I've used two liters before with success. Wash and sanatize carefully. Also, instead of a blow-off tube, I would just cover the opening losely with foil. I've also used a cotton ball soaked in star-san.

Hmm. What was your pre-and post-boil volume? It sounds like you're boil-off rate is not as high as your software is predicting.

+ 2. I use a Johnson or Ranco controller now (can't remember which), and it works great. I'll soon be switching that controller to a keezer, and using an ebay aquarium controller to controll heating and cooling for fermentation. Also, I found the dorm on the street, and it works great...

Check out the similar threads below. Doable, but it takes some doing.

You'll be filling up your legal limit in two batches! Looks awesome.

Looks like a nice recipe. Schedule B is a straight-forward single-infusion mash, and that's what I'd do if I made this beer. As you say, aim for a rest temp of 147. "'Sacch Rest" means saccharification rest, which is a mash stage that converts starch to sugar. Schedule A shows two...

I would say that acutally crunching the numbers probably won't make you a better brewer, but the process of designing a recipe on paper could force you to better understand the relationship between grain and og, for example, or between time, AA%, and IBUs. I suppose it might be useful to...

+1 for Kegglebrewing. Good prices, flexible, very responsive, and great customer service.

This is a trip--I waste equal amounts of time in homebrewing and woodworking forums. Opening this thread was a little disorienting. Nice bench, btw!

I've always added the sugar to my belgians at the end of the boil, with good results.

I'm no physicist (nor do I play one on TV) but is seems the volume of water you need to cool down the wort has everything to do with the difference in temperature between the water and the wort, and little to do with the size of the chiller pipe. A big pipe will have a bigger gallon-per-minute...

(pi*.5^2)*12*100 = 942.477796 cubic inches = 4.07999 gallons BTW, great project!