Recent content by Having-A-Homebrew

Leave it in the secondary as long as you can stand it. You'll get better beer.

Ummm, brew a lager?

You would want to reactivate it the night before by adding sterilized wort.

Bulk DAP is something like $300 a ton. Bulk urea about the same. The money they charge for "yeast nutrient" packages is highway robbery. Permit me to be skeptical of the claims for high buck nutrient packs.

Small batches are more problematic because of the loss when racking and testing and the greater potential for contamination. I've made mead cold using campden tablets, honey, yeast, and water. Nothing else. Turned out great, just took four years. I used the Wyeast sweet mead yeast.

Sorry, no pics, and the vines aren't too photogenic this time of year. I have them growing up the side of an outbuilding. The vines reach 10' in height most years, growing up a metal grid. They are dark green, and quite pretty, I think.

I have never had the experience of getting beer of adequate clarity without using a secondary. Others have done better. You should not get enough sediment on the secondary for positioning of the racking cane to be critical. Just a 1/8" layer or so. It is not a big deal to get a little...

High IG beers can take forever. I had some mead that took more than two months once.

Find out whether it's a two wire thermistor or a three wire sensor with a builtin amp. If it's just a thermistor you can put an ohmmeter across it and vary the temperature and see what you get. Then it's a simple matter to apply a series or shunt resistance to fool the uP. You can use either...

You do have to be careful with gas because you can in fact blow yourself up. That said, it isn't that hard to do right, albeit something you want to do early in the day before you have a homebrew.

The cider-specific varieties have higher tannin content and higher acid content. Fedco Trees sells them, as does Cummins Nursery. Cider without sufficient tannin is like beer without hops. Or so I'm told.

Well, you can always brew them.:mug:

There is probably a calibration screw somewhere inside the unit that will allow you to tweak it a little bit. Depending on the type of sensor, there are different ways (involving solder and resistors) to fool the microprocessor into thinking the water is cooler than it really is. There are...

The one I have was originally propane, and came from a homebrew supply store. They sold me a replacement orfice for it for converting it to natural gas. Then we moved to a house that had propane so I've converted it back. Lehman's has one that can be converted: Lehman's - Products for Simple...

I find that a 20,000 BTU burner is sufficient. There are cast-iron burners available in this range that run quietly and that will work off a standard 7" w.c. natural gas line. For comparison, a typical kitchen stove burner is 7,000-11,000 BTU.