Recent content by joshpooh

Fridge works great, but you still need the external thermostat (Johnson Controls is the best/most common). You may need to talk shelves out or make a modified shelf to fit your fermentors in there. Just remember that when your fridge gets to the temperature that you set the external thermostat...

I don't have experience with the plastic carboys, but I would think if it still holds water and you wash it out good it should be fine.

Fifteen minutes isn't really long enough to boil hops for bittering. In some recipes you want to make additional hop additions inside of 15 minutes remaining in the boil for flavor, but you almost always want some hops to be boiled in you wort at least 60 minutes to balance out the sweetness of...

I'm surprised you got any fermentation at all pitching the yeast while the beer was hot. Seeing as how you know most of what you did wrong I'm sure the next batch will be much better.

I would add Great Lakes and Victory Brewing to that list. Maybe Southern Tier, but those are just ones I can think of. I'm sure There are smaller breweries all over the place brewing unique beer.

I ride and brew also. I don't hit the rally scene much, but if there were other brewers there that liked to ride things would change. This thread was cool. I didn't realize so many homebrewers had bikes.

I know the issue has been resolved, but I still have to chime in. You said you saw Krausen and you were still worried. That is as sure of a sign the fermentation is occuring as a hydrometer reading. Only difference is when you see krausen you don't know how much fermentation has occured...

I picked one up a few months ago, and I thought for the price you can't beat it. Nothing in there is the best example of that particular style, but they all are great beers and good examples of the style in my opinion. Sucks you bought it for the bottles and they are twist though.

Couldn't one say this about brewing in general? I mean its a hell of alot easier to just buy the beer. Right? Seriously though, we should all brew the way we want to and feel comfortable. Although AG is nowhere near as hard as it sounds.

Does anyone know how many barrels are in that "batch" with the 28 lbs of hops at the beginning?

I use crystal 40 in about 2/3 of my recipes. It is undoubtedly my most used specialty malt.

That is similar to my idea for my next brew. I'm going to call it the 333 special because it will be 1/3 barley 1/3 wheat and 1/3 rye. I haven't formulated the exact recipe yet, but I'm thinking of adding some medium crystal in with the barley to make it an amber color. when the brews are...

I'd say 10 lb 2 row to replace the extract sounds good. Then everything you steep just mash with the 2 row. I'd mash somewhere in the 150f range for 60 min. Good luck with the brew.

I wish some others would chime in. I'm a glass carboy secondary guy myself, but I guess others have had luck with the better bottles which look like the bottles on water coolers but are made of a better plastic. These are probably ok for your shorter secondaries when the only purpose is to let...

everything sounds perfect to me.