Recent content by jpmcd03

I suppose I will throw in a vote for primary only. While I am a fairly inexperienced brewer, 6 batches to date, for time/space reasons I am sticking with strictly primary. I just bottled a Red Cherry Ale a few days ago, my lightest beer to date, and it was uber-clear, two things I did...

Just a thought, for my own education as well...even if you are using a hop bag, probably a good idea to strain, isn't that the whole point of cooling down fast to create the cold break? Solidify and strain out some of the impurities?

Really? Couple months in the primary for an ale? Well anyway that is good to hear, i was figuring things would be OK (as usual), but glad to hear from some with experience with that kind of time frame.

Right now I am working with a one stage setup, and I put a red cherry ale into the primary fermenter about 2 1/2 weeks ago. The problem is, since the weather was so much colder than normal the closet temp got pretty low (62 deg or so) the fermentation was so slow that at this point the airlock...

For some reason I can't find the quote, but someone mentioned in this thread leaving a bleach solution in their primary overnight to give it a good solid cleaning. Is this alright with a plastic fermenting bucket? Wont be overly corrosive?

Here is a question: The closet where I store my beer shares an outside wall and has been getting as low as 60 degrees lately, consistently 65 - 68 or so. Like others its taking a little longer for my ale to carb, but no problems. Anyone know if these low temps have a positive or negative...

so I am intrigued by all this...I was just talking in another forum about how my latest batch (an Irish Red) turned out pretty good as usual, but still lacking a good thick head, with good retention. I would like to try a full, or at least larger boil (space/equip constraints) maybe around 4...