Recent content by mashpaddled

Having a tough time finding shops close to my home (Denver northeast) or work (Lakewood Belmar area) that refill tanks these days. The paintball place that was over here moved to the far edge of Aurora. I used to stop by Altitude Brew going home from work but they appear to have closed. Does...

A few lager strains work alright over 60F but generally they give you those cleaner fermentation flavors at cooler temperatures. The second struggle is getting the beer to clear up because lager yeasts are poor flocculators. Depending on the temperature in your area, you might be able to stick...

Peaches make a nice brandy although you need a lot of peaches to make a little brandy. There's several distilleries around western Colorado that make great peach brandies. Store bought apples can also make a decent apple brandy. @doug293cz is doing the hard work for us here showing how much...

Yes, fresh yeast and table sugar. Adding the right amount of sugar is the tricky part. The *right* amount depends on the age of the beer and temperature over the life of the beer. I would start out with 1.5oz/gal which seems to do a good job. If you ferment in a warmer space you may want to...

I've been on a real Belgian kick recently. Tomorrow I'm whipping up a Belgian pale ale. I picked up some red milo (sorghum) and going to try it out in a beer because it's supposed to add fruit flavors. Brewing the beer with pils and red milo, a little table sugar, WY1388 and homegrown mt. hood...

Fruit needs the sugars expressed out of the cells before they will ferment, unlike sugar washes. Also keep in mind that it takes a lot more fruit to get the same amount of sugar as unloading table sugar into a wash. Fruit generally needs to be crushed to break up the fruit and as fermentation...

That looks like a very normal fermentation where the krausen has not yet dropped out. Yeast can remain in suspension or even float krausen for a while which can give beers a sourish, yeasty flavor. That's exactly what seems to be going on here. If you have the ability to chill your beer and keep...

If you're making an American barleywine in the bigfoot variety, I think your recipe is fine as it is. That beer is sweeter than the typical old school American barleywine that was like an all grain DIPA but not anywhere close to the supersweet, lightly hopped barleywines brewed by a lot of...

There's no way to look at a pellicle and come to any kind of conclusion at what's in the beer or how the beer will turn out. If the barrel was used for brewing previously and had a productive culture residing in the wood, chances are good you will continue to make good mixed fermentation beer...

Surviving drinking this beer is a real superpower. All jokes aside, the process of creating alcohol and acid is going to murder most of the dangerous microorganisms that exist in a compost bin but whether they create toxic or GI tract disruptive compounds before that happens is kind of a...

I'm of the same mindset. I don't think about packaging sour beer ever before a year and really try to push out 18-24 months especially when fermenting in a carboy. (Rules change when you're talking about a barrel, especially a small barrel.) The hardest part of brewing sour beer is absolutely...

Can't go wrong with SM but depending on your willingness to commit to a larger batch, I like picking up the 22lb crown jewels from Royal Crown. I've gotten some coffees from them at $5-8/lb (shipped) that are simply incredible for that price. They are primarily sold for small batch commercial...

I really like the coffee that comes out of the wahgi valley. They showcase a lot of island type character with soft floral character at lighter roasts but they are very affordable (as you see) because there isn't a lot of hype out of PNG and especially not that processing area. I always liked it...

Belgian beers as a whole were a big part of craft beer from the late 90s into the early 2010s. The trappist styles were a big part of that up until the end of the 2000s. They were considered the height of interesting but well made beers. Looking back with hindsight, I think there was a lot of...

I grow four varieties in partially submerged half wine barrels (to keep the roots from intermingling) so my harvests are usually less than people who plant directly in the ground. I pulled about 12oz of chinook, 6oz of mount hood, 3oz of sterling and what would have been about 12oz of cascade if...