Recent content by MoonMaster

So about 6 months ago I tried my hand at making a vanilla porter and the results were pretty underwhelming. I added 2 or 3 beans, scraped and chopped up, and added them to the secondary for at least a week, maybe 2 but I ended up with no noticeable vanilla flavor. I have another batch in the...

Yea that was what I was thinking, having the pump and some cold water would probably work a lot better than the hot groundwater we have out here in socal... but damn is that thing ugly

My assumption is he is using the two coils and pumps to pump more water through it faster but yea it does look pretty gnarly. I really only care about it being efficient though, and the pumps were appealing but... I hadnt found any as cheap as that site was listed (cheapest Id seen was around 60...

I'm about to brew my 5th batch and I've been considering a wort chiller just because Im tired of waiting 45 minutes to an hour for an icebath to cool my wort down. Im just brewing extract batches so I know I dont necessarily *need* a chiller, but im willing to pay for the convenience. I found a...

Yea, I know now that rinsing starsan = bad, but they were so loaded with foam it really freaked me out. I bottled another batch yesterday and I left it in, so I have learned my lesson there. It is entirely possible that the yeast was not done, since I did not check up on my gravity readings...

And damn was that thing loud! My first beer (an Irish Red) has been conditioning in bottles for just over two weeks now and everything seemed to be going well until last night when disaster struck. It was only one bottle, but it was absolutely pulverized and tiny shards of glass were all over my...

Good to hear, thanks for the peace of mind. Hopefully its just hops related but its good to know it wont be ruined!

Not dry hopped or particularly hoppy, just an Irish Red. I am fairly certain its olive oil the more that I think about it, I initially thought it was soap but I had spaghetti a few days prior so oil would make sense and can be tough to get off. Kind of a bummer, but at least it wasnt in it the...

Just bottled my first batch a couple days ago and I'm concerned with what looked like oil on the surface of the beer when I transferred it to the bottling bucket. I didn't notice it at all when it was in the secondary and the only place I can think of that it came from is the pot I used to heat...

Just bottled my first beer today and I have been trying to figure out the alcohol content without much success. Can someone help me calculate this? I forgot to take an initial gravity reading so I dont know what it was initially but I have heard you can calculate it roughly with just...

Midway through my first batch but I am concerned I screwed my beer up when I racked to secondary. I got an auto siphon and I was transferring the beer but it was taking a really long time (later I realized I was stupid and had both containers level) and I had people waiting on me so I ended up...

Hey all, first time brewer here and I think I did most things right (although I am constantly concerned about contamination though I have no reason to think it is) but I realized I forgot to build up a passive oxidation layer in my aluminum kettle before I used it. What impact could this have on...