Recent content by neldred

I for one am glad that a premium 750ml bottle of beer is only $11 (for say a St. Bernardus Abt 12 which is easy to get anytime and A+ in my opinion) instead of some insane original amount, or even worse increased 2-4x's that original amount due to speculation and hording. FWIW I like wine...

2.5 years on and there have been a few startups in our area, but a lot of places have gone out of business (and only very recently after struggling since the downturn three years ago) .

Shouldn't be, we are just above sea level close to the gulf of mexico (west coast of florida)...carboys are in the same exact place and temp as they've been the entire time (high 60's in the dark). I don't see any cracks, it's dripping through the tiny little opening in the bottom where the dime...

Thanks guys, that's good news. Just out of curiosity, why is any water at all dripping through the airlocks? They are the 3 piece kind, and its happening on both of them.

I have a couple of Belgian style big brews (around 11%) in two glass carboys that are aging...it's been over 6 months and the water in the airlocks were getting really low so I refilled them, but a few drops of water got into the beer through the bottom of the lock (which are in stoppers well...

Flying Dogs standard IPA Snake Dog is VERY balanced IMHO.

Is trub loss generally the same regardless of 1, 2.5, or 5 gallon batches? Will trub amount effect ABV or Gravity, since its actually a solid (or are you precalculating in beersmith to compensate for trub)? Thanks...just getting back into brewing after taking a year break.

As an example, she has an aversion to Sam Adams Boston Lager and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It's the amount, and I think the type too. Cascade are a lot more aggressive than East Kent Goldings even in similar quantities.

My wife doesn't like beer. She'll drink cider (even the dry stuff) and Lambic though. But I'd like to do maybe a cherry cream ale for her, and I'm wondering which hops she might be ok with. Any hoppy beer or IPA she tastes, makes her actually feel sick, but she can sip a lighter Weiss and...

+1. Freeze purified water that is sealed. You can also do this with jugs of purified drinking water and cut the plastic off with a sanitized packing knife. I do this with the Zephyrhills 3 Liter bottles from Walmart (I think they are $1.18), you'll need approx 6 of them for a 5 gallon...

Thanks guys. It sounds like if I actually weigh the DME, grains, hops, invert sugar, etc I'll be ok. I have a nice (but inexpensive) digital scale that does grams, oz, lbs, klgs up to 8 lbs as small as 1 gram.

Do you guys generally call one LB (of say DME or grain) 16 oz (in a measuring cup), or 1 actual pound of weight on your precision scale?

I found this http://www.foamrangers.com/malts.html (Thanks Baron Von BeeGee and YooperBrew for the help above)

Thanks, that's getting very close to what I'm looking for...like you say here 10% would be balanced, 20% would be very much on the sweet side. So can all the specialty grains be grouped into sweet, or toasty, or coffee? So is 20% for most any steeping grain the general point of no return?

Right, I know that no one can give a general rule of thumb for which steeping malt fits in which style in which amount, that's not really exactly what I'm asking though. It says on the beer wiki and on some post here that using too much specialty grain can be either too overpowering or...