Recent content by Nnaakk

I'm in.

Here's a pic.

I made one out of oak dowels a few years ago using just a saw and drill press, and it's worked great. Shaped like below. ``| ``| ``| ``| |-|-| |-|-| Used a larger diameter (3/4"?) dowel for the handle portion and the two side peices and ran smaller diameter (1/4") dowels across...

You can get a good idea using a simple stick on thermometer(fermometer) on the outside of your fermentor. I use a temperature controlled fermentation chamber, and I've at times had to set the air temp as much as 7-8*F below what I want the fermentation temp to be.

I have a similar setup, with the temperature probe free hanging. I use the stick-on theremometers on the fermentor and adjust the temp controller regularly throughout fermentation to keep it where I want it. I would think that using a thermowell would allow a more hands free approach, but I...

What yeast did you use? For what it's worth, I recently brewed a Barley Wine with 1056(1.5L starter and plenty of oxygen) that finished around 11%. I bottled after 3 weeks, and the yeast had no problem with the priming sugar.

Replied.

I've used a small(cheap) space heater set to the low heat setting with a temp controller inside a small chamber made from foam board insulation. I recently used this to ferment a belgian ale at 80* and it worked great. I also have a square hole cut out of the side to accomodate a mini...

Ran across this on BYO: http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/19-brewing-tips/1410-small-scale-brewing Looks like some usefull info.

I'd been planning on doing this with 5 gallon batches, but it may be worth it to scale down. I'll have to look at what equipment is available for sub 5 gallon batches. I'm also in the process of building a fermentation chamber, so maybe I can include some extra space for small fermentors...

For my first post, I decided to share my plans to educate myself. I've brewed 20 something beers, and I enjoy it immensely. However, I feel that I have little grasp of what different ingredients or other brewing variables actually do to finished beer. I have of course read most anything I can...