Recent content by sd_tom

Was at the White labs tasting room recently and there was 5 Ambers (so, not porter) done with 001, 002, 041 and one other.. think 028. 041 was the winner for me.

Ok, have secured the ingredients for from scratch root beer syrup (to be mixed with carbonated water). I liked this route better as while I have a kegging system I got some serious warnings about the flavor never getting out of a keg or o-rings. Plus, right now I have an empty keg with nothing...

ok well I feel a little better that I'm not the only one that's had complications with this thing :o what about some chinese lantern kind of thing (the orb/sphere ones) where you knit with some nylon thread rings of different sizes so it opens up when suspended?

I built one of these and it sucked. I see all these photos where your bag is all open.. but the one and only time I tried to use it the bag immediately bunched up once I got a boil going / caught in the current, thus bunching up the hops near the surface and I feel I got really poor utilization...

Think it's carastan dark (30-37L), or at least that was my conclusion.

To tell you the truth, I've had horrible luck with WLP002 as well; not to the extent of bottle bombs but early flocculation and having to rouse a bit. However, that was before I got serious about starters, etc.. so was looking for a rematch against this yeast if appropriate. My assumption...

Definitely looking to do a pumpkin beer in the next couple of weeks.. my last attempt 2 years ago failed where I think I used fresh nutmeg vs everything else from a jar.. which so overpowered everything else it started tasting like plastic. However the malty presence and other characteristics...

Thanks those are some good tips. I'll update this with the final game plan and recipe here when I get going. Was thinking of doing it this weekend but work might get in the way

So locally there was a one off beer produced by a local brewery on contract from a beer bar in town (Hamilton's in SD). It was a "Imperial Chili Spiced Chocolate Milk Coffee Porter w/ Vanilla Bean". I had it on cask the other day and while I thought there was going to be so much going on that...

So today I was trying to do a wit and the LHBS I use was out of rice hulls. Anyway my gf has a horse and says they have huge bails of rice hulls there.. so we went and 6cuft of rice hulls was $10. I took as much as I could conceive needing in the near term and she took the rest to the horse...

ok just tried it again focusing on less air being the way i wanted to go, i had been assuming more air as people generally have talked about jet engine sounds. So I tightened down all the connections on the regulator assembly and started it with shutter closed. I did appear to have the...

Just started playing with a camp chef, morebeer, burner I got a month ago. Read a lot of threads about messing around with the air shutter, and what people are describing doesn't really match at all what I'm seeing... talking about blue with yellow tips.. I've just got pretty much a...

So, I'm on batch 13 in my homebrewing hobby, and I've starting to see a pattern here (which may not be the case) when using williams extracts. Specifically I've done 3 batches with their Marris Otter extract, and 1 with their German Gold.. they seem to be the only ones with the first anymore...

I just bottled a triple with: - Cane Sugar, also followed Jamil's comment that Candi sugar is a waste of money - Added near end of fermentation Gravity Readings: OG 1.068 Added 2.5lbs of table sugar at 1.012 FG 5 days later: 1.011 So, can't argue with reaching the right dryness...

Well, ordered the German Gold from williams. Figured, if I like it then i'll never know what I was missing with the real stuff.. and if I don't, can try it next time.