Recent content by TapeDeck

We did a big imperial stout, and made enough that we have spare. One of the fermenters somehow came out a little tart/astringent, but not in a way that particularly makes me think it's got a bug. We drink a lot of sours, and I think this was just a poor mash and not the best fermentation...

Just wanted to say, based on this little build, I made one myself. Slightly different. I use threaded liquid disconnects, so mine was Pump (in a bucket, hanging from taps) 3/8 hose that I had sitting around, heated to fit over 1/2 fitting on the pump... hose clamped because I don't trust it...

Hmm. Almost every purchase I've made has made a big impact in my beer quality. It might be easier for me to try to narrow down to things that were NOT helpful. Brew Hauler is a HUGE plus for those of us that like glass. Thermapen (I had one before I started brewing) is such a great tool...

So you save the dregs of a few of your favorite chunky beers, or a whole bunch of your favorite not-so-chunky beers. You make a 1 L starter and spin for 48 hours. And you have clear yeast growth. How do you know how much you have made? Don't you sort of need a ballpark to know how many...

I will have to brew this soon. I can get the real thing, but I'd like a keg of the real thing in my keezer, so this should be "the thing." :)

The thought was to share information that I found extremely vexing, which I got from a Siebel certed commercial brewer. The decision to withhold a name has to do with professional courtesy... I believe it would be inappropriate to put a brewer's name out there who could be giving information...

I understand the reality that people post made up nonsense on the web, but it's weird to be ad hominem to another supporting member of a site... why would anyone go through the trouble of paying toward a site to provide intentionally bad information? Can't someone troll for free? I am...

Yeah. I asked him if there's any way this could have been a contaminated sample, etc, and he said that we should definitely try again (LOL this is almost surely his elaborate means of drinking more of my beer for free...) but that he's confident that this wasn't the issue... he believes that if...

Regarding yeast culturing from the can... I have a commercial brewer friend, whom I asked to help me in trying to start a Conan culture. He went through the procedure, and his (autoclaved, sterilized) petri dishes had 9 out of 10 lager yeast colonies. In talking to a couple of other brewer...

No doubt, but as I haven't had any savable yeast cakes (very high gravity) recently, and I literally just built my stir plate and got my flasks, that's an idea for later. Now, it's a matter of sneaking some of my current starter to have some of this yeast available for next time I want to brew...

So, if I take a small random amount, add it to a 150L starter, let that go for 36 hours, decant that, and save the yeast cake from that, I effectively have a roughly calculable cell count, right?

I'd like to bank a small amount of my starter yeast to use in a month or so. How much should I save? I have tiny little jars, similar to the white labs vials... Can I go small like that, and just step up a couple of times the week I want to brew with it? It seems easy... Tell me if I'm...

I know I've asked the "do you secondary" question before, but I keep on bumping into reasons why I could imagine one might... and I'll be brewing one of them on Friday. I'm doing a relatively high gravity barleywine. I have expectations that this beer will want to sit for 6-9 months before...

Thank you. I just didn't want to put the effort in if there was reason to think this could cause a meaningful hassle. I have no problem harvesting less yeast, as I don't need 4 mason jars of this stuff. This is my first time saving the yeast... I like the idea of subtracting $8 from my...

I did a pale that used a ton of hops, and then a ton of dry hopping. It wasn't a high gravity brew, and is somewhere between 5-6% ABV. Because the alcohol content isn't massive, I was thinking of washing the yeast for next time, but since there's an abnormally high quantity of hop matter...