Recent content by TcJ

Thanks singybrue - I couldn't find any inside pictures!

Has anyone tried this freezer with a temp controller for fermenting? The specs look like it'll easily hold a 6.5 gal carboy or bucket. http://www.walmart.com/ip/40899474?wmlspartner=wlpa&adid=22222222227030235391&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=t&wl3=50901641432&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=103528372112&veh=sem

It looks like this freezer will easily fit a 6.5gal bucket. Has anybody tried this unit? I already have a temp controller. http://www.walmart.com/ip/40899474?wmlspartner=wlpa&adid=22222222227030235391&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=t&wl3=50901641432&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=103528372112&veh=sem

The shape of blue lines are intended to give a quick visual sense of a recipe: if things squish up into the top right corner, it's a "big" beer, and if the horizontal blue line is higher on the left, the balance tends towards bitter, while flat is balanced. The green lines are the range of...

Oh, wait, sure it can use a diamond:

Hey, that just gave me an idea.... In this version, OG is on the right, and IBU is on the left. The scales have been adjusted so that when the line from OG to IBU is horizontal, OG:IBU is 0.5, to suggest a "balanced" beer. (But it can't be a diamond to show it this way ;))

You're right, the numbers would be useful. And in fact the name and style aren't important here, as they would be on the front too. Here's another version, with numbers and another tweak - the color behind the graph is the SRM color from an SRM color chart.

I have always wished that beer bottles displayed pertinent information to the drinker: What's the ABV? What's the bitterness? OG/FG? It annoys me that commercial bottlers don't do that routinely. So I started thinking about ways to show "back of the bottle" information. I like visual data. So...

Drinking the wort is definitely the best argument against returning the wort! I notice that several of the suppliers suggest doing basically the same thing with the Femtech wine thief... so I suppose some brewers think the risk of returning wort to the fermenter isn't that great. The advantage...

I'm in the process of fermenting my very first 5-gallon batch, so I'm obviously a newbie. As I was pulling off the cover of my bucket to take a gravity reading, I thought there has to be a better way. I imagined a tool that is a variant of a battery hydrometer, where the wort gets sucked up...

Thanks, that's reassuring!

Hi, I searched but couldn't find if this has been discussed. I'm about to do a partial mash brew. Is there any harm in splitting the boil into two equal halves... i.e., boiling 2.5 gallons with half of the recipe in each step, and mixing them in the fermenter? Of course it'll take longer...