Recent content by Vagrant

In, thank you.

Prost

I can't imagine what it was like trying to brew beer without homebrewtalk! You're in good company, Gunny. Welcome back to brewing and welcome to the 1st Civ Div (if you're a new comer). Your brewing abilities will come back proportional to how long you grow your beard out. I was with 2MARDIV...

Can you brew beer without taking a gravity? Absolutely. Now that that's out of the way. Why take a gravity reading? It really depends what your goals are. If you are a beginner, it's less important (IMHO) as you're concentrating on sanitation and pitching temperature and not leaning over...

hahahaha. "I nearly capsized the pot trying to retrieve it from the middle of the pool." Priceless. You make it sound like a Naval Operation. And just the thought of your kettle floating away... Thanks for sharing.

The last batch I brewed in Ft Collins while the sun was blocked out with smoke and ash from a forest fire 10 miles away. I literally had chunks of ash from burning forest fire falling into my fermenter as I was cooling in. If you take the extra steps to be extra careful, even if you screw up...

your blowoff bucket doesn't need to be covered, just make sure the tube is under water in the bucket.

Your yeast should be fine. It's not ideal conditions and you may get some off flavors/esters, but it should ferment out fine. The more disasters you have, the more you learn. You're on the fast track.

Wild yeast floats freely in the air. There is a high possibility that yeast could end up on hop leaves, for sure. However, you will most likely find them in higher concentrations on fruit where some sugars would be present giving you potentially a higher cell count of yeast.

This beer started my "beer epiphany". I had it for the first time in Djibouti, Africa. Next was Chimay which I had half way around the world in Kailua, Hawaii a few years later. I started homebrewing days after I tried Chimay.

When I steeped specialty grains, I always brought my water up to ~155 to emulate mashing temperatures, although it isn't necessary since you aren't really "mashing" them. You could probably do either as long as you didn't go over mid 160's where you could potentially extract tannins. Irish...

1st Q) If you're hitting your preboil gravities, don't worry so much about volume. If you want more volume, adjust your malt bill and adjust your sparge volume/brewhouse efficiency as necessary. 2nd Q) Think about it. You were 1.063 preboil. Post boil you were X. You diluted it with water...

You could dilute down with water but keep in mind you're going to dilute down all the other flavors as well. Use less base malt/extract. Learn from this batch by adjusting your starting gravity to compensate for the fruit sugars to bring the ABV down in future batches. If the flavor's good...

Sounds like you've done your research and you have a good idea of what you're going into. A lot of breweries want to see prior experience... it is pretty hard to break in but there's two time tested ways to do it. 1) Hang around the place. Become a regular. Make friends at the brewery and...

I second schoellhorn82! Get a couple second opinions, especially if you aren't a belgian style fan. I would definitely consider entering it if you get some positive reviews from others that don't know the back story. Bring a bottle/growler into work and have a few non-beer drinkers try it...